Movie Review: The Big Short

If all you want to know is whether or not a movie is worth watching, here it is: The Big Short is an astounding example of everything done right as all of the writing, dialog, acting, music, and directing fall together to make a well paced film that will bring out every emotion in your body and leave you tired and worn out, and you must watch this film.

For readers who want more, I can tell you that this is probably one of the best performances seen from Christian Bale, who actually became another character for me and not just another version of what we've seen in every other movie he's been in. Steve Carell's character probably doesn't fall that far from what we've seen from him before, but is emotionally captivating none the less. You get everything you expect from Ryan Gosling, a solid performance that doesn't knock it out of the park but definitely adds more to the film than many other actors would in that role. Finally, Brad Pitt delivers a solid performance that is as understated as possible. What's really impressive about the acting, is that all of these very aggressive actors are blended together perfectly to serve the great picture and pull out the meat of the story for you, and that makes every single one of them superb, even if they don't show off everything the actor is capable of, because sometimes the hardest thing for an actor to do is let the movie be bigger than they are.

That said, it's easy for actors to do great things with great material. Everything here is fantastic. Each and every character has powerful and memorable dialog to deliver as they give you a tour of the events that make up one of the most difficult times that the majority of Americans alive today have had to live through, and the mess leading up to it. The absolutely phenomenal writing oozes out of every single scene. This goes beyond good quips and great sound-bytes and emotional dialog, too. The Big Short delivers accessible and informative views about the tragic oversights and criminal negligence that culminated in the biggest financial crises in decades. More on that later, though, but it's important to say that what makes the writing in this movie shine so bright is how well it communicates the ideas it feels are important in the middle of a hurricane of ideas and information.

And absolutely all of this is pulled together just right by the directing. Adam McKay delivers a thoughtful piece that is well paces, placing your eyes and ears where they need to be to see and here want you need. He blends a tremendous cast from the top billed actors to literally everyone who spends a moment on screen to breathe life into every single concept, regardless of how challenging the ideas are.

All of the pieces of this film come together to elicit powerful emotions, pushing the viewer through fear, terror, joy, trepidation, sadness and ultimately one of the emotions that I have never truly felt from a film before: Rage. This movie should make you angry. It should inspire you to ask what the hell happened and why wasn't anyone held responsible for the events portrayed? This was less than a decade ago and there's evidence that it's all happening all over again, and no one is talking about it anymore as people are victimized from the bottom up and completely betrayed by every single system that should exist for the express purpose of serving our interest, from the evaluation of securities, the oversight of legal investments, and the outrageous conflicts of interest and finally ending on a government that did nothing but pay our money to protect the very people responsible for all of it.

This is probably the only film this year that you have to see, a year filled with nostalgia and quality film making. I highly recommend it to all, and I hope it makes a difference, even if it doesn't seem to think it will.

Life is Too Short to Make Butter

Consider this entire post a metaphor for just about everything in life. It has ideas that I feel are really important. Life is full of so much to do, it truly is impossible to do everything. However, it shouldn't be impossible to decide what to do. One of the really big traps I have personally fallen into from time to time is trying to decide what is worth doing, and this is pretty well symbolized by making butter.

You have so much to do every single day. Generally, as you get older, life is a series of increasingly open doors of things that you can do and places you can go. Your finances get freer if you've lived well, and you have access to a greater pool of resources. Your experience makes finding out how to do things you want to do more accessible. Doing things things that let you better understand the basic building blocks of all the tools you have to explore everything you want to do becomes really important. Exploring your world like that makes you better able to do what you want to do when you want to do it and more effectively, and this is where making butter comes in.

Cooking may be the most important thing for every human being to learn how to love to do. It is essential to how you live and how you enjoy your life. If you never learn how to cook, you become limited to eating what other people have made when and how it's convenient for them to make it and it is by far one of the best ways to live how you want to within any means you have available. Chefs from around the world will inform you that one of the most basic and important building blocks to cooking good food is butter.

The thing about butter is that not only is it such a fundamental ingredient to making good food, it is also incredibly easy and accessible to make. I'll just go ahead and leave a good link for how to make quality butter right here:

• How to Make Butter

As I believe everyone should learn how to cook, it then can be followed that I believe everyone should make butter... once. Learning how it's made, what it can do as it's being made are both very important, and you get to enjoy a real treat that is the product of your own two hands.

After you have done all of that, though, it's time to ask the important question: Did the time I invest in this produce something that is better than anything I could have bought?

Maybe for you it might, but I chose butter for this example for a very particular reason. I greatly doubt that you will reasonably produce butter better than what you can get, readily available, for a cost in time and money that justifies what you're going to use that butter for. Your time is limited, and your money is limited, no matter how much you have of each, they're all still limited. Given that, you can better invest your time and money into other aspects of what you're cooking. 

If you have resources like time and money left over that you could have made the butter you used, you could have better invested those resources into other aspects of what you made. You could have picked a harder recipe, worked with other higher quality ingredients, pioneered new ground. You can always pioneer new ground, even if it's just new for you. That's why you should make butter once, because at that time, it's new ground for you.

But after you've made butter once? After that, it's time to pioneer new things, because if you don't, who would have the time to get to the things that no one has ever done before? Who will have the time to do the things that change the whole world, and not just your world? I'm not saying don't do it, but I want to encourage you to use it as a stepping stone to bigger things, and that means you don't have time to make butter.

But who knows? Maybe you'll find a way to make butter than anyone has ever made before, and if you do... please tell me how.

Spectre Review

Casino Royale was a well paced and superior addition to the James Bond franchise, shifting dramatically from the exotic almost science fiction entries from previous years to gripping spy narrative focusing more on espionage and intrigue than gadgets and explosions. It was followed up by the more traditional and forgettable Quantum of Solace before the final turn in Skyfall with a deconstruction of Bond as a character and a Mission Impossible style exploration of the destruction of Bond's support structure. 

The trilogy genuinely felt complete, which tragically undermines Spectre's attempts to insert itself into the previous narrative with heavy handed gimmicks and exposition based on an increasingly implausible back story forced directly onto Bond's character. Absolutely everything that is wrong with this movie revolves around attempting to tie it into the narrative of the complete and well resolved trilogy leading up to it. If you're able to overlook these issues, you're in for a treat to one of the best action movies of the summer.

The movie opens with one of the best set piece locations of any Bond movie to date, and explores it fantastically, jumping right into one of the better action sequences in recent memory. It's an aggressive and entertaining start that feels like it's ready to move the story into interesting places with exciting speed. While the movie fails to capture and maintain this forward momentum, this can hardly be considered a failing as that would have made it one of the rarest of action movies.

The acting is spot on, the directing is well paced  moving the story forward and keeping viewers engaged. The cinematography is a treat with some of the best framed locations and images since Mad Max: Fury Road earlier this year. The music absolutely shines from beginning to end, and the cast of villains is superb, though you may end up asking why Bond is so bad at killing people despite frequently being labeled as an assassin quite heavy handedly. The movie would be about half as long if Bond bothered to check a pulse every once in a while when he gets a breather instead of just running off without a second thought.

Spectre is a perfectly respectable final outing for Daniel Craig as James Bond, but it definitely isn't a high note for the series or for Craig's portrayal of the character. This would have been better if it had been written to stand on its own rather than trying to force its way into an already complete narrative. Spectre will go down in history as relatively forgettable because of that, but here and now it stands as some of the most fun you'll have this year.

Losing All Confidence in Steam

Note: This issue is ongoing as of this writing and still has not been addressed by Valve.

A month ago I was one of the most avid and evangelical supporters of the Steam platform. I've spent thousands of dollars on the platform, and have accumulated almost 600 games and over 300 DLC on their platform. As soon as it was possible I immediately began putting effort into building a Steam machine for my living room, and spent countless hours calculating how to put together a low budget gaming machine that would provide a fun and versatile experience for everyone in the house.

I've had an account with Steam since the beginning, I have a badge on my profile for 11 years of service. I pre-ordered the Steam link and Steam controller as soon as they were available, and was beyond excited to be receiving them soon. There are very few companies that I have supported as loyally as Steam. I'm saying all of this because I want to really emphasize the quality of customer Steam has lost. And now I want to tell you why.

Account security is a serious issue, and for websites that are used in multiple locations account recovery can a game changer. You can have the most secure password in the world, but if you log in from a compromised computer that security gets flushed down the toilet. It's important to keep this in mind, any account that you use a lot and access from a large number of locations is increasingly likely to get compromised. Thankfully Steam guard is a powerful tool, and my email was not compromised. So when a malicious user logged into my account without authorization 2 weeks ago, they were unable to gain complete access because Steam Guard was enabled.

Thanks to Steam Guard the malicious user was unable to fully access my account before I was able to get home to change the password from a Steam client. This is all of the good news, and all of the places where Steam succeeded in keeping me safe. Now for the horror story. The horror story starts when I first get the email in the middle of my shift at work. I do not have a client installed at my workplace, and so I am completely unable to change my password. Steam's restriction of password changes to an email client prevented the fastest and most attentive response I could provide.

I was in a nightmare. Someone was accessing my account from Ukraine, someone who I clearly did not know and did not want in my account, and there was no support or option. I checked the website, the phone app, everything. I was completely out of options and there was nothing I could do. I read the email notification from Steam Guard carefully:

If you haven’t recently tried to login to the Steam client… from the computer located at 178.94.22.89 (UA), someone else may be trying to access your account. You can view more info about this login attempt online.

If you suspect someone else may be attempting to access your account, please either:

• Change your password immediately or
• Lock your account online and then request Support assistance to regain access to your account.

Thanks for helping us maintain the security of your account.

The Steam Support Team

Two clear courses of action were provided to me, and I want to emphasize, actively recommended to me by Steam support, one of which was completely impossible without access to a computer that I was authorized to install a client on. I was out of options and getting multiple notifications. Clearly they were trying to brute force the much easier to force 5 letter passphrase from Steam after already having found access to my password through unknown methods. Only one course of action remained to me as I was hours away from being able to perform the more secure option of a full password change: I had to lock my own account.

The idea is simple. You lock your own account, then via a support ticket login not related to your Steam account you provide your Username, and verify your ownership of the account with payment information. This was a piece of cake for a long time user like me. I had wallet codes and credit cards that I could provide the name and last four numbers of all day long. I locked my account to feel safe and eventually got home and changed my password. Then I immediately submitted the required support ticket for assistance with unlocking my account after this terrifying run in with near loss of my account.

It has been two full weeks and I have not had a single reply from Steam support, no reassurance, no request for additional information, my ticket has yet to be touched. It lays open and ignored. I can't talk to my friends. I can't invite them to play games. I can't buy new games, I can't redeem the games I buy for steam from the current Humble Bundle End of Summer Sale. I can't trade. My account is completely neutered and Steam wont even respond to me.

This ticket could literally be automated. A TOOL could cross check my information with the information on my account via a method that would not require ever being touched by human hands in less than a second, and I have been unable to get my account unlocked for two whole weeks, unlocked or even a response. Why am I still waiting for help two weeks after this nightmare that never seems to end?

I cannot express how livid I am at being completely ignored after such a severe issue and after complying with every action that was recommended to me. I only needed moments of assistance and reassurance after the 11 years of support I have provided to you.

I probably can't ever forgive this.

I sure as hell know I can't ever forget it.

Hardware fails all the time, is the type of completely non existent support I'll get when my controller and Steam Link arrive? Or if I had bought a Steam machine? I've searched and searched for alternative options for help and I've seen something. I've seen a lot of users that have had this experience. A vast sea of us who know this pain.

You may be the coolest client, with all the best games, and all of the newest features, but... that can change. You have competition now.

There's Origin, and UPlay, and even GOG  has a client now, a client with fast installs and full friends lists that I can play my games online with , and I can even download every single game I buy from them DRM free if I happen to want to.

I want you to know, Steam, Valve, Gabe, or whoever cares, or if anyone in that whole wretched place even cares, that I've changed. I've gone from a die-hard supporter who wont buy games at all if I can't get them through your client, to a customer who will literally use any other service regardless how inconvenient it is to avoid shopping with you.

Maybe you can look at me and say, "He's 600 games deep, he wont really leave us." I want you to know... as soon as I was able to buy most of the games I play on your platform, and realized I wasn't playing the CDs or DVDs I'd collected over my ten years as a gamer before Steam, and that I'd likely never pull them out and play them again, I threw away two 500-disk wallets filled with CDs, DVDs, and even floppy disks.

You're just a wallet, Steam. I can throw you away if someone else does what you do better, and right around now that bar is pretty low.

Entropy

You know those days or weeks or months when you can feel the entropy of the universe in every fiber of your being? When it feels like everyone is sick or dying all around you and everything is falling apart because everything is meant to fall apart and everyone is supposed to die. You suddenly feel like everything you do is just patching the latest hole in the ship and bailing out what water you can while it rises anyway, and you're starting to see the holes and cracks that aren't there yet, and...


Nothing is enough, because the ship wasn't built for you... Was never intended to do what you wanted or needed... And you just can't ever be good enough to fix that. You know with certainty, you understand in that moment that even trying too hard... bailing water too passionately... patching too many holes too wildly and too quickly... all of that is part of the trap.


Part of staying afloat a little longer is accepting this inevitability and accepting your limits and pacing yourself while you watch the water creep up. Only... only you can't see the water. You don't know where it is or how high it's gotten out how much time is left. You just feel it getting higher and higher.


It's the nameless shapeless monster in the dark, that creeping inevitability. That entropy.


And you want to cry, but you're afraid that your tears will help it, that amorphous nothingness. You're afraid that talking about it will make it stronger.


It feeds off everything. Your weakness and your strength. Your friends and family and all your support.


But you say it out loud anyway. You find a way to whisper it, and know it for what it is.


The truth.

Gone Girl: The Movie

This movie snuck up on me out of no where. I feel like I should have known about it, though, given how many people I know who have since confessed to having read the novel. I fully intend to give Gone Girl a read after this fantastic film adaptation. There are a few things that may keep a viewer from enjoying this movie, however, which I don't feel are flaws with the film. Overall, though, I highly recommend viewing it before reading anything else about it as a lot of what makes this movie as good as it is though is the way it carefully manages the revelation of plot twists and important information throughout the run time. This makes a really good discussion of the quality of the film dependent upon information that would constitute significant spoilers. So, you'll have to trust me, and then read the rest of this later.

The first part of the movie drags and feels predictable, reaching a point where a thoughtful viewer may safely conclude that either everything is as it seems and the movie will be straight forward and mediocre, or a bad twist is in store that will tank the movie for the sake of being surprising, or that there is a really well developed twist coming. This part of the movie is the most difficult to watch. It's well filmed and acted, and the music is well done, but it feels very straightforward and uninteresting. We've seen this movie before, where we slowly see that the supposed victim appear to be the criminal.

It initially feels so bland that the twists that make up the movie would be a complete surprise if it weren't for the fact that the film is developed by David Fincher. It's pretty clear that the movie had places to go with a director like this, and it goes to them. Gone Girl is a brilliant and thoughtful thriller with clever twists and turns all the way up until the end. The list of actors and actresses all deliver brilliant performances and the film itself is technically superb in its execution. The cinematography and direction underline the themes of the film constantly and deliver the story to spectacular effect.

This is a must see for fans of genius psychological thrillers and is genius in the horror of the finale. I strongly recommend seeing this film.

Some Days

Life is so full of obstacles that are either so trivial or impossible to overcome that success or failure is generally meaningless. A guaranteed outcome is ultimately empty, you tried the impossible or you accomplished the expected.

It is when life sends you a challenge that is on the very edge of what is possible that should make your blood pump. These opportunities are few and far between and they push you to be faster, stronger, smarter... in a word, they challenge you to be better. Your very best. These challenges must be embraced for what they are, the opportunity to be incredible. These challenges should be embraced to the fullest, because they do not present themselves every day, and because they mean so much.

Some days you just have to be a badass.

As It Happens

It turns out that some people do read my blog. Thank you so much to those who commented on my last post! I will leave commenting turned on, and limit my anti spam to just using captcha.

I've been absorbing a lot of great media lately. I've seen a good number of movies recently and read a large number of books. My favorite book that I have recently finished was easily Homeland by Cory Doctorow, and my favorite recent movie was surprisingly Noah.

All the movies I have seen in theater have been pretty solid though. The weakest one is easily Captain America: The Winter Soldier. When it was all said and done, the movie was only a little better than an average super hero movie. The big standout next to Noah was The Muppets: Most Wanted. I LOVE the recent Muppet movies. They're immensely enjoyable and the new one was as funny as the old one.

Noah was a surprise, though. There haven't been very many good movies based on the bible in years and years and years. It's a genre that tends to get flooded with movies that target a very small audience with greatly differing standards that also tends to be too divisive to do what needs to be done to make a good movie. Noah does it. It really gets into the really cool pre flood biblical mythology. Fallen angels, people living hundreds of years, and the like. It depicts a man who is genuinely concerned with purpose and what is wanted from him, and has some very cool psychological tension. I would recommend this movie to anyone, I liked it a lot. It was a genuinely good movie.

Also, my back yard is getting cozier and more developed. Time to start working on a patio to keep chairs and a table on next to the fire pit I just built.

Why We Can't Trust Anyone

Well, it appears you just can't leave your doors open online. I left captcha off of my comment forms for as long as I could, but I haven't had a real comment in almost a year, at least not directly on my site, and I certainly haven't had a fraction as many as I have spam comments lately. It's not worth the trouble, I'm constantly being emailed now having to read how my useless blog is "Exactly the type of information" some robot is looking for and how much they appreciate my contributions and wont I please visit their porn site, etc.

I am strongly considering turning off comments entirely, really. I haven't had a real one in so long.

I Miss You.

Upgrades And AMD APUs

For the third year in a row I'm incredibly disappointed with AMDs APU offerings. The processors themselves are just fine. They're adequately powered for a low level gaming machine, and their quality ranges from playing all games at low settings and low resolution to playing all games at medium setting and high resolution or high settings and medium resolution. The problem is really with the upgrades. A decent video card in a complete system is a stepping stone, as long as the socket is compatible. The PCIE-16x has been pretty standard for a while and even among the graphics PCIE slots there has been a lot of inter compatibility. I've been able to pop in just about any video card that's come out for years and years now. Same with the AMD 2, 2+, 3, and 3+, each and every one of these sockets offered a wide range of chips that scaled from entry level to high end.

And this is where the APUs have just flat out failed, three years in a row all the socket has changed, limiting you to inside of a single generation of chips. You've cut out every prior generation of consumers from upgrading in any meaningful way. They can't upgrade the processor without changing the motherboard, at all. And if you upgrade your video card on its own you're torn between a very tiny Crossfire upgrade or an expensive upgrade that totally discounts your system's APU graphics core. You certainly can't use one of the new APUs. When this happened in the first generation it was upsetting, but three generations in a row is unforgivable. AMD APUs are off my list, it's not happening again. I'm not going to buy another system that requires a full system rebuild every year for a modest increase in performance. Because when you get down to it, the third generation APUs are nice, but they're not nice enough to justify a third new motherboard and processor to run them.

As for the upgrade route, I'm currently using an A-10 6800k, I ended up deciding to grab a 6670 GPU for my Steam Box, a decent little card that will give me a modest crossfire performance boost for my APU. I really can't wait to see how much improvement I get to milk out of the combination. Would be nice to see a really good improvement in Crysis 2 and Skyrim, the two benchmarks I've been using lately. The new A-10 7850k is just absolutely not worth the system rebuild cost. It'd be close to 250$ for a performance increase of a fraction of what an equivalently priced video card would offer.

By the way, Ninja hoodies are pretty cool, I love mine.

Thinking About Things

So, I've been thinking a lot about movies and books where the characters clearly voice one opinion, intended as the message of the story, but the actions clearly paint a different picture.

This one was kind of a weird monster. All of the narrative problems aside, and any of the other things you might not have liked about this movie, one thing it did really poorly was stick to its message. It tried to explore the idea of a machine with a consciousness and a life as valuable as a human being. And then at the end it sacrifices the machine specifically to save a human being, showing which one of them is really a person.

You're as good as real people, unless one of the real people needs a new heart.

A really good experience comes from a cohesiveness, where the film says its messages subtextually as well as overtly. Terminator salvation was particularly disappointing because it came from the otherwise excellent Terminator franchise. Take Terminator 2 for instance. The future is what is important, not any one person regardless of emotional attachment. They say this over and over again, and then they repeat it in the subtext, any character can die as long as they accomplish the goal of saving the world from Skynet. And in the end, to prevent the world from repeating its mistakes, the terminator destroys itself, because it has to.

Terminator Salvation could have made a similar argument, but they didn't, really. They didn't even look for other solutions. The machine was a convenient sacrifice.

I'll spend some time thinking of other movies where the message differs from the underlying values of the story.

Things We Learn

I just honestly didn't think it was possible to learn to dislike someone so much so quickly. It's really interesting to pay attention to characters in books and stories, and even people in real life. The actions of the character reveal their true biases and priorities and often in subtler ways than you might imagine. For instance, frequently the actions done in many stories could have been performed by a great many characters, and the character chosen to actually do them is incredibly telling. For instance, the betrayal by the fiance in the movie Frozen. This character actually feels very wedged into the story but their function there is very deliberate and purposeful even if clumsy. It has to be that character that performs that betrayal, because it has to undercut the concept of traditional fairy tale romance to set up the real love story, the love shared by the two sisters. He's there because the writers felt he was necessary for contrast, and that they weren't confident that their story, by itself, would be contrasted against the other stories in their genre so they needed to internalize this conflict, despite having a wealth of other characters and circumstances they could have used to make their point.

So you look at what a character is doing. They may profess great love for someone else, but if every time that love requires any kind of difficulty or sacrifice they hide it or ignore it or let the other character down, then there's nothing there. I could easily depict a scenario like this in a matter of moments as it is so easily caricatured:

Jim and his wife have reached a difficult spot in their relationship, and they agree to separate. THis rough patch is caused by financial difficulty, they can't support each other and they can't achieve their goals realistically, and it begins to look impossible. During their separation both Jim and his wife have affairs with various lovers, but Jim becomes particularly fond of her, tell her he loves her and spends a great deal of time with her in secret. Jim is also unfortunately a borderline alcoholic, which has caused many social ills. Their affair goes on for some years and one day the unthinkable happens, through both great effort, and chance, and the support of both his wife and his mistress Jim gets a new job. Concerned for appearances in the grace period for the new job that leads to everything he wanted in life, Jim ceases all communication with his mistress on the chance that this would risk his job in the eyes of his new employer as he has no idea how the new employer would react to such a relationship, but Jim still sips whiskey under the desk at work. Three sips a day instead of a half a bottle a day, but he doesn't give it and everyone knows about it. It is quite probably more damaging of the two, but it would cause Jim personal pain and discomfort to give up the whiskey.

This is a simple and meaningless example of how you can identify a characters real motivations and genuine internal struggles. People are generally very transparent if you give them enough time and pay close enough attention. Sometimes when you get really involved with a character early on though it's easy to miss things that seems meaningless but unfold in a larger pattern.

Breaking Bad 's Walter White is a brilliant example of this, the portrait of his character over the course of the series draws upon a very beautifully complex series of motivations. Every scenario of conflict draws on the tension of what is more important to Walter, very rarely, if ever can we believe what he is saying. He is clearly portrayed immediately as a character incapable of admitting real truths about motivation or feeling to almost anyone, however his motivations and values are consistent throughout the entire series.

He is a damaged man cheated out of billions first, he is a family man second, he is a brilliant chemist third, he is an moral man fourth, and he is a honest man fifth, and a truthful man last. The conflicts as these are carefully pulled out and highlighted in each of his major decisions is like a character being beautifully painted, but in time and with something richer than colors can ever display.

THere is also a brilliant tension with the audience as we wrestle with our own values, and whether or not we want to see him succeed. We constantly ask ourselves just how much we like Walter White. At what point does he cross the line where we could no longer feel good about seeing him successfully resolve his issues into a happy ending through any amount of cleverness?

I find it amazing how often we ourselves have no idea what our actions communicate to the people around us and how important it is that they communicate what we really feel.

Double Review Day: Frozen Book Thief

I sit here tonight, eager to play more of Dishonored GOTYE, which I just started yesterday, but reluctant to do so without taking care of some overdue responsibilities. I've seen two movies in the past weeks and I feel that you should know about both of them. You know who you are. And if I don't write these reviews tonight, already at least a day late, who knows when I will ever write them.

Disney's Frozen:



I wish I could say I was surprised by this movie, but I'd managed to totally avoid any trailers for it and I didn't hear anything about it till the buzz exploded that it was just a fantastic film. I'm happy to say that I was not in the least disappointed. I went in expecting a great film and I got one. It's easily the best film in Disney's "Disney Film" repertoire of feature animations since Beauty and the Beast. I mean, sure Wreck it Ralph and the most recent Winnie the Pooh were both just stand out amazing movies from the same studio, but this one FEELS like classic Disney. More importantly, though, it feels like classic Disney that is relevant. It breaks molds, it's not a romance, there's romance in it, but it's not about a girl getting a guy or vice versa, it's about being able to connect with the people you're closest to, which is broader picture type stuff.

This movie is layered. It's filled with metaphors, and it has to be. The story is bigger than it really has time for, and frequently feels rushed. There's more than a few spots where everything feels really cramped together, and in a perfect world and in a perfect movie, it wouldn't feel that way. Story wise, the pacing is probably the thing with the most issues. I don't know a good way that this movie could have fixed this. Maybe it needed to be longer, maybe it needed a few less events. Maybe if it didn't have to have as much comedy as it did, or didn't have to be a children's movie it could have cut some of the "fluff" but the fluff was as much of a reason to watch the movie as anything else. Olaf is adorable, and honestly, he's the type of character who is usually cast with a voice that sounds like nails on a chalkboard to me, but he's not annoying, his voice is whinny to me, it's soft and he just sounds so sweet, which works because he is just such a sweet character. Another weak point for the film is the song writing. Some of the songs just don't work very well for me. They lack a strong structure even though they have some great lines, and they don't hold the scene together well enough.

These are just rough edges though. It's no a perfect movie, though it felt like with some really careful polishing it could have been. The story is beautiful, complex, and loaded with interesting characters and twists. Many of the songs are noteworthy and extremely well done, getting to the core of the characters and the scene and moving the plot along briskly with lots of character development that works. The characters are very well done, though there are a few two dimensional characters that could have had more depth. This movie is a must watch.

The Book Thief:



This movie is just beautiful. It feels like a movie from my childhood that I forgot. The pacing just feels like something from another decade, everything about it feels ancient and it fits very much with the themes and ideas. There's more happening than just the main plot line, all of the characters have something going on. This movie is able to convey a lot of sub-textual story telling because of the well know historical background that allows it to include a great deal of history that would otherwise make it very much impossible to tell the whole story in a meaningful way.

From the cinematography to the music and dialog and characters, this movie is simply an excellent example of film making. I hadn't been impressed by almost anything I had seen at all this year until I saw this movie, and it was like waking up. It was warm and sweet, funny and sad, beautiful and painful and moving. I can recommend this movie without reservation to absolutely anyone, as everything about it is extremely well done. I am honestly having trouble thinking of any really rough patches that kept this movie from being amazing. There are a few weak points in the acting, which shouldn't be taken at face value, because this movie rides so heavily on its child actors it would be astounding if it didn't have those moments, and what few there are barely cause a hitch in the pacing of the scene.

I haven't read the book that this movie is based on. That doesn't necessarily mean much, but it's always weird to me. There are so few book to movie translations I have ever enjoyed, maybe 5 or seven. I do want to read this book very badly now, and see how the movie holds up after reading the book. It would be absolutely fascinating. If you have the chance, though, definitely watch this movie. It's beautiful, heart wrenching, and extremely well crafted.

Republic Wireless

Well, I'm in for a great experiment. I've picked up a Moto X from republic wireless and their 25$ per month 3g data plan and I am EXCITED. I've had about a week to play with the phone so far and I am honestly very impressed with my experiences. I'm a pretty tough customer to please, too, because I was pretty happy with Boost mobile and the service they have provided me over the years, most especially over the last few months with my most recent phone.

I've been using the HTC One SV and it was by far the best phone I had ever used. In fact, if it were not for with the give and take advantages/disadvantages between the plan/phone I'd say it is dead even tied with the Moto X for me. The One SV could last a day and a half easy with 4g LTE turned on and running, and even moderate use over the time period. Games would burn out the battery, but what phone do they not do that on?

The Jellybean O/S ran smooth as silk, the screen was bright and large enough to be comfortable but not too large to function conveniently as a phone. The one and only hiccup I ever had with it was the disk storage space management. With a limit for 2 gb of app space and a fairly large list of pre-installed apps that could not be removed the updates eventually made it very difficult to keep any games installed on the phone and still allow for all the apps I wanted to be able to update regularly. In the last few months disk space management actually became quite serious any time a list of apps needed to update.

The Moto X has a massive internal drive comparatively, and though it can't use an SD card, even though the One SV would let you plug one in, it couldn't REALLY use it either. Using my internal storage space without a care in the world I still have about 10 GB free internally to play with on this phone allowing me to really breathe and enjoy games and other media really easily and conveniently.

The contextual features are also really sweet and I really enjoy playing with them, though, honestly they are not as impressive as I had initially hoped. Using NFC to lock and unlock the phone turned out to be less awesome than I had hoped mostly because of software. You can't unlock it just by touching it to a RFID chip, you have to push the unlock button, then touch it to the RFID, and it's just an extra step that feels nu-neccessary. I just wish it could completely unlock with a swipe. I just think the software isn't quite there yet.

And I am a battery life junky, the longer without a charger the better. You never know when you'll be in an emergency and need to go as long as possible without charging, so those extra hours mean a lot to me, and the Moto X just doesn't give me the same battery life.

Overall, between the price of the phone time, the list of features and advantages and disadvantages, I'm happy with the difference, for now I'll be sticking with Republic Wireless and their truly fascinating service plans, which I highly recommend anyone check out.


On a side note, I can't wait to live in the future when my phone can unlock my house, turn on my car, and pay for things on site with NFC wallet apps and RFID for EVERYTHING, and even be used to authenticate my identity and my driver's license. On that day, I wont need my wallet or my keys anymore. I remember when I only needed my keys, and then only my wallet and keys.

Ladies and gentlemen, I have a phone case that holds a few cards, enough to hold all the essential ones I carry around with me. Since I do not carry cash this means I can finally experiment with leaving my wallet behind.

The last two days of my life I've pared down to just a wallet and keys and it feels AMAZING.

I can't wait for more of the future!

Facts About Me

I guess I have to do this, 15 facts about me:
1. I once ate an entire tablespoon of 600,000 scoville hotsauce and it was the single most painful experience in my life. I was sincerely concerned that I needed to call an ambulance the pain was so bad.
2. My favorite book is the Count of Monte Cristo, and my favorite translation of it is the copy that was given to me by Marcia Reynolds forever and a day ago.
3. I once cooked a turducken, and it was delicious! It took me several days of preparation and was tons of work, but I loved every minute of it and the end result was the best of the franken meats.
4. When I was in my teens still my parents gave me my first guitar and a couple of guitar lessons. I really resented it at the time, and I was mad that they didn't understand who I was, but almost 8 years later when the circumstances were right and that guitar was still there for me to pull out and play and begin to learn with I could not have been more thankful that it had been given to me, even if it was almost a decade before I knew it was good for me. I just wish I'd been a smarter teenager.
5. My favorite regional food style used to be Mediterranean, with all the sharp tangy cheeses, fish, vinegars, textures, etc. until I visited Korea, now my favorite regional food is Korean, I didn't have a single bad meal there, no matter how cheap or how tiny the restaurant, they were all in my top 100 of my life.
6. I failed high school because I was lazy, and had to go to summer school to pass my final class in order to get my diploma.
7. When I was a child and had finished reading the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, I was really mad when my dad didn't let me read the Silmarillion because it was too mature. This only bothered me more when I was old enough to just read whatever I wanted, and I realized all he had to do to stop me from reading it was let me try. Most boring book ever.
8. I think the octopus is the coolest animal on the planet, but kittens are cuter.
9. My favorite movie of all time is still The Shawshank Redemption. My very close second is Fight Club.
10. I couldn't even begin to pick a favorite song or genre, almost every style of music has produced at least one song that moved me emotionally to the very core of my being and I couldn't pick one of those emotional experiences over another.
11. I never had cable as a child, it wasn't until I was a full grown adult that I paid for it myself to get the best internet connection.
12. I used to stay up all night and read over the edge of my bed to the light of my closet, and every book was precious to me. I don't even know when I would fall asleep most nights, but the important thing is that I fell asleep reading.
13. I think a lot about how the expanding space between intergalactic bodies that lack sufficient gravitational pull to hold them together means that there is a hard limit beyond which objects projecting light will never be visible to us because the space between us is expanding faster than the speed of light. I thought the universe was pretty big before that, but now that I know this I believe it is so big that we will never comprehend its true size and will never have any way of measuring it. The words Too Far Away have never felt so final to me.
14. My favorite reading spot as a kid and young adult was nestled in the arms of the third or fourth level of branches of the tree in my front yard.
15. I started working on a podcast with a friend of mine, Sean Foley, Words Are Bullshit.

What if Fez Were Good?

I mean, don't get me wrong, my initial experience with Fez was extremely positive. It didn't take long for the thin veneer of positive to wear away into almost nothing. The puzzles initially have very cool structure, and the music is beautiful. There were some strong story telling devices used in the game world, which often are neglected in more narrative heavy experiences and make for incredible world building. But then I started to notice that nothing was being built on top of it. There just wasn't any purpose for this beautifully created world.

Then the puzzles started to bump into some of the meatier puzzles that make up the majority of the game. A lot of them dealing with reading long sequences of code and puzzles that require a lot of notes. Very classic and old school, requiring meticulous note taking to decipher the very clear and incredibly obvious puzzles. I hated every minute of that. Recently another game brought back a similar relic of ancient game playing, the hand drawn map. Etrian Odyssey brought back old school with style, integrating map making into the very deepest parts of the game, but at the same time giving you the tools to play with the maps inside of the game.

I once heard someone say that it's less important to accurately reproduce what we remember being good than it is to reproduce how they made us feel. To capture the essence. What I loved about puzzles that made me write down and copy codes and images and codes to use later is that it made me feel like I was discovering special.  I don't feel like that anymore. I know the solution, but the writing and memorization becomes just irritating. I feel like when I know the solution to a puzzle I should be able to implement it without having to stop playing the game. Etrian Odyssey manages to capture the essence of how I felt drawing maps without the inconvenience and irritation I'd have if I had to actually pull out graph paper. This is one of Fez's bigger failings.

By the time I got to the initial "ending" of the game I had begun to tire of almost everything I initially found charming about it. For everything that is there, it is missing something that feels deeply essential, leaving a very superficial experience.

Even the exploration becomes a chore as backtracking transforms into a granular and tedious experience. The map is very nearly completely useless as the most useful long distance shortcuts are poorly documented if they're visible at all. I live for quality exploration. Super Metroid, Shadow Complex, Castlevania... these are my bread and butter, the root of everything I love most in games, and Fez manages to implement this element in a way that makes me loathe it. Navigation is just slow and painful and tedious, like a point and click adventure game with slow walking and puzzles across 30 screens.

To sum up, the game feels amazing when it first starts and quickly wears away to a chore. But it really could have been amazing.

Adventures

Wow, I had a pretty awesome week last week. A good week at work, and then a good week in leisure. I averaged above quota all week, which just felt great. It's the first time I did this purely on merit. Then, Friday night I was able to see the Astros vs the New York Yankees live.

It's not like seeing the Yankees play is a life long dream of mine, but it's somebody's and someone out there has died not ever accomplishing this life long goal, and there's something to be said for accomplishing other people's lifelong dreams. A sort of beautiful saccharine joy. Kidding aside though, I got to go to the game with Rich and a fried of both Rich and Mike, and I had a great time hanging out with them. After that, the three of us went to Flying Saucer and had a pretty good time.


Slept in and felt great on Saturday. Relaxed and played games. Finally around 5:30 or so Rich swung by and we went out to Souther Star Brewery for Oktoberfest. I had a great time with a whole bunch of friends. Delicious food, delicious beer, and great company. Finally went home late at night and just totally lost consciousness.


Sunday evening? Breaking Bad series finale. Had a great time. Cooked queso with Sean and Scott. Guac and sour cream. Tons of chips. Then Breaking Bad and the first episode of a new season of Bob's Burgers, and a great episode at that.


And Sunday night I had no work. Took the night off to fully enjoy Breaking Bad with friends. Spent all of Monday relaxing and chatting and working on small nothing projects.


All in all a crazy good week. Working hard on making this week just as good.

It's Time To Look at the Big Picture

I've put together a Steam Machine early this year, using windows for the games availability, and I wanted to use it with the AMD APUs to test out some really affordable hardware options  and I have been incredibly surprised by the quality of performance I've gotten.

There are some really big improvements I wish Steam could do that would push Big picture mode a long way. I wish I could be logged into both my living room PC and my bedroom PC without having to worry about whether or not I've logged off already and will need to re-type my credentials if I accidentally log in some where new while my old machine is still running. I can see needing to be told that a game is being played and not being able to play a game while the other profile is, but that looks like it's being addressed by game sharing.

One thing the Steam Big Picture can't do right now is have multiple user profiles logged in simultaneously. There are already some great games that support local multiplayer, Dungeon Defenders, and Monaco to name a few. This is something that consoles have been able to do this entire generation and I'm a little spoiled for it.

The ability to browse and play media from inside the client. Movies, music, etc.

The things I can tell you're trying to fix, and just need to improve on, fixing game launcher issues. Skyrim still requires a mouse to start the game and in game requires a keyboard to type things. Rocksmith requires a keyboard in game to type things but the big picture mode shell prevents the keyboard from working inside of it at all. Etc. Bugs in general.

Aside from that, Big Picture mode is making amazing strides, and I would be exstatic to play on it as my primary gaming machine in my household and to give my input during its development.

I Notice When You Don't Talk to Me

I'll tell you the story about the goblin that ate fire.

It was a rotten and greedy goblin. She'd snuck into a giant's house, and because of how giant things work the goblin found she had swollen up to giant size herself. However, the last meal in her belly didn't, because magic is funny that way, and so while she had been just a little bit hungry before, she was famished now that she had a great giant empty belly and only a very very small half digested smack in it.

So she found the dining room, and, sure enough, the giant's table was laid out with an enchanted never ending feast lit with torches and served on gold plates. Even though it was never ending she was so hungry that she tried to eat it all anyway.

The more she ate, the more sprouted magically from the table. The faster she ate it, the faster and quicker it erupted from nowhere.

The great hungry goblin was so ravenous that she was not discouraged, used both hands to shovel every morsel into her vast mouth, hinged so far open that she could no longer see her own hands tirelessly thrusting sustenance down her gullet. Suddenly she gasped and gagged and choked and sputtered, clutching at her throat!

Wheezing and gulping for air she failed about till she fell down on her back, striking so hard against the floor that it dislodged the obstruction in her throat and caused her to choke it down whole.

Still shocked and surprised and out of breath she kept tumbling backward and out of control right through the back kitchen door and out of the house, back to her normal size, and down the steps and off into the woods where she finally lay still.

When she began to feel herself again, she noticed she felt hot all over everywhere, for though she did not know it and had not reasoned it out yet, she had absent-mindedly swallowed the giant's torches .

And great fiery torches of fierce flame lit by dragons they were, though now she was just a very tiny and unassumingly normal goblin.

She went on to be the mother of all goblins, the fire in her belly always destroying whatever she ate, always leaving her hungry and angry, but forever cooking within her unlimited imaginings and ingeniously clever hatreds. And that is why all goblins are so bitter to the core of their bellies, and so clever as to work out any plot or trap or weapon.

Because from then on, all true goblins have had a bit of that stolen fire in their bellies. And it forever drives them to evil madness.