May 15: Here are a few things I have written down on a piece of paper and that I was supposed to write about. It's kind of random. I kept it relevant with writing like TV shows and words I learned.
One Life to Live: I never watched this soap opera, but if you read how it got cancelled, then got on the web series, and then cancelled again. Read this from Wikipedia:
One Life to Live (often abbreviated as OLTL) is an American soap opera broadcast on the ABC television network for more than 43 years, from July 15, 1968, to January 13, 2012, and then on the internet as a web series on Hulu and iTunes via The Online Network from April 29, 2013 to August 19, 2013.[2][3][4] Created by Agnes Nixon, the series was the first daytime drama to primarily feature ethnically and socioeconomically diverse characters and consistently emphasize social issues.[2] One Life to Live was expanded from 30 minutes to 45 minutes on July 26, 1976, and then to an hour on January 16, 1978.
After nearly 43 years on the air, ABC canceled One Life to Live on April 11, 2011.[7][8] On July 7, 2011, production company Prospect Park announced that it would continue the show as a web series after its run on ABC,[9] but later suspended the project.[10] The show taped its final scenes for ABC on November 18, 2011, and its final episode on the network aired on January 13, 2012 with a cliffhanger.
On January 7, 2013, Prospect Park resumed its plan to continue One Life to Live as a daily 30-minute web series on Hulu and iTunes via The Online Network.[11][12] The relaunched series premiered on April 29, 2013.[13] The new series was plagued with several behind-the-scene problems, most notably a litigation between Prospect Park and ABC regarding the misuse of One Life to Live characters on General Hospital.[14] On September 3, 2013, Prospect
Park suspended production of the series until the lawsuit with ABC was resolved.[14]
My opinion: It's like this show is on and off, and on and off. I know Veronica Mars got cancelled, and years later it became a movie. It's like Arrested Development got cancelled, and years later it goes on Netflix with new episodes.
I learned some words while reading: Do you know any of these words?
Apocryphal-of doubtful authorship or authenticity.
Détente-a relaxing of tension, especially between nations, as by negotiations or agreements.
Halitosis-a condition of having offensive-smelling breath; bad breath.
May 23:
Joycean- of, relating to, or characteristic of James Joyce or his work.
May 28 "His mission: cultivating a youtube for readers": I cut out this article by Shelley White in the Globe and Mail on Oct. 24, 2013. It was in the business section of the newspaper, but it's about reading and writing too. It mentions about how fan fiction is really big on the site. Well you can go on the internet and type in fan fiction of whatever TV show and movie you like and read it from there. Here's the article:
When it comes to the future of Wattpad, his innovative story-sharing site, Allen Lau isn’t thinking small. In fact, he wants Wattpad to be the next YouTube.
“When someone is looking to discover new reading content, I want them to think of Wattpad as the No. 1 destination,” says Mr. Lau, 45, of his Toronto-based website.
As it turns out, Mr. Lau is well on his way to reaching his goal. He has 19 million users in 200 countries. They spend 4.5 billion minutes a month on Wattpad, and the numbers continue to grow. The millions of stories on offer run the gamut from fan fiction and sci-fi to romance and poetry, with some of the most popular authors drawing more than 1 million views.
But Mr. Lau and his partner Ivan Yuen haven’t just created a vibrant online community, the median age of which is 18. Wattpad is disrupting the traditional publishing model and changing the way the world reads.
“People don’t just want to pick up a book and read,” Mr. Lau says. “They want to comment on the work, interact with their favourite authors, share it with others and post their own stories. Instead of a few gatekeepers choosing to accept or reject manuscripts, the public is deciding what they want to read.”
Mr. Lau’s keen insight into the future of reading originated a decade ago – before the iPhone, before Kindle – as he sought to solve a problem he faced personally.
“I’m a huge reader, and I wanted to be able to read stories on my mobile phone – a Nokia that displayed five lines of text at a time,” Mr. Lau says. “There wasn’t an easy way to do this, so I set out to build a solution myself.”
It wasn’t until several years later, in 2006, that Mr. Lau found what he was looking for. He received a message from Mr. Yuen, a former workmate living in Vancouver, who wanted feedback on a mobile reading app he was building.
Mr. Yuen had also created a website that allowed users to share and upload stories to their mobile phones easily. Mr. Lau immediately caught a plane to Vancouver to begin planning what would become Wattpad.
“Being the geek that I am, I figured if there was no solution to a problem that I faced, there must be a market opportunity,” Mr. Lau says.
YouTube had just been sold to Google for $1.65-billion, and Mr. Lau envisioned how the concept of mobile, social, user-generated content could be applied to publishing. With Wattpad, people could follow their favourite writers, share with friends and be notified every time a new chapter was added to the story they were reading.
Perhaps the most forward-thinking idea Mr. Lau had was to tailor Wattpad to mobile devices, allowing users to read and write stories whenever and wherever they like.
“People don’t really read on their PC, they read on the go and they read when they want to escape into another world and be entertained,” Mr. Lau says. “Today over 85 per cent of time spent on Wattpad is coming from phones and tablets.”
Mr. Lau also bucked the notion that in this era of texting, Twitter and videogames, teens don’t read. A key part of Mr. Lau’s success was to combine reading with two things young people love: mobile phones and social media.
“We’re seeing tons of teens reading and engaging on Wattpad,” he says.
Mr. Lau says another important element of his success has been to let the site grow organically, rather than try to sell users on what’s “hot” or on-trend. “Wattpad is where trends emerge, it’s not a platform that dictates what the trends are,” he says.
As an example, the site’s fastest growing story category is fan fiction. There are 4.7 million such tales on Wattpad, based on characters from TV shows and movies such as The Vampire Diaries and The Hunger Games.
But how does the site make money? As Wattpad’s numbers continue to grow, there has been pressure to monetize.
Mr. Lau says they are experimenting with a “fan funding” program, similar to Kickstarter or Indiegogo, where readers can contribute to their favourite artist’s new work in exchange for rewards such as having a character named after them. The site also recently partnered with the publishing company Sourcebooks, which will be releasing the works of select Wattpad authors in either print or e-book format.
But Mr. Lau says he’s in no rush to attempt full-scale monetization before he feels the community is ready.
“We’ll be trying many different things before deciding on our approach,” Mr. Lau says. “But our No. 1 priority right now is continuing to grow the Wattpad community.”
“I always say that when we have a community of a billion users, there will be a million ways to make money.”
Jun. 18:
Prorogation- to discontinue a session of (the British Parliament or a similar body).
Jul. 13 Antediluvian-
1. of or belonging to the period before the Flood. Gen. 7, 8.
2. very old, old-fashioned, or out of date; antiquated; primitive:
Aug. 12:
Riesling-1. Horticulture.
- a variety of grape.
- the vine bearing this grape, grown in Europe and California.
Synecdoche:
1. a figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole or the whole for a part, the special for the general or the general for the special, as in ten sail for ten ships or a Croesus for a rich man.
Acerbic-sour or astringent in taste:
Circumscribed-1. to draw a line around; encircle:
to circumscribe a city on a map.
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