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Sorry to hear about your health troubles Rath...

Rath Darkblade wrote:Hmm, up until last Friday (2 Feb) I was working on what I thought was an original idea.
And then I fell sick into a very, very stressful and unhealthy time. I had to go through some very unpleasant medical tests. They're still not finished, and I will need to have an operation. But at least the worst is over, I hope.
Anyway, that's why I haven't been around recently. Been feeling very, very sick for about 3-4 days, but it felt like much longer.
Still not out of the woods, but at least I'm past the first post. Thank $deity$.
My parents deserve endless thanks and love for putting up with my pain and bitching. And I thank you all too for waiting for me to catch up. I'm sorry I've been away without notice or word of why.

Get healthy, good sir. There's only one of you, and I like having you around.

Thank you, Tawm and BBP!

Hmm... I've spoken to my health insurance, and I'm not covered for the operation unless I go through a public hospital, which could take months and land me in a room with five strangers all yelling.

But, actually, I might not have to go through the operation after all. I'm still watching myself very carefully, but things are starting to look up.

As long as I avoid certain foods for a while - e.g. cheese, soda, chilli, junk food etc. (i.e. anything that causes bloating and that sort of thing) - then it looks like I should be fine. At least I won't have to go through an operation. Yay!

(And as an added bonus, I lost a little weight! Yay!)

Sorry to hear about your health, Rath. Hope it gets better soon.

And don't be discouraged by the prospects of plagiarism. Half my writing process is googling and scrapping every idea I have until I finally find something different. It's aggravating, but it's part of the process/journey.

I did a recent declutter of all my backup CDs (20 years worth) and discovered an old fantasy novel I wrote that I angrily threw aside and forgot about after discovering it wasn't original. The novel was called "Dark Phoenix" (because I didn't know "X-Men" well enough), and the entire plot was basically the same story as "Final Fantasy IV". But when I looked through it last week, I felt really bad that I scrapped it so easily over a few plagiarized elements. I had a bible's worth of world-building notes in there, complete with original cities, races and characters. I feel I could've turned it into something with an editing overhaul.

For what it's worth, I missed that Robot Chicken episode, so I thought your version of "How ESB Should've Ended" was pretty funny.

Datadog wrote: And don't be discouraged by the prospects of plagiarism. Half my writing process is googling and scrapping every idea I have until I finally find something different. It's aggravating, but it's part of the process/journey.
I did a recent declutter of all my backup CDs (20 years worth) and discovered an old fantasy novel I wrote that I angrily threw aside and forgot about after discovering it wasn't original. The novel was called "Dark Phoenix" (because I didn't know "X-Men" well enough), and the entire plot was basically the same story as "Final Fantasy IV". But when I looked through it last week, I felt really bad that I scrapped it so easily over a few plagiarized elements. I had a bible's worth of world-building notes in there, complete with original cities, races and characters. I feel I could've turned it into something with an editing overhaul.

This is so true... and I say never scrap anything. Finish it, if you can. Then, by the time you comb it over 30,000 times, to try and perfect it, you're going to have a refined story, that will have enough original elements that it won't be confused for something else.

It's funny that you mention going through your backup CDs... I recently got a BluRay Burner - so I've been burning stuff to that (holds 25GB vs 4GB DVDs). So I was literally going to go pull out all my backup CDs and DVDs this weekend - and namely focus on all of my writing (the stories I started and never finished, the really bad poems, the really corny song lyrics) - and shove them into one folder and comb through them and put them all in one file, with categories... ("Fan Fiction", "Lyrics", "Poetry", "Stories", etc)...!

I don't have a backup of all my writing stuff. If I lose it, I've lost it.

I also didn't want to update from DVD to Bluray. What's the point? In two or three years, there will be a new standard anyway.

I still remember when VHS first came out, and everyone went crazy for it. Then 10-15 years later, CDs and DVDs... and now Bluray. I'm sick and tired of having to shill out money for a player every time that the format changes. I'm happy with my DVDs, thank you, and I'm not getting a Bluray player just so that I can play the Blurays that I don't need and won't buy.

F***ing movie industry think that they can force me to buy a Bluray player. F*** you, Hollywood, and f*** your greedy little marketing @r$eholes who want to get their hands on my hard-earned.

Rath Darkblade wrote:I don't have a backup of all my writing stuff. If I lose it, I've lost it.
I also didn't want to update from DVD to Bluray. What's the point? In two or three years, there will be a new standard anyway.
I still remember when VHS first came out, and everyone went crazy for it. Then 10-15 years later, CDs and DVDs... and now Bluray. I'm sick and tired of having to shill out money for a player every time that the format changes. I'm happy with my DVDs, thank you, and I'm not getting a Bluray player just so that I can play the Blurays that I don't need and won't buy.
F***ing movie industry think that they can force me to buy a Bluray player. F*** you, Hollywood, and f*** your greedy little marketing @r$eholes who want to get their hands on my hard-earned.

First, I'd highly recommend backing up your data - even if it's on DVD.
And if you don't rip your movies (like I do), then there's no real reason to upgrade to a BluRay burner. Every movie I get (whether DVD or BluRay) - first thing I do is rip an MP4 version of it, and then put the DVD/BluRay away (so that it doesn't get scratched). If I want to watch it on TV, then I just use ChromeCast from my PC and play the MP4 file.

But definitely get a DVD burner, at the very least, to back up your writing.

And to be clear, it's not Hollywood that's doing the whole VHS, DVD, BluRay player movement. I don't think Hollywood cares what media it's on - only that it sells.

But it's really no different than how we went from 5.25" floppies, 3.5" floppies, Zipdrives, CDs, etc., for gaming/data.

Changes in the media standard are perfectly valid with advancements in technology and the process of producing the best possible product. It definitely isn't something like Hollywood changing the standard. a VHS isn't at all comparable to a Blu-ray, and it's absolutely a change necessitated by technology. The reason things are re-released on new media are to provide them for people that want to view it on the newer formats. Not doing so would be pretty crazy, like never releasing Blade Runner on a Blu-ray just because it was on a VHS already.

Digital media is changing that rapidly anyway, and is definitely the next area of progression.

I really don't understand the vehemence of your opposition to Blu-ray. It's not just an arbitrary change; Blu-rays were introduced because they're objectively better than DVDs: they have higher capacity and can store the same length of video at higher resolution. So if you have the option of buying a new movie on DVD or Blu-ray, the latter will look better. Maybe you don't care about that (though maybe that's because you haven't seen things on Blu-ray to tell the difference), but for those who do, there's a good reason to prefer Blu-ray.

Also, Blu-ray players are designed with backwards compatibility for DVDs. So you don't need to keep both devices around and upgrading doesn't make your existing DVD collection obsolete. You'd only need to buy something again if you want it in higher quality, not because you'd otherwise be unable to play it at all. And at present, even new films are still being released on DVD, which wouldn't be the case if it were about greedy people trying to force you to upgrade.

(Of course, there's also the issue of digital downloads and stream services and whether those will obsolete physical media, but there are still enough people with poor Internet connections, myself included, that I don't think it's going to happen soon.)

Tawmis's comparison to games is a good one. Just imagine where we'd be if the games industry decided to cater to people who were happy with floppy drives they already had and didn't want to upgrade.

For that matter, you're complaining about Blu-rays now, but a while ago, your same arguments could have been made about DVDs (which you're now happy with). What would you say to someone saying that they don't want DVDs because they're happy with their VHS?

Well... my vehemence stems from the fact that every few years, the medium changes, and the new medium is always insanely expensive (at least here in Australia - not sure about the rest of the world).

Audio cassettes became CDs, CDs became DVDs, DVDs became Blu rays.

Floppies became CDs, CDs became Zip disks and DVDs and USB keys...

And at every stage of the way, adopting the new standard meant high prices for me.

I'm going to wait with Blu ray until the price of Blu ray players goes down a little. Right now, I can get an el cheapo Blu ray player for $100, or an ultimate-ultra-mega-super-Blu-ray-player for $1,000. I'm paying off my mortgage, so I have to live on a constrained budget and don't have much money to spend.

So one: if I go for el cheapo, I'll have to upgrade it sooner or later to keep up with the Joneses. OTOH, I definitely don't have an extra $1,000 just knocking around and waiting to be spent. Even if I did, I wouldn't spend it on a luxury like that.

I didn't know that Blu Ray players can play DVDs. But what if, in a couple of years' time, Blu Ray players themselves become obsolete? Then I'll be bombarded with ads for the next generation. "Come to our store and get the NEW NEW NEW STUPID PLAYER!!! You can play our STUPID DISCS on it!!! And you WILL buy it, because we're the marketing people and YOU are just a STUPID CONSUMER!!!" etc.

I hate marketing. Maybe I have such a low opinion of marketers because of the constant iterations of the iPhone, and how so many people have gone apeshit over the iPhones that they absolutely MUST have the latest iPhone, even if they don't need it. I know more than one person who went into debt, just to be able to afford the latest iPhone. Why? I have no idea... but it's so depressing.

Rath Darkblade wrote: Audio cassettes became CDs, CDs became DVDs, DVDs became Blu rays.

Well. That's sort of incorrect, because you're mixing mediums.

It'd be Records/Vinyls to Cassettes, Cassette to CDs, CDs to MP3 files (like iTunes, or whatever other means). The medium for music has not made that big of a leap.

Movies went from VHS to DVD, DVD to Blu Ray.
But at least, still today, the market is still accommodating both DVD and BluRay. I can't think of a movie that's come out on BluRay that has also not come out on DVD.
(I am sure there's probably got to be some... I am just not aware of them).

Rath Darkblade wrote: Floppies became CDs, CDs became Zip disks and DVDs and USB keys...

Well I think it went from 5.25"/3.25" floppies to (100MB) Zip Drives (which were just over sized, hard, "floppy" discs), to (720MB) CD, to (4GB) DVD, to (25GB) BluRay.
And that's just because the media holds more, as it's progressed.
But it's like the movie media - tons of DVDs are still sold all the time, as blank DVDs for burning.

Rath Darkblade wrote: I'm going to wait with Blu ray until the price of Blu ray players goes down a little. Right now, I can get an el cheapo Blu ray player for $100, or an ultimate-ultra-mega-super-Blu-ray-player for $1,000. I'm paying off my mortgage, so I have to live on a constrained budget and don't have much money to spend.

Well, if you were even interested - Blu-Ray Burners play Blu-Rays and DVDs fine, and are pretty cheap. For example, the one I got is 69 dollars. So I am able to rip Blu-Ray, DVD, CDs, and I can watch all of them (DVD, Blu-Ray), if I wanted to from my computer.

So if you wanted to get a legit, Blu-Ray player, that connects to a TV and such, yes, that'd be more expensive (but like I said, what I do is rip my DVDs and Blu-Rays, then use my Chromecast to project to the TV).

Rath Darkblade wrote: I didn't know that Blu Ray players can play DVDs. But what if, in a couple of years' time, Blu Ray players themselves become obsolete? Then I'll be bombarded with ads for the next generation. "Come to our store and get the NEW NEW NEW STUPID PLAYER!!! You can play our STUPID DISCS on it!!! And you WILL buy it, because we're the marketing people and YOU are just a STUPID CONSUMER!!!" etc.

Well, like I said, since even now (and Blu-Rays have been out how long now?), it's still a very mixed medium of DVD and Blu-Ray, I am not too concerned.

It's easy to think now in terms of a linear succession, with each new medium being an improvement over the last before it. And I don't think it makes sense to complain about this sort of advancement in technology. Better technology is better.

Where there is valid cause for complaint would when one medium has multiple competing successors, none of which has become "standard" yet. Instead of a linear succession, it's more of a branching tree, with a lot of dead ends. For example, HD-DVDs were made to succeed DVDs, but they didn't really take off and have since been discontinued. So if you'd bought into HD-DVD, you'd be out of luck now: your HD-DVD player won't get any new releases and can't play Blu-ray discs, and your HD-DVD discs won't work in a Blu-ray player if you switch to that. That's the risk of being an early adopter.

We're past that early adopter stage now, though; the competition has ended with Blu-ray the winner and de facto standard.

Whoops. Reading over my last comment, I now realise how silly and uninformed it sounds! My apologies.

I'm so sorry for sounding so ignorant. Tawmis, adeyke, thank you for correcting my foolish and ignorant post! I apologise.

I hope that, at least, I have the saving grace of being able to learn from two such knowledgeable people such as yourselves, and able to change my mind when presented with the correct facts, rather than persisting in my obviously wrong opinions and my bad language. Please forgive me my earlier post?

If anything, this whole thing taught me the truth of a saying I heard once: "Opinions are like @rse-holes. Everyone has one, and occasionally they stink."

(I hope that made you laugh too!)

You could also invest in an external hard drive, depending on your needs. Part of the reason I was decluttering was because I had too many burnt CDs and DVDs in my box (over 400 gigs worth). Now I keep it all on a single 1TB drive that easily fits in a drawer. It's a little pricey, but totally worth the convenience and space.

If you're just backing up documents and pictures, I think a flash drive would also suffice. Although I'm not sure about the longevity of data storage in a Blu-Ray disc vs. digital drives. I discovered a lot of my old CDs already suffered from "CD rot" where all my ZIP files were now corrupted. That's going back 20 years, though.

Rath Darkblade wrote: Whoops. Reading over my last comment, I now realise how silly and uninformed it sounds! My apologies.
I'm so sorry for sounding so ignorant. Tawmis, adeyke, thank you for correcting my foolish and ignorant post! I apologise.
I hope that, at least, I have the saving grace of being able to learn from two such knowledgeable people such as yourselves, and able to change my mind when presented with the correct facts, rather than persisting in my obviously wrong opinions and my bad language. Please forgive me my earlier post?
If anything, this whole thing taught me the truth of a saying I heard once: "Opinions are like @rse-holes. Everyone has one, and occasionally they stink."
(I hope that made you laugh too!)

Pshaw! Nothing to apologize for, good sir.
And my saying is somewhat similar - "Opinions are like arseholes - everyone has one, and no one thinks theirs stinks."

Datadog wrote:You could also invest in an external hard drive, depending on your needs. Part of the reason I was decluttering was because I had too many burnt CDs and DVDs in my box (over 400 gigs worth). Now I keep it all on a single 1TB drive that easily fits in a drawer. It's a little pricey, but totally worth the convenience and space. If you're just backing up documents and pictures, I think a flash drive would also suffice. Although I'm not sure about the longevity of data storage in a Blu-Ray disc vs. digital drives. I discovered a lot of my old CDs already suffered from "CD rot" where all my ZIP files were now corrupted. That's going back 20 years, though.

I agree, that the external drive is the way to go, also. However, unless you have a NAS Server (which I don't because of the price tag) that makes back ups of it, it too can unexpectedly die - like any hard drive. I had that happen to me (I talk about it on my Neverending Nights page - http://neverendingnights.com/about ), and I lost a ton of data. Which is what made me a religious freak about backing up every 6 months to a year on CD (back then, to later DVD, and then to most recently, Blu Ray).