My good friend in the States, Tyler, pointed out a rather nifty service that Google offer where you can create customised searches of specific web sites. He thought I could use it for my screenwriting activities, and so I gave it a go, and created a search that looks primarily at Screenwriting Blogs (plus a few other useful sites).

I though the results were particularly good, being that’s it’s Google search heuristics running in the background, so I thought I’d have a go at making the interface a bit more presentable, adding a few other related features and seeing what came out…

The result is Scribomatic – What do you think?

Today was an eventful day. It was the first time I’d ever experienced an earthquake.

We don’t get too many of them here in the UK, and quite frankly I’m very glad. I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared. The quake itself only lasted about 3 or 4 seconds, but it measured 4.3 on the richter scale.

I tried walking towards my wife, who had a look of absolute terror on her face, but the vibrations and the noise (it sounded like a train thundering through the house) totally disoriented me, and I ended up grabbing the door frame to keep standing up.

Afterwards everyone went out in the street in an absolute daze. The power had gone out and we had no idea what had just happened.

Initially I wondered if it had been a major terrorist attack on the Channel Tunnel (about a mile to the north of us) but when word started getting out that it had been felt quite a few miles away we just had to assume that it was a tremor of some kind.

Initial radio reports were sketchy, but slowly it became apparent what had happened. I was suprised how much incorrect information was given out. The magnitude of the quake went from 4.7 to 5.3 and then down to 4.3 as the epicentre took a little stroll around the area before settling somewhere out to sea in the Dover Straight (about 6 miles SE of us).

It was so surreal to drive into town later listening ot the reports of the Kent Earthquake… utterly insane in fact. That kind of thing happens in California, for sure, but not here in sleepy South East England.

Luckily most people were still in bed when it happened so only one or two people seem to have been hurt.

But, man, what an experience…

The BBC have some pictures…

I’ve given the old web site a bit of a makeover as I was getting really bored with the old one.

I like this new version, as it gives me much more scope to expand. Not that I can think of much else to put up at the moment, but it will be nice to expand out the projects section to give more information of past, present and future projects. I can’t think of what to do with the home page either, so the ‘Home’ and ‘Journal’ menu options currently do the same thing…

I’m still not 100% happy with it, but it’s a decent start for an evenings work…

I’ve also given the site a new moniker. I like the way blogs such as Josh’s ‘I find your lack of faith disturbing‘, Dave’s ‘Man Bytes Hollywood‘ and SystemAddict’s ‘Please Check Your Dignity at the Door‘ all seem to be that little bit cooler for having funky (non-blogger name oriented) titles.

So, no longer is this blog called ‘Andy Coughlan’s screenwriting and filmmaking blog*’, it is now…

‘My Next One Will Be Better.’

Yup, inspiration struck while reading through some quotes by Ed Wood, who once said, ‘Really? Worst film you ever saw. Well, my next one will be better. Hello. Hello.’

I have no idea why he said Hello twice at the end, but after some of the comments I got back from Secret Thoughts of Angels, I knew exactly where he was coming from…

Right, now on to some proper work.

Oh sod it, it’s time for bed already…

*I mean, it’s so 2004 – and who cares about Google anyway?!

I’ve started to work a little more on the Trimes screenplay, and realised that before I get too far into it, I really need to work out a lot more detail about the city in which it is set.

So rather than create the city myself, I’ve turned to a rather talented chap called Simon, who’s something of a dab hand at Maya.

In the few e-mails that have bounced between us this week I’ve already been forced to think really hard about what the city is and realised just how important location can be to a good story, in fact I’m starting to think of the city as a character in it’s own right.

It’s nice to have someone else involved in the development process, it’s given me added incentive to get the script complete. Just got to finish this sound work for Greetings and I’ll be away…

…Or maybe not – in an intriguing turn of events, Chris Knowles rang me today and briefly mentioned the possibility of working on a sci-fi TV series with him, mainly in post-production and special effects, but coming on board at an early stage.

He dangled the words, ‘it’s like Dr Who’ in front of me.

Red rag to a bull, mate!

Just a quicky to say the third edition of the excellent movieScope magazine is out today, so rush off to your local newsagent and hunt it down. Or, if you’re feeling lazy, you can saunter casually here…

I’m having a bit of a running battle with IMDb at the moment. I submitted Alligator on Ken’s behalf after the showing at DigiFest the other week, but they declined saying ‘DigiFest won’t do.’ That was it, the sum total of their e-mail. Needless to say I was less than impressed on more than one account, and told them so.

A nice chap called George responded with a much more polite e-mail, but still wouldn’t budge. They won’t accept a ‘local’ screening as suitable (despite the fact they have accepted it in the past).

They also seem to think that think Ken Colley is not famous enough by himself to justify adding the film on that strength either.

As a web designer, I appreciate that quality of content is king, but I get the feeling they must be getting inundated with spurious submissions and are clamping down a bit. Maybe a bit too much?