Bryce Moore's Blog, page 290

Watching Movies with Your Kids

It was a hard frost last night, and it's still pretty nippy out this morning, so I'm on my computer for the moment instead of outside scraping the garage. And that means I have a bit of time to blog, so I'm going to take it while it's here. One topic that I'd been wanting to write about for a while is on how to decide what movies to watch with your kids (or to watch at all, for that matter).



When I worked in Orem Public Library, we had a lot of people come in wanting movies. OPL has over 25,000 of the things, so it's a good place to go for some cheap entertainment. And a lot of those people would ask for recommendations. If you know me at all, you know I love giving movie recommendations--it was a great job in that aspect.



The only trick was that, since this was Utah County, I could never be completely certain what sort of a movie a particular person would find offensive. I got to be quite good at offering disclaimers. But even then, some people would be offended by something I totally didn't even think of as offensive. So I've decided that when you're particular about the content of movies that you choose to watch, it's best to be as exhaustive as possible. In other words, if you want to know how much "bad content" is in a movie, you don't ask someone regularly watches ever gore-infused horror movie that comes down the pike. You ask someone who's a stickler for details. And that person's role needs to be presenting the unbiased facts of the movie. It had this in it. And this. And this.



That sort of thing.



That's where kids-in-mind comes in for me. In a nutshell, this is a site that has people watch every new movie that comes out. They keep track of anything that might be even remotely offensive in the film, then rate it on a three part scale (violence, sex, and language). But they also provide descriptions of all the potentially offensive pieces of the movie, instead of just the rating. This is ever so much more useful than the arbitrary (and often crooked) MPAA ratings that get assigned to movies. (Don't get be started on those.)



Now, I'm not saying I go to this site before I watch any film. My own take on movies is different than many of my friends. But I do go here sometimes before I decide to take TRC with me to watch something. It's a bad feeling when you take your kid to a film you thought was going to be sweetness and light, and the poor guy ends up being terrified the whole time. (Ratatouille. Who knew a three year old would be that scared?) You know yourself and your family, and while there are probably some of you out there who don't need this site at all (or have any desire to ever use it), I'm also sure there are some of you who really have been looking for something like this.



Look no more.



Anyway--that's all I have time for today. It's above freezing out now, and I've got to go scrape something. Sound off in the comments--have you used kids-in-mind before? Something else? Think it's an awful travesty to do reduce a movie to sheer statistics like that? Speak up! And happy weekend, everybody.

No Post Today--Too Busy Scraping my Garage

Remember that scraping, sanding, and painting project I had going on last year? How the garage was supposed to get finished? Yeah. Since it's a whole year later, and part of it still isn't done, I've taken today and tomorrow off work, and I'm using the great Maine weather we're having to scrape like a mad man.

This is just to say that you might not see me much tomorrow, either. It's not because I don't love you all. Trust me--I'd much rather be blogging than scraping. But once this is done, I think I'll feel ever so much better about myself as a home owner.

Carry on.

Book Review: Terry Pratchett's Snuff

Terry Pratchett. The man's a living legend, and his Discworld series is one of the few works out there that proves humorous fantasy has a place in this world. At this point, reviewing his books is about as useful as giving a thumbs up to a work by John Grisham, right? So why bother with a review of his latest book, SNUFF?



Plenty of reasons.



First of all, some Pratchett fans out there might not be aware that he has a new book coming out. As a diehard Pratchett fan myself, I know I wouldn't want to miss one of his works just because I was too busy being distracted by other books at the moment...hey, it happens. But let's be honest: any serious Pratchett fan should already well aware of the latest book on its way. That said, Discworld has over 35 books in it, and that sheer number alone is the main reason I'm writing this review. There might well be fantasy readers out there who've heard of Pratchett, but have no desire to devote themselves to a 35+ novel epic. It'd be like tuning into Lost for the last three episodes, right? Wrong.



Pratchett's Discworld series is a series only insofar as it all shares the same globe, and some of the same characters. In reality, the series is cut into smaller chunks, with certain characters taking the lead role in certain books. Thus, you have the Witches books, the Death books, the Wizards, Tiffany Aching and the like. Fans have their favorite characters. I personally really like the Death books and the City Watch books, and so I'm really happy to report that SNUFF is a City Watch book.



[Reprinted from over at Elitist Book Reviews, where my review originally appeared earlier today. Read the rest of it over there.]

Apple's iPhone 4S, iCloud, iOS 5, and Various Other Numbers and Letters

(Reprinted from my Library Blog)



Apple had a big To Do over in California today to announce a heap of different things. As Apple is wont to do, it went on for quite a long time, and while some significant new pieces of hardware and info were introduced, the proceedings were much like an American Idol results show: lots of hype for 5 minutes of actual information. But I followed it so that you don't have to. Aren't I nice?



The highlights?


iOS 5 will be released a week from today. This lets enhances iPads and iPhones will all sorts of features, including the ability to sync your device without hooking it up to a computer. (Nice.) There are also camera enhancements, message tweaks, Twitter integrations--just a lot of nice extras. And it's free--always a plus.
iCloud--Apple's free(!) online storage space for iOS users. Your photos, documents, apps, music--all available anywhere you have an internet connection. For an additional small fee, you can access all your music, not just the stuff you downloaded from Apple. ($25/year--available by the end of October in the US.) This has the potential to be a real game changer. 5GB free, more for extra fee.
Find My Friends--A new feature that lets you broadcast your location out to people you've approved to be able to view it. Now all your stalkers can find you that much more easily. Thanks, Apple!
A new iPod Nano--Complete with updates and new features, like the ability to track steps and fitness right out of the box. Available today.
New iPod Touch--Now available in white. (Seriously--what's up with the obsession with white?)
iPhone 4S--Up to seven times as fast, longer battery life, iOS 5 and iCloud compatible. GSM and CDMA (meaning you can use it internationally, as well). Better phone (8MP, better light sensor). 1080p video recording. $200 for a 16GB phone. Launches in 10 days.
Siri--The ability on an iPhone to use voice recognition with natural language. Seems like it could be pretty cool, though I'll have to see it in action before I decide for sure. Voice recognition has been spotty in the past. I'll admit this looks like it has a lot of potential, however. Set up appointments, reply to messages, look up information--all hands free. But demos can look awesome and fizzle in practice. Just sayin' . . . Full voice dictation also available with this.
Vanilla iPhone 4 is now $100. iPhone 3GS is now free (with contract).

The impact of all this? Apple continues its domination in the world of mobile computing. More and more, whatever Apple does or doesn't do makes a huge impact on what the world does or doesn't do. I don't mean to overstate my case here, but when you look at sheer numbers and trends in technology, much of what goes on these days really comes back to Apple, whether as a response to Apple or a move by Apple itself. That's a lot of influence for one company to have.



Then again, in today's world of technology, the company that's on top of the pack one moment quickly finds itself slipping down. But for now, at least, Apple seems to be doing what it needs to to stay at the top.



Thoughts?

The Lightning Thief: When Good YA Fantasy Books Become Bad YA Fantasy Movies

Denisa and I watched The Lightning Thief last night, mainly because it arrived in the mail from Netflix, since I'd forgotten to bump it down in my queue. (My queue has since been updated.) I hadn't heard much good about this movie going in, so my expectations were low. Why did I watch it anyway? Because I loved the original book. It had a strong YA main character, with a first person point of view that kept things light and fun. I read it before most people had--before it became another "Next Harry Potter" candidate, so I felt a strong affinity for the book.



So . . . low expectations, big budget movie--usually a good combo for me to at least have a decent movie watching experience.



Not this time.



This move has almost everything you could ask for in a popcorn movie. Really good effects. Breakneck pace. Big stars (Uma Thurman, Pierce Brosnan, Sean Bean). A plucky trio of adventurers . . . what's not to like?



Two huge, Parthenon-sized problems. First off is the fact that no time is spent developing the main characters at all. They come across as little more than playing pieces in a board game, with all the complexity of a red Sorry token. In the book, the first person point of view saturates the entire novel, putting us on Percy's side and helping us root for him and like him as a character. That doesn't work in a movie. They needed to take some time to ground the characters before sending them off on a rollicking adventure. Again, in the book, a significant amount of time is spent at Camp Halfblood, as Percy learns more about the world and the magic. In the movie, the pace just never lets up. One minute Percy's finding out the Greek gods are real, the next he's taking all of ten minutes to become a master swordsman, and then he's off on a cross-country road trip. He's too busy having things done to him for us to get to know him. That's a big mistake.



The second problem is the way magic is used in the movie. Basically, whenever a problem needs to be solved, a new magic ability conveniently appears to solve it. Stuck fighting a hydra? Oh--Percy can summon water and make it do what he wants it to. Problem solved. I don't want to give any more examples (trying to avoid too many spoilers), but magic can't be used this way to provide satisfying climaxes. It just comes off as all too convenient.



In the end, I think what really sunk this movie was Chris Columbus's decision to recreate as many of the cool effects scenes from the book as possible. This is true to form. He did the same in Harry Potter I, and I thought that movie was weak, too.



Directors, take note: when adapting a YA fantasy, character counts. You can't gloss over it. Character comes before plot. Fans might be disappointed that you didn't include Tom Bombadil, but they'll be livid if you get Gollum wrong, or if Frodo comes across as too whiny. Make sense? Character before plot, no matter how much you feel like plot should come before character.


Character before plot.



One and a half stars for this one. Maybe two, if I'd been feeling generous. But I'm not.

Movie Review: Moneyball

Denisa and I went out to the movies last night (belatedly for my birthday, since the theater had been closed on the actual date). Our choice of film was pretty much made for us: due to scheduling constraints, it was Moneyball or nothing. (Well, that's not entirely true. We could have watched a few others, but if I'm going to pay money to go to the movies, it had darn well better be a good movie. The Help was too late, as was Contagion, and those were the only two others I would have considered yesterday. Typically, I wouldn't go to a movie in the theater unless it was one that's likely to be significantly better on a big screen than it will be at home. But I make exceptions now and then for birthdays.)



Anyway. Moneyball. I was a bit worried about this one as a date movie, since my wife is not only not into baseball, but not even American to boot. This would sort of be like me agreeing to go watch a movie in Slovak with no subtitles. I'd be likely to understand about as much as Denisa would in the wrong sort of baseball movie.



Thankfully, this one wasn't the wrong sort.



For those of you who don't know, Moneyball depicts the real life endeavors of Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), the general manager of the Oakland A's, who decided to try and put together an unorthodox group of players using the small budget he had available, in hopes that those unorthodox players would be able to take on the big guys like the Yankees or the Red Sox. (You know, like almost every other sports movie out there.) The difference in this one is the way Beane decided to assemble the team. He used statistics instead of scouts, choosing players for their numbers and not their overall feel. A pitcher's pitch looks really funky? So what, if it gets results. That sort of thing.



Denisa and I both really enjoyed the movie. It's got some genuinely funny scenes, it's well acted, and they're able to convey the basics of what's happening without requiring their audience to have an exhaustive knowledge of baseball. I think it succeeds in large part because it plays with the tropes of sports movies just about as much as it follows them. There are some scenes that are straight out of The Natural. Baseball certainly gets romanticized. But at the same time, Beane is essentially destroying some of the great traditions of baseball. Ignoring scouts to go with statistics, instead? Yikes!



It also helped that I think Bennett Miler (the director, nominated for an Oscar for his work on Capote) approached the movie not as a sports film, but as a film more along the line of Aaron Sorkin's The Social Network (Sorkin also contributed to the script of Moneyball). The movie is focused on Beane and his approach to baseball, not the team and their drive to win. It's an important distinction, and it affect the entire movie--most noticeably in the ending.



In any case, I heartily recommend the film. Good quality cinema, for baseball lovers and baseball neophytes alike.



Three and a half stars.

Yet Another Update in the Thrilling Saga of the Stairs

The stairs. The stairs! My life will be a better place once that staircase is finished, if for no other reason than the fact that I'll no longer need to remember that I really ought to be working on them right now. A fact that I'm reminded of every time I come home and see that big gaping hole.



What's happening with them? They're all stained, all sanded, all polyurethaned up. The walls up are. The electricity has been wired. All that's left is to




Cut and nail up the ceiling
Put in the risers
Put in the treads
Finish nailing the door frame
Poly the door frame
Put in the door
Put in the railing
Put in the light
Put in the light switches


Once that's all done, we still need to finish last year's project: scrape, sand and stain the two small sides of our garage. It sounds like a lot of work, but the end really IS in sight. At least, that's what I keep telling myself.




Has it been worth the time, trouble and expense? Well, hard to say at this point. I mean, the stairs aren't even finished yet. Even once they're done, they go . . . nowhere. The site of my future home office, my house's second bathroom, a walk-in closet, master bedroom, and loft. (Note: those are not all the same thing.) When I keep that goal in mind, then yes, it feels very good. Progress is being made.


Of course, that's like a 10 year goal. So . . . only nine years to go?




Here's some pictures to satisfy your curiosity in the mean time. First, what it looked like before we touched anything:




First hole sawed out:





Hole totally sawed out:




The risers:





The walls up, the treads in temporarily:

What's the Best TV Comedy?

Denisa and I recently decided to rewatch all of Arrested Development (well, I decided to do it. Denisa was kind enough to agree). And after the first five episodes, I'm reminded just why I loved this show so much.



It was always on. The jokes are all over the place, from sight gags to inside jokes to pop culture to self-referential to existential. Denisa and I debated for a while which recent show has been the best best comedy on TV. The candidates? 30 Rock, Modern Family, and Arrested Development. (Yes, you could make arguments for some others--particularly The Office, but realize at the same time that this was just a private conversation between Denisa and me, and neither of us are 100% behind The Office. I like the show, and I've binged watched it now and then, but in the end I never could stick with it. I just don't derive enough pleasure just from watching a man be a complete and utter idiot--probably because I relate to the character too much.)



Anyway, for me, Arrested Development still wins. 30 Rock has some hi-larious moments, as does Modern Family, but they both also have their share of so-so episodes that I could take or leave. Arrested Development is like a bullet train that never stops. Often I have to pause the show just so I can finish laughing and make sure I don't miss any more jokes.



It's extremely quotable, it has a good blend of characters without going overboard on them (allowing the writers to explore those characters more fully), the writing itself is rapid fire (something I've always preferred my comedy to be) . . .



It just wins.



But I got to thinking that maybe some of you would beg to differ. I love me my drama TV, but every now and then I want to just laugh and not be bogged down with Mad Men or 24 or Lost or whatever. So what are your all time favorite comedies and why? They can be from any time period--but they have to be as funny as possible. (Denisa and I keep going back to The Dick Van Dyke Show, which we also find highly entertaining.) Ideally, the show should be available to stream via Netflix, because I'd like some more Ol' Reliable shows to fall back on after I'm through with AD.



Thoughts?

My Vision of the Future and Facebook: A Ramble, not a Rant

REPOSTED FROM MY LIBRARY BLOG.



Unless you've been hiding under a rock (or you're not on Facebook, which some people think is tantamount to the same thing), you've noticed that Facebook has changed in the past week. It's made some fairly radical changes (and even more are in store), moving from a fairly static page that updated when you told it to into a free flowing page that seems to update at will (and randomly).



I personally love the new direction, but abhor the lack of organization. (Maybe that's the librarian in me coming out.) To me, it would be fairly straightforward to fix: let the users determine who they want to have the most updates from and how. And bring some method to the madness. Before, I could know with a fair amount of certainty that I was seeing all the updates from my friends that I wanted to see, since I could view all the updates in chronological order. But Facebook has now taken that chronological order and removed the "logical" part of it. Updates are scattered over the page in four different areas: recent stories, top stories, other recent stories, and the latest updates. To make things even more confusing, it's now showing me practically all the activities of all of my friends.



Now, I'm not one of the people heading for the pitchforks and torches. I'm willing to give Facebook some time to iron this out, and in their defense, it's gotten a bit better over the past few days. It's hard to get such a big change right all at once. (And since I don't pay anything for Facebook, I can't very well demand better service. What's the alternative? Google+? Please. That place is still snoresville every time I remember that I really ought to poke my nose in to see if anyone's actually using it yet.)



One of the reasons Twitter's interface works so well is that as a user I have control and knowledge over what exactly I'm looking at. I get a chronological feed of Tweets from the people I follow, and Twitter lets me know when I have new Tweets waiting. I click a button, and it's clear what's new and what's not. Easy. Simple. Nice. If I want to have smaller groups of friends I follow, I can easily set up lists to corral similar friends into categories of my choosing, and then the updates of those lists work the same way as the rest of the site. So it's really customizable, but also simple.



So why isn't Facebook like that?



Well, some of it might be due to the vision that Facebook has of the future. I think they've been doing a crappy job of explaining it, so allow me to give it a whirl. Picture a world where you can hang out with your friends regardless of where you live. If I want to sit in my living room in Maine and play board games with my buddies in Utah while listening to the same music or watching a TV show together, I can. I can go online and see someone's there waiting for me, and I can be chatting with them, and channel surfing at the same time, each of us making snarky remarks on what we're watching--together. At the same time.



I want that future.



Facebook wants it, too. Of course, I want it because it's cool, and Facebook wants it because it would  make a lot of money off the process. That's a key difference, and it has to be noted. But still, if I can get that future, and it comes via Facebook, I'm okay with that.



But how do we get from here to there?



Facebook's approach right now is to jam it down our throats, whether we want it or not. It's the brute force method. It has almost a billion members, and Zuckerberg's decided to go all in on that vision, with Facebook leading the way on a road paved with the gold earned from data mining its user base. Listen to a song on Spotify? Your friends will know. Watch a movie on Netflix? Your friends will know. Check out a story on CNN? Your friends will know.



Um . . . can we say "creepy"? Maybe I don't want you all knowing that I watched 15 episodes of Strawberry Shortcake yesterday. Or that I have a penchant for listening to Eminem when I think no one's watching. Or that I habitually read ever news article about goat cheese. (Only one of those statements is true, by the way.) Why doesn't Facebook just let me post updates when I . . . you know . . . actually want people to read those updates? (You can stop Facebook from tracking your every internet step, BTW. Here's how.)



I think it's because Facebook's worried it'll be sort of like Google+  It's an excellent idea, but until people start actually using it, then what's the point? In my vision of the future, it all falls apart if every time I go to hang out with my friends, no one's there. Not because none of us are there, but because none of us are actively sharing and saying "I'm here!"



Catch-22. Chicken and the egg. Whatever you want to call it, it's a problem, but it's only a problem getting there. If we're in a spot where we all know that everyone can share whatever he or she wants whenever he or she wants, then we get to a point where enough people are using that service (online, ready to hang) that when YOU are ready to hang, you can go and find some of your friends who want to hang, too.



Make sense?



And this is ignoring other nasty little roadblocks between me and my vision of the future. Roadblocks like copyright law that's dated and a legal system that can't keep up with how it pays itself, let alone how to handle the ever shifting realm of technology.



And have you heard about Facebook's next step in its plan: the timeline? Picture a profile page that represents all your actions, from birth to death. Needless to say, there are some concerns about this change, too. I've already signed up for the beta. Hopefully my profile page gets it soon, and I can evaluate it.



Because like it or not, the future is here. The rate of change is increasing all the time. Gone are the days when you can lean back and feel comfortable that you're On Top of Things for the next decade or so. Life as we know it will be different a year from now, and drastically different in five years, and unimaginable in a decade. I really believe this, and I think history backs me up.



This makes me excited, even though I also understand why it scares some people (or even terrifies them). What do you think? Chime in!

The Copyedit: All Bark and No Bite

I've known the Vodnik copyedit would be showing up at my house (or email inbox, as the case may be) for quite some time. But since I'd never done a copyedit before, I had no idea what to expect. Unknown quantities are often the scariest for me. I had a ton of different things on my plate: from trips to Bangor to presenting at state-wide library conferences to organizing service projects to that lovely stairs project I'm (still) working on. The copyedit was the big unknown in all of that. I knew there'd be a hard deadline I'd have to meet--but I had no idea how much time it would take.



I was concerned.



I didn't need to be.



As things turned out, I should have been much more worried about the stomach flu that was going to hit me Thursday night into Friday. That ended up affecting my life much more than the copyedit, which came at the same time. My editor asked for the copyedit to be back to her by Tuesday. I got it back to her Saturday. It basically was just me going through the manuscript, looking at each correction and saying, "Okay." There weren't even that many "okays" I had to say.



Bonus.



So the copyedit is now done, and I'm over the vicious stomach flu to boot. (Though that did entail lying down most of Friday evening, Saturday and Sunday. Joy.)



Where does the book go from here?



I'm a bit fuzzy on the details. I know it needs to get typeset, designed, the cover has to get finished, cover flap text has to be written . . . As for the order of when all this happens, I don't really have a clue, mainly because a lot of it is Stuff I Don't Have to Worry About. :-)



Although of course I WILL worry about it, if asked to. Have no fear: I'll probably tell you way more about the process than you'd ever really want to know.



In any case, this frees me up to do other things, like rewrite Tarnhelm (starting a week from Wednesday). And in the meantime, I have a short story I want to write for my annual Christmas newsletter. I plotted it out the other day, and a week should be just enough time to get it done.



Anyway--that's all the time for updates I have for today. Good night all!