Update: This one’s silly too.
[tags]Battlestar Galactica, wiki, Sci-Fi Channel, Ronald D. Moore, David Eick[/tags]
Daily Archives
July 31, 2006
Not completely destroyed, it seems…but it’s going to take a while to get it back into shape, I’m sure. It was one of the world’s largest sound stages, after all. (Not sure if it was the largest.)
The fire in the corrugated metal warehouse-like stage wiped out three different sets that had been transformed into Venice for several final scenes in the new Bond film Casino Royale.
One of them was a house that tilted into the water with the help of a complicated hydraulics system, which used four specially-made valves of which there are only eight in the world.
The valves had been flown into England under armed guard from America and production bosses were yesterday waiting to get the all clear to get onto the set to see if they had survived the fierce fire that took two hours to get under control.
The Beeb, I suppose unavoidably, can’t resist adding at the end of the article:
No-one would say if they had seen a short, bald man with a scar running down the right side of his face and carrying a white cat running from the scene on Sunday.
Update: it’s going to have to be demolished and rebuilt.
[tags]Pinewood, 007, Casino Royale, Daniel Craig, 007 sound stage[/tags]
Oh yes. Read the details at BookBurger and be horrified. I desperately wish I could believe that this is a hoax…but I very much doubt it is.
See, you can be in these people’s anthology of stories about gratitude to the Divine for things that have happened to you. All you have to do is pay them between $300 and $500 for the privilege! (Depending on when you sign up.)
And free brainwashing is (included | required)! Get this:
**ALL STORY SUBMITTING AUTHORS are strongly encouraged to participate in our three month thankfulness course to help ensure that your story is coming from a place of thankfulness and presence enough to qualify for our series.**
…Once you have reached a state of unconditional love & gratitude for WHATEVER it is that you believe is getting in your way, we will then work with you on sharing your personal story with our readers.
The purpose of this course is to assist you in bringing whatever issue you are dealing with to a place of thankfulness, presence and love and to then be able to write your story from this perspective. If you are unable to do so even after completing the course, we reserve the right to turn down your submission.
Uh huh. …And there’s more!
Up to 1% of the net profit from the book sales of the book your story is published in for the lifetime of the book, PLUS, a percentage of the net profit of the entire book series.
The option to include at the end of your story a biography about yourself and any service you offer, for example, other books you have published, your website, contact info, etc.
Thousands of dollars worth of marketing and publicity. This series will be translated into different languages and marketed to millions of people around the world.
You have the opportunity to earn money for the lifetime of the book!
Leaving aside that the business model sounds totally whacked… Never mind. Just back away slowly. Then run. Run, do not walk.
(headclutch)
[tags]self publishing, vanity publishing[/tags]
As if Peter’s horsefly bite reaction wasn’t enough to deal with right now, the power outages yesterday took out the data provider of Groupee, the firm that hosts YoungWizards.net and the Young Wizards discussion forums. Both site and forums have been down since around 5:30 PM EDT yesterday.
Most of Groupee’s hosted sites are back up now, but our site and forums are hosted on a server which was hit so hard that the hardware failed. Groupee is presently replacing the hardware, and then both site and forums will be replaced from backups.
I’ll post something here as soon as things are running again. (BTW, YoungWizards.com and the Errantry Concordance are unaffected, though naturally the main page at YW.com isn’t displaying the feeds of messages from the discussion forums.)
[tags]outage, power outage, Groupee, Young Wizards discussion forums, Young Wizards[/tags]