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Geek Alert

Fountain for coders, or the joy of writing

April 15, 2014 Apps, Fountain, Geek Alert, Highland

Charles Forman, whose company OMGPOP developed Draw Something, is [writing a screenplay in Fountain](http://setpixel.com/writing/writing-a-screenplay-in-fountain/):

> I don’t work at a bank. However, I’m sure that on the first day of orientation, they teach you how to use an application written in 1999 in Visual Basic. It hasn’t been updated since 2001, it doesn’t work very well, everyone hates it, but it’s the way it is, and if you trick it, you might be able to do what you want, or wait until it’s 5 PM. It’s probably exactly what it’s like to use Final Draft.

> The joy of writing shouldn’t feel like working at a bank.

Forman offers a detailed look at writing in Fountain from the perspective of someone who’s written a lot of code. For his screenplay, he used both [Slugline](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/slugline/id553754186?mt=12) and [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12), but also built his own tools based on the libraries available on GitHub.

>”How many scenes do I have?” It’s a pretty simple question. Normally, in order to do this, you have to go through the whole script and count the sluglines. I used Javascript to parse my Fountain script. I looped through the sluglines and counted them. Then I was curious about the unique locations. How many times did person A talk vs. person B? I generated some basic stats and spit it out in the console by creating a tool in 20 minutes.

He also built a tool that [generates a word cloud](http://playground.setpixel.com/wordcloud/) based on a screenplay.

Here’s Big Fish:

big-fish-wordcloud

Forman listens to the podcast, so he’s heard us discussing the possibilities of a new screenplay format. He argues that we already have it in Fountain.

> Because Fountain is pretty flexible, you could add metadata for anything you might want to extend the screenplay with. In my case, I have included storyboards. You could add metadata for the song that is playing. You could add metadata about which characters are in the scene, if its not totally clear. You could add metadata about what the purpose of a scene is. You could add anything. If I could make a small ask to the Fountain team, I would love a specific way to insert metadata. I am using notes. I’m thinking about putting curly bracket objects inside of notes going forward.

This kind of thinking is why I’m so bullish Fountain: not just what it can do today, but what it can be repurposed for in the future.

Scanning scripts on your iPhone with Weekend Read + Prizmo

February 20, 2014 Apps, Geek Alert, Highland, Weekend Read

This falls more into the category of “because you can” than “you definitely should.” It’s more tech demo than recommended workflow.

The [Prizmo](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/prizmo-scanning-ocr-speech/id366791896?mt=8) app for iOS has built-in OCR, which means you can scan documents and access the underlying text. Learning this, I immediately tried using it to go from a printed screenplay to [Weekend Read](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/weekend-read/id502725173?mt=8).

It actually works.

It’s far from perfect. Prizmo has no inherent sense of what a screenplay is, so it sometimes divides text into blocks it shouldn’t. (Double-spaces after periods are often a contributing factor.) Weekend Read does the best it can with the somewhat slapdash PDF Prizmo gives it.

If you have an entire screenplay to convert, you’re likely to have a much better outcome with an [actual scanner](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ATZ9QMO/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00ATZ9QMO&linkCode=as2&tag=johnaugustcom-20) and [Highland](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/highland/id499329572?mt=12) to make a real, editable document.

Still, Weekend Read + Prizmo kind of works. In certain cases, it might even be useful. Actors with audition sides, for example.

And the fact that you can do it all on the phone in your pocket is amazing.

My First Mac

January 24, 2014 Geek Alert

Mac SE
The Mac turned 30 today, unleashing a wave of nostalgia for people’s first Macs.

Mine was the Mac SE with a 20MB hard drive.

I bought it in December 1987, when I was a high school student taking classes at CU Boulder, thus qualifying for the discount at the bookstore. My dad tried to talk me out of the hard drive — it added $500 to the price — but having worked on the high school paper with a dual-floppy Mac, I was convinced it was worth it. (I was right. It made working with the computer vastly better.)

I don’t have the receipts, but thanks to this [handy price list](http://classicmacs.org/2012/02/mac-prices-in-1988/), I can estimate how much I paid.



Mac SE w/20MB HD $1749
Keyboard $86
ImageWriter II Printer w/Mac Accessory Kit $455
Microsoft Word $85
HyperCard $36
TOTAL $2,411

In adjusted dollars, that $2,411 would be almost $5,000 today. I paid for it with a cashier’s check from the credit union.

It was a great computer that served me well. My second Mac was the IIci, which I kept through grad school.

Source code on screen

January 9, 2014 Geek Alert, Prince of Persia

Finally, a Tumblr documenting and discussing all those [scrolling shots of code](http://moviecode.tumblr.com) on computer screens in movies and television.

I love when directors and production designers take the time to get this right.

And look! Here’s some vintage [Prince of Persia](http://moviecode.tumblr.com/post/72240625132/in-the-tv-series-revolution-series-1-episode-6).

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