So, I have been giving some thought to my personal happiness plan and have embarked on the first step already.

Letter writing.

Something that has bothered me for years has been the lack of communication in our so-called social spheres. We have all kinds of tools to talk at people but nothing that really makes a conversation possible. We have blogs with commenting systems, Facebook walls, Twitter conversations (if you can call them that), and text messages on our portable devices. All of these technologies make it easy for us to communicate and they have their own strengths and weaknesses and none of them are perfect.

But I don't think that these technologies make it possible for communication. I think they provide us an easy way to get someone's attention for a micro-second, discuss something quickly, and then allow us to move on to the next thing. To me, there isn't any communication going on.

So, I am going to try and bring back the writing of letters. Letters that require a pen, paper, an envelope, and a stamp. No typing, no planning, just a plain letter. The letter is a lost art in the world now and I think it really needs to come back. Writing by hand forces people to really think about what they are writing. Letters also allow you to say things that you may not say in a public forum such as a blog or an e-mail. (Yes, people, e-mails are public unless you encrypt them.)

Are you ready to write me a letter? Are you ready to receive a letter from me? I challenge you to get on board with me. My first letter arrived today and I am going to write the response tomorrow. I am jazzed like you would not believe and this is just a letter. 

I can't wait to get my next letter.

I have often wondered where the desire to do what I do comes from. I write in my little books, I share my photos with the world, and I write on my blog. But where does this all come from? Where is this desire (for myself) spring from? What virtual well is it all from?

Oh, wait, just watch the video and you'll have all the answers. Good night all.

There appears to be a Tron 3 movie underway. I am not sure how I feel about this. There is an animated television mini-series coming to television screens in 2012. I am not sure how I feel about that fact either. I suppose if I were to pick just one emotion it would be confusion. My confusion stems from a curiosity about why are there so many remakes and sequels these days? Over the last few years, we've seen movies remaking 1970s and 1980s television shows such as the A-Team and Knight Rider. We've seen the rebirth of franchises like Tron.

What happened to original shows? What happened to original writing? Are studios relying on established fan bases for old movies and television to turn a buck? Look, I am all for making money and I understand the strain these film studios are under in light of smaller audiences and audiences that are diversifying their time between theatres, home movies, and Internet viewing - but, come on! Isn't there an original thought out there?

Did the Writer's Strike of 2008 sour studios that much they don't want to pay for new works? Did the writers of Hollywood get sucked into a Hellmouth and beaten by the minions of Gozer into producing just another series of weak writing? (With exceptions to writers like Jane Espenson who has been doing a whole lot of good work in building current shows as well as making her own.)  Probably not. Writers, I suspect, are living and healthy and are not sitting around wondering about what shows they could remake into new and current properties. I think that the current relationship between audiences and the production companies is fractured to a point where no one knows what the next move should be.

Audiences Should Take Responsibility

Something I have been noting for a while is how people choose to interact with the programs they like. Many of us have complained since the beginning of time about commerical breaks. We first had devices like the VCR that was able to record but, at the beginning, these devices could not avoid those pesky commericals. We would either suffer through them or fast forward until the show came back. As technology developed, we had more and more devices that could automatically avoid commericals to a point where, these days, we don't have to watch commercials at all. I am sure that most of you reading this may have already come to this realization but there seems (at least, to me) a fundamental break down of this understanding.

You see, those annoying commerical breaks are how these stations make money. Plain and simple. They buy programs to show you and then they sell time for commercial breaks in order to pay for everything else. Again, this is probably not news to you. What I find interesting is the complete lack of understanding or compassion towards the companies who make these shows. They become the "tyrants" for wanting you to watch these shows as well as the commericals. We should just be able to watch and never suffer through - yet, we audience members still want to have the programs get made.

See where I am going with this yet?

Production Companies Should Stop Being Dinosaurs and Start Leading

I am beating a dead horse with this one but I have a serious note to the production houses - stop being afraid that you're going to be out of a job tomorrow. I think that production companies and television broadcasters should pull up their bootstraps and start thinking about how they can change the way they broadcast while still maintaining the bottom line. There are ways to do it and - granted - very few have found a successful answer yet but I don't see too many innovations into flexibility and creative dispersal of television programs - I see too much focus on the copyright issues and the invention of new DRM strategies. I think this kind of thing is a waste of time and far more dollars should be put into education about how the industry works. Letting audiences know that you need to spend a certain number of dollars to make the shows they like to watch really should be a two way road. We make and audiences should expect to pay something for your work. I don't see this happening successfully all that often.

Get creative or I am glad your shows wither and die.

Essentially, all I am sharing here is that both parties still haven't found a way to talk on even ground. And, sure, I am not an expert in the field of television or movie production and I am sure I am missing a whole lot here but to those in the industry with sets of numbers in front of them - you guys can stuff it. This is not about numbers. This is about education and compassion. I think we've gone too far down the road of numbers and have failed to acknowledge the human factor here - people want entertainment in their homes and they don't understand how you work for one reason: they don't want to know. They just turn on the television and - boom - it is all there. We're making this fight about the details of one side (mainly) and not the side that counts.

That's It, I Am Writing An Original Screenplay

I have been writing a bunch of fiction lately and I am trying to get something finished that I can either post here or publish elsewhere. I just haven't had a whole lot of time to finish anything. But, realizing that 2011 is chock-full of more bland repeats, I am thinking I should turn my attention to writing something worth while. I would have to choose a genre, I would think, but I don't know what that would be. If you have any thoughts about this, let me know.

So, audience, I have one final thing to say to you. Stop being lazy. If you want fewer "reality shows" and more quality programming, start letting the production companies know. I don't mean head over to Facebook and click a "Like" button - get involved. Find like minded people and find out if there is somewhere you can go to voice your opinion.

Don't get me started about UUB or Bill C-32. Augh. For what it is worth, there you have it...

In light of my desire to get posting about new topics and things going on in my life, I whipped up a quick tag cloud on Wordle. It is a great web site where you can toss in your web site URL (as long as you have tags and a blog feed) and get a reasonably accurate tag cloud. I find it useful to see where my brain is at.

I love that Firefly is right up there.

I have been trying to figure what is it that drives my passion for blogging and more so what stops it. I enjoy blogging. If I am not doing it, I am thinking about what my next blog post should be. But, still for reasons I can't fathom, I stop. Days turn into weeks and not one post leaks from my fingers. Does life get in the way or is there something else going on that I am not seeing?

If you're reading this, you are most likely already blogging or are thinking about getting into blogging. It is an addictive hobby that has spread and transformed into other methods of sharing. In the beginning, there was HTML and the creative spirit. You could write text and, if you were lucky, figure out how to post images. I refer to these days as "scratching in the technical dirt". Today, we have blogging software, photo sharing services, audio sharing services, and services like Facebook that take such things to a whole new level. It is in our blood this "sharing addiction". Some say a sense of adventure drives it but it could be anything.

So, what stops it?

Drinking The Coolaid

Yes, we've all done it. You've found something incredibly cool and you want to let others know about it. You become all fired up and start to walk the walk and talk the talk. The problem is, you burn out. Writing and creative expression is hard work and many out there don't believe it is so. I challenge the nay-sayers and want to educate those who think that posting information to the web is an easy task. Unfortunately, there is a down side to being the blogging "guy" and it is the reality of creating quality content. If you sit down and pump out meaningless sentence after meaningless sentence (cough, Twitter) you and your blog become less interesting. I think Twitter is one of those services that has encouraged people to stop thinking and creating and has reduced people's blogs to merely sharing content from other locations and by other people. Not everything is poor, mind you, but Twitter has created a small portion of lazy bloggers.

Finding The Balance

Yet, as exciting as sharing information and knowledge is with others, it can be time consuming and can consume the unwise. I am guilty of this from time to time. I am so busy sharing I can forget what I really should be doing - enjoying the moment! In my experience, I lack a lot of time to blog because I am dedicated to getting things done that I need to get done. Blogging hasn't been one of those things over the last couple of years. Finding the time is hard if you want to create meaningful and useful content for your web site or blog.

New Toys

I suppose it is about the toys. You have toys as a child and regardless of how crappy the toy is or ordinary, it is still the toy you want to play with. Blogging is no different. We get distracted with all kinds of glittery things. We obsess over the different options, features, and fancy shiny things we may configure and place on our blogs. I am always concerned about bloggers who follow this practice. Many don't think past the glittery stage. They blieve something is so cool to look at that it must have some sort of

Of course, I haven't discovered anything new here. This kind of attitude is everywhere. New gadgets, shiny options, and fancy layouts seem to dominate the realm of the blogging world. I am seeing this leak away a bit these days - which may be why I am wanting to return. My voice has meaning and value but it is like the followers I gained over the years lost their way. They were distracted by the new stuff and forgot what it was they got into blogging for to begin with.

Gak

Essentially, I think my biggest issue is that I had lost faith. With so many sharing services, I was personally overwhelmed to "walk the walk". It is very interesting to me as I haven't really gone into this much depth before. I have promised and re-promised that I would return only to get sucked back in to life, confusion, dry mouth, or whatever issue I can make an excuse of. Just when I thought I was out... they pull me back in.

This whole post has not gone where I thought it was going. Enough. Off to bed and more tomorrow.

I am a published author and have been for a few years.  Since becoming one, I have thought long and hard about the future of books.  Most of the time, I think about how I love to have books around me.  If you've ever been to my house, I have a lot of books.  I wish I had more shelves to stack them on but I have been told my book addiction needs to be kept in check and, apparently, shelves only make my addiction worse.  So, then, I stack.  The books find an empty space on the floor to inhabit and I continue on my merry way.

And this is the problem.  I go on my merry way and ignore one simple fact: books are in danger of disappearing.  Not because people will stop writing or publishers will stop publishing but because technology will not be free enough to let today's publishing industry continue.  I found this article via Digg.com today and here is a snippet to get your brains on my wavelength:

When I buy an audiobook on CD, it’s mine. The license agreement, such as it is, is “don’t violate copyright law,” and I can rip that CD to mp3, I can load it to my iPod or any number of devises—it’s mine; I can give it away, I can sell it; it’s mine. But when you buy an audiobook through Audible, which now controls 90 per cent of the [downloadable] audiobook market, you get a license agreement, not a property interest. The things that you can do with it are limited by DRM; the players you can play it on are limited by the license agreements with Audible. Audible doesn’t do this because the publishers ask them to. Audible and iTunes, because Audible is the sole supplier to iTunes, do this because it’s in their own interest....

Anyone who claims that readers can’t and won’t and shouldn’t own their books are bent on the destruction of the book, the destruction of publishing, and the destruction of authorship itself. We must stop them from being allowed to do it. The library of tomorrow should be better than the library of today. The ability to loan our books to more than one person at once is a feature, not a bug. We all know this. It’s time we stop pretending that the pirates of copyright are right. These people were readers before they were publishers before they were writers before they worked in the legal department before they were agents before they were salespeople and marketers. We are the people of the book, and we need to start acting like it.

You can read the full transcript of Cory Doctrow's speech here.  I shared this elegy about the book with some people (within earshot) and their initial reactions were that: 

• It would never happen. 
• People would fight it.
• Cory Doctorow is being too sentimental about books.

This got me thinking.  Could books disappear?  Is Cory being a turd and just trying to make a speech sound interesting?  But then I remembered Bolivia and the water protests that happened there in 2000.  But, Shane, you're saying.  That incident was about water and you're talking about books!  Oh, really - I may retort.  My point is a bunch of very smart people got together and made it virtually illegal to collect rainwater because a company wanted to make the water system of an entire country private and controlled.  Smart people.  They let it happen.  They wanted it to happen.  I could make mention of Germany and World War II but, I think, most people would agree that somewhere along the way something went wrong.  And now I can hear you saying: but Shane, that was a situation where millions of people were murdered and you're talking about books!  How are these things possibly related?  Again, I submit to you: smart people let something horrible happen.  No one sat up and said to the person across the table that something was wrong until it was much to late to do anything about it.  In any case, books are important.  They are as important as our entire civilization.  Books revolutionized everything.  And now you're thinking that I am being more dramatic than Doctorow and, maybe, I am. But I feel very strongly about the disappearance of books.

Let me tell you why.

There is a technology created for DVDs that allows an individual to purchase (or rent) them.  They can take the DVD home, unwrap it, and watch it.  24 or 48 hours later, the DVDs destroy themselves and make themselves unreadable.  The user them tosses the DVD away.  Firstly, that is a complete waste of materials.  Secondly, what is to stop publishers (or some governmental body) from inventing a similar technology for paper?  It will happen, mark my words on that.  If an entire country can make it illegal for people to collect rainwater, what is to stop them?  Imagine, books that erase themselves.  It is not outside the realm of possibility.  By the way, if you don't think it is possible for things like restricting rainwater collection to happen in more "civilized" country, I suggest you tell that to the state of Colorado.

Again, I return to my point.  Sure, Cory Doctorow may be more sentimental about books than you are, but he has reason to.  Situations where laws about who controls water rights normally belong in the pages of your favourite fiction book.  But, as they appear to say, truth is stranger than fiction.  Things we take for granted each and every day are under threat and we should stand up and take notice now before things like water and books are gone forever.  When a monumental change like this happens, we may never get it back.

We are in a new economy and, as I am sure you've noticed, most content publishers are struggling to make ends meet.  Newspapers, book publishers, and music producers are all thinking up ways to make sure they are rewarded for their efforts.  They should be rewarded.  Publishers and digital rights management advocates need to embrace the technology as well.  They have been fighting, suing, and making merry with courts for a while now and it needs to be re-thought.  I don't mind people protecting their work but there comes a time when the work needs to be free to the masses and we need to reinvent how we reward people for the work they create. I am not going to pretend I have the answers but I want people to recognize that this future is coming and, before you know it, you will wonder where all the books have gone.  Don't kid yourself.  It will happen if we're not watching and doing something about it.  It did happen to water and the people of Bolivia were lucky to get it back.  We may not be so lucky next time.

This entire rant makes me think of this scene from Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade:

I just remembered that I haven't made much of a splash about the third edition of Blogging For Dummies.  I will start with the publisher's verbage:

This is something that Susie and I worked on back in the summer and we made quite a few updates.  There are a bunch of new chapters and a whole lot of revisions to existing chapters.  We added a lot of stuff on social networking and whatnot and I was surprised how I had naturally adapted to newer technologies.  Getting it all down on paper was awesome and quite difficult at times to sort out all the details.  If you get a chance, why not head on down to your local book seller and get a copy or two.

I also have a shout out to Susie who is, as usual, totally amazing and rocks my world all the time.  The book comes out in January 2010.