Pop quiz. Your house burns down. How many photos do you have left? The few on your camera's memory card (provided your camera isn't in the house at the time of the fire). Maybe a few more if you have a laptop that's also not in the house. The couple hundred on your Facebook gallery. But chances are you're missing a lot.
Question two. How many photos do you have (in overall disk-space terms)? 50 gigabytes? 100 gigabytes? More?
Wouldn't it be great to have an offsite, web-based repository for every single one of your precious images?
Well Flickr has you covered!
Granted this is not the site's primary function. It's a social photography site designed to help you share and explore photos by interest/theme. But with their most recent update Flickr has upgraded their free account to now offer one terabyte of storage space. That's a lost of photos to upload (privately or publicly and keep tucked away in the cloud in case something bad happens. Granted, it would be a horror to download your photo library one image at a time. But as a super mega emergency backup against worst-case scenarios (and FREE) it's a very viable option.
Monday, June 24, 2013
Monday, June 10, 2013
Dooooods
Hugo and I got to attend a meetup with several other doodles (and friends) this weekend. It was a blast:
Monday, June 3, 2013
Arrested Development: Season 4 (First viewing reflections)
I couldn't wait until I was finished with the much-anticipated Netflix-only Season 4 of Arrested Development before I started giving my thoughts on the new season. I've now made it through the entire season and feel a little more prepared to reflect on this chapter of the Bluth's tale as a whole.
And by more prepared I mean I'm still fairly lost.
As a huge fan of the original Arrested Development run I kind of expected Season 4 to somehow magically pick right up where we left off, with all the same dynamics, chemistries and interactions we'd grown to love. But much like running into a good friend from high school so many years later, Season 4 is an uneven commentary on how much we both have changed.
In my previous review I wondered if Season 4 was going to be like the original series, where it takes a while to get going and you only really appreciate the earlier episodes once you have the context of how things develop. I'd say that's definitely the case. But it's different at the same time. When you initially watch Arrested Development it takes 6-8 episodes to determine who/what the characters are, which explains the absurdity of their actions. Season 4 is much more deliberate. It's almost trying to be too smart for you.
I watched the first couple episodes with some friends this weekend. On the second go-round they make so much more sense, and reveal so much more. The laugh out loud moments were all still there. And while my friends were saying "What the heck is THIS and how does it have anything to do with anything else in this episode???" I was saying "Ooooooooh man!!!" Because it turns out Season 4 is filled with easter eggs. There are oh so many hints and suggestions at what's coming, but none of it makes sense at the time. Case in point: George Michael randomly popping up with a mustache during one 5-second scene in episode 1.
This whole method is especially confusing because it's never entirely clear where each event falls on the timeline for Season 4. Events from previous seasons are easily spotted thanks to a hilarious watermark that takes a jab at many of the show's cult fans as well as the current delivery method for the series. The current season/s shredded calendar makes it an ever-twisting knot of chronology that will take many viewings to untangle.
Maybe with time a lot of Season 4 will get considerably better, but ultimately it servies as a reminder of a show that you don't want to end, but ultimately ends again. And ends abruptly. One of the very last scenes of Season 4 perfectly encapsulates my experience with watching it. I'll save the spoiler for you so you can experience it for yourself, but suffice it to say that it will take quite a while for this iteration of Arrested Development to find itself at home alongside the original.
PROS:
And by more prepared I mean I'm still fairly lost.
As a huge fan of the original Arrested Development run I kind of expected Season 4 to somehow magically pick right up where we left off, with all the same dynamics, chemistries and interactions we'd grown to love. But much like running into a good friend from high school so many years later, Season 4 is an uneven commentary on how much we both have changed.
In my previous review I wondered if Season 4 was going to be like the original series, where it takes a while to get going and you only really appreciate the earlier episodes once you have the context of how things develop. I'd say that's definitely the case. But it's different at the same time. When you initially watch Arrested Development it takes 6-8 episodes to determine who/what the characters are, which explains the absurdity of their actions. Season 4 is much more deliberate. It's almost trying to be too smart for you.
I watched the first couple episodes with some friends this weekend. On the second go-round they make so much more sense, and reveal so much more. The laugh out loud moments were all still there. And while my friends were saying "What the heck is THIS and how does it have anything to do with anything else in this episode???" I was saying "Ooooooooh man!!!" Because it turns out Season 4 is filled with easter eggs. There are oh so many hints and suggestions at what's coming, but none of it makes sense at the time. Case in point: George Michael randomly popping up with a mustache during one 5-second scene in episode 1.
This whole method is especially confusing because it's never entirely clear where each event falls on the timeline for Season 4. Events from previous seasons are easily spotted thanks to a hilarious watermark that takes a jab at many of the show's cult fans as well as the current delivery method for the series. The current season/s shredded calendar makes it an ever-twisting knot of chronology that will take many viewings to untangle.
Maybe with time a lot of Season 4 will get considerably better, but ultimately it servies as a reminder of a show that you don't want to end, but ultimately ends again. And ends abruptly. One of the very last scenes of Season 4 perfectly encapsulates my experience with watching it. I'll save the spoiler for you so you can experience it for yourself, but suffice it to say that it will take quite a while for this iteration of Arrested Development to find itself at home alongside the original.
PROS:
- Cameos, cameos CAMEOS! These cannot be overstated. Could have used more of them in the later episodes.
- Easter eggs. As I mentioned, there are so many things (some subtle and some obvious) that happen early on and don't make any sense until nearly the very end of the season. Just watching the pilot episode again there were tons of things I had no way of knowing until the second go-round. Definitely conducive to repeated viewings.
- Character interactions. Whether or not you understand the plot arc of Season 4, the dialogue is brilliant. Absolutely spot-on. In that regard Season 4 doesn't miss a beat.
CONS:
- UMMMMMM? The season as a whole felt very disjointed the first time through. Lots of things were happening but you couldn't really figure out what those things were because it jumped around so much. The plot could have been a little more linear.
- This again? In some ways it felt like they didn't shoot enough new material for the entire season so they repeated many of the clips in multiple episodes to fill space. This also helped support the disjointed, nonlinear plot by taking you back to things you've already seen to remind you about it and provide more context and detail than the original viewing. Think of it as adding layers to a cinematic onion...????
- What About??? The new season does a great job of not beating us over the head will every one of the tried and true favorite jokes/lines/references. But honestly, I could have used a few more. Many of the great recurring characters make cursory appearances, but it seems like there were a few chances to find them some more "meaty leading man parts" as Tobias might say. And SPOILER ALERT: You don't get to enjoy William Hung and his Hung Jury in Season 4 :(
CONCLUSION:
I'll probably dive right back into a second viewing of Season 4, but I'm not sure it will ever land itself in the annual rotation with seasons 1-3. I appreciate the additional episodes of dialogue and further hilarity with characters I love. This also servies as a highlight/benchmark for the Netflix delivery model of exclusive content. I feel like in Season 3 of Arrested Development the show took an abrupt turn when they knew they were getting cancelled. Season 4 reminds me of that in a lot of ways. But it's frustrating that the ending was so abrupt and unsatisfying. Especially after watching the finale of The Office, which I consider to be one of the best finales I've ever seen. Arrested Development was given an entire season to tie up loose ends and go out on their own terms. Instead got us emotionally invested and then ended the series with a punch to the face... emotionally(?)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)