Category: Life

First off, H4CK3R5 has a new name: Rice Tea. It avoids any kind of potential cease and desist letters I might get from a not-too-happy MGM.

Now last time I talked, I said that I had completed the second revision of the initial draft. In the time since, I’ve tweaked it to my liking. Enough for me to get into writing the true brunt of the project.

To that extent, I present to you my new plan: each week, I will release on my blog the latest iteration of this project. Every Friday night from now until completion. You’ll then be able to download the book to that point and share your thoughts.

That said, do keep in mind that I will likely edit older chapters as I go on, for the sake of making sense. Near the end, major revisions may even be made to earlier segments of the book.

Download the first release here (PDF).

So I’ve finished the new revision of the H4CK3R5 plot. It’s 45 pages this time round, a tad longer than the 32 pages of the previous incarnation (or the 6 pages of the original concept.)

The ending has been completely revamped, but still doesn’t sit well with me. It’s better, but is still of a letdown compared with the earlier half of the plotline. I’ll continue ecking away at it until I’m happy.

Well, progress on H4CK3R5 is doing well. Last I talked about it, I had finished a new draft and was toying with the idea of creating a radio play and novella.

I am now well underway with yet another new draft, the necessity of which was based on the rather unengaging latter half of the original work. Then, about two weeks ago, I decided to mothball the idea of a film script altogether and instead create a novel.

Now this creates an interesting shift. The original script was grounded in the target budget of production for the subsequent film. Every single shot in there is pondered as something that can be achieved for free or at least for really cheap. Money was a limiting factor for my imagination with regards to the events that take place in H4CK3R5. But now being a novel, that ceiling is no longer present. But the shift extends to more than that – the film script is a visual medium, and to that extent can convey information in a certain way that a novel cannot. The reverse is just as true. So we’re dealing with a situation where I have to really reinvent the whole thing.

Purely presenting a screenplay as prose does not work. The differences are too significant, and I cannot ignore the new opportunities afforded to me by the removal of limits on my imagination.

I suspect that the book will end up being like a Michael Crichton work; in essence a novel that reads like a movie. That’s what I hope at least. I don’t fancy that the end novel will be all that long. Perhaps 200 pages.

Here I stand.

University is over. With its completion, the pre-defined path laid before me all my life ends. Up until this point, I always knew what came next. I went to high school. I got a job. I went to university. I am now confronted with the biggest question of all – what next? What do I do come September?

I’ve been thinking of going to Algonquin college to take an “advanced diploma” in computer science. With that, I could maybe enter the CSE or the RCMP. It seems like some of the jobs offered could meld my interest in computer security with my love for world politics. Or do I perhaps go the money route, and get a job in the GIS world – a field for which I’m qualified, but for which my interest level simply isn’t there? Or do I go to Vietnam to teach English?

What do I do? It’s all a big question for me. There’s a big weight on my mind, and I don’t have much time to make certain key decisions. I have about a week to decide whether I’m going to apply to Algonquin.

Keeping me sane at this point is the screenwriting. Last month, I picked up the original H4CK3R5 draft that I had completed in October of 2006. I’ve spent a good deal of time producing a new 35 page draft, which is again being thoroughly revised in favour of creating a more engaging story. I’m going to adapt the final script into both a radio play and a novella, before I then even think about making a movie from it all. I have yet to recover financially from Docks, which is still in editing limbo pending having the funds to repair my PC (PSU and/or mobo is busted).

As documented this past weekend, the Associated Press has sent a cease and desist letters to a variety of blogs and folks on the interwebs for quoting and linking to their articles. The basis for such claims: copyright infringement.

The move is about as non-sensical as a book publisher suing blogs/forums because their readers are discussing one of their books online. Or suing them because one reader put in a link to where the book can be purchased on Amazon. If anything, these activities reinforce the value of the original intellectual property.

Are these the side-effects of a luddite executive crowd making incredibly idiotic moves as a result of their incapacity to grasp essential concepts? Or is this perhaps the work of overenthused lawyers doing the only thing their lobotomized bodies allow them to? I do wonder.