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Can't exist. Seriously. Vampires, like everyone else, would be starfuckers. Virtually the entire uppercrust celebrity population would be converted and then we'd all be fucked. It's not like rockstars and actors are well known for their impulse control. david shute - Jan 31, 2010 at 10:57 PM
I realized while walking in to work and watching a couple guys brace themselves against the snow that I don't really miss smoking. Sure, there are times when I think I'd really like a cigarette but largely I don't miss it at all. Of all the things that I don't miss braving the cold is very low on that list. The worst were the throat infections. This is, in fact, what I thought about as I was walking in to work. I didn't realize that smoking and the throat infections were related because I started smoking so young. I didn't have much of a frame of reference, many solid, continuous memories of a time when I didn't smoke. I just assumed that the two throat infections I would get a year were just a normal part of me. Something that happened. Other people might get dry skin. I got throat infections, strep throat to be exact. I'd feel it start and I'd already know the progression. Acetaminophen to get me through the night, sleep, more acetaminophen to get through the school/work day, off to the doctor/clinic by the end of the day feeling like garbage. Amoxicillin prescription. In a day or two I'd be tasting penicillin tinged pus as it drained in to my stomach. Lovely visual, I know. I associated it with winter, not smoking. In my early 20s I had a particularly bad throat infection. I was sleeping about 18 hours a day. There was a four inch sweat ring in the shape of my body around me in bed. My girlfriend at the time woke me up at one point to give me some water and gravol, the draining pus in my empty stomach ensured I puked quite a bit. She made a mention of my fever, 103 for those wondering, and I quipped back, "That's a spicy meatball!" and passed out. I puked up the gravol a short time later. I have no recollection of any of this of course. She decided at that point it might be prudent to get me some medical attention. I quit smoking just shy of eight years ago. You know what I haven't had once since I quit? david shute - Jan 30, 2010 at 10:55 PM
I lost my wallet on Wednesday. It sucked. I eventually found it. The netherworld unto which it disappeared for several hours, sending my afternoon in to a frenzied spiral, I'll never know. I assume that I may have been stupid/old enough to have missed it the eighteen times I looked. My co-worker missing it the several times he looked in the same area? Not likely. It's not like I found it hidden at the end of the day. I did learn one lesson out of the whole thing as I scrambled to cancel my bank and credits cards and figure out how to replace my ID. Between talking to customer service folks for my bank and credit cards, the police to report my wallet lost, the MTO about getting a replacement license and ownership, I learned that an unfortunately large number of people don't immediately move to cancel their cards. The police officer I was talking to noted that he's had people wait several days to report their wallet lost. They only did after large sums of money had been withdrawn or spent. They knew the cards were gone. They knew they weren't coming back. Yet they waited until this went completely south before bothering to do anything about it. Seriously, first thing to do is cancel all your cards and all your memberships. Then call the police and report your shit lost/stolen. Don't sit around the pool hoping it'll turn up. It's better to have it turn up and need to wait a couple days for replacement cards then have to pay off several thousand dollars you didn't spend. david shute - Jan 29, 2010 at 10:43 PM
I finally pulled the Project Central link off my page. A short while ago the Celtx team decided to axe their free hosting service for Celtx based projects. This was called Project Central, in case you were unaware and stumbled in here drunken and confused. I had a link to my project space there along with all the other off site links at the top of each page. I finally got around to pulling mine down. On one hand, a lot of the material that was posted there is here. The actual scripts anyway. The thing that I liked the most about Project Central was that it hosted entire Celtx projects instead of a single file. I don't just write a single script. I'm a big process kind of guy. I have notes, character bios, journals, outlines, and all kinds of other stuff to go along with the script, however many versions of the script there may be. I think there's benefit in sharing the kind of material. I know a lot of writers have problems with organization and tackling large projects. Seeing a large project can help demystify the process. I understand, and even support, their reasons for removing the service. It was really just a large sinkhole for people to plunk up their materials. A large majority of it wasn't even seeing a set of eyes other than it's creators. Another piece of the puzzle to maintain that wasn't even integrated with the Celtx software anymore. An online resource that wasn't generating any revenue. Still sad to see it go. david shute - Jan 28, 2010 at 10:30 PM
So, one of the side effects of going to see THREE TALL WOMEN, which you should really go see before it closes, is noticing the call for submissions for the June One Act Play weekend. I didn't think much of it that night but apparently my stupid brain has been working over time in the background. I got it in my head that I wanted to do another production. It's been over a year since my first one act was produced. I think I've had sufficient time away that I'd enjoy doing another one. The largest failure of all of this is that I don't have anything to submit. Yes, I could spend the time researching other one act plays, finding something I like, and submitting that but what fun would that be. Above everything else I would like to identify myself as a writer. I do have a one act that I wrote shortly after the last set of one acts wrapped, THE BETTER RAT TRAP, that I like but really isn't something I would personally like to direct. So that leaves me standing here empty handed. Following my typical pattern of self abuse I decided that it would be fun to try and come up with an idea, write, and polish it in a week. I started Sunday night and I, quite frankly, have no idea if I'll actually hit it. That said, I do love writing and projects like this remind me of that fact when I've been away for too long. david shute - Jan 27, 2010 at 10:09 PM
As I'm tooling around with playing guitar again and have a distant eye on recording I've been looking in to methods of distributing somewhat half heartedly. I'm a huge fan of offering artistic works for free. If the material is good enough people will want to pay for it. It shouldn't, at least in my eyes, be the other way around. I don't want to buy something I'm going to hate but I will gladly pay money for something I love. In my travels I happened upon CDBaby again. I've always liked the model they have going there of allowing independent artists to have a method of distribution. When they introduced digital downloads some years ago I thought it was a good idea. One of the biggest barriers for independent musicians is physical product. It's very expensive to get CDs pressed in small amounts. Considering the exposure base of most of these artists it's simply not feasible to press in a quantity large enough to get decent bulk discounts. That leaves the artists having to charge an unfortunately high amount for their disc just to cover their costs, which isn't going to happen anyway. How many bands do you know that have dozens, if not hundreds, of their album in a box somewhere? Digital distribution should elegantly solve that problem. With home recording or cheap studio time, a decent ear at mixing, and the entry level drops through the floor. No need to scrounge money just to get press discs that will largely never sell. Since the entry level is so minor it should encourage prices to be low as well. Sadly, that's not the case. I'm seeing small, independent artists suffering the same pricing issue that international, label backed artists have. A CD isn't worth more than $10. That's a physical object. Something that someone owns with cover art and printed materials. It's tangible and can be resold. Despite this downloadable albums, usually a middle of the road bit rate MP3, are selling for $10. Single songs going for 99 cents. Really? Most of these artists wouldn't charge more than that for the physical CD but will charge an equal amount for an MP3. There's a personal psychosis in here. I really dislike the MP3 codec. After spending a lot of time with FLAC and OGG I just really dislike the sound of MP3. That aside it just seems entirely backwards to me. Regardless of your discipline the number one issue for artists isn't people stealing their shit, it's people never being exposed to it. Why should I part with my money for your music? Why should I spend the same amount for a digital download that I would spend on a professional CD? The removal of the barrier to entry should be driving down the costs. Maintaining the status quo seems ludicrous to me. I'm curious as to why artists aren't releasing entire albums sub-$5 range. If I were to visity CDBaby and while browsing found an artist that seemed pretty solid based off the samples with digital download for $2 I wouldn't even think about it. I'd just purchase it. Why not? It's $2. The margin is thinner but the potential exposure, the likelihood of purchase increases significantly. That's what artists should be focusing on, finding and growing an audience. david shute - Jan 26, 2010 at 9:09 PM
Had a chance to make it out to the theatre again for the first time in a long time. Having an infant seems to chew up quite a bit of time. I haven't done a lot of things lately. I'm glad I made it out. I went to go see KWLT's production of THREE TALL WOMEN. I largely went to go see Sue Kluckow, who I've worked with on a couple of short films, but the chance to go out and see a show was really nice. Overall, the script was definitely not my cup of tea. It takes some of the liberties that are allowed on stage that I have a hard time swallowing. For instance, the talking head indulgence that allows three people to be on stage talking for two hours with very little else happening. The actual revelations through out the story are pretty minor and the resolution doesn't come of as simply profound as it is intended to be. Though, to be fair, a lot of my basis is in modern films and the majority of THREE TALL WOMEN simply wouldn't fly in that medium. I did enjoy it though. I always like seeing Sue perform. There's a speech, an angry one, that she has in the second act that comes out of her effortlessly. It was during this speech that I had one of those fantastic moments where I forget I was sitting in a chair watching a performance. That doesn't happen to me very often. They're playing for one more week, this coming Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. If you're like to see a show and can part ways with $15 for community theatre it's worth checking out. david shute - Jan 25, 2010 at 9:05 PM
Among my current list of activities is working on an RPG in the style of old 8 and 16-bit console games. Sometime last year I was chatting with a friend about doing a chiptune/videogame music project for a game that would never exist. I rambled out a quick story in the span of a half hour. We chatted about it briefly and it sort of dropped off. He's recently revived the entire thing but with a different direction. Instead of making a soundtrack for a game that would never exist put the effort in to making the game. As much as I dabble in the occasional hack in a scripting language to create a tool for myself I am very much not a programmer. So I'm leaving that up to others. Instead I'm assisting in the writing and whatever else I can toss ideas toward. You know, not the real work. Things are still pretty tentative at the moment. There are a lot of people interested in helping in various ways but the direction still isn't clear yet. There's a drive to start working on fleshing out a larger story. Until a clear direction on the type of game is made so writers know exactly the style they're working in I don't see much headway occuring. It'll come though. It's a part time project being undertaken by a group of people spread out across the world. Once there's more about THE GIANT EGGPLANT MONSTER to discuss I'll be back with more. david shute - Jan 24, 2010 at 2:31 AM
I'm back to playing guitar again. All part of my working on my focus and putting time in to projects rather than random boring shit. I don't know if you've noticed, part of my focus thing has been putting some time and energy back in to this site as well. I don't really have any plans for guitar at the moment. I've approached the song/album writing thing a couple times. I've gotten to the point of having enough material together for an EP and then moving on to the next shiny thing right before I was about to record "good" versions of the songs. So, while I'd like to work in that direction, I know better than to set that as my goal for right now. On the other hand, I don't want to just pick up the guitar and either practise technique or play along to albums. I think I've done enough of them both, especially the latter. Instead I'm just working out whatever shit is in my head. Whatever I like I write down. If the things that I like make some sense together I try playing them together. If they work I write them down together. If they happen to form a song that's cool. If I can come back and tweak it until I really like it then I'll do that. One of the biggest problems with the earlier approach of writing an EP was that I'd want to get to the recording stage. I would get two tracks I really liked but would jam out three more quickly for the sake of momentum. I think that's a large reason of why I'd move on before I started recording. Just playing and keeping what I really like and then polishing it has a much better possibility of being songs I'm happy to record. So that's what I'm doing. If things pull together and I record I'll probably keep it under the twitchfist moniker. I like the name so I will continue to use it. So there. david shute - Jan 23, 2010 at 7:06 AM
If you haven't checked it out yet, I've got a blog going for the work I'm doing under the heavyliftingindustries banner. This is a small group I started putting together last year gear toward local filmmaking. I talk about, or will talk about, some of the things I'm doing with hli here but the details are all there. david shute - Jan 22, 2010 at 10:51 AM
I spent an unfortunately long amount of time, anymore than five minutes is more than required as far as I'm concerned, sanitizing a trojan/rootkit combination from one of my systems. This is largely one of the major reasons I'm happy with my (mostly) complete switch to Linux from Windows. The relative ease with which this trojan installed itself is shocking. Now, Windows isn't entirely to blame here. The thing is, it installed through a browser scripting exploit. Not in Opera. Not in Firefox. Not even in Internet Explorer. No, this happened in the built in browser in Songbird. This is a serious problem. Providing a full function Mozilla browser tied in to an application is only as good as the security in the browser. If it's not up to the standards of Firefox, which clearly it's not, then it's a severe hazard. Granted, it shouldn't be a replacement for the regular browsing habits but if it is intended to brave the wilds of the Internet then it should limit the amount of damage that can be done to a system. Just disable JavaScript isn't a solution. I really like Songbird. It's got a pretty solid layout, and while the audio quality isn't quite as good as some of the other apps I use I like that it's cross platform. As long as I keep my music on an external storage mediums I can make one change accessible to all my machines and operating systems. That's a huge bonus for me. Being worried that it's so easy to tank Windows through the browser might just be enough to push me away from it. david shute - Jan 21, 2010 at 9:41 PM
Within the list among my focus crusade is try and find my way again at work. I got saddled with a dead end project that I languished in for a long time. I wasn't happy doing it but I had it pretty easy so I leaned back and coasted. Not only did I end up going no where, I got pretty miserable doing it. It's largely my own fault but it really made getting up in the morning and going to work difficult. I was miserable and functionally existed. I did what I needed to get through the day and came home when it was done. It's not that I hated what I was doing. Much worse. Instead I was completely apathetic toward the entire situation. It's fine for me to hate something. At least I have strong feelings toward it even if they are negative. To not care one way or another? That's when things are very bad. Being apathetic about work is neither who I am nor who I want to be. I've had some movement within my team, I'm with a different supervisor, and there are a bunch of opportunities around me to explore if I'm willing to pull up my socks. Apathy is a hard thing to shake but I'm coming out of it. I'm not sure where it's going to head but I'm looking at work related education and internal courses being offered by the company. I'm looking at professional conferences. I'm just looking and reading and learning. That's something I haven't done in this job for long enough to be discouraging. david shute - Jan 20, 2010 at 12:02 PM
I've started back in to studying Japanese again. This is probably the 20th time or so in the last 20 years. And that's really what gets me about it. It was sometime around 20 years ago that I took my first Japanese class. 20 years? I should be beyond fucking fluent by now, and depressingly enough, I have some survival materials within my grasp but not much more. Around four years ago I took an beginners conversational class. Of course, I was a little too far along for that one and found it quite tedious. Worse, they weren't teaching any writing at all. While I've got hiragana and katakana quite comfortably under my fingers it's be nice to have some practice. Being able to start in to kanji at a basic level would have been nice as well. Despite not being very enthused by the class I just signed up for the intermediate level. I'm not sure whether it's a good thing or not but the class has been cancelled due to low enrolment. In a way I'm relieved. It'd be nice to have access to a native speaker again for three months but I'm not sure I'd see much improvement in my overall skills. There are private classes close to my house but I don't have a lot of information on those. Something to look in to. Part of my attempts to find focus again I've dedicated some time every night to Japanese. This is my only daily activity that must happen every day. Except for one night where I passed out on the couch at 9 PM I've been pretty good sticking with it. I'm thinking about languages a lot lately. I don't want Japanese to be the only one that I pick up. There's a list of about a dozen languages that I'd ideally like to learn. I know I won't learn them all but it's nice to consider. I will be picking something up other the Japanese but the question is what? Korean would be cool but I think one Asian language I can't write might be enough for now. Italian would also be cool but I have no practical use for it. Spanish would be a bit better. I travel south every couple years. There are enough Spanish speakers in Canada. I work with a couple of native speakers, but it isn't quite enough. Logically, the best choice would be French. It's on the list. It's around number 11 but it is on there. I don't know why I'm so resistant to studying it again. It would benefit my daughter to have some assistance when she's taking it in school. We are a bilingual country. I have ample access to French TV programming. It's just not sitting with me. I don't know. Something to consider. david shute - Jan 19, 2010 at 6:22 AM
I'm trying really hard to find a focus again. Not necessarily a focus on one specific interest or idea but just focus in general. As much as Monday rolls around and I don't feel rested when I'm working on side projects I'm not a big fan of the alternative. I really enjoy playing video games but I feel like a I've fallen in to a time vortex every time I've got a controller in my hand for more than a half hour. Hours can go by, bed time can be hours gone and I'm still going. Work (job type work) suffers because it takes me forever to get to sleep and then out of bed. I miss the mornings with my family on the weekends. My side projects get ignored for another night. As much as I enjoy that time it's gone and I regret that it's gone. I also find the same happens when I'm randomly browsing the Internet. Movies and TV shows are a bit better, provided I actually enjoy them. At least they relate to my side projects and personal interests. As long as I'm not just sitting in front of the TV watching Simpsons reruns because it's easy. So, I'm trying to find focus again. Part of that has been following up on my correspondence. I was tragically behind. I had a couple of scripts to give notes on, an audition to edit and post, and some others projects to figure out when and if I'd be needed on set to help. The other side has been picking up those interests, I guess one could call them hobbies, and dusting them off. One of my biggest problems has been a very narrow band focus. I pick one little interest and I chased fanatically for two to six weeks. I learn a few things, I pick up so stuff, and then I summarily drop whatever I was doing and chase something else. OOOOH, SHINY! Instead I'm going to work on projects concurrently instead of consecutively. This way I don't burn out and I don't get bored. I can take a couple days away if I need to while I'm focusing on something else but it's always there, in the forefront. david shute - Jan 18, 2010 at 1:36 AM
Things are in flux it seems lately. At the end of September we shot a short called THE NEW FACE OF SECURITY. I'm sure I've posted the script on this very site at some point in time. Anyway, we were working through Ed Video and getting our equipment for free. An equipment combination that looked alright on the cameras LCD display and on the external monitor turned out to not quite be so solid. I managed to sift through half of our 160 shots before I gave out. Only one had a sharp enough focus to be considered worth keeping. So we need to reshoot now. It's unfortunate as it pushes back the entire schedule we had planned out for this year but it needs to be done. This isn't a project we can just walk away from. There's not a lot of money/equipment/time invested but it's enough that I'm not willing to drop it. Hopefully we'll be getting this together for the end of February. I'm still working on and waiting for some details. It should be quick since we've already shot it once. Hopefully we can redo it a little more quickly and cleanly than last time with a lighter crew. Easily, one of the largest spots I screwed up this shoot was having too many crew and delegating too much responsibility. I like have my face behind a camera. That's a better fit for me. As for what we're shooting after that, I have no idea. It's something that we need to get together as a group and figure out. I know that Dave and Lynn both have their eyes on directing. I, on the other hand, will be happy to take a backseat for a few projects and work on the camera or audio. I've got a bunch more but I need to sleep. Perhaps I'll remember to update again before another month and a half has passed by. david shute - Jan 16, 2010 at 3:12 AM |
