The View From The Towers
Created | Updated Jun 21, 2003
At the h2g2 meet up on Saturday I managed to grill Jim Lynn for a few titbits of gossip and information on what we can expect over the next few weeks or months from h2g2.
h2g2 is soon to undergo a lot of changes. The clever bods that programme the site have got a whole load of new coding ready to run it. This isn't a few tweaks here and there; this is a whole new system to run the site. It's got to be tested out first and that could take at least a week, depending on how many bugs there are in the code. So keep an eye out for that.
Also there has been something called a load balancer put into the servers over at the Towers. I'm not entirely sure how this works, but Jim explained it by saying that it distributes the online users evenly amongst the available computing power and makes the site run faster. I'm for anything that makes the site run faster. He says that over the last week we may have noticed h2g2 running slower than normal, but that should now be fixed, and hopefully a thing of the past. Let's hope eh?
The current number of registered users is now over 43,000 and set to rise sharply. Last week Douglas was doing a tour of the German media and h2g2 received an influx of new German users. This is set to be emulated in the UK soon as Douglas does the publicity over here. This will involve appearing with Gloria Hunniford and talking to James Whale as well as the usual blurb in the newspapers. So keep your eyes and ears open for that.
Away from h2g2, but still related to the Hitchhikers Guide, the latest news/rumours on the film of the Guide are that both Douglas and everyone else now have a script that they are happy with. It'll probably be tweaked a few more times yet, but at least we now know that there is a script. Also this is to be a big budget film, with a figure of around $120million quoted. Whether this is true or not we're sure, but that does seem to be the way that Hollywood is going these days.
And no, casting hasn't been started yet, but a few names have been batted around as to who some of the staff would like in each of the roles. But whom would you like to see in each of the roles?
