I miss being part of the WordPress community. I never really left, but I’ve definitely been far behind the scenes. My work with rocketgenius and more specifically Gravity Forms has made me long for the days when I was writing about the developments in the community. I remember the passion I felt finding out what new things were happening, and chatting with Charles and then Jeff on their respective podcasts.

Things are so different now, and despite working in and around the community for a decade now, I doubt there are many people that still remember me or what I accomplished. Heck, even I, have probably forgotten most of what I did, so I can’t really blame others.

Many people will say that they didn’t join the WordPress community for fame, but I would definitely like to be remembered, even just by a few. I am also hopeful, in the near future, I’ll have the opportunity to really help build the Gravity Forms brand by sharing my passion for the product and become widely known, once again, in a segment of the WordPress community. I look forward to talking about Gravity Forms, its evolution, its usage, and of course my coworkers.

I miss the community that I was once a part of, and I hope that I’ll be welcomed back as I try to make inroads in building those friendships once again.

Annie and I were chatting at my place after work one evening and I had mentioned that I had come up with a new story idea that I wanted to work on. Annie added that she had been thinking it might be interesting for her and I to collaborate on a story, since I love doing exposition, action and setting, and she loves dialog and creating characters.

I talked her through my concept and she thought it sounded interesting. She made some personal requests right off the bat about the main character, and it didn’t interfere with the story I wanted to tell, it began the partnership that you can see in each “page” of Second Class Supers.

I won’t give away any plot points here because you should be reading the pages. We will be posting them as much as possible on a Monday, Wednesday and Friday schedule. Sometimes, the Friday release might slip to Saturday, but we hope to publish about three thousand words per week over the course of the summer.

Annie, despite not being a fan of odd numbers, got to post the first page of the story, and we are publishing every other page on her site, and the even number pages on this site. So if you are looking for the start, check out her blog: Second Class Supers – Page 1.

What is it like to collaborate?

So far, the process has been really easy. We are both very honest when it comes to what we like and don’t like. We don’t shoot ideas down, but we ask questions and make tweaks as needed.

I have to admit, I was curious how the process was going to work because I had already come up with the first third of the plot and didn’t want her to feel like she couldn’t add her own touch to it, but we have had so many sessions just coming up with ideas that the story gets easier to write as time goes on.

The characters are coming alive, and Annie and I are just trying to record their journey. It is an interesting feeling that I’ve never really had in any of my previous writing.

How long of a story will it be?

Of course, Annie and I are hoping to do a good 50-60 pages, as the plot could certainly sustain near that. We might fall short, and get to around 30-40 pages and call it complete at that point, we aren’t entirely sure yet. I can say that when we sketch out a page, more often than not we have to split a page we are working on in two because of how much we each have to say. I had much more stuff written for the page four plot that got bumped to page five because we had already went over our 1200 word self-imposed limit before reaching the end of what we had mapped out.

So if we get to 60 pages, that means it will be complete twenty weeks from when it started, which would be sometime late in October or early November, as long as we stay on schedule. Annie has already talked about increasing our writing pace when she is done work for the summer.

I am excited about the idea of getting to around sixty pages as this would mean we would have something like 72,000 words. And with the average softcover having around 300 words per page, we would then have completed writing a 240 page book, which is one of my biggest life goals and on my list of things I was hoping to accomplish this year.

I couldn’t have done any of this on my own. Having someone passionate about the story, and someone to bounce ideas off of is amazing. I am super grateful for Annie’s help in making this story come to light. I hope you will all enjoy reading it.

Since starting this blog, I’ve received one thousand comments. On average, I receive 29 comments per month. The most commented post on this blog was entitled, modX Admin UI Thoughts. The person that has commented the most times on this blog is Tom Leroux a.k.a. WTL, with over 110 comments. I wanted to take a minute to thank everyone that has commented on this blog, or that will comment on this blog, including my fiancee, Annie, who was comment 1,000. I really appreciate each and everyone one of them.

So, in my earlier discussions and thoughts on the Canon 70D (My Next Camera: Canon 70D), I as pretty certain that the camera would come out with a 18MP sensor, like the 60D, T5i, and SL1, but Canon Rumors has just posted that they’ve been hearing chatter that the Canon 70D might have a larger megapixel sensor so that they are seen as industry leading once again. It looks like the comments I received on my previous post might be right and Canon could be worried about what Nikon has been doing. Are we going to see a new megapixel race again?

Here’s a snippet from Canon Rumors article:

A different source says there are 3 different sensors currently in development, all of which are above the 35mp pixel count. Canon is apparently quite motivated to make industry leading sensors again, as we should see some of that in the EOS 7D Mark II and perhaps even the 70D in the summer.

I am hopeful that we do get a high megapixel body as it would allow amateurs like myself more options for cropping, while still having enough pixels to get nice prints done. My worry of course is that a big jump in the number of pixels doesn’t make for a better sensor, or cleaner images, and then there is dealing with bigger RAW files that are already eating through my hard drive space like nobodies business.

I guess we have to see if the Canon 70D gets this new sensor, but the question is “will we see the Canon 70D this year or next?”

Microsoft recently made a huge mistake that had Annie and I discussing the culture attached to media, and we realized that while Microsoft is the most recent example, it is not the only example: companies are trying to kill the sharing of media and thus, by extension, culture.

People are passionate about media such as movies, games, music and books, and as such, they want to share the things they enjoy with like-minded people or those that they care about. Unfortunately, this is quickly becoming difficult, and creating a society where the only thing you can do is create word of mouth about what you like, and hope that each person pays for the opportunity to read, watch, listen or play the various things out in the world.

Growing up, if I wanted my best friend to check out a game that I owned, I would lend it to him, and he would play it through. We would trade games between us, and in doing so, we would strengthen our friendship by creating a relationship of sharing and the opportunity for engaging conversations about our experiences.

This same experience was common with books and music tapes and eventually CDs as I got older. This same experience has been shared by friends and families since the first books were written and shared over a thousand years ago.

Microsoft discussed their plans for their Xbox One, a console coming out later this year, and the biggest frustration in the gaming community is that they aren’t just restricting digital content, which many people are sadly used to, but also the sharing of physical media. Want to let a friend borrow an Xbox One game you’ve purchased in disc form? You can’t.

With new limitations being imposed daily on the sharing of e-books, MP3s, movies, and video games, we are quickly coming close to a world where only those with money will be able to enjoy the wide array of entertainment being created on a daily basis by millions of creative individuals.

One of the biggest losses is the library of cheap media for those that can’t afford the original retail price for media, and trading in content you’ve experienced for something new allows for people with less money to enjoy the same content as those with more money. It also allows those trading in media to access new content and share their discoveries with a reduced risk of financial loss. I know I’m much more likely to purchase a game I know little about if the cost is mostly subsidized.

It is sad that many computer gamers have already become accustomed to not being able to share games thanks in large part to Steam, a great digital download service for video games, and before that the license keys that didn’t allow you to install a game more than a handful of times.

Many people have also gotten used to not sharing music thanks to iTunes, and lately I’ve heard many people say “you should subscribe to Netflix if you want to check it out” with regards to both movies and television shows.

Where would society be without the sharing of media and culture created and curated by movies, video games, music and books? Despite many gamers being angry with Microsoft, and their choice to restrict the sharing of game experiences, I fear we may find out during my lifetime.

So on Sunday, Annie and I took two guys that she works with to Niagara Falls ComicCon and had a great day of it. I don’t want to really go into detail about the event itself, but more just focusing on the Tim Russ Q&A session we went to first thing in the morning.

Once arriving, Annie and I almost immediately went to sit in line for the session to make sure we were able to secure decent seats, and we were around two or three rows from the front of the small room. By the time Tim came in to talk, a few minutes late, the room was only half full and considering it could hold probably less than two hundred people, I was shocked by the lack of attendance.

Tim Russ was Tuvok on Star Trek: Voyager, and will reprise that character in Star Trek Renegades, an independent movie shooting this fall. I was going to ask him about Renegades, but he jumped in and discussed it before I could.

Annie and I are currently working through watching Star Trek Voyager, so while Tuvok wasn’t my favourite characters from Voyager, the session was the best of the day.

We were able to hear about his opinions on a variety of subjects including his involvement with Renegades, working as a director versus an actor, and his thoughts on the upcoming Star Wars movies. His insights on Disney being a corporate octopus were amusing to say the least, and his humour had the room completely energized by the end.

He took the mandatory Star Trek questions in good stride, and really seemed to feel comfortable in showing how opinionated he is about the current state of science fiction television. After talking about how there have been dozens of pitches for new Star Trek shows, and how they aren’t currently planning to make one due to the cost per episode being too high, I got the opportunity to ask him why then they were taking the gamble on Star Trek Renegades, which they plan to shop to CBS Paramount. His response was that they know they’ll have to remain off-lot, and potentially film more content in Canada if they want to make the series work, as filming in California is just too expensive. They also hope to prove that a high quality Star Trek story can be done for a limited budget, but he also sighed in frustration acknowledging the fact that if it works, they’ll have to continue to produce content with a tight budget, saying something along the lines of, “if this is a success, they’ll want us to make more at the same low price.”

Unfortunately, he ran out of time before being able to promote the band he is the front-runner for, but I am planning on checking out the music he creates, which apparently can be found on iTunes under his name.

In seeing this session alone, I was happy to have been in the car for nearly an hour and a half, after waking up before seven in the morning to see him speak.

Want to see more pictures from Niagara Falls ComicCon 2013? Check out my Flickr.