Hugh Perkins

I took a screen-shot because I imagine it won’t last, but it’s fun whilst it does!

I couldn’t resist…. today’s xkcd uses “strip poosticks” as a search term, and there are *zero* results! Maybe this post will get to the top of the list

Here’s the cartoon, just for fairness sake :

frequency of strip versions of various games.

Jammie Thomas’ damages owing cut to 54,000 dollars.

From reading the Slashdot comments, it seem that the Slashdot crowd on the whole feels that this is reasonable, and on the whole I guess I concur with this. As long as it’s not me that has to pay out 54,000 dollars

I think that making the fine 2000 dollars per available song might have a much bigger disincentive effect than having a 2 million dollar fine, since having a 2 million dollar fine just means, if you are caught, your life is basically screwed whatever; whereas a 2000 dollar fine per available song might mean that seeders might reduce the number of songs they are seeding, making available, gradually throttling and killing off the p2p distribution process.

I don’t really have a problem with p2p dying. If proponents of piracy are right that music is over-priced, then I feel there really ought to be an opportunity for other distribution methods to provide music at a lower price point, and compete ably with the current price-points.

After all, I think there are tonnes of bands out there trying to “make it”. It’s not like there is a shortage of people willing to spend time on trying to make music, and attract eternal glory and fame, I think.

In a sense, if the proponents of the price point being too high are correct, then I feel it is possible that a crackdown on piracy could actually accelerate this process, by discouraging people from listening to the current mainstream songs, and start to look elsewhere, instead of just saying lots of bla-blah and then listening to the mainstream music anyway

As an example, there are a few reasons why I currently use linux as my sole home computer OS, and one of them is that it means I neither need to buy a license for lots of dollars, nor do I need to be paranoid about being required to prove I have a license every time I cross customs between countries. Not that I think that customs do check such things, but why take a chance?

Not really a post about writing as such, more a post about nostalgia.

Chinese potato seems to have lots of Western songs from my teenage years on it now. I’m not sure when they appeared, but I don’t think they were there a year or two ago.

I looked at Neneh Cherry’s Buffalo Stance. I seem to remember that I used to think she looked, how to say?, to me, somewhat … I don’t know, ghetto? Not in a good way. But I used to think she looked cute I think? But in the video now, I can’t see how I ever thought she ever looked cute! Strange… Still, to be fair, I still really like the song, and I find the words quite endearing: “No moneyman can win my love. It’s sweetness that I’m thinking of.”

I think at that time we didn’t really have videos as such, just the music on the radio – tape-to-tape machines were in! – and pictures and interviews in my sister’s Just Seventeen magazine. So maybe I never saw the video, just heard the song and the words on the radio?

Depeche Mode’s ‘World in My Eyes’. I still really like this, a lot.

Paula Abdul, ‘Straight Up’. I used to think she was really cute. I still think she’s quite cute actually, though I think the initial tap-dance makes her look like a guy… but after that I think she is quite cute. I find the bit where she says ’straight up!’ and points upwards a bit silly…

Roxette ‘The Look’, I think I still like this. There was a group of fairly well-off, hard-working students at school that I hung out sometimes, I mean I wasn’t particularly well-off, relatively, so I don’t know how I fitted in particularly, perhaps I didn’t, but I seemed to hang out with them sometimes; and this was one of the main pop groups that this group liked; and I seem to still like it.

A-Ha ‘Take On Me’, this was from when I was like eight or something, maybe ten. I still really like it. Actually I say “still” but I’m not sure I actually liked it at the time. I don’t think I really enjoyed music at that time, I just liked the cartoon… I really like the music now though.

I find it strange watching the old videos because it makes me realize how old I am getting … and it reminds me of being young, which wasn’t always fun-fun-fun I think, but on the other hand, when I accept that it is a part of me, and then I look at my life now, it has I feel the opposite effect: making my life now feel quite free.

Ok, after re-reading, one more song I want to mention: INXS ‘I need you tonight’. I was never massively into this song, though I liked some of their later work like ‘Guns in the Sky’. There was a guy at school who was really good looking, I guess, since lots of really hot girls really liked him. He liked writing really long stories in English, and was pretty good at that. He really liked INXS. I think the singer in INXS is a bit too good-looking for me to relate to

And… Guns’N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle”. I never really understood why this was so popular, and I still don’t really. It’s really strange to me seeing this come up with a huge copyright notice at the front. I can’t really imagine a rebellious group today having a really big copyright notice at the front and being popular, although perhaps I am being naive on this point? The whole video looks very contrived to me, put together by a huge record label is my feeling, but I could be biased. There was a guy at school whose parents were I feel really well-off, who was a really nice guy, lots of friends, had a really cute girlfriend I feel, and studied enough to be second in most classes, and he really liked this song, which I never understood at all, and still don’t! I can’t help thinking I need to get older still before I will understand this

I just started Prison Break season 3.

My first impressions, first episode, and first half of episode two were: this is awesome! Really cool interesting world. It’s like Lord of the Flies. I love the concept of getting order from chaos. It’s one of the reason why I used to play on the Everquest PvP servers, Rallos, not so I could pk – I didn’t really – but so that other people could pk me, and all the politics behind that.

And then, second half of second episode, Michael techs the tech. I was just like … oh man, what is this, the A-team?

The bit where he suddenly magically discovers a way to get water to flow out of a pipe into the yard, and everyone is happy. I just thought the whole thing was ludicrous, I don’t even know where to start, so:
- Michael holds the match the wrong way up, with the flame at the top, so it keeps going out. Heat rises, the ions rise, the flame rises. He’s an engineer, is he so surprised it keeps going out? It’s almost as if they made the actor playing Michael hold it like that so it went out each time…
- the whole concept of having a block in the tunnel that can be conveniently cleared by an explosion, it’s I feel like something out of Zelda, which is admittedly I feel a very fun game, but games and films don’t set the same standard in terms of suspension of belief I feel.
- how did he suddenly find this pipe and the block? How did he even know the block was there? Magical. Teching the tech…
- explosion, from alcohol. Alcohol tends not to be explosive, unless it’s mixed with air, oxygen, and that’s quite challenging. A bag of alcohol is highly unlikely to explode I feel.
- and then, why doesn’t Michael just tell the dealer what he is doing? Why doesn’t he tell the guy who runs the prison what he is planning? There is no plot-legitimate reason except to create a fake suspense, A-team style, I feel.

Other than that, the whole concept of a lawless jail having rules and laws is pretty cool I feel, so I might keep watching anyway. I’m quite disappointed about the whole teching the tech thing though…

I just watched the end of Prison Break season 2, episode 20, and the start of episode 21.

I got bored with Dark Angel pretty fast. I think it may be fun for short episodes, but for watching lots of episodes en masse, I feel it gets tiring pretty quickly, since there is not really much of an ongoing plot underlying the episodes, besides her quest to find her classmates, which doesn’t seem that interesting as far as quests go! At least, on its own, without something more, some pressure to get to them on time, before something bad happens to all of them.

So, I’ve gone back to Prison Break. I feel the characters in Prison Break feel very real. I feel they are generally intelligent. I think the plot is reasonable and well thought through, and very interesting, and really unpredictable, at least if one doesn’t pause the video every 30 seconds or so to try to figure out what happens next

That said, I find the end of episode 20 and the start of episode 21 a little annoying to me. I think Michael is acting a bit stupidly and a bit out of character.

This is the bit where he sees Sucre send a message on the europeangoldfinch.net messageboard, telling him that T-Bag is in Panama, near where Michael is.

I think a specific thing I find annoying with Michael’s going after T-Bag is that, unless he does something unexpected, which is admittedly quite likely, I’m not really sure what he intends to do with T-Bag? I don’t really see Michael killing T-Bag, it is very out of character I feel; I can’t remember Michael directly killing anyone so far.

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On another track, all these lives that Michael has indirectly destroyed by breaking Lincoln out of jail. He is not I feel wrong to feel bad about this, and, more to the point, for example, perhaps it could be more in character if, when he realizes he’s going to do something bad, he just stops. Or maybe, when I say more in character, I mean: more in a hero’s character.

For example: with Sarah, he explicitly asked her to leave the door open, effectively screwing up her life. Whilst I can understand this, considering the amount of pressure he was under at the time! but hey, he’s a hero right? , and also whilst the very act of asking her was itself courageous, the results for her were catastrophic, and she did it under I feel moral coercion.

I feel if there was some way for him to have got Sarah to do stuff without moral coercion, and similarly for the warden, without physical coercion, I feel I’d feel more comfortable with his character.

I’m not saying it’s easy to do, and I’m holding up Prison Break to a far higher standard than any other series, simply because I feel it really is one of the best, if not the best, but anyway it was what was crossing my mind recently whilst watching it, and arguably nothing is perfect.

To balance things out a bit, I really do think Prison Break is an awesome piece of writing generally. Really well done I feel.

Interesting potential writing exercise: figure out a way to rewrite some of the bits where Michael doesn’t do things that are particularly nice, and change it around a bit.

An example of where he does do something nice, against his own best direct interest, is where they go into the bar in the middle of the New Mexican desert, he gets attacked, Sucre walks in (so: help from someone he’s been nice to in the past), and then, specifically, after the gun fight, Michael lets his assailants go, so that they can take one guy to the hospital.

Another example of where he doesn’t is: T-Bag wants into the escape. There are two possibilities here: Michael forgives T-Bag for things he has done in the past and welcomes into the team, or Michael doesn’t want to have T-Bag running around outside, so he refuses to go any further in the escape, potentially compromising the escape. At this point, something else jumps in, and neutralizes T-Bag somehow.

Not: wait till Michael’s just about finished escaping, and then randomly regret T-Bag’s escaping and run back to kill him, or whatever he is going to do, I feel.

Idea for a writing exercise: rewrite Dark Angel episode 3, ‘Flushed’, taking into account lessons learned from watching Prison Break, increasing the number of parallel sub-plots, and the amount of suspension, and problems for the hero.

One thing I liked about writing workshops is not so much that people make useful comments on one’s work – it happens but mostly I feel the comments say ‘I like’ or ‘I don’t like’, just in more words… but something I do like about writing workshops is that you can see people who are about your level, and you can see what seems like obvious ways to improve their writing, and then apply the same lessons to one’s own work.

When one looks at one’s own work, the lessons are not always quite as obvious as when one looks at other people’s.

Actually, when one looks at one’s own work that one left fallow for a year or two, things that other people said at the time become more obvious to oneself, but still, waiting a year after writing something to learn from it is quite a slow process I feel…

The plot in Dark Angel episode 3, and in Dark Angel so far in general I feel, is fairly linear, with only the tiniest smidgeon of parallel subplots, and contradictory actions.

The plot is essentially:
- Max (=Dark Angel) needs a drug, tryptophen, in order to supplement serotonin levels, which are insufficient in her brain without the drug
- her flatmates see her eratic behavior, and its association with the drug, and assume that the drug is a recreational drug, that she takes for pleasure, and that she has lost control over
- they do not understand that it is actually more like a drug that a Parkinson’s patient might take to compensate for reduced dopamine levels: that it is essential for her normal well-being and continued survival
- they flush the drug down the toilet!
- there is a slight pre-plot here:
- she had had to ‘borrow’ a chunk of money from them to obtain the tryptophen
- and she had used that money to buy the tryptophen
- then she stole a car in order to raise money to pay back her friends!
- when Max understands that there is no way for her to obtain the tryptophen legally, she breaks into a hospital pharmacy and obtains the drug
- an orderly notices the break-in and alerts security
- she is overpowered, by three police officers
- she is taken to jail

meantime, the guy she likes, Logan? , notices her missing and goes to see Max’s friends to find out where Max is
- he communicates the necessity of the drug
- he uses an inside connection in the police force to procure the belongings that Max had had when Max entered the jail, the evidence perhaps
- the inside connection breaks Max’s female friend, Cyndi, into the jail! into the same cell-block as where Max is

in parallel:
- Max meets a guy who seems quite cultured and helpful
- he obtains milk for her, through an inside connection in the guards, which apparently contains tryptophen
- he agrees to help her to escape, by providing a distraction, opera singing in the courtyard
- she attempts to escape, but fails to get over the fence
- she is recaptured, the warden sees her, and likes her, sexually, and has her transferred to his quarters, so that he can rape her, and keep raping her, though she isn’t actually raped just yet
- there is a girl in the quarters who is the current rape target
- Max wants to free the girl along with herself

Cyndi manages to break into the Warden’s office, by climbing through the window.
- she meets up with the girl and asks the girl where Max is
- next we see Max in a coma in her bed, and the warden appearing over her
- Max grabs the wardens throat and pushes him against the wall
- we learn that Max had already obtained the drug from Cyndi, and taken them. Cyndi ‘Girl! What do those pills have in them?’ Max: ‘Spinach!’
- the girls force the warden to help them escape, by taking them outside the jail in his car
- Max and the girl hide in the boot
- Cyndi sits in the front with a gun pointed at the warden
- it’s a little unclear to my mind how they get past the checkpoints without the warden saying something. Cyndi is fairly weak after all I feel, and would not suicide herself to protect Max or revenge the warden or anything like that by killing the warden if the warden alerted the guards
- the plot skips handily over such an issue and presents the girls outside the jail

At this point, the warden overpowers Cyndi, and heads for the boot of the car
- just as he reaches the boot of the car, the boot opens
- Max had broken the lock earlier!
- Max gets out and overpowers the warden
- a jeep full of guards drives up
- Max jumps on the jeep, and kicks the guards’ butts
- meanwhile the warden comes back to his senses, grabs the gun, and points it at Cyndi and the girl
- who are escaping into the woods at the side of the road
- and manage to get away unharmed
- Max gets into the jeep and drives it towards the warden, who is sheltering behind his car, firing the pistol at Max
- Max drives the jeep into the car, which knocks forward, running over the warden
- Max and Cyndi and the girl are free

Meantime, Liebecker, a military guy who is trying to kill the escaped barcoded guys, has received a call from a private detective, who he has obligated to snitch on Max
- Liebecker actually arrives at the jail just before Max and Cyndi and the girl break out of it
- when he finds out they’ve escaped, he orders the records searched
- the search reveals no records
- and we cut to Logan, who’s just finished deleting them

Actually, *pant* *puff* ! , there is a fair amount of detail in the plot, and a smidgeon of subplot: Liebecker chasing her in parallel.

Still, Liebecker is easily thwarted it seems: Max and Cyndi and the girl merely escape jail, and Logan erases Max’s traces.

To be honest, for a 40 minute episode, there is a fair amount of detail here I feel. Maybe this is about as complicated as a single episode story can get?

I’ll have a ponder over this and see what I can come up with.

Possibly I need a way of measuring just how much plot one can fit in a 40 minute screenplay? Possibly I should rewrite the original episode, in my own words, using the original plot, I mean using the words I can remember, and improvising where I forget; and then I can do the same with a potential new episode screenplay, and compare?

I think it could be possible to make an interesting Prison-Break style story from the fight against rising seas in a specific city, for example Calcutta.

By making the story span many years – forty or fifty – we can possibly speed up the story enough to create plot, tension, suspense.

We can have a group or two or three fighting against the rising global warming, and the obstacles arrayed against them: political, scientific and so on, and how they overcome them at each stage, until slowly the waters start to recede, and people can move back into the, somewhat cleansed, city.

It sounds a like little sanjie haoren, a Chinese film about the rising waters in the 3 Gorges damn area, except that sanjie haoren doesn’t I feel really have much of a plot: there is not really suspense and then denouement. Sanjie haoren is more like a documentary showing the rising water level, and its effects on the human population.

Similarly the Day after Tomorrow depicts the possible effects of global warming, but I do not feel there is a plot. The participants do not seem to ever reverse the effects. It is not a ‘Next’-like film for example where the protagonist realizes what is going to happen and then avoids that.

And neither is my proposed story a Next-like film, just that, in the nature of films, stories and fantasies, the protagonists get sufficiently lucky to reverse the global warming trend, somewhat through their own efforts, and somewhat because they are perhaps courageous and sympathetic heros?

Dark Angel’s episodes are generally I feel self-contained. 24 Hours and Prison Break systematically have I feel a cliff-hanger at the end of every episode.

Speaking for myself:
- watching 24 Hours on tv, I find annoying, since I invariably miss every other episode or so, and the story skips loads of chunks and I feel I am missing out
- whereas Dark Angel et al are I feel very watchable on tv.

On the other hand, watching as a block, the whole season, I feel Prison Break et al draw me in much more. I tend to just try to watch the whole season in a weekend or so, whereas Dark Angel, after an episode or so, I’m ready to take a break, though that could possibly be a good thing, for my private life

I suspect that tv companies push for cliff-hangers at the end of each episode though I feel personally that if I am writing things that will appeal more to me personally, I would push for no cliff-hanger at the end of each episode, if it is a screenplay for weekly tv viewing.

I was going to say that 24 Hours, Lost, Prison Break are more famous and well known, and perhaps it is because of the cliffhangars? And that could be true. Still there are I feel some series which don’t have cliff-hangers, and that are successful, eg Star Trek. I think at this point in time though that 24 Hours et al are far more successful currently!

Maybe a possible rise in home entertainment systems, and the use of dvd players and so on mean that many people will buy the whole season on dvd, and that the series with cliff-hangers are very popular in this format, and drive word of mouth marketing in this way?

Dark Angel is I feel ultimately hot. I love her face, and the calm way she approaches I feel many situations, she doesn’t seem to get flustered, even in the face of almost-certain death.

And, unlike to my mind Steven Segal, she doesn’t seem to me to be particularly arrogant, or horrible. She seems to me to be nice to her friends, and to people generally.

I feel she is a departure somewhat from my classic hero-model, because she is not I feel always perfectly ‘nice’ to others. Is this a good thing and why she is successful, or is this a weak-point of the series and why it only has a couple of seasons? Actually I don’t know how many season there are, but I don’t think it is as successful as Prison Break?

I feel Dark Angel’s actions are awesome, very hero-like. I feel her words are often quite caustic, which is fine, but a little off-putting to me at first. I think after a while I start to feel that her acid words are an attempt to cover up an underlying passion to help people and be nice to people.

The plot itself is I feel a league away from the detailed intricate web of suspense that I feel is Prison Break. Still there are moments when I’m not sure what will happen, although I can’t say I’m particularly in suspense.

I really enjoy watching Jessica Alba playing Dark Angel