On the CBC

So I was browsing cbc.ca when I saw this cool looking link on the right-hand sidebar. The link was titled: "Essential Reading: The week in seven stories". So I clicked on it.

And then CBC apologized to me, politely saying, "Sorry, we can't find the page you requested."

My conclusion? There is no essential reading on the cbc.

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition

Seventy-Five years ago this month, the United States ended alcohol prohibition. A bunch of police officers think there's a lesson to be learned from that, in regards to our current global drug policy. I recommend checking it out: www.WeCanDoItAgain.com (the e-mail form doesn't work for Canadians, FYI)

Sometimes the Internet Scares me a Little Bit

So I've been trying to figure out what the hell is up with Revver (the link doesn't work because the site is down).  It's kind of nerve racking since in about twelve hours I'm supposed to be uploading a video to a site that, for all intents and purposes, doesn't exist.

Google is fairly devoid of recent news, except this tidbit gleaned from Wikipedia: "As of November 12, 2008, Revver's site has been down for several days, so it may currently be defunct." Which is hardly encouraging.

But then I read this article, which is slightly older, and discovered something interesting.  My twitter got quoted.  Weird.  Oh, and there was also a plausible explanation for why revver is down ["they are in the middle of major migration from a CDN/provider to a tier 1 & top technology provider which “should make the quality of Revver videos displayed better then ever” (could take a few days)"].

But I was quoted and I could have never known.  Hell, I didn't know for almost two weeks.  And the funny thing is, I wasn't even worried about Revver in that tweet... more so my own inability to get videos online, on time.  But still, regardless of the quote being out of context, it's strange to be surfing the internet and all of a sudden, there's a picture of you, and some words you once typed, and you're all, "What the hell?  What am I doing here?"

So I guess what I'm trying to say is that the internet is weird sometimes.  And a little bit scary.

Buy Stars, Sell Movies

I was just recently directed to the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which is pretty much what it sounds like. No real money trades hands, but you get to buy up stars and movies and earn or lose play money depending on the success or failure of your properties.

For example, yesterday I made just over $8,000 on Terminator 4, and lost $2,500 on Aaron Eckhart. It's an interesting premise, and has been well executed by the people in charge of the site.

As a liberal arts student with next to no understanding of the real stock market, I can't really compare the fiction to the fact, but that doesn't make the Hollywood Stock Exchange any less fun. And that's really what matters with a time waster like this one. You get to predict whether a movie will be successful or not and place play money bets on it.

You think the new Indiana Jones is over-rated? Short it, and earn money when it bombs. Think Brad Pitt sucks? Bet against him. Waiting for Tom Cruise's career to make a come back? Buy him up. You can finally put (play)money where your mouth is, and see how right (or wrong) you really are when it comes to movies.

I feel like there's more to say, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. It's a simple premise and it's a fun way to kill time. That's it. That's all.

Oh, and if you do decide to sign up, tell them imceachern sent you.

The Quality-Quantity Content Divide

Although this blog was originally supposed to update five days a week, monday to friday, anyone who has been paying any attention (or anyone who glances at the archive) could tell you that it has not. Which is ok, because I never officially said it anywhere, so it's not like I was missing official deadlines, just personal goals. Which may be as bad, or worse, but that's another issue entirely. Thing is, after missing about a weeks worth of updates, I updated twice in one day. Which seemed a little like a system overload.

Anyways, this whole fiasco got me thinking about how people consume media online; how people watch serialized videos, read comics, or read blogs. My first impression is that people tend to have short attention spans online. I know I'll rapidly flip through Penny Arcade, Sam and Fuzzy and Zero Punctuation on you average wednesday, consuming the media morsels on offer, then moving on, spending maybe 5-10 minutes per site (Tycho's news post requiring a more than average amount of attention).

So if I run with the short attention span assumption how am I, as a blogger, supposed to keep you, my loyal reader(s), interested. I'm beginning to think there's a sort of fine line between too much content and not enough content. One update a day lets you know I'm still here, gives you something to do instead of actually accomplishing something, but isn't going to leave you feeling left behind.

I wonder though, if someone were to stumble across this website, would they look at the overwhelming volume of text and decide that there was too much content, not enough of it good? My intention here is not to make you feel like you're working. I want you to think - maybe engage in a little meaningful dialogue when you feel like you've got something to say - but I don't want this to be work. This is supposed to be what you do to avoid doing work. I know that's why I'm here.

Then again, does any of that really matter? A lot of this is just an excercise in writing for myself, and although I, like everyone with a website, derive some measure of self-worth (self-importance?) from the number of hits my blog gets, it's not for you. It's for me.

So here's to me hoping I'm not giving you too much crap to wade through, but telling you that for all my wonderings, I'm not going to change a damn thing.

Although sometimes I really do wish I could pick the brains of my visitors.

Wiki this, Wiki that

Wikipedia is a wonderful tool. It's also a great time-waster. And it may also be full of crap.

A recent discussion with a former book seller got me thinking about wikipedia. It's not perfect, but I think the sheer volume of users tends to keep it fairly honest. Maybe not Encaeclopedia Brittanica quality. But on a par with some print Encaeclopedias to be sure.

But is it enough? Right now, I can hop on Wikipedia and read a quick synopsis of pretty much whatever I want, from Penny Arcade to 1951-52 in English Football. I can even have a random article displayed and start learning a little bit about whatever I want. I'll never become the world's leading expert on the subject, but I'll learn a little bit. After enough time, I'll know a little bit about a lot.

The closest equivalent in books (excluding print encaeclopedias) is reading the back cover. But that's more of a teaser than a brief overview. And few will argue that flipping through the pages of a book is faster than Wikipedia's search function.

Of course, you're never going to flip to a random page in a print book and find it vandalized. Or if it is vandalized, you should be able to discern that in no time at all, unlike the sometimes cunning, often crude Wikipedia vandalizations. Maybe the article will only be incorrect for a few minutes, but the chance remains.

So where does Wikipedia fall in the grand scheme of things? I have no problem with it being used academically, as long as it's only a brief usage, backed up by other sources. A certain amount of caution should be excercised by the reader as well; at the very least making sure that an article has been sourced - but probably checking up on a few sources as well - before taking the article as the gospel truth.

Will Wikipedia ever reach true academic standards? Not while it's an open project. But if it stops being an open project, then it'll be deader than dead. I'd call it an interesting experiment, but at this point, I'm pretty sure it's moved beyond that. Perhaps as the internet and the community built up around it matures vandalism of Wikipedia will start to disappear. Or maybe not.

Regardless, I'm going to keep using Wikipedia if only because it's so damned convenient. And I work in a book store.

In a Frenzy

This is going to be brief for reasons which I hope are obvious. I highly recommend that anyone interested in writing check out Script Frenzy; regardless of whether you like to write poetry, short stories, novels, screenplays or non-fiction.

The Frenzy, in a nutshell, is a challenge wherein you must write 100 pages of screenplay in 30 days. This year, the challenge month is April. Last year it was June. Who knows what next year holds. All I know is that it's fun, hectic, challenging, and forces the creatively inclined to actually sit down and do something.

So if you fancy yourself some sort of writer, check it out. Realize 100 pages in 6 days is too much. Forget about it for 10 months. And finally, join the frenzy next year.

Seriously.

Retroactive Continuity

Retroactive continuity, for those who aren't aware, is "the deliberate changing of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction", according to the fine writers at Wikipedia. If we take a slightly broader interpretation of the term and include non-fiction, then this post was retconned. Which is to say, I posted one thing, and have now removed it and replaced it with this post on retconning.

In film, television, writing and any other type of serial fiction, retconning is bad. Plain and simple. Sure, it might open up interesting new paths for plot to develop. But it opens them by cheating. Taking the easy way out.

It is sloppy and it is lazy and if you really really wanted to take your character from his office job to the far flung reaches of space, don't retcon his father into a mad scientist who implanted a tracking device in his son at birth so that when the mad scientist transcended space and time he could transport his son with him. Everyone will wonder about the office worker's old father, the good carpenter who raised his son and forced him to go through university so he could get the rewarding and fulfilling job where he met his beautiful young wife.

Why don't you instead just make a smack-talking chihuahua from the planet Xorb pick the office worker at random and transport him to an alien world. Still need a mad scientist? Maybe the mad scientist just thinks the office worker is his son. Don't change the past. Come up with creative solutions for the future.

But that's just fiction. What about non-fiction? What about this blog post right here? Should I preserve the content of the original post, no matter how stupid or insipid or trite I think it is?

What if I make a spelling mistake? Should that error be preserved for all time? Or should I correct it? Or does it not matter either way?

I reckon that fixing unintentional errors is ok. Worth doing even. But removing and replacing whole posts? It strikes me as somewhat dishonest. Especially when part of the point of this blog is to let my writing evolve. Once my writing has improved, should I go back and clean out the archive? Wipe the slate clean? Leave behind only the writing which lives up to my personal standard, whatever that may be?

Again, I don't really have an answer, just questions. I'll be thinking about retconning non-fiction over the next little while, and will probably revisit it in another post. Until then, I guess I'll just think.

Social Boon, or Social Bane?

Facebook is a strange creation. It's a website for you, about you, by you. It has also been a gargantuan success. So now, with all this success, and the attention that follows, people have been lining up to analyze, accuse and otherwise question the new online social networking sensation.

A quick look at recent news about the website (c.o. Google News Search for "facebook") reveals a wealth of articles. The content of which ranges from the personal drama of the creators and owners of the site, to theories about the implications of the personal drama between users of the site. Frankly, I don't much care about the legal woes, etc. of the multimillionaire creator of facebook. But as a member of the site, I do care about the effects and implications of this particular type of social networking.

I'm not one to bash online socializing - or social networking - as the end of "natural", "healthy" socializing. Nor am I going to write a long piece yearning for the golden days when people just talked face to face, or just talked on the phone, or just didn't use facebook.

However, watching the first generation of online communicators raises certain questions in my mind. The specific concern (question?) I would like to raise today is about self-perception, and the effects facebook may, or may not have upon that.

Facebook is laid out like a combination between older social networking sites, and CNN. Your home page is a news feed, displaying up to the minute stories about you and your friends. Or should I say "friends"? Regardless, no generation in history has had this much access to this much information about the goings on of their friends and acquaintances so easily. And never before has it been presented in this way. Except, perhaps, in the most eccentric of small towns.

I can't help but wonder what impact this presentation has on people. A recent bout of online drama made me wonder if it doesn't inflate the ego; make everything seem like it has more meaning and more importance than it actually does. We're not used to seeing personal information displayed this way. But we are used to seeing important news in a similar way - on the web and with a similar layout.

I don't think that this changes our conscious perception, but rather I wonder if constantly seeing personal information this way gradually leads you to view yourself as some sort of celebrity. Perhaps that gives it more power than it actually has, but it makes the point. People are constantly managing their image, through the profile picture they choose, the applications they add and the status they display. And all this image managing, showing the world only what you want them to see can (at least in the theory I'm proposing) lead you to believe your own facebook press.

Here I think the celebrity analogy is more fitting. When people make Chuck Norris jokes, making Chuck Norris seem awesome, it's funny. Cute even. Bad ass perhaps. Maybe a bit of all three. But when Chuck Norris does it, everyone looks at him and goes, "Shit, he actually believes his own press." I wonder if facebook does the same thing.

I don't have an answer, because I'm not a psychologist (hell, I didn't even take psych courses in university). But the question remains. Does facebook over-inflate our sense of self-importance?

Or am I just a semi-self-aware narcissist with similarly self-centered friends?

Maybe both. Regardless, it probably won't be an issue in the future for one of two reasons. Either facebook and similar sites are a passing fad. Or the next generation will grow up with them, and their expectations will be adjusted accordingly (instead of seeing what was once reserved for the rich and famous, now applying to you and your pals).

Web Spotlight: Color Wars 2008

I was directed to Color Wars 2008 a few days ago, c.o. the website of troubadour extraordinaire Jonathan Coulton. As a product of the imagination of Ze Frank (the man behind the fantastic, and now defunct The Show), my interest was immediately piqued. Ever since The Show ended in March of last year, I've been eagerly awaiting Ze Frank's next big project. And here it is. And even if, as a Canadian, I'm baffled by the misspelling of the word colour, I'm intrigued.

So what exactly is Color Wars? Basically, it's a competition where a bunch of teams (represented by, gee? I wonder? Colours?) compete in a series of online challenges. This seems a natural evolution of The Show, where Frank would often try to engage viewers, challenging them to compose songs, submit videos of themselves, play a game a chess, and even write a whole episode. Color Wars simply takes Frank off of the digital stage, and places the emphasis solely on the onetime audience.

Whether or not this digital cultural phenomenon of user-created content has any longterm prospects, it remains interesting to watch. Contests so far have included the creation of Nerd Rap, photo duplication (where entrants try and recreate a picture of them as a child, with them at their current age), and, my current favourite, creating videos of people spinning with a broom 30 times, throwing said broom down and then jumping over it.

At just under a month old, Color Wars is still in its infancy, but it's already attracted enough attention - and participants - that I think it's going to be well worth watching to see what comes out of all the fun and games, aside from a good time for all involved.

So check it out, join a team or start your own, and join the world's first (?) online summer camp.