National Novel Writing Month
This year I am going to be participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write 50,000 words of a novel in the month of November. I know that I am probably insane for attepting NaNoWriMo, but the idea of finishing a novel is very enticing. That worst that can happen is that I am out some time. The best that can happen is that I write a best-seller (not very likly, I know). I will try to keep updates of my NaNoWriMo attept here on this blog as well as excerpts if everything is going well.
Severed Fifth
Severed Fifth’s debut album is finally released. Eight tracks of pounding metal, grinding guitars and machine-gun double bass drumming, sealed with a ripping vocal performance. The album was written, performed, recorded and produced entirely by Jono Bacon. Denied By Reign was mastered by Paul Wilkinson.
This album is free. It is released under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license which means that you can share, copy, remix, mash-up and sell Denied By Reign, just make sure you give credit to Severed Fifth.
How To Set Up Your Own Torrent Tracker
The other day I had some free time, so I decided to try and set up my own torrent tracker on my home network. Why would I need a tracker on my home network? Well I was just fooling around, but I can actually think of a few reasons. On of the uses I am particularly excited about is using Bit Torrent at LAN parties.
When I host LAN parties, we usually mostly play free first person shooters like Tremulous and Nexuiz and Open Arena. This is because they are free, and they run on lots of systems. Now, if I want to distribute Tremulous, Open Arena, Nexuiz, and Urban Terror along with all the associated patches, mods, and additional maps, it adds up to well over a gigabyte of data. To transfer that much data over my humble 100 megabit LAN would take a few minutes for just a single person. But when half a dozen people are all trying to download that much data from a single computer then things start to be really slow. If I use Bit Torrent, instead of more traditional file transfer protocols, to distribute the files then I am willing to bet that the total time required to transfer the files to all the players would be reduced by half.
The Bit Torrent tacker software that I used for my expiriments is called Opentracker, it is the tracker software that The Pirate Bay uses. These instructions were written for Ubuntu 8.04 but should work on multiple Distros. As far as I know, there are not any binary packages available for Opentracker, so we will have to compile it. You will need the usual packages for compiling C code. On Ubuntu this is as simple as:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
There also are not any tarballs availible for the source code, so we will need to fetch it via cvs. If you do not already have cvs you will need to install it. On Ubuntu you can:
sudo apt-get install cvs
The next few steps come from Opentracker’s documentation.
cvs -d :pserver:cvs@cvs.fefe.de:/cvs -z9 co libowfat
cd libowfat
make
cd ..
cvs -d:pserver:anoncvs@cvs.erdgeist.org:/home/cvsroot co opentracker
cd opentracker
make
Now that we have the beast compiled, we can run it by running ./opentracker from inside its source code directory. To use the tracker you can create a torrent with the client of your choice and point it to http://yourhostnameoripaddress.here:6969/announce and then you should be in business.
Doing Movies Differently: An Idea
After watching a small documentary about piracy, I got to thinking about the current business model that is used to produce movies. I think it used to be a very good business model; it fulfilled its purpose of delivering content to the masses better than anything else at the time. However, now we have a much better way of distributing content, the Internet.
Instead of revising their business model to take advantage of the Internet as a distribution platform, the movie industry choose to ignore it. Is it really any wonder that piracy came to fill that void? The fact of the matter is that the Internet is a much more efficient way to get content to viewers than the antiquated methods of the current movie industry. The movie industry needs a new business model. One that isn’t weakened by file sharing but strengthened by it.
My idea is based on putting the movie producers directly in contact with the movie fans. At the hub of my business model would be a website (or perhaps a few websites) with just that purpose. The model would involve movie producer directly garnering support for a film before it was made. To illustrate how I think this could work I will outline what I think the process of producing a movie could look like.
First a producer would come up with the idea for a film. Then he (or she) would either write a first draft screenplay, or work with a screenwriter to write one. If the producer was well known enough they might get some well known actors to sign onto the project as well. They would then put together some promotional materials: a sample from the screenplay, an introduction to the story’s characters, maybe even a teaser trailer. The promotional materials along with a figure for the needed budget would then be posted to the site. In our example lets say that the group needs three million dollars to make the film. Movie fans would go to the site and look at the page for the proposed film. If a fan liked the idea for the film then they would buy a “ticket.” In this example lets say a ticket costs twenty dollars. The funds from these ticket sales would then be held in escrow, perhaps by the website. If the movie didn’t raise the three million in set amount of time, say 6 months, then the money would be returned to the ticket purchaser. However, if the necessary funds were raised, then they would be given to the movie producer to make the movie.
When the movie was finished it would have a “world debut” in which the film was streamed live to the PCs of those who had bought tickets. For a period of about a week the film would only be available to those who had bought tickets. Then the movie would have a general release in which it would be made freely available (perhaps under a Creative Commons license). The more people that download the movie the better, because the wider audience that a movie gets the better chance a particular producer has at getting funds for another movie.
Such a system would be reputation based (like whuffie in Cory Doctorow’s novel, Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom) in which somebody who consistently does good work is rewarded with a larger fan base. Another advantage of this system is that it would be easier for independent filmmakers to get their works seen. One could see how a producer could start off by producing small low-budget films and then garner more and more respect until he or she could pull off making larger high-budget Hollywood style movies with the best actors, engineers, screenwriters, and the like.
Review: Forever Fifteen
Forever Fifteen Cover
I recently finished listening to the Podiobook Forever Fifteen, a vampire-horror story from the author Kimberly Steele. If you aren’t familiar with the concept os the podiobook, it harks back to the hayday of magazines when the most popular stories were serialized. A podiobook is a mash up of a podcast and an audiobook. The author will release chapters of the audiobook periodically. The main website for podiobooks is podiobooks.com.
Anyway, back to the review. The protagonist, Lucy, is an apparently 15 year old girl. But, as in real life, looks in this story can deceiving. She is actually a hundreds of year old vampire. The story itself switches in between the modern day and ancient Italy.
Vampires in this books are a bit different from the normal portrayal of them. For instance, sun doesn’t hurt them. For another, it is not enough for them just to drink the blood of their victims, they must actually kill them so they can take their life force. Lucy must feed about once a month, and she tries her hardest to only feed on evil people. Nonetheless, even Lucy finds herself monstrous.
The story got me hooked pretty good, and I finished listening to it in only two days. The plot is probably the best part of this book. The characters are pretty good as well, but could be a bit better. But overall I can easily recommend it, especially to fans of the horror genre. The author has already said she will be writing a sequel, and I am looking forward to it.
Coming up @ pyre8.net
Sorry I haven’t posted in so long. I have been busy with preperation for school. But I didn’t wirte this post just to complain about being busy. This post is about some of the content you can expect to be coming up here on my blog.
Of course you will be getting my varied and random thoughts. But in addition to that I am planning some informational catagories about varios subjects. The stuff you can expect to find here can be broken into four general catagories (subject to change at any time without notice): Reviews, Technical How-tos, Wicca tidbits, and my other random thoughts.
As far as reviews go I have already posted a review of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. I plan on reviewing all sorts of stuff. If you have any sugestions of books, movies, etc. for me to review please feel free to email them to me.
I am a computer geek, so I thought it might be nice to put some howtos here. I haven’t written any yet, but I plan on doing so. I am particularly interested in howtos about privacy and encryption software like GPG and Tor.
As far as Wicca is concerned, I will post whatever I feel like I should post. I have already done a short blog about Lammas, and am considering doing one for every Sabbat when it comes.
Or course, I will also be posting all the crazy things I think need to be posted from random corners of the web and my brain. And I also encourage you to check some of the other sites here at pyre8.net, such as Central High School’s GSA, and Life Uncertainly.
Lammas
The Wiccan Holiday of Lammas was just a few days ago, so I am going to share a few of my thoughts about the subject. Many Wiccans call Lammas the first harvest. In many regions it is a time when grain is starting to be harvested, so in my observances I focus on that theme.
One of the major themes of Lammas, to me, is sacrifice. For something to live something else must die. That is what I contemplate on Lammas. When we eat bread, we kill the grain plant and eat its offspring. We do this so that we can live. Life is a beautiful thing. An organism lives, and then it dies. But it existence continues in its offspring. It is a natural and beautiful cycle, and during Lammas we enter the phase of the year that represents giving up life for the sake of giving life. Sacrifice.
On a mythic level I envision the God giving of himself for the good of the rest of the community. Many people envision him as starting on quest that will eventually lead to his death, but doing so as a sacrifice so that others may benefit.
The mysteries of Lammas are indeed bittersweet. Some might even say they are dark, but they are also beautiful.
Review: The Moon is a Harsh Mistress
I thought I might use this space to express my opinions about books, movies, games, and other media I consume. So, without any further ado I give you my review of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert A. Heinlein.
This is the first novel I have read by Heinlein (I now realize the error in my ways), and it will most certainly not be my last. It was, in a word, gripping. The novel takes place on the Moon, which in this future has been turned in to a sort of prison country. The Earth’s undesirables are sent to the Moon where they grow grain to send back to the now overcrowded Earth. However, at the point where the story takes place, most of the Moon’s inhabitants have either completed their original sentences (but cannot return do to muscle atrophy), or were born on the Moon. The books main character and narrator is one of the latter, he is actually a third generation Moon dweller. In this setting, the goings on of the Moon are governed by a so called “Lunar Authority” back on Earth, and their agent on the Moon, the Warden.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is a tale of revolution. You see, the Lunar Authority does not have the best interests of the Moon in mind. A few inhabitants of the Moon also realize that if they continue to ship the grain that they grow using their own supply of water mined from lunar ice deposits back to Earth, that the Moon will run out of water in just a few years time. So those few characters (including a computer) set out to free to Moon from the Lunar Authority.
Like a good novel should, it is both intellectually and emotionally engaging. Its themes of the human right to be free, and the price one has to pay for that freedom are thought provoking as always. And like any good science fiction novel, the author creates a distinct setting and thinks out how the conditions of that setting affect its inhabitants. Perhaps most importantly it is a highly entertaining read.
Collage…
Well, it is official. I am going back to school. I took a year off after I finished high school, and wasn’t really planing to go to collage. However, I changed my mind. Next minth I will start classes at Lord Fairfax Community Collage. The big plan is to transfer after two years over to the University of William and Mary. I am not at all looking forward to having to face math again. I am pretty confident about the rest of my classes though. To be honest, I am rather looking forward to some of them.
I will be aiming for an associates degree in Liberal Arts while I am at LFCC, and when I transfer I am thinking of doing a double major in English (or maybe Liberal Arts) and Computer Science. This semester I will be taking Collage Composition, Math for Liberal Arts, Survey of Mass Media, and a collage study skills class that is virtually mandatory. It will be interesting to take a look at my testbooks once I pick them up. It will also be interesting to see if LFCC, at partially state subsidized collage has a filter on their network connection. The ethics of filtering a network connection that the state helps pay for raises some pretty serious questions about first amendment rights, but that is a discussion for another time.
Hello world!
Welcome to my Blog! I am still doing lots of site setup, so please bear with me! This blog will contain my random thoughts. I also am planing on doing a little bit of writing and maybe a podcast which will appear right here. So check back soon kay?