Off for a few days of holidays, food, family, and chaos. In the meantime, Happy Holidays.
Category: Uncategorized
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This is not a review. If you want a review of the Star Wars prequel movies, Google it. You’ll get somewhere in the neighborhood of a googol of reviews. (See what I did there?) The new movies have been reviewed, dissected, disemboweled, villified, trumpeted, defended, and defecated on more than just about any movie franchise extension I can remember. And rightly so. The original Star Wars trilogy took about two days in 1977 to completely and totally embed itself like a deer tick in the American (and worldwide, really) pop culture psyche.
Naturally, then, when Lucas announced in the mid 90’s that he was embarking on the holy crusade of geekdom and making three new Star Wars movies, the world lost its collective shit. As a child of the 70’s and 80’s, I can safely say, so did I.
I wanted to like the new Star Wars movies. I desperately wanted to like them. Someone asked me (I can’t remember who now, since it’s been fifteen years) what if the movies weren’t that good. And all I can remember thinking was “What are you, nuts? How could they possibily be bad?” How indeed.
My primary gripe with Lucas is that he forgot his own motto, by which he lived back in the time of the first three movies. Specifically, he stated that a special effect without a story is a pretty boring thing. I wish he’d remembered that, and modified it a little. A special effect with TOO much story is also a boring thing. The first of the new moveis, The Phantom Menace, had all kinds of stuff going on in it. A dispute centering on a trade dispute, which causes the aggressors to invade a largely peaceful planet. The political machinations of a dark shadowy figure pushing the aggressor to act first. The discovery of a messianic child and his extraction from his slave existence. The peaceful planet’s not so peaceful coexistence between two species that, while not at war, are certainly not at peace. A noble knight so blinded by his belief in the potential of the messianic child that he’s willing to defy the orders of his elders and train the boy.
I mean, way too much.
The Phantom Menace, while it made a bundle and a half of money, received a lukewarm response from critics. Viewers and devotees of the franchise flocked and reflocked, and flocked a third time, to see the young Obi-Wan, the younger Anakin, the insanely awesomely designed and underused villain Darth Maul, and to lose themselves in new depths of a galaxy they had not visited in sixteen years.
Guilt as charged.
I actually didn’t despise the first movie the way many fans did. I was four when I first visited the barren wastes of Tattooine. Returning to the desert planet was like a homecoming of sorts for me. Despite the inadvertent cultural insults, the hit and miss speed sequence of the pod race, and lackluster acting and dialogue that can only be summarized as being written with a “tin ear”, I enjoyed the first movie.
The second movie was so-so for me. Lucas continued to push forward, continued to direct, folding odd storylines in on themselves, and introducing even more special effects that were, honestly, boring.
While the third movie seemed to showcase Lucas finding his directorial stride, it was still beset with issues ranging from crappy dialogue to continuity holes so big, they could only be filled by the small cadre of party-line devotees that refuse to see the movies’ flaws for what they are, and endlessly debate the ways the continuity holes were “probably” filled.
And yet…
And yet, as I watched the third movie, I realized that, as we came to a point that every Star Wars geek had been waiting for, the visualization of the betrayal of the Jedi order at the hands of Anakin, as I watched him arrive at the Seperatist stronghold on Mustafar and proceed to, um, despense Sith justice to the Seperatist leaders, I realized the Lucas may be a stroytelling genius. These Seperatists–who had been among the primary antagonists of the first two movies, and the first half of the third, who the audience was meant to root against and whom the Jedi struggled to defeat–these individuals were being slaughtered at the hands of the newly annointed Darth Vader, showing ruthless effeciency. As he cut down the Seperatists, I realized that these villains/victims had been the progeneters of the Rebel Alliance, a group that we will ultimately root FOR in Episodes IV through VI.
It was a kind of stark moment for me, and I sat in the theater wondering how I should feel about that. And as I watched the phenominal final lightsaber duel between Anakin and Obi-Wan, a duel made fantastic by the involvement and advise provided to Lucas by his good friend Steve on how to craft a great action sequence, I realized that the characters I thought I knew had changed, as did my feelings toward them. As this realization came to me, I accepted the fact that Episode III was actually a good film.
Through all of the machinations and somersaults Lucas took in his films to set up a political war, a power grab by an evil villain, and the subsequent betrayal of the Jedi order, Lucas created a helluva story arc. What’s unfortunate is that his execution on the movies was feeble, causing his Machievellian like plotting to be overshadowed by mediocre filmmaking.
Maybe these would have been better as books…
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I was having a discussion with a coworker today about the Elf On The Shelf. I hate that thing. Seriously. Hate. It. And let me tell you why.
First, let’s start with some history. The Elf On The Shelf is based on a book that was written by Carol Aebersold and Chanda Bell, a mother and her daughter. Back in 2004, if Wikipedia is to be believed, it was conceived by mother and daughter over a cup of coffee to provide a backstory for their own holiday tradition. Apparently they had their own version of the Elf On The Shelf that “moved” around and reported back to Santa the goings-on of the children in the house. Once the book was published, the toy was introduced as an additional product, followed by a TV special, etc, etc.
There are two reasons I loathe this thing.
The first is ideological. I find the idea of a “purchased” folk tale character incredibly crass. Here we have capitalism at its most noisome. You can walk into any Target or Toys R Us in America and buy the elf for $30. What do you get for your $30? Along with the book, you buy a fairy tale creature that magically comes to life the moment the cellophane comes off. Suddenly the elf is watching you and flying home to Santa nightly to report your foibles. This “magic” has been introduced to countless children who delight at the idea that they might have some sort of direct line to Santa. Never mind the obvious questions that children are too young to conceptualize. Questions like: how does the elf end up in the cellophane in the first place? What’s he living off of while under wraps? What happens to the leftover elves that stores don’t sell? A fairy glue factory? And of course, the incredibly cynical side of me is asking darker questions like: does Santa get a cut of the profits of each elfin sale? With each transaction, given that Santa is selling his own factory workers, is he the single largest and most egregious plantation owner of all time?
The second reason I don’t like this thing is cause it’s Just. Frickin. Scary. Hey, look kids, here’s a little creature that’s watching you ALL THE TIME and during the night MOVES AROUND THE HOUSE. If I brought that kind of mythos into my house my kids would never sleep again. “What if it comes up the stairs? What of it comes in my room?? What if it’s an EVIL ELF???”
I’m like Charlie Brown. I find Christmas to be an incredible commercial enterprise that has moved, and continues to move, further and further away from the heart of the season. But, for me, the Elf On The Shelf sets a new low. Apologies to you have one and if your family loves it. But it will never–I mean NEVER–find its way into my house.
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This popped up in my Facebook feed the other day:
Admittedly, I watch “The Walking Dead”. I used to enjoy it more than I do now, but that’s a different post for a different time. But the real question is, how does Facebook know I like/watch “The Walking Dead”?
There is an interesting and quick breakdown of how Facebook ads work, and a bit of how and why they show up in your timeline at Social Ads Tool. And, yes, in the past, I have Liked things related to “The Walking Dead”.
But “The Walking Dead” in German? That perplexes me a bit.
Perhaps Facebook has only so many “The Walking Dead” pages for me to Like, therefore it’s presenting all of them. Perhaps Facebook somehow knows that I follow NeinQuarterly on Twitter, and that I have retweeted and favorited several of NeinQuarterly’s tweets. (Side note: NeinQuarterly is a twitter account posting things that have a specifc German humor to them, which I find hilarious and to which my wife went “Oh, that explains so many things” when I told her about it.)
Or perhaps, and the scariest thought of all, Facebook knows of my secret German past, in which I took German in college, four semesters of it, four straight Ds. Yet I was determined to learn it so that I could understand what the hell Hans Gruber, et al, were saying in “Die Hard”. Oh yeah, that’s not a joke. That’s the reason I took German.
No matter the reason, it vaguely creeps me out that I’m being stalking by a German “The Walking Dead” Facebook page.
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I’ve been thinking a lot today about my grandmother who passed away at the end of this past August. She was ninety-four years old. She out-lived her husband, my grandfather, by twenty-seven years.
The reason I’ve been thinking about her recently is because her loss is still very recent, and I haven’t quite let that settle into my mind or my heart. And because it’s Veterans Day.
My grandfather was a Marine. He joined the Marines after the bombming of Pearl Harbor. Because I was only thirteen when he died, I didn’t have the chance to ask him about his time in the service.
So many members of my grandmother’s and grandfather’s families were in the service. My grandfather and his brother were both in WWII. My grandmother’s cousins all had husbands in the service, as was my grandmother’s brother. One cousin lost her husband in the war and went on to re-marry the man I knew as her husband.
I would have greatly enjoyed the chance to talk to my grandfather. Because I was still very much a boy when he got sick and died, the world outside was still distant to me. Even if I had talked to him when I was thirteen about his service years, I wouldn’t have understood the conversation.
After my grandfather was gone, and as I grew older, I relied on my grandmother for stories about the war years. We would talk over hands of canasta, games which my grandmother, mostly blind and getting hard of hearing, would trounce–I mean TROUNCE–me. I would ask her about the family history and the large cast of characters that rolled in and out of the stories. When two men who are brothers marry two women who are sisters, the result is a close-knit family with lots of stories.
There aren’t many left now. My grandmother was ninety-four. Her youngest cousin is eighth-four. I saw this cousin at the hospital and subsequently the viewing. It was bittersweet to see her again under such circumstances.
What never occurred to me while my grandmother was still alive was that, despite the fact that my grandfather was off doing the fighting, my grandmother was as much a veteran as my grandfather. Aside from all of the normal daily work that is done to build a life, my grandmother had to do this without her husband by her side. Worse, she, like all the wives and girlfriends and mothers, had to do this with the constant worry that a telegram would appear some bright blue morning declaring in as succinct a manner as possible that the life as she knew it two minutes ago was at an end.
These things have been on my mind this Veterans Day. As much as we celebrate and give thanks to those who go off and serve their country, this day is also about those they leave behind to keep up the house, cook the nightly dinners, help with homework, make the home feel like a home despite the glaring absence.
I’m eternally grateful for the service and sacrifice my grandparents gave for their country. Without them and others like them, we would not be the nation we are today. But more personally, my family would not have become the family it is without them.
So this Veterans Day, if you know a vet, thank them for their service. And if you know a vet’s family, thank them for their sacrifice.
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Mine was good. Busy as always.
Saturday, in addition to the usual ballet lessons for the girls and running around doing errands, my older daughter had a Girl Scout “field trip” to a local glacier-caused crack in the earth called Purgatory Chasm.
There was climbing and hiking and learning about trail maps and blazes. All the girls had a good time, but I in particular enjoyed myself because I got to go hiking (something I love) with my daughter (something I love). We’d never been hiking together before. Might be the start of a new activity we can do together.
Sunday we got the pumpkins. We’re probably a little late, but I like getting them later so they’re not all droopy and caving in on themselves by the time Halloween rolls around.
We’ve even got one of them carved.
Designs courtesy of my younger daughter, implementation courtesy of me.
Arrrg, matey!
Like most weekends, it flew by, always over too quick. And sometimes I don’t always enjoy them because I don’t feel like I really get to relax. But this was a good one.
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Before we get started, let’s lay down this first really big disclaimer: I do not have any formal software development training. What I’ve learned I’ve learned largely from Googling it, and applying some of that to my own development stuff in Excel and Access.
That out of the way, here’s my question of the day: is software versioning relevant anymore?
A little background on where this question came from: app updates in my iPhone. That’s right. I thought about this while scrolling through the app updates available on my iPhone.
(I don’t get out much.)
Like most everybody with a smartphone, I have a crapload of apps I’ve downloaded. Some I use all the time, some I use some of the time, some I downloaded with good intentions and have yet to go back to them, and some I deleted ten minutes after trying them out.
A couple I use pretty regularly are Cozi and Zillow. Cozi is a type of family organizer that shares data across members of the same family. My family uses it for grocery lists primarily. Zillow is a real estate listing app that’s been useful as we think about buying a new house in the next year or two.
One that I occasionally use is Spotify. I’m not a subscriber, so I’m not on it hardcore all the time.
All three came up recently for update in the App Store.
What does this have to do with versioning? Well, I’m one of those people that, when they see a new version of an app has been released, I actually expand the section to see just what has been done. Do I want to waste my bandwidth updating an app that hasn’t added anything I find valuable?
I was looking at these the other day, I noticed that the updates to Cozi and Zillow were very very minor. If you look up software versioning in Wikipedia, then what you’ll find is that Cozi and Zillow appear to be following your average everyday sequence-based identifier. The updates to both were in the revision number, which means not a major release (version 1), not a minor release (version 1.1), but a revision release (version 1.1.1).
Based on the Wikipedia article, a major version is for a major change or jump in functionality, a minor version is for a minor features or significant bug fixes, while a revision number release is generally used for really minor bugs.
What stuck me about the revision number of both. They were ridiculously high. The Zillow revision number is 602, while the 2611.
2611! Does that mean that the developers of Cozi have found, since the last minor version release, two thousand six hundred eleven bugs?? If so, it would appear to me that they have a HUGE problem with their QA department. Same with Zillow.
Now take Spotify. The Spotify mobile app has been around since April 2013. They are on version 0.8. The regular desktop app was launched in 2008. Currently (again, according to Wikipedia), the last stable release was 0.9.4.numbernumbernumber.
According to most software release cycles, this means that Spotify is still in the “beta” test stage, which means the developers have tested it, and it’s been distributed to a user community for additional testing and piloting. They have yet to button up a final released version.
Spotify has 20 million users.
“Beta”? Really??
Given these two observations led me to wonder to myself, and in this post, whether software versioning really matters anymore. This doesn’t even begin to tackle OS changes, Windows 8 versus 8.1, the odd dessert-based naming structure the Driod OS follows, or the big cat structure Mac OS was following.
Has software versioning become less about the quality control of releases and more about marketing? I think maybe it has…
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My job moved offices about two months ago. Like at the old office, I try to go out walking every day at lunch.
We moved to a technology/office park that’s seen better days. Our buildings are beautiful, but a couple of buildings around here are empty and dilapidated:
I think that someone is moving in eventually, because one of the buildings appears to be under renovation. But the fix-up must be going slowly, because more often than not, the heavy equipment outside the buildings is quiet.
Yesterday while walking, I noticed this sign on one of the walkways to the building:
Something about this sign struck me as the kind of leftover stuff that Roland, et al, would find in Mid-World, a sign of the Old Ones from a time before the world had moved on. Especially when attached to an abandoned crumbling building.
Between this sign, half demo’d/reno’d buildings, and silent heavy machinery, I felt a little like I’d stepped into a section of Stephen King’s Dark Tower Mid-World. All it needs is some really strange creatures scurrying around and doing things like chomping off fingers to be complete.
(Kinda glad I didn’t see any of those…)
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My older daughter is into a game on her iPod called “Star Girl”.
According to itunes, the purpose of “Star Girl” is:
Star Girl puts you in the high heels of an aspiring celebrity who is setting out to build her career as a superstar while having a ton of fun along the way!Really?
I dig into this a little more, asking my daughter some questions about what she thinks the purpose of the game is. Maybe get some details about the gameplay. Cause even though the game is downloaded via my account, since my daughter’s not old enough yet for her own Apple ID, god knows I’ve never played it.
So I ask some questions and learn that some of the things you do in this game are get boyfriends (not just any old boyfriends, mind you, but boyfriends like Tom Cruise, which I think qualifies this game to be categorized in “horror”), get gifts from these boyfriends, spend money (air quotes, please) on clothing, get a job, play carnival games (Me: “Huh? Play what?” Her: “Carnival games.” Me: “Wow. Which of these things doesn’t belong?”).
Okay, I’ll let the vacuous nature of this game go for now. After all, I’m not immune. I killed many hours fighting incredibly difficult monsters and foes in the first two “Infinity Blade” games. So I get it, to each his or her own form of entertainment. I live in a glass house.
At this point you might ask why my wife and I let her play something like this in the first place. Fair question.
The app itself is rated 4+, but so what? When it first came out, the NRA’s shooting game war rated the same. So that’s certainly not going to the deciding factor.
No. Instead, the answer is that my daughter has a pretty good head in her shoulders. She can tell when things are silly, just for fun, or even inappropriate for her age. She’s got a good sense about these things.
Which leads me to the title of this post: pick-up lines.
One of the things the game does is let you read “messages” from these boyfriends. And some of those messages are pick up lines. Things like “Do you have a map? Cause I just got lost in your eyes.”
I kid you not.
My daughter reads this out loud to me last night and asks, “Who talks like that? Why would anyone think that would work?”
[internally] YES! [/internally]
Sometimes I wonder how I’m not going to be arrested when she starts dating. Last night I felt like maybe everything might-MIGHT-be okay after all.
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I have to apologize for my absence. Okay, maybe more like a full blown MIA. There have been so many distractions, so many reasons not to post. Among other reasons, a few job changes, and the basics of family life with two children and all of their activities have kept me away.
That includes away from writing. (I’ll post about that another time. Soon. I promise. No, really, I mean it!)
Yeah, I know. Excuses excuses.
Well, no more. Time to saddle up.
So, plan on seeing more from me more often. Watch for me and I promise not to stand you up. I hope to post once a week.
I’m back. And it’s good to be here.
Scott Lyerly 