Thanks everyone for the amazing suggestions about what to do with all my Tempest DVDs!  It’s going to take me awhile to fully process what I can realistically do, but it seems like almost everybody suggested donating to local schools/clubs, so that will certainly be on the list.  I also like the idea of creating something, like producing a modern interpretation of a scene from the play. 

Anyway, I promised 3 winners chosen randomly, and here they are:  Cass, Brian and Alexi!  Even if I already have your address, please drop me a line so I don’t have to go searching for it.

Thanks for playing, everybody! Look for more opportunities to win (both from me and from some other Shakespeare blogs, hint hint big hint) soon!

UPDATED APRIL 2, 2012 — My app is now available in the Google Play Store!  Thanks to everyone who helped test.

Ok, show of hands, how many of you out there have an Android phone or tablet device?  Note that this includes the new Nook and Kindle Fire devices, those are both Android.

Second question, how many of you would be interested in helping me test an application I’m working on?  This would involve me sending you a software “package”, you trusting me that I’m not doing anything bad to you, and you knowing how to get it installed on your machine when it doesn’t come from the market.  (Try that with an Apple device! :))  Note, in case you know enough about the terminology, that this in no way involves “rooting” your device.

As a career programmer I’ve forever wanted to combine my abilities at coding with my passion for my subject, and it’s always eluded me.  I’m the closest now that I’ve ever been, I’ve got an actual application that I’ve actually packaged and run on my phone.  It’s not beautiful, but that’s part of why I want other people to see it so I can ask you, “What should I make this do?”

Much like writing my first ebook, this is a learning experience.  The “meat” of the matter, the big where you have the idea or the feature or the content, you want to think that this is 90% of the job and then you just wrap it up and it’s ready for public consumption. It’s more like the other way around – the idea itself represents maybe 20% of the final, and then you’ve got a lot more work in “finishing” it.

Anyway, let me know. This post is going up late on a Friday so I have no idea who is going to see it, but I gotta start somewhere. Thanks!

UPDATED: By let me know, I meant email me.  I need some way to send you the files!  I probably should have been more clear about that.

In case you missed it going by on Twitter I’ll post it again – there’s a quote going around attributed to Sir Ian McKellen that says of course Shakespeare was gay.  Honestly, when I saw the headline go by that “Shakespeare actor says Shakespeare was gay” I thought, “Well there’s a stupid and uninformed actor trying to get his name in the paper.”  Needless to say I was quite surprised to see Sir Ian looking back at me when I clicked.

I’m trying to find the original source since all I can find are clips out of context, but here’s the juicy part:

SIR Ian McKellen: “No doubt Shakespeare was gay. His predilection was evident from his works. An unmistakenly feminine portrait of his patron Henry Wriothesley adds evidence that early sonnets to ‘fair youth’ were probably meant for males.

“Married, with children, he left his wife in Stratford to live in London. I’d say he slept with men. ‘The Merchant of Venice,’ centering on how the world treats gays as well as Jews, has a love triangle between an older man, younger man and a woman. And complexity in his comedies with cross-dressing and disguises is immense. Shakespeare obviously enjoyed sex with men as well as women.”

Clearly this merits discussion. I am hoping (nay, assuming) that Sir Ian was being a bit silly, as I don’t often see anybody with a Shakespeare credit to their name saying that there’s “obviously” or “no doubt” about anything in the man’s life.

Discuss.

 

For Christmas I treated myself to a subscription at Audible.com, since I’ve found that in general my most productive reading time takes the form of listening in the car for at least an hour a day during the commute when I’m a captive audience.  Bonus over traditional audiobooks is that the audible player has a nice “read at 1.5x speed” feature that I’ve found cranks through the material at a quicker pace without making it harder to follow.

They give you a free credit to start, so naturally I went and grabbed Contested Will.  What, doesn’t everybody? 🙂  I know that I’ll never find the time to sit down and read it (despite the review copy which I was given), so this seemed like the ideal compromise.  This is an unabridged audio, so between that and having the paper copy to fall back on for any required visuals, I should be good.

This is not, however, my review of that book. I’m barely 25% done with it.  I am quite enjoying Shapiro’s dissection of exactly when “experts” in Shakespeare went all banana sandwiches on the subject and started looking for autobiographical clues anywhere they chose.

And, thus, my new game.  Pick a bit of something Shakespeare wrote, and make the case that it tells us something autobiographical about the man.  It can be your own invention or something you read and found amusing.  It can be something you’ve proposed in the past or something fresh off the top of your head.

With tongue firmly in cheek here’s my contribution, which I’m sure someone must have come up with prior but I’d never heard it:  Winter’s Tale tells the story of King Leontes accusing his pregnant wife of infidelity, and then paying for this cruelty with the untimely death of his only son.  As we all know, Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway after she became pregnant.  Later, their only son died.  Clearly this is Shakespeare’s way of acknowledging that he long doubted that he was the father of that first child.  The death of Shakespeare’s son Hamnet was God’s way of punishing him for his doubts.

Next?

Last year I posted some Shakespeare Resolutions of my own. Shall we see how I did?

• speak publicly on the topic of Shakespeare. Not sure how, exactly, but it’s a goal. Take it to the real world.

  As I’m sure everybody knows by now I came *this close* to teaching a unit on Shakespeare to my daughter’s second grade class.  I was preparing material and everything. Could still happen in the new year, with the fourth graders.

• use my experience in publishing my first book, Hear My Soul Speak, to try a second.

  I got nothin.  I have an idea for a book and know exactly how I’d go about doing it, just haven’t made it happen yet.  No excuses.  Bardfilm knows what I’m talking about.

• expand my empire by turning on some of the Shakespeare-related domains I’ve been sitting on for awhile now.

  I launched ShakespeareAnswers.com in May 2011.  I call this one a success. I still have another domain that I’ve not done anything with, but as it is I’m not doing a stellar job at keeping up the sites I’ve already got.

• make more concerted effort to see Shakespeare productions.

  Can’t say I made any special efforts.  Saw my usual production in Boston Common, and the local Rebel Shakespeare show that came to town, but I didn’t do anything special.

Ok, so, how about for the new year?

• I’m going to keep “Speak publicly on the topic of Shakespeare” on the list, because I still want this to happen and still think I can make it happen.
• Develop and distribute a Shakespeare mobile app.  Working on this now.  Not sure what final form it will take, but my day job as a programmer means that I’ve wanted to develop mobile apps since there were mobile apps (and by that I mean going all the way back to the Palm Pilot days).  Now circumstances may finally be correct so I can actually make something happen. Stay tuned.
• Merchandise.  We had a brief run last year where we introduced some new products, and they seem to have done well (the iPad cases are a big hit).  I need to find the time to do that more often, because it translates directly into revenue for the site.

Think I can do it?  How about you, what have you got? What did you accomplish, and what do you plan to accomplish? I’d say “hope to” but that’s too wishy washy.  Don’t just sit back and hope it happens, plan to make it happen!

Happy New Year!