I’d been assuming that Bit Torrent would either go the way of other great file-sharing methods: be shut down like Napster, or become clogged to uselessness with viruses and fake files like Kazaa. The longer it goes on — three years at this point — the more I feel like it’s ushered in a golden age of media accessibility, in particular for episodic television. Most of the shows I watch regularly, in fact, started with being able to steal them easily.
-
Secret Encoder Ring
-
Getting Real and Giving Numbers
The web tech firm 37signals made $175 grand in the past 75 days selling their book online and has posted the details “to show that self publishing is a viable and profitable route for an author/company with a built-in audience.” (via)
-
How to Silkscreen Posters and Shirts
Silkscreening is such a great happy medium — nestled comfortably half-way between hand-drawn and mass production, more colourful than photocopying and with an aesthetic all its own. Artist Shannon Gerard broke out her silkscreening gear to make cool shirts and posters for her upcoming comic launch, and despite being crazy busy has shared her skills in this funny and detailed tutorial. Read on to learn how to print your own posters, shirts, or whatever you fancy printing on, and how the Virgin Mary and Spiderman join forces to help her out.
(more…)
-
CTHEORY digs on My Trip
There’s a mention of My Trip to Liberty City as “a great work of popular culture commentary” in the tech journal CTHEORY. (Thanks, Liam!)
-
Video Compression Howto
The folks over at Rocketboom talk about the various video compression methods they use to make their daily internet show. (Thanks, Kirby!)
-
Selling Ads for Small Mags
Gabino Travassos, publisher of the excellent music mag Mote, has a practical howto on getting ads for small magazines.
-
Freeware Rebellion
I’ve done a fair amount of writing about Raigan and Mare, two indie game developers I know. This 10 minute documentary I made was a bit of a revelation, however: instead of writing about how fun and stylish their game was, I could show it. Instead of talking about how they’re not your typical nerd coders, I could show them in person. It’s the cardinal rule at writing school — showing, rather than telling — and with this project I realized that video was really good at this. As the kids say, it’s a powerful medium, but I seem to always have to learn these trite truisms myself before I believe them.I’m going to be screening this video and my six other videogame shorts at a screening of Pleasure Circuit Overload at the megacool Blim Gallery in Vancouver. Monday May 8th, 8pm, $5-7 sliding scale. If you can’t make it, click through to see my mini-doc.
-
A Pick-Your-Own-Podventure
I got hooked on radio drama when I was young mostly by accident — it followed the comedy hour on CHUM-FM. I listened to Orson Welles on the The Third Man serial long before I saw any of his movies. Thanks to various sites, I’ve been enjoying the old time radio drama on my MP3 player.Almost a year ago I was struck with the idea that it would be interesting to make a kind of audio drama that took advantage of the MP3 player, to turn it into a kind of primitive interactive story. I grew up on computer text games like Zork and books of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure ilk so it was a natural fit. And here’s the result: the first 20 minute episode of “The Letter” that you can listen to on an MP3 player or the computer. At the end of each track, you decide what should happen next…
(more…)
-
Take Our Taste Test
My pal Scott lent me his copy of The Winking Circle, a DVD made by some kids in small-town Ontario that documents their attempts to “eccentrify their lives.” More than anything else I’ve seen, it reflects the essence of the cut-n-paste photocopied zines — it’s an hour long piece that masterfully mixes the visual eye-candy of skateboard stunts and crazy haircuts and artbikes with stirring music and non-idealogical philosophy. It’s spectacle reclaimed, really: spectacle given a soul.So it’s not so strange, really, that Coke wanted a piece of it. And why go to the trouble of buying something you can just steal?
(more…)
-
Pleasure Circuit Overload
My series of short movies about videogames is being screened together for the first time as part of a really fun event on Saturday April 8th in Toronto. It’s put on by the dorkArmy crew at the Gladstone Hotel (1214 Queen Street W., 7:30pm, $5) — come for the vids, stay for the Drunken Dance Dance Revolution & karaoke! There’s also a screening at the Blim Art Gallery in Vancouver on Monday May 8th. I’ll be going to both and really looking forward to them — as well as six videos I’ve released on the site and elsewhere, there’s a brand new minidocumentary piece about two indie game makers. Click through to see one of the series, “Mark Slutsky Reviews the Nintendo DS.”
(more…)
-
Bert is No Gay Gandhi
Joey Comeau’s Lockpick Pornography isn’t just a title tease: it puts out plenty of sleaze and theft in a smart and funny queer adventure story. The narrator puts his foot through a television, pulls together a genderfucked super hero team and launches a figurative and literal attack on the straight man’s world. Starting life as an online novel, it’s become a beautifully designed physical object courtesy of Vancouver’s Loose Teeth Press. Joey is launching it with a reading with Derek McCormack at Toronto’s This Ain’t The Rosedale Library Bookstore (481-A Church St) on Tuesday, March 21, 7 p.m. Free.I asked him a few questions over email about the book.
-
Do-It-Yourself Book Press
By Hamish MacDonald
UPDATE:Hamish has started a DIY Book podcast!Back in 2000, I wrote an article for this website about how to produce your own book. Things have changed considerably since then, both in the technology available to individuals and in the services available in the marketplace. It’s all good news for us independent publishers.
The original article was called “DIY Book Production.” Aside from being a clunky term, you now have more power than that: You can be your own press. I now produce my own books at home from start to finish, and in this article will explain what I’ve had to learn and acquire in order to do that.