#220 - Reminder: Two Part Movies are Cheap

Reminder: Include a Motto


I haven't written much lately because I've been working late. My motto at work has been "when the going gets tough, the tough get going."

I've been using Google Calendar & Gmail since July, 2007. My relationship with those two products is older than my relationship with my university. Gmail and Google Calendar haven't really changed much in the past 7 years. That is, they hadn't changed much until about a month ago when Google unveiled their "Inbox" application and an updated Android Calendar app. They have been updated with new intelligence... and Google's "Material Design". In place of Google Tasks you get "Reminders", that you can set from multiple places.

 But, it's kinda weird how it works... and it's not at all obvious. Let me explain:

 You can SET reminders from Google Now, Keep, and Inbox. You can see your set reminders in those three apps and also Google Calendar. But not all reminders show up everywhere.

 I've sat here for half an hour trying pull off several elegant ways to describe how this works visually... but it's late and I'm both tired and an engineer, so here's a table:

It's got colors. That's the best I can do.

 Or, maybe this one:

Isn't that a weird set of relationships? Google Keep exists in a silo... sorta. You can see Google Keep reminders from Google Now, but not from anywhere else. You can't see reminders from anywhere else in Google Keep. And you can't create reminders in the one app that would seem the most logical to create them from. Where's the consistency? How am I supposed to work this system? 

 Also, why is Google Tasks still around if you aren't supporting it at all?

 Okay, if I don't start talking about the other thing I wanted to mention, I won't get to it. So here goes.

 I just watched "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1". It's a decent movie. The acting was good. The cinematography was decent. The music wasn't terrible by any means. In general there are many positive things to say about the movie.

 But it's the "Part 1" of a story that was never meant to be split into two parts. It's a 2 hour movie that has about an hour's worth of content. The pacing is slow. Several scenes felt like they were included just to fill time. Several other scenes felt like they were drawn out way longer than they should have been. This sentence contributes nothing to the paragraph, but I'm putting it here because it would feel cheap if I gave you a short paragraph. The ending of the movie is abrupt. It doesn't really feel like any sort of an ending. There's very little actually accomplished in the story. It's a setup without any pay off.

 I am not a fan of Hollywood's latest "Part 1 and Part 2" trend. Drawing out the end of your series by splitting what should definitely be one story into two parts is nothing short of a money grab. Worse than that, it's a money grab that cheapens the experience of the viewer. "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay" presented as 1 movie would have been awesome. As it is, it's just okay. When the next one comes out, I'll have to pay again to see it, and it will probably be just okay. The worst part of it all is that you won't be able to push The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 and Part 2 together to get a compelling movie. You'll get one super long, very very slowly paced movie.

Harry Potter started the trend, to the best of my recollection. While I agree with Melissa that Harry Potter had more of a right to split the last book into two movies (it's ~750 pages long), I still think a single "Harry Potter and Deathly Hallows" would have been more than the sum of parts 1 & 2.

 Don't even get me started on "The Hobbit". That's ridiculous.

 Check back in 5 years when I make up some excuse/lame justification about how awesome and okay it was that Marvel split up the "Infinity War" movie into two parts.

 Speaking of movies - I noticed sometime in early October that NO GOOD MOVIES had come out in two months. Seriously, there was nothing. It was Guardians of the Galaxy, then NOTHING worth watching. Compare that to right now. Right now I want to see almost everything playing in theaters.

Top 5: Movies Out Right Now I Want to See
5. Big Hero 6 - even if it's aimed at kids
4. Nightcrawler - even if I have no idea what it's about
3. Interstellar - even if it's ~3 hours long
2. Dumb and Dumber To - even if it's probably terrible, I'll watch it
1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 & John Wick & Gone Girl - even if I've already seen all of them

Quote:
“Poop while you are going up, eat while you are going down. Science.”
- Jon, spitballing an idea for how to do assisted pullups on rings -

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