ARCHIVED NEWS ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

October 25, 2002

Now into the second year of work with this documentary, things start to take shape: narratives that are presenting themselves, facts and ideas that I'm being told about or discovering in conversations, people who it is obvious I need to contact to interview. Falling to the wayside are ideas that didn't pan out, theories I had that were dead wrong or are ultimately irrelevant, and people who it turns out were not quite as serious about being talked to than initially thought. Don't hold any anger or disappointment for this last group; they were swept up in the initial announcements and time, reality or introspection have pulled them away.

The September news indicated that I'd bought a house. Well, that's all together and the house is doing great, as well as its filmmaker occupant. I have been quite busy in the last month and a half, so don't think I sat around thinking of mortgages. I added dozens of newly acquired software to the software directory, interviewed another 8 people, and best of all, purchased a very nice VTR. So nice, in fact, that it threw me for about a thousand dollars; my biggest purchase since the camera itself. This VTR plays Mini-DV tapes and can do digital copies, meaning that I am now in the process of making backup copies of all my major interviews (and then moving into the non-major ones). This will make things very easy when I need to send tapes out for editing or to be able to send copies of interviews to museums (some of these should be in museums, honestly) or to archive. In case you're keeping track of my purchases, the VTR I got was a Panasonic AG DV-1000. Very, very nice.

This weekend, I'm going to New Jersey, followed by Tennessee the weekend after that and Montreal after that. It never stops, it seems. My rough plan is that at the end of this year I start focusing specifically on a list of people who MUST be in the documentary, and then start going just to those people, picking up a few other groups who happen to be in the same area. That's still going to be dozens of people.

To do in-documentary animations, I'm swirling pretty rapidly around using Flash to generate the actual animation and then put it to video. I'm not a big fan of Flash as a replacement for website navigation, but for easily making compelling artwork for use in a video? Perfect. I'm still not settled on my editing suite, although my gut says it will be a freebsd-based disk array with a terabyte of storage hooked up to a Macintosh with Final Cut. But that's still a ways in the future....

In other words, I've not lost steam yet! And I seriously doubt I will. How could you not have FUN with all this?

September 1, 2002

As mentioned in the previous entry, the documentary had to go on hold while I moved into a new house I bought. As I'm writing this, I'm surrounded by tons of boxes and equipment and lots of things that need to be sorted or chucked or what have you. The piano's in the garage and there's an Asteroids arcade machine looming over me because I can't fit it in the right corner yet.

One side effect of this move is that I have a lot more space to conduct research and spread out papers, CDs, tapes, and other required items. I've had a couple loose ends that needed tying up and that's going to happen now.

It's been a year since I officially announced production on the documentary, so I put together a one year status report. Here's hoping people still care.

More after I figure out where we packed my socks.

August 10, 2002

NOW we're cooking with gas. I've returned from the previously mentioned California/Nevada trip loaded up with over 30 hours of interviews of around 22 people. Included were sysops, developers, users, history-makers... just an all-around amazing bunch of folks. If I was worried I didn't have enough diversity of opinion and experience, I don't have to worry any more.

I flew to San Francisco from Boston on a Friday, and then drove all over the SF area for a few days, before embarking on a 400 mile trip (!!) that took me through San Luis Obispo for an interview, before ending up in Los Angeles, and many more interviews. Finally, I flew out of Burbank to Las Vegas for DEFCON, picking up a handful more of interviews before flying home.

And I only lost my cell phone and my driver's license! Whoever's flying on America West, check the pocket in seat 13C for me, will you? America West sure hasn't.

Wrapped in this set were two of the "vitals" - folks people would yell at me if they were in the documentary: Wayne Bell, creator of the WWIV BBS Software, and Tom Jennings, creator of Fidonet. Both were fascinating people, and had a lot to say - no holding back - about BBSes and their personal experiences with them. In case you're wondering how many "vitals" there are and how many I've interviewed, the two answers are 10, and 3. All 10 have been contacted, 9 are interested in being interviewed. Not bad at all, if you ask me. And all have been gracious and helpful, some even pitching in with research and information they've had around.

I could probably fill this with paragraph after paragraph of my experiences in California, but it'd probably come off as a panting travelouge. Suffice to say, when all was said and done, I'd driven over 1,600 miles (!!) in about 7 days and asked an awful lot of questions of an awful lot of people. It's coming together, folks!

I've lost the next two weeks to life-stuff: I've just signed on the dotted line for my new home (well, new to me; it's 100 years old) and have to get my considerable amount of stuff out of three locations into it before my old lease runs out. Then it's back to research, interviews and travel. Glory!

July 16, 2002

Now is that vital time, when people have checked back and seen no obvious updates for over a month, and might think "Well, he got bored, lost money, died, forgot himself." For many projects, one just loses the way and the project collapses and becomes a "might have been".

Not in this case!

I ended up stumbling upon a fantastic house in Waltham, Massachusetts and have put down the cash to buy it. With buying a house comes inspections, investigations, negotiations, and all that fun stuff, and between that and the day job, I've not had much time to film. Instead, I concentrated on filling out some of the research, answering letters, and otherwise doing the 'back-end' stuff. The house closing is in August, as well as my moving this massive office I'm in into a newly also-massive room in the house, and that will no doubt eat a little time as well.

But the filming is back on again! Just this past weekend, I visited H2K2, a Hacking convention in New York City, which was simply fantastic. Got to meet lots of cool folks, get some feedback on the documentary, watch a couple hacking documentaries to take notes from, and generally had a real great time. Surprisingly, I even found time to interview a few folks: The Mentor (he of "The Conscience of a Hacker", a famous writing that blazed the BBSes for over a decade), Cheshire Catalyst (of TAP Magazine) and about 10 other "man in the street" interviews in a huge networking room set up for the event.

But the big one coming up is an absolutely insane trip I'm taking from Boston to San Francisco, South to Los Angeles, then off to Vegas and home. I hope to be conducting at least 20 full-length interviews at that time, increasing my total interviews by about half. Very important folks this time around, historically speaking; I'm going crazy printing out my "help folders" that will allow me to bone up on an individual's history.before interviewing them.

Onward and upward.

May 27, 2002

Texas proved everything to me about my goals for this documentary: That I would travel to places I'd have never travelled to in my life. That I'd speak to people who were interesting, fun, and smart who I'd have otherwise never have met. And that I would be saving, for history, some really important views and statements that don't exist anywhere else.

See, it's not just about rounding up some folks to talk about Bulletin Boards; it's also about showing the amazing spectrum of people that this technology attracted and who worked together (and at odds) to bring life online. And in Dallas, I got to meet a lot of wonderful people. I also know legions more about Fidonet, as many of the interviewees know and continue to use Fidonet. I especially have to thank Bob Gilbert, who opened his home to me and three other BBS-related folks, to have a good old-fashioned round-table discussion that went late, late into the night. And the pizza! Oof!

I drove around like a maniac, rounding out hundreds of miles and I skittered from suburb to suburb. I got four hours of sleep the first night, three the second, and finally, a whole SINGLE HOUR before I gathered up my gear in my hotel room (ironically watching a great BBC documentary on farming while doing so) and heading out to the Dallas airport in the darkness before my flight.

I also visited Toronto over the last weekend. Even as I was suffering from a cold, and various other ailments affecting my joints and well being, I got some great, fantastic interviews!

April 27, 2002

I made a lot of resolutions when I was planning this documentary, one of them being to not make the same mistakes a lot of similar projects make; the website related to the project becomes a big, sad "coming soon" and you wait for years and by the time the project is actually ready... it looks like they're behind schedule, when in fact they might be right on time. I think that the personality type of people I am appealling to with a lot of this documentary are really buying into the current "work-in-progress" mentality that pervades, for example, the video game industry. In many cases, you have screenshots, plans, example animations, the whole deal, long before you see the game itself.

I can see how this might get out of hand, but I think that core interest is seeing how the work is progressing and trying not to let hype, marketing and false promises take the place of content. So I've been trying to put lots and lots and lots of content up on the website for people to see now, instead of waiting to the end. This is also because there is SO much information, I simply need people to correct me.

Right now I'm only doing about 2-3 interviews a week. This is bothering me greatly, and is mostly related to planning plane trips and getting a hold of folks. I feel like I'm living and breathing this thing 24 hours a day, and I want interview footage to show for it. So if I'm "only" getting 4-5 hours of footage a week, I feel like I'm getting behind... I predict a busy, busy summer.

I started applying for grants. Hey, why not? I should really put up a list of all the places I'm applying to, so other filmmakers can get ideas. I was actually trying to put together a host of pages that would give you hints on how to run your OWN documentary. I expect that will happen across the year, as well.

There's major amounts of information being added to this site, but it's not public yet: an entire section of the site that will be dedicated to FidoNet, since that will almost definitely be an episode unto itself. Fido is one of those subjects where you THINK in a light way "Yeah, it's complicated." and then you go into it and say "Gee, it's not THAT complicated...." and when you delve further, it hits you: "This is more complicated than I could ever imagine." The policies, the history, the controversy, the politics... it's just astounding. I expect to spend quite a bit of time on it. When I'm happy with the foundation, it'll go up as a sub-site.

Looked into the price for an editing station; as things stand I was considering a Macintosh whatever-the-best-one-is along with Final Cut Pro 3. I found the most money you could spend on it for insane reasons was $10,000, and with a small amount of effort you could reduce that greatly, so here's hoping. It's too far in the future to know what I'll want when, but it's fun to dream, isn't it?

A note to would-be researchers: If you want to drive yourself completely insane, just try to track the full arc of a court case. I mean from when the person is first arrested, through all the court case, any appeals, and ultimately, any jail time or what sort of probation they recieved. It is VERY difficult; I spent something like 5 hours last night tracking all the details of the Tony Davis Oklahoma Information Exchange BBS Case, one of the more celebrated ones in 1990's BBS History. The case affirms a continuing theme: Where the Law and the BBS have collided, it has cost happiness, freedom, families and dreams. I don't like blanket statements like that, but in the 15 or more BBS-related cases I've been looking up, that's the way it's been. A real shame. I hope to save some of these stories for history, because I think they're going to happen again and again.

Next up: More travel, more interviews, and a ton more research.

April 8, 2002

I'm fresh back from rubi-con, a hacker conference held just outside of Detroit. I spoke for two hours (it was supposed to be one but I got a little overboard) about the documentary, my plans, and all that. I also got wrapped up in a hacker trivia game that got entirely out of hand, and then there was the issue of the police showing up with the drug dogs.... It's nice to have been to a party that as actually as wild, drunken, destructive, and raided as much as this con was.

But I didn't go just to give a talk and nearly get arrested; I also wanted to do interviews! And I did, getting FIFTEEN done in a very short time. Two of them were my standard "travel to the house, interview the folks, go to the next location" shoots, and the rest were shot in my hotel room, filming as many people who I could snag from the floors below.

This actually works out in a fantastic way; because there's no large setup between the interviews, the folks who only have maybe 15 minutes of memories or comments on BBSes can be given some time, while other folks who turn out to have cool stuff but didn't contact me are pulled out of the crowd and deliver me great material. For example, I interviewed two gentlemen who ran a BBS in the incinerator room of a funeral home; they'd be working on the BBS while bodies were wheeled behind them to be cremated.

Looks like I'm going to Defcon, H2K2, and Summercon later this year; I hope I have similar success there as well.

Unfortunately, I missed a few people in the Michigan area I'd hoped to interview; so I'll just have to find my way out there again. And I now have a list of folks I didn't know I needed to interview before. This is how things get out of control, but hey, it's giving some great additions.

For those keeping track at home, it's the beginning of April, and the farthest east I've interviewed has been Boston, MA, the farthest west has been Ann Arbor, MI the farthest North is likely Warren, MI and the farthest south has been Atlanta, GA.

March 15, 2002

Now things are getting serious. Well, actually, they were pretty serious (as opposed to unrealistic) before, but I've started to quantify the documentary and gotten a handle on the full scope of the project, and begun focusing on story arcs and the rest of what makes something watchable.

There's now a list of cities I'm visiting to interview folks. For now, there's no information about WHO I'm visiting, which is why you don't see any names and some towns are doubled. As time goes on, who is in the documentary will be released, but for now, I'm focusing on the general information and will be more specific as time goes on. Some folks may be experiencing multiple interviews, for example, as I track down more things they know about or can weigh in on.

You can now look at my credentials. Trust me, the documentary is in good hands.

To accompany the video captures I mentioned last entry, there's now also some audio snippets taken from various interviews. People weigh in with all sorts of interesting things, and I have a small picture of the person who's speaking. Just click on their eyes to hear them mention some aspect of BBSes or surrounding subjects.

I'm off to Atlanta this weekend (in 24 hours), and then who knows what's next. Film, film, film. Thanks for checking in!

February 27, 2002

How are things going? Can't complain! Hundreds of interviews lined up, 20+ interviews in the can, and pretty much all the bugs have been worked out of the whole process. Sound is good, image is good, and I can pack the entire setup into two bags and travel (with no incident) on airplanes with it. Every day, a few people mail me to offer help, suggestions, and interviews. I integrate their corrections about the BBS software directory and any relevant events they think I should know about/ask about. Keep them coming, folks! I use them and they do show up on the site!

The highlight this month has been the opportunity to sit down with Ward Christensen, co-inventor of the BBS and original programmer of XMODEM, to ask about both his own history and his thoughts on BBSes in general. Ward is a real great guy and that was one fun weekend! Of course, what made the whole interview work were the efforts of Rob Lipscomb and Peter Zelchenko, who worked hard to ensure that I would have access to both the hardware of the first BBS (that's what's in the picture) and the right questions to ask Ward. (When you interview the guy who invented the thing your documentary is about, the potential for stumbling is quite great.)

Why haven't I put up pictures from my shoots? Well, I think the digital still camera I use (An Olympus C-3000) produces such nice photos that they mislead you into thinking that the actual VIDEO will look as sharp and lit. And that's just not what video does. So, with the help of a friend who has an iBook, I am pleased to announce that you can now browse a web page with stills and video captures from a couple of my interviews conducted so far. They're almost a random selection; Count Zero talks about Boston BBSes and their influence on the high-tech clubhouse known as the "L0pht", Jake Kouns of the ANSI group "Rulers of Chaos" talks about being a little behind the times technologically, and Ward tells you how the first BBS came to be. This was the first time that either of us used iMovie to play with the footage, and it came out really nice really easily. No complaints here! As time goes on, I'll try and release more example footage for you to see and comment on.

In other more down-to-earth news, I've decided to ask if people want to assist me with financial or other such help. The initial outlay for equipment and flights took some of my safety net away, money wise, and while the documentary will get done, I've had to scale back travel cross-country air travel for a couple of months and focus on the eastern seaboard till things calm down. The page tries to explain the whole process and gives you hard numbers as to what my costs have been. I'm shooting this thing with out-of-pocket and the key is to pace myself. So, there you go. No one will think less of you for saying "He made this bed, he has to lie in it." I intend to do just that; it's very comfy.

The outpouring of support, by the way, has been spectacular, I just can't say that enough. Folks have corrected me on things I thought were completely settled (in my mind), and they've pointed me in so many cool directions I have to write them all down and spend an evening tracking all the new information down. That's so great! And when people have criticisms, they're all pretty helpful. Sometimes it's a matter of opinion, and other times it's just a concern that I will skip over something important. In any case, I like to hear from you, so keep it coming.

Well, back into the fray!

January 17, 2002

Filming has begun! Finally! Only two interviews in the can, but they both went as smooth as silk and I couldn't have asked for two people to help me more in getting everything off the ground. Equipment worked fine, lights were bright, and the question and answer sessions went off perfectly, yielding hours of informative material. I feel like I'll be able to handle the basics of an interview, such as getting a good shot, arranging people to get them in frame, lighting, and all that part. I'm still a little worried about getting all this equipment on an airplane. And I better come to terms with that, because I'm flying to Chicago in February.

After Chicago (and an interview with Ward Christensen and others from the early days) it'll be weekend after weekend to different parts of the country. Not many of these are scheduled as of these seconds, but I can expect them to happen shortly. The biggest deal is that some of these trips will happen with VERY short notice (Web Specials, my friends!) and so I have to be VERY organized ahead of time.

I want to restrict myself to flying for under $180 across to a city and to see at least 4 folks when I'm there. That'll stretch the budget, and make sure that if an interview doesn't work, there's something else to do besides take shots of the landscape and write postcards.

I think I better set aside slashdotting for a while; I STILL have mail I haven't gotten to! (Less than 30 letters, thank goodness.) People write amazing letters and they can take a day apiece to integrate the changes they suggest.

Soon, there'll be results of these interviews online; I promise.

January 2, 2002

Greetings from Canada! I head up to Northern Ontario every year to a great cottage owned by friends. Normally, this makes sense, but I was slashdotted on the 28th and after getting hundreds of e-mails from folks, I had to head off to a place with no net connection. Not the greatest of timing, but I wanted people to know the whole thing was coming along.

This latest slashdotting got me the most criticism of any of my public announcements. I assume that's because the site has grown enough that people can find things wrong or missing with the research. I figure I might as well address some of the concerns that were posted on Slashdot or sent to me directly, in case other people are wondering what the answers are but not enough to write.

The software.bbsdocumentary.com site (that is, the list of BBS software) drove people insane, especially when I didn't have any data in the entries for the most commonly-known BBS programs. The reason for this is that my biggest priority was tracking down the most obscure and hard-to-find programs, not to list out packages like WWIV, Renegade or MajorBBS, which I've collected information on but haven't put up. Give me another week, and I'll flesh that thing out and your favorite software will get the treatment it deserves.

There was the usual concern that this documentary couldn't possibly be of interest to anyone, which is natural. Either it'll be of interest or it won't, right? No sense worrying about that sort of thing before a frame of video is shot.

My favorite complaints center around concerns of bias; either that the documentary will focus on the disasterous or negative of the history of the BBS, or that it will avoid anything that makes the BBS experience look less than rosy. That's great stuff! The core of the "negative" questions is that the timeline has mostly BBS legal issues and busts through the ages. This is mostly because it's been easier to find exact dates of those events than the opening and shutting of influential companies, creation of software packages, and other happenings that didn't make the papers. No doubt as time goes on the timeline will be weighed down with events as I get the actual people involved in them to tell me when they happened. And as for being too rosy.. well, I hope the interviews will clear out THAT concern...

Finally, people sent me a lot of cool pieces of information that I did not in fact have, and have offered greater information about subjects than I had up. I'm going to integrate these while I schedule the first spate of interviews for January, so expect this whole site to look meatier, shortly.

Today I'm over in Toronto purchasing the light kit for the travel kit I'll be bringing when I do shoots, and then I go back home tomorrow, when I'll try and get through all the mail I've got waiting for me. The rush begins!

December 23, 2001

Ah, the holidays. A time of rest and relaxation.... for most folks. In my case, the hot times are just about to begin: a full-on sprint for over a year filming people for my documentary. This means that I've been busy buying supplies, checking into rental agencies, scoping out airlines, and trying to clean up and work on the research and planning for both the documentary AND the textfiles.com sites. My life is currently a life involved and centered around history. And I love it!

Of course, the longer I study the history, the more amazing details come out. I've mentioned to a lot of people the "Game of Firsts", which is my term for the situation where a person or group think they're the first to do something, but nearly all the same attributes minus one or two technological differences happened before. Confusing? Maybe for you, but maddening to folks who want everything to have black-and-white beginnings and ends. I'm interested to see how that all pans out in the final story.

I've also got a wave of people who are interested in the specific objective way this story will be told. I think it's going to be a little different than folks usually think of documentaries. My plan over the next couple of weeks is to put together a 'reality' page that tells you my thoughts on the nuts and bolts of the whole thing, what I think the whole documentary will manifest itself as. This is mostly going to be a scratchpad of odd thoughts, but it's something. Hey, it's not like I don't have months to decide about it, right?

So into the fray with me. I'll be keeping the site updated, and I really want to get that software.bbsdocumentary.com page even more complete. Be sure to help, if you can.

November 15, 2001

Every once in a while it hits me anew: This project is really frigging big. It's easy to get hopelessly lost in the specifics and the vitals of very large events and controversies that loomed on very tiny stages. I look up occasionally, at the full picture, and am blown away by how very much there is to tell. I mean, sure, the general themes are out there and somewhat easy to grasp: BBS software types, sysops, users, modems, the different comptuer brands... everybody has something to say on these general subjects and I won't hurt for material or solid interviews. But something that was both important and highly influencing, like the structure of the FidoNet network or the lineage of the "Dopewars" BBS Door, and I can lose an evening or two just on that!

One problem that was manifesting itself was going down the same old paths over and over. Someone would mention a subject I'd already spent quite some time on and my reaction was "Well, maybe I need to take another look" and I'd have to spend a couple hours reaquainting myself with all the facts and players. Now there's a strange little research list that has been built up off of these here-and-there facts that people have brought up. These are odd subjects and very obscure in some cases; that's the nature of the game of research.

There is now also the beginnings of a File Transfer Protocol List that arose when someone talked to me about "Bimodem" and I had no idea what they were talking about. As it turns out, there's been a lot of attempts to dethrone ZMODEM and KERMIT over the years, and it's up to the reader if they succeeded. There will be a page similar to this one for compression algorhithms as well.

Here are some rough statistics for you, in case you're wondering what I'm thinking through: I intend to spend at least all of 2002 interviewing folks and recording footage for the documentary. I am currently in direct contact with over 30 BBS Software authors, 50 Sysops of various sized BBSes (single line to full-blown still-running ISPs), and probably 150 other folks who were users, industry leaders, or people I think will weigh in with some good insight. I have answered over a thousand e-mails ranging from one-line responses to multi-page epics. I expect to be recording something in the range of 400 hours of footage. Current ages of interview subjects range from 17 to 86. And, in what I consider the most encouraging sign:

Only one person I've contacted has responded with a litany of profanity!

I expected many more. Of course, a few people have turned down being interviewed, either because they don't think they have anything to contribute (I don't agree, of course) or because they think that portion of their life is over and they don't want to go back there. But this is the nature of things; some people have truly moved on and consider the matters closed. Obviously, if I had my way, the documentary would be that closure, but you have to respect someone's relationship to their own life. And I have to stress again: We're well over 95 percent positive, "I want to be part of it" response. That's so excellent!

So it's steady as she goes for the next few weeks, as I start to assemble all the interviews and folks I've been talking with, and decide where I'm going and when. If you look at the Calendar, you can see things are starting to fill. It's looking good!

October 28, 2001

A kind soul named Windrip decided to help spread the word about the documentary by posting to a tiny site named Slashdot. The story went up on Slashdot on a Saturday night, and I found out in a most amusing way: A kind soul wrote me to tell me that her husband had played a part in the International FidoNet Association and he would mostly likely be able to help me with the documentary. "That's very kind of her", I thought, and started to write a letter back when I noticed that five more letters had arrived. Each one was well-thought out and long, and I thought it must have been a pretty boring saturday for so many folks to be spontenously inspired to write to me. Then another 20 letters arrived.

All told, over 300 letters came to me from October 8th onward because of the story. There were as many postings on Slashdot itself, although anyone who had something to say to me has written to me directly. What a windfall of contact I've gotten! I knew that this documentary would be important to a lot of folks, but that still doesn't deaden the happiness I get when someone writes in a massive essay about their time on BBSes for me to read (and to help themselves remember).

While in some ways the changes have been incremental over the last month, I've actually thrown a ton of information onto the site, including something like 230 megabytes of BBS source code, information, and program files over on the new sub-site software.bbsdocumentary.com, which is tracking 561 BBS software packages as of this writing. A couple of times a week, someone reminds or introduces me to a new package or increases my knowledge about a package and its author. And sometimes the author themselves contact me!

In many ways, you see, this project is already a success, personally; I've corresponded, spoken on the phone, or otherwise communicated with a huge number of people now, many of them authors of BBS programs, and in a few rare, precious cases, architects of the BBS itself. These folks are heroes to me, and I've had the pleasure of speaking to them about the project and heard them want to tell their stories. I've already had to expand my knowledge of certain subjects because these sages have pointed me in new directions to get the real and actual story. Accuracy is my watchword, and I'm sticking with it.

The calendar is finally starting to fill. I'll be attending at least 4 computer conventions next year, both as a speaker and filming folks talking about BBSes and their experience. There's a concept in film and video called "shooting ratio", considered the ratio of how much footage you shot to how much ended up on the screen. Since my belief is that there is absolutely no downside to shooting as much footage as possible, I expect my ratio to be quite high indeed, as I will speak to anyone and everyone about BBSes during the next year. If you're going to be at the conferences in my calendar, don't hesitate to get my attention if you want to speak to me.

There'll be more sections showing up on this site, and I expect that I'll be writing a lot more over the next few months. Keep tuned.

Next Time: Realities!

September 28, 2001
One month later, and the ball rolls along! I've made a multi-thousand dollar purchase of a Canon XL-1 Digital Video Camcorder, so I guess I'm committed. It's what's called a "Prosumer" camera, which translates roughly to "It's way too much money if you want to shoot home videos but it's cheap enough for you to get a very good looking result without recording them repo'ing everything else you own." Choosing a camera is a huge crazy big pain in the ass because every person who works professionally with them has a completely different idea of what constitutes "good". The reason I settled on the Canon XL-1 was because without exception, every review I could find argued about this or that minor detail but they all said the images looked superb. That's very important to me, because I want this stuff to look and sound good. And that's what I paid for.

Additionally, this camera has an awful lot of support out there, both in articles from people and accessories for sale. Let's just say I don't feel like I bought a TI/994A in Fall of 1984. (Although apparently there's a newer and more feature filled model that kicks the XL-1's ass. But with 20 years of experience with computers, I know this is just the way of things.)

Over One Hundred folks have been contacted about interviews, information, or research discussions. I've recieved a spectrum of response from folks, and to my great surprise, only one person has told me unequivocably to go to hell. This may sound like an unpleasant experience, but I knew going in that for some people, the BBS time of their life was this golden nostalgic time, and for others it's a nightmare they've long been able to forget. The vast majority of folks are pleased that someone is taking this on, and some have gone as far as to offer crash space and rides when I come to their city or town. That's really great and I appreciate that.

For the next month, I intend to be in DEEP, DEEP RESEARCH MODE which will be reflected on this site in both the timeline and BBS software sections. I'm going to try and track everyone I can down, and expect to be firing off a ton of letters.

By the way, if there's one thing which I'm really in need of, it's fellow researchers to point me down the road of what to look up with the history. Right now, this really is a staff of one and I can't imagine that'll translate to an entirely accurate outlook on the subject. I may end up with the very slant and point of view I'm trying to avoid, simply because every fact dredged up will be what I was specifically looking for. I'm trying to stop that by going to places on the web I'd never normally set foot in and try to convince people to give me pointers, but I'm worried that filming will begin in January with a lot of subject matter unfound. Now, obviously as actual MEDIA starts showing up where people will see it, we'll get more active response and people will start to help, but I'm going to feel kind of dumb if I go to a major city, interview 3 people, and then get word from an enclave of 40 others that they all want to be interviewed as well. So don't hesitate over your keyboard; write to me, or write to others to write to me! Let's get it ALL in!

In other, semi-related news, I've been hammering through the main textfiles.com site to get it in some way "finished" as the documentary goes into production. This probably won't happen, but I've sorted through over 4,000 files in the last week and a half and added over a thousand files to the main site. I have roughly 100,000 files in my inbox now (!!!) but I suspect many, many of them are doubles and my scripts will settle that for me. Amazing how these little larks get bigger and bigger....

August 28, 2001
Things have considerably calmed down for the moment, which is fine with me; I had over a hundred e-mails, many of which were of the "rich, deep" quality. That is, people gave me meaty letters and intriguing branches of information to track down. I've made a ton of arrangements to interview people next year as I pass through different communities, and I've got a list of articles, names, and places to track down.

It's amazing what you forget until it's brought back to you; a lot of people know about the Phrack E911 case, but how about the Tom Tcimpidis case? Or the Rusty and Edie's BBS Bust?

But now you also know I can reference events in the timeline directly. :) This is all part of my plan to make a lot of the information on this site cross-referenced, so people can see where I'm going with my themes a lot easier. As the timeline files out, the BBS Software Index gets more complete, and as the general Research Menu increases in size, this site will be a helpful library in itself!

So the short-term plan is to sort and solidify the mass of contacts, knowledge, and input I've gotten in this short time, and then burst forth with more and more outreach to people who might not know about the project.

August 16, 2001
Here it is, less than a mere month since I announced to a few choice sites, friends and mailing lists that I was embarking on a BBS documentary, and already the mail is pouring in. I've got a four day lag on answering e-mail that is shrinking quickly, and I've made some headway in tracking down even more BBS software packages. My original guess was that there were roughly 500 distributed software packages, and that's working out to be pretty close. I know I've got a ways to go and we're nearly to 350! A side effect of this effort is that I'm getting some good ideas about the different Hardware platforms that have existed, and what part they played both as BBSes and communications terminals for BBS users.

But as I watch the hits to the site, I see they hit a peak of about 300 different visitors in one day, and there's been a total of about 1000 visitors to the site this month. The hits are going down, and that's understandable; The whole point of the website was that you would come, get the idea, agree or not agree, and contact or not contact me. So as things slow down and hit a little bit of a lull, here's what I'll be doing:

I'll be continuing work on the site itself, that is, adding in timeline entries and adding in BBS software package names, coming up with ideas for what the documentary will be covering, think about any subjects or headings I've missed, and as time gets closer to the filming period (most of 2002) start booking flights, talking to people I've already talked to, and solicit more interest. Then might come another round of publicizing the project (which will be rather large in terms of research material on this site by that time) and off I go, filling the weekends (and some weekdays) of 2002 with my interviews and flights around the country. Exciting times ahead.

I promise to keep this news page updated regularly and keep you appraised on what's going on. Thanks for checking in again.

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