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Sci-Tech

Long Time Ago In A Galaxy Far Away We Weren’t Overloaded With Content

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It all used to be so simple and satisfying- a long time ago, tv content was delivered from a long distance transmitter and received by a roof antenna. That antenna had to be manually or automatically positioned whenever you wanted to watch distant channels. Work was involved. Mystery was involved. Finding something to watch was satisfying. Channel 3 Barrie-Orillia for example had classic movies. CP
TV content used to be delivered from a long distance transmitter and received by a roof antenna on your house. The antenna had to be manually or automatically positioned whenever you wanted to watch distant channels. Work was involved. Mystery was involved. Finding something to watch was satisfying.

I’m often asked what I think about the original Star Wars series versus the “new stuff”. A debate that continues to rear its ugly head again ever since Episode VII was released back in December 2015 . I think, for me, I’ve determined what the problem is and why those of us who grew up with Darth, Luke, Han and Leia have a hard time with the newer movies when the younger generation just loves them.

If you're approaching or passing 40 years of age, you might remember your grandparents having a set up like this. You might have dreaded the day you visited because you were forced to watch black and white television and fiddle around with the 'rabbit ears'. To those readers who have no idea what I'm talking about (LOL) the 'rabbit ears' are those two metal rods sticking up from the corner of the television set. The rods could be rotated, pulled apart, shortened and lengthened etc. All in the hopes of receiving a television signal as clearly as possible. There was an art to this stuff. Trust me, I'm old. CP
The ‘rabbit ears’: two metal rods sticking up from the television set. The rods could be rotated, pulled apart, shortened and lengthened etc. to fine tune a distant channel.

The Empire Strikes Back was released in 1980.  I was an impressionable nine year-old. Although I had seen the original Star Wars, it didn’t resonate with me as much as Empire did. When May 21 of that year hit, my life it would seem was changed forever. After seeing the film, it was all I could do to stop thinking about it and what I had seen. The cliffhanger ending was killing me and yet I seemed okay with the fact that I was going to have to wait three more years to find out what happened to Han (no spoilers here in case somehow you have somehow missed Return of the Jedi).

With no VCR in his home, Syd watched The Empire Strikes Back at the cinema...13 times! CP

That summer I saw the movie 13 times. The world was a different place. I took the bus by myself downtown to the beautiful Capitol Theatre (now the even more beautiful Sanderson Centre in Brantford). There was no internet (at least, not that mere mortals could access). I got excited by the occasional mention of the Star Wars universe on the television and I wouldn’t even get a VCR for four more years so the idea of being able to watch the movie “on demand” was not even a thought in my young mind. Instead, I had to rely on my mind through my memories and imagination.

For me, getting the action figures from the movies and being able to recreate scenes from the film helped bring me back to my happy place inside the Star Wars universe. We couldn’t afford to get all the playsets and ships, so I built a lot of them out of cardboard. I used my creative side to paint them like I remembered them in the movies and as soon as I could I ordered the photo books from the school book service so that I could go back there. When the movie eventually made it onto television, a VCR-less me compromised by recording the audio of the film onto cassette. I could then listen (and listen I did) to the movie with my eyes closed and pictured it all in my mind.

If I told this story to a nine year-old today, I would get strange looks. “Dude, why wouldn’t you just watch it on Netflix or look it up on your iPad?” It just wasn’t possible. I was so desperate for a connection to the universe I even cut out the black and white mini-movie poster that was printed into the newspaper with the local theatre listings and posted it on my bedroom wall. Yes, that’s honestly how it was.

Today, I feel like the instant access we have to everything “on demand” somehow diminishes our connections to content. I am pretty sure good movies have been made after the 80s, but I would be hard pressed to find one that hasn’t held such a close connection with me. Not only is there instant access to so much of the content we get today that there is, in fact, more content out there than I can possibly keep up with. This got me to thinking, how do others deal with content overload?

In my case the biggest problem I have is video games. With over 15,000 to choose from I am rarely bored. However, I have needed to come up with a system to keep track of everything I want to play. In my vast game collection there are surely a ton of stinkers, but there are also some amazing games from the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s that I have missed. Heck, I’ve missed a lot of the games that made the most critically acclaimed lists in the past few years. So I had to come up with a system.

How easy is it to have access to thousands of movies? Netflix can be streamed anytime to your I-phone. There's no need to adjust an antenna or fine tune video settings with an actual dial control. The older crowd reminisce about having to work to get results, the new generation can't see the point. CP
How easy is it to have access to thousands of movies? Netflix can be streamed anytime to your I-phone.

What I do now is maintain a list on Dropbox.com that I can access anywhere. It’s called “Games I need to play.txt” (notice the “need” and not “want”). It has two sub-sections: “Started and Never Finished” and “Games to Play”. I don’t really like leaving games unfinished and so when I look at this list I am reminded of what I need to finish up (as I am often playing more than one game at a time) and then for my larger list I prioritize it with what should be next “on deck”. The list is dynamic, changing as I remember what I want to play or come across things of influence from my colleagues. I also have to admit sometimes I choose to play shorter games so that I can get through them and feel more “accomplished”.  The site www.howlongtobeat.com  is an amazing resource for this sort of thing.

When I asked my friends how they deal with content overload I got some interesting feedback.  One of them, John, actually has an algorithm for dealing with his backlog of books. John shared it with me and it goes something like this:

1. I always have one serious and one fun book on the go and which I put on top of the night stand along with my reading glasses. Sometime I cheat and have two of each kind on the go.
2. I keep a pile of books I want to read someday in my night stand.
3. If I get bored with a book, I trade it with one in my night stand.
4. When I finish a book, I choose another from inside my night stand.
5. If I get tempted by a new book I buy it. If it will not fit in my night stand, then I discard the book that interests. Same goes for books that I’m given.
6. I do have a book shelf at work and one at home for books that I want to keep for later reference. If they get too full, I discard things of least interest.
7. I discard books by giving them to someone, donation to a charity or yard sale.

That’s pretty organized. It’s a little more efficient than how I deal with movies I have yet to watch. Presently, the ones that are on the shelf (Blu-ray or DVD) get “pulled out” a little bit so I can see them clearly among all of my other movies. Since they are all in alphabetical order I don’t want to just pull them out randomly and create a new pile.

A friend shared with me a good way to deal with television content. Just PVR or DVR all the content and then watch as you can. I tried this, but filled up my hard drive so I had to go out and buy an external drive. That drive is now dangerously full. There was some good advice in there, however. “What I do is record all the episodes of a TV show and then when it’s all done I go on a watching marathon and binge on the content for an entire day or two. If it’s a new series and I find out it has been cancelled before I even watch it, I delete all of the content and that way I’m not investing in a show that will ultimately let me down with no additional content.”

Algorithms, mechanisms, processes and lists all to deal with an over abundant amount of content. It’s a wonder there is any room left in our brains to remember or think about what we consumed last week, let alone last year. Yet I find myself looking forward to more content in an ADHD kind of way, I can’t seem to get enough. This is, ultimately, why there will never be anything better in my life than the original Star Wars and other films of the 80s (Raiders of the Lost Ark, Ghostbusters, Stripes, Uncle Buck, Back to the Future). At the end of the day, I’m okay with it because there is always something good and interesting around the corner, even if I have to implement a system to manage it all. There are definitely worse things in life. For the Silo, Syd Bolton.

Culture

Our Vintage Computer Was Used In The Thing Prequel

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Computer display in John Carpenter’s 1982 sci-fi classic The Thing,

Getting Into Hollywood Accidentally…When I conceived the idea of a computer and technology museum around 25 years ago I didn’t concern myself with things like revenue models and how the place would be funded. Instead, I just worried about getting the coolest (and oldest) pieces of technology I could in order to have the best displays possible and appeal to the widest range of people.
Fortunately, I still think like that. However, the reality of having to pay bills for storage and electricity and all of the other things that come with running a proper business (and make no mistake, a museum is a business) means that on top of having some of the greatest technology pieces in the world to look at I must find ways of making money along the way.

A couple of years ago a production company called me asking for some early computers to use in a documentary about the origins of the internet that was going to run on the Discovery Channel (or was it the History Channel?) The guy was such a quick talker that I never really got a chance to get concrete information on what the show was going to be called or when it was going to air. To this day, I still don’t know if it ever did.

Then the CBC called. They were looking for an older computer running DOS with WordPerfect, the de facto standard in word processing – in 1989. An upcoming episode of “The Fifth Estate” required a computer recreation from the 80’s and they wanted to know if I could help. I missed the initial call and by the time I had gotten back to them, they had located something locally. It was at this time, however, I started thinking differently about our collection.

Some time had passed, and then the television show “Design By Decade” called. They needed some pictures of machines from the 90’s (and yes, in terms of computers, these are now quite ancient) and then Wired magazine asked for pictures as well. People writing Wikipedia articles were asking for permission to use some of our unique photos of machines to enhance their submissions. I started to think that we were really onto something.

When I first heard about a remake of 1982’s “The Thing” I never knew I would have something to do with it. A production designer called about putting computers from that time period into the 2011 remake. The only unfortunate part, because of the nature of the film, was that they would require purchasing the computers, not just renting them. “I can’t very well rent them from you and potentially return them with fake blood on them now can I?” I recall her saying. I had to agree. In the end, none of our computers actually made it into the film but I did my part as a consultant and helped steer the production in the right direction.

Earlier this year (2012), someone from Cineflix Media called. I recognized the name from the American Pickers and Canadian Pickers shows I somehow ended up addicted to. They required a recreation of a 70’s something office with computers and related materials. Dubbed as the “world’s most heroic airborne combat missions” it seemed like the furthest subject matter from computers I could think of, but hey, everyone needs to have an office, right? Getting paid for renting out our equipment was a real bonus, plus we got to be part of something cool. Now I found myself thinking about what the television and movie houses might want and have started acquiring those machines. Typewriters and old cell phones are now filling the nooks and crannies of our storage units.

Most recently a Toronto production company called, producing a film called “Public Service”. A short film that will make its rounds in the film festivals next year, it stars Gil Bellows (“Ally McBeal”) and Sheila McCarthy (“Little Mosque on the Prairie”). The majority of the film takes place in a government office in the mid 70’s and required some hard to find computers. A large one that normally sits in storage because it’s too big for even us to display was used during filming. We are excited to see how it all turned out, but we now feel like we’re pros at renting our stuff out to production companies.

We are presently working on expanding our website to included film and television production rentals as part of our service offering. It has not only become a nice revenue stream for the museum but it’s also exciting being involved in television and film. From the CRT screen, to the LCD screen, to the Silver screen we go!    For the Silo, Syd Bolton. 

 

 

Culture

The Long Road To Self Publishing

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Bookends worth having- courtesy of hiconsumption.com
Bookends worth having- courtesy of hiconsumption.com

It is amazing to me how many of us aspire to write and publish a book. If you don’t believe me, try this experiment. Mention to five people “I’m thinking of writing a book…” and then wait for the response. Among the (hopefully) positive comments you get back, I bet that three or four people will say “I’ve always wanted to write a book myself.” Even in today’s age of digital distribution it seems like writing a book – a real, in-the-hands book, is a dream of many.

I know for myself I’ve had that dream, too. I am quite sure I can trace it back to several years ago when I actually did author a book. It’s around 30 pages long, and I bound it with denim fabric wrapped around cardboard. It has illustrations and is written in a “choose your own adventure” style with choices that present themselves at the bottom of each page. It was typed with an old manual typewriter and the copyright page clearly indicates that copying or electronic transmission, of any form, is prohibited without the express written consent of the author. I think I was 10 years old at the time.

In my twenties I dreamed about writing a book on the history of the Amiga computer. I contacted several involved individuals for interviews, some of which I actually conducted and others which I just got a general “yeah, sure I’ll do that” response. The project sat on the back burner, only to be moved around to the side when my next project – a book about the history of two of my family members – reared its head. Research started, more family got involved. Yet, it has sat there. I’m still convinced I’m going to write that project (heck, it could even become a movie) but it sits there on the back burner with the other book. I envision the scenario is similar with all of those other people who say “yep, I’m going to write a book too”. Back burners around the world must be filled with these book projects. It’s a good thing that we are moving more towards a digital age because if all of these books actually got written it would likely overflow our libraries.

In my thirties I was approached by someone who had already written a successful book and had been interviewed by some very major radio and television stations. His previous publisher had ripped him off, illegal translations of the book were out there with no profits coming to him, and now that publisher was in the throes of bankruptcy. He had made some improvements, gotten new illustrations and was ready to release the latest version of the book. He just needed a new publisher. He was even going to provide camera-ready files, a term that doesn’t even apply anymore in the industry. He just needed someone to produce a cover and bankroll the whole operation. It wasn’t my own book, but it was a step into the world of publishing that I had dreamed of being a part of since I hammered out the keys on that old Underwood.

 

Food for thought: even JK Rowling and her first Harry Potter book were rejected....more than once.
Food for thought: even JK Rowling and her first Harry Potter book were rejected….more than once.

 

To say it didn’t work out as planned would be an understatement. The book did make it into Chapters, but the monies that were paid to the distributor seemed to evaporate as they also filed for bankruptcy. I did manage to get some of the books back. They currently serve as great insulation in my garage, and I’ve considered burning them for heat this winter. The problem lies with how the old model works. The publisher orders and pays for a large number of books, and then hopes the distributor gets them placed at retailers. The retailers may or may not sell them, and to pay for the ones they have sold, they actually return unsold ones – delaying paying anything until the interest in the book has passed. It’s a nasty, dirty business and one that I have no interest in dealing in again.

Yet the call of writing a book – of crafting something from scratch that comes from deep inside the brain – will not go away. It’s no surprise that many of us would love to take a manuscript and submit it to one of the big publishing houses and have them send us a big advance cheque, but if J. K. Rowling can write a hit like Harry Potter and still get rejection letters, what hope does the average citizen have?

Just like that old bouncing Amiga Ball, (seen here on Syd's shoulder) writing is about 'bouncing back' and 'rolling along' when inspiration wanes.
Just like that old bouncing Amiga Ball, (seen here on Syd’s shoulder) writing is about ‘bouncing back’ and ‘rolling along’ when inspiration wanes.

 

When I discovered the self-publishing site www.lulu.com, I thought it was definitely a dream come true. This site allows you to submit press-ready files and have a book produced for a very reasonable cost. In the past, the only way to get a reasonable unit cost (if at all) on a book was to order a minimum of 1,000 units. Now, the average size book can be purchased for 10 to 20 dollars, and it will be professionally produced and bound. How is this possible? Advanced technology has created what the industry calls print-on-demand and it has changed the game on how all of this works.

I wrote about lulu.com and the process itself several years ago and had a reader write back to me and asked about helping her get the files of her book ready. She had a very unique personal story and had, over the years, written the guts of a book about her experiences. She just had a Word file, however, and had no idea on how to produce the final layout document with a table of contents and so on. I told her I could help her out and provided a cost for her to do so and we took it from there.

The experience was a positive one overall. In the end, we had a few kinks to work out (and she always seemed to find something to change) but we produced a companion website and she ordered several copies of the book for her friends and family. It was a positive experience in the end because she now has her book in a real book format, and although she really didn’t sell that many copies, she did it because she always wanted to record her story on paper. She accomplished that.

It fired me up for working on my own projects. I couldn’t decide which one I wanted to tackle first, and then a more brilliant idea hit me out of nowhere. I started working on it. I didn’t have a gameplan other than knowing I was going to work on it until it was done. I was shocked to realize I had spent almost two years doing research alone, but I wanted to produce a quality product. Along my journey I talked to other friends who had also gone the self-publishing route, but had opted for a service called www.CreateSpace.com rather than LuLu. When I looked into the costs of manufacturing, I could see why. CreateSpace.com was much more affordable and for me this was especially important as I was doing a project that was full colour and has a limited audience.

So I switched, mid-book, to a new provider. I noted that CreateSpace.com is actually owned by Amazon, the world’s largest online book retailer. This has to be a good thing, but I’m glad I dug a little deeper into what challenges I might face as a Canadian. It turns out that you are going to need an IRS tax number in order to receive your royalties. That’s understandable. What is not, is the process. I tried calling and was on hold for what seemed like a lifetime, and I finally gave up. I tried faxing. The thing about faxing is you never really know what happens on the other end or where the piece of paper ends up. It’s also so 1999. I waited a few weeks and heard nothing. I tried calling back again and finally got through to someone who told me I actually had the wrong department and would be transferred. After a total of three hours on hold, I finally spoke to another person who asked me a couple of questions and I was a bit confused at the them (since they were not questions on the form). When I showed some hesitation, she went for the kill and referred me to faxing in the application to a different fax number than I had ever heard of. Eventually I just sent the fax to every IRS number I could find. Four weeks later, my number arrived.

I share my pain with you because I am glad that I started the process early on. I would have been devastated to have my project complete only to have it held up from selling due to a paperwork problem. If you are thinking about selling through a major channel like Amazon.com, you are wise to take care of this detail early on.

 

 

During the development of my book I took breaks. It can be difficult focusing so much on a single topic and it’s easy to lose your concentration and end up with a scattered project. A colleague approached me about putting together some simple-to-follow steps for a social media presentation I was working on, and I took the opportunity to turn that into a book. It is a small book, called “Mastering Social Media” but it was enough to get my feet wet about working with CreateSpace.com and the process. It turned out to be invaluable experience before my main book was ready.

This past July it finally happened. My book, “Collecting for Dragon’s Lair and Space Ace” was finally released and has been given all five-star ratings on Amazon. I am very proud of the book and all that it took to put together, but I know that the road to get there was not easy. It might seem like it, looking at the final product, but it took all of my experience with the previous books to get there. There are still hurdles… promotion is always a tough thing and reaching everyone you can with such a niche book will be a long slow road.

The best advice I have for those wanting to publish their own book is to just get out there and do it. There are so many options that exist now that the excuses for putting your work out there are now gone. It’s a different world out there – go live in it. For the Silo, Syd Bolton.

This article originally published in the print edn. of the Silo, Summer 2013.

Supplemental- 100 million images available for self-publishers.

 

 

 

 

Culture

Disney Aims To Put Star Wars Films Back On Track

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Disney’s Michael Eisner, George Lucas and Mickey Mouse at the 1987 opening of Star Tours. Photo: Associated Press

The recent news of Disney’s acquisition of Star Wars was met with both trepidation and cautious optimism. For those from my generation and older (that would be the 40+ crowd) the release of the first three episodes in the Star Wars universe weren’t exactly over the moon with how it all unfolded. We all knew the basic plot points of how we got to a New Hope and The Empire Strikes Back, but the inclusion of some surprise extras (Jar Jar anyone?) left many of us shaking our heads.

Before you start thinking this is going to be yet another bashing of Episodes I, II, and III let me say that the films are not as bad as most people say they are. Sure, the acting is a bit stiff but it’s made up of all of the stuff that we loved the first time around: interesting characters, worlds we had never been to before, space ships and amazing special effects. After spending a good amount of time in my own Star Wars room in my home contemplating what went wrong, I came up with the following conclusions.

When the first Star Wars came out, I wasn’t even quite six years old. I vaguely remember seeing it, but it wasn’t until The Empire Strikes Back came out that I really fell in love with the world. I was almost nine, and turned nine during the time of its release. In fact, I remember seeing the film 13 times that summer of 1980. The only other thing I remember from that summer was the release of the song Funkytown which will forever (for me) be associated with the film.

Looking in the rear view mirror, it doesn’t seem that long ago (30 years seems like a short time somehow) but it was definitely a different world back then. I was able to take the bus by myself to downtown Brantford to see the film at the Capitol Theatre (now replaced with the beautiful Sanderson Centre for the Performing Arts). It was also a time when seeing films at the theater was something that lasted for weeks and months because fewer films were produced and home video releases were a relatively new thing. For a child, the time between the episodes seemed pretty much like an eternity.

There was little coverage of the Star Wars universe on television at the time. The film may have been mentioned periodically as breaking box office records, but the only ability to return to the universe outside of the theater was to save up your allowance and get your hands on as many action figures as you could. There were never enough funds to buy everything there was, either. It seemed like Kenner released new figures every week and the ships – oh the ships – they were just to die for.

Just a small part of Syd’s Star Wars collection.

I asked for a Millenium Falcon for Christmas in 1980. It was the coolest and best toy there was, but my parents could not afford it – or they couldn’t find it. So instead, I got the “put it together yourself” model version of the Millenium Falcon. Although it wasn’t really what I had wanted (you could not put your figures inside and play with them) I did end up spending a lot of time with it. Paint, stickers, and a cool battery operated light at the back that lit the whole thing up better than the Christmas tree made this a toy I grew to enjoy over time. In fact, it’s one of the few things that I cannot find from my childhood – I am not sure whatever happened to it but fortunately the rest of my Star Wars toys are intact and can be enjoyed anytime.

The key here is time. As a child, I spent a lot of my time in the Star Wars universe, even when I wasn’t in the theater. I used to tie a string from our tree to the neighbours railing and have Luke and his friends escape from the Stormtroopers and the evil Darth Vader in the nick of time, over and over again. It didn’t matter that we couldn’t afford those ships, I built my own from cardboard. I used pop cases as the base and made egg cartons into seats. I painted control panels and lights onto cardboard pieces that I fitted into the ships. I played out my own scenarios in these contraptions of my own imagination and created adventures that even George Lucas hasn’t thought of yet.

That is why Episodes I, II, and III – released at first when I had not quite reached my 28th birthday – would never capture my imagination, my mind, or my heart in quite the same way. Sure, I saw Episode I a number of times when it first came out and then bought the DVD (and the VHS, and now the Blu-ray) and I’ve seen it a few times since 1999. However, I did not build ships and think about the movie during over 75% of my free time. Life, bills, and a million other things were crowding my inner child. While Episode I was a fun (albeit short) trip back into that Star Wars universe, there was absolutely no way it was going to be as good or as fulfilling as the universe was the first time around.

With Disney at the helm, I hold cautious optimism that I can once again be transformed into being a child with a huge imagination and a roomful of action figures and cardboard boxes. Even if it is for only two hours, there is nothing that will ever replace or come close to my memories with Luke, Han, Leia and Darth from the 80’s. Star Wars helped shape the person I am today and there is nothing that will ever change that. Not even a new Princess in the Castle. For the Silo, Syd Bolton.