Posts filed under 'General'
September 24th, 2008
Some of you may have noticed that they site was down today. That was totally my fault, apparently I forgot to renew my domain and so today it expired. It quickly figured out the issue and renewed my domain, but it was a few hours before everything was back to normal and may still be down for some as the DNS propagates out.
I am working on the next episode, I have most of it recorded just need to edit. My plan is to have Chasing Shadows done by the end of October. I am doing things differently with the next book, planning on having at least half records and edited before I launch sometime early in January.
This next book will bring Shadow Hunter to a close. When it is done, my plan is to turn back to Buried in the Sand. I am working on something different here and will be looking for a lot more input from you. I hope you’ll be ready and willing to help out. I’m hopefully going to have the ground work for that done by the end of October as well.
Thank for sticking with me through my inconsistent release of Chasing Shadows. I am working to make sure that Shadows Fall does not suffer the same pain.
March 28th, 2008
First I know it has been a while since my last post. I am working on Chasing Shadows and I am almost ready to send out text to my guest readers. I’m still looking for two more reader, each with only one or two scenes so if you are willing to help out that would be great. Both scenes are fairly short so it should take much.
That being said it’s time to talk about the actual reason for this post and that is Earth Day tomorrow. My famil (my wife, son and I) will be taking part. We may have to make some exceptions as my son will be in bed and really doesn’t like the dark. I’m considering leaving a candle of him, but I am concerned about leaving a four year old with a candle.
I think that anytime people group together for something they believe in is a great idea (as long as they aren’t hurting anyone). In this case I agree with the message. We need to start doing more about Climate Change. When I look around I see people still making choices that are more harmful to the environment than they could otherwise make. People are still buying large vehicles when smaller ones would do. I’m not saying that larger vehicles are not needed but some buy them when they are not. As long as we are not willing to give up a little of what we want for the environment things are not going to be better. Earth hour is a start, but it is how we live each day that will make the real difference.
January 18th, 2008
After finishing my NaNo Novel I’ve been working on completing Chasing Shadows, the second part of Shadow Hunter. The goal was to get enough written that I would be able to start sending it out to readers by the end of January. Things were going well, I had written far enough into Chasing Shadows that the remainder of it was in Shalli’s POV. Since I will be reading for Shalli this meant the I could start editing the other POV characters and sending files out to readers. I had two readers confirmed and was looking for one, two or three more depending on how I did things. I was planing a podcast by the end of this week calling for readers.
That is when I decided to reorganize my writing files and back them up. I have done this in the past and have back up files from that last reorganization. To be honest my files had got quite disorganized with duplicates. I finished my reorganization and copied my writing files off to a USB key.
Yesterday I plugged the key into my computer and went looking for my work in progress, Chasing Shadows. To my shock the file was not there. I check around the key and still could not find the file. At home I searched through the files I had organized and still could not find the file. I did some searches and found some delete file restore programs. After some some work I was able to “recover” the file. I clicked on the file and watched in horror as the file opened but did not display the text of novel, instead it displayed a mass of unreadable characters.
I am currently looking at ways of fixing my file, but at this point I’m not hopeful. The only saving grace is that when I started writing this story I was writing it by hand. That means that I have only lost my work since the beginning of the year, about 1/4 of what I had. So I will continue to try and recover the file but in the mean time it looks like I’ll be typing out the story again, and re-editing the novel.
Because of this, obviously, Chasing Shadows will not be out as soon as I hoped. I do not have another novel to podcast at this point; my only two finished novels are Shadows Falls and Shadow of a Hero. Shadows Falls is part 3 of Shadow Hunter and Shadow of a Hero is book one of the series that follows Shadow Hunter. I will however look at what I do have and what I might be able to give you for content until Chasing Shadows is ready.
I will keep you updated.
August 31st, 2007
I just wanted to send out a quick note about today’s episode on Never Was. It is not up yet and in fact is not ready at this point. I have not received my new equipment yet and I was really hoping to get the next one up using it. That leaves me with either not producing an episode or producing a short one. Right now I’m thinking I’ll wait until next week. Sorry for those looking for the new episode and I hate to do this to you, especially since this has been a great month for me. After some high profile promo plays my traffic has jumped. I will produce something next week regardless of the equipment status if I don’t do one this week; and as always thank you for listening.
I also wanted to write about a post on Boing Boing today “Science Fiction Writers of America abuses the DMCA”. It is worth reading and is one of the reasons why I don’t support a DMCA style law in Canada. We need a law that protects creator and consumers in a balanced way.
April 18th, 2007
I found this via Michael Geist “SOCAN Seeks $60 Annual Podcaster Fee“, if you don’t read him you really should with additional information from Sara Bannerman, “Tariff 22 Opening remarks“.
SOCAN, an organization that is suppose to support Music in Canada and compensate artises for public performance of their works (Radio, Dances, etc.); if you are putting on such an event or broadcasting music you have to pay them a fee (which they “give” to their member). The thing with SOCAN is that you have to pay them even if the musician doesn’t belong to SOCAN. Even to the extreme of if an independent musician plays their own music at a gathering they have to pay.
However in the exchange for this, we, in Canada, we are allowed to make copies of music for personal use.
Due to pressure from the US Government and US Music Companies, the Canadian government is making changes to our Copyright laws. The changes would include support of DRM, anti-curivention and Tariffs on new music “Broadcast” delivery. This includes a tariff on Podcasters. The recommendation is that for non-commercial Podcasts that they would need to pay $60 per year.
Now $60 a year isn’t a lot of money, but it’s it might be a lot for some Podcast hobbiests. Almost every Podcaster I know users music that: they have created or have had someone create for them, get approval from the creator or use Creative Commons/Pod Safe music. In almost all cases the creator is not a member of SOCAN and thus don’t see any of the Podcasters $60. It instead goes to line the pockets of SOCAN and the big Music Companies (essentially the RIAA), this does not make any sense to me. Why do I have to pay SOCAN for Music the creator has provided to me for an agreed upon amount (free is an amount) so that they can give it to someone else?
The only advantage that I could see for this is the possibility of being able to podcast “big” artists. I would be interesting in hearing from anyone who know if this would be allow under the new laws.
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