— पांच हजार चार सौ —
After seeing
BlackBerry (the movie) last night, I thought a lot about the 2010 David Fincher film, which was also about a paradigm-shifting product (Facebook) and was similarly lauded by critics. Some people still laud it as one of the greatest movies ever made; I just checked
its MetaCritic page and the score there is a truly astonishing 95, averaged from 45 reviews.
I did like that movie a lot, even might go so far as to call it excellent. A 95 on MetaCritic does make it feel slightly overrated, honestly; at the time, I myself
gave it an A-minus.
That is precisely the same grade I gave
BlackBerry in the review I wrote last night. And I have to say, I was really impressed with it. Admittedly, the biggest reason I went to see it was because of how critically aclaimed that one was itself. That one's MetaScore
stands at 80, averaging 36 reviews. (When I first looked it up, the score stood at 83, putting it into "Must-See" territory. Apparently it's slipped slightly.)
I had to leave work half an hour early yesterday, riding my bike from down here near Myrtle Edwards Park up to the U District, because, annoyingly,
BlackBerry is not playing at the AMC Pacific Place downtown. And, the showtimes I had to choose from at the AMC 10 in the U District were either 8:00—too late—or 4:30. So, I chose 4:30.
Even though 4:30 would always have been a low-traffic showtime, I really don't think this movie would have played to an empty theater at the same time before the pandmic. On the one hand, that really bummed me out. This is an excellent movie, and nobody is seeing it. Will it find life later on a streamer? I sure hope so, but that won't make it the money that traditional box office would have in the past. On the other hand, it was nice for me on a personal level to be the only one in the theater (something that's been happening to me pretty frequently lately). I didn't have to wear a mask. Had there been even one other person in there, I would have. But with it being just me, there was no need. Also it was nice to be able to look up things on my phone if they occurred to me.
Riding my bike home from there always takes me back to the pre-2016 days when the PCC office was located on Roosevelt, just one block north of the bridge. As much of a challenge as it ever is to ride up Capitol Hill from the current office location, it's a much bigger challenge from the U District, with three different steep hills much longer than any hill on my current route. Granted, there's a two-block hill near the start of my current route far steeper than any other hill I ever ride. But, at least that one's only two blocks. According to Google Maps, the elevation gain overall is actually higher with my current route. The old route has more portions of steeper downhill sections, though, which means even more uphill climbing. In any case, I always find that route more challenging.
— पांच हजार चार सौ —
— पांच हजार चार सौ —
I'm probably going to spend some $2,500 or more soon, on a new Apple macbook laptop. There are two major reasons for this. First, I need a reliable source for processing and uploading photos
while I travel, as using the Photos app on Shobhit's PC laptop while we were in Australia proved to be a massive pain in the ass, adding unnecessarily to the time needed to spend on it, while at the same time depriving Shobhit the use of his computer.
There was a time when his PC had a different version of a photo processing app, and it worked very well, never glitchy. This new one is a giant piece of shit, as it doesn't
ever load the photos in chronological order. On top of that, if I have made any edits already in the Photos app on my iPhone, the Photos app on the PC laptop loads both the edited photo
and the original, unedited version. The differences are often so subtle that it's difficult to figure out which version to load to the hard drive for further processing. It's just a stupid clusterfuck of a process, and it occurred to me that if I just had a Mac laptop of my own to travel with, it would all work properly and I'd get through the process a lot more quickly.
It's too bad I couldn't have gotten to this point
before the trip to Australia, as it would have made my life a lot easier during those travels. But, whatever. I had to come to this realization while traveling somewhere.
The second reason is just my aging iMac desktop, which freezes constantly due to multiple programs being open at once. I need ready access to Chrome, Music, Excel and Music, usually all at once. Multiple tags open on Chrome alone can cause the computer to freeze, an issue I can't really get around as I need quick access to all the tabs I have open. I need to open between two and four more, on average, for things I research while I write a movie review. Which is what I did last night.
The thing was, I couldn't get anywhere even when I sat down to
start. I had to close other programs, and even close and restart Chrome, because single tabs were not loading to start. Getting everything I needed reopened took a good fifteen minutes before I could even start writing the fucking thing.
Shobhit was like, "Are you done writing?" I was all of maybe halfway through the review. Granted, I wouldn't have been done yet even had I been able to start at the time I should have been able to. Part of this was Shobhit's crazy-making impatience.
We were at Costco last weekend and we took a look at some of the MacBooks on display there. I opened the Photos app on one and it opened so instantly I felt like I was in an alternate universe. I was looking to spend the least money for the minimum of what I would need in a laptop, but Shobhit was like, "You don't want to be cheap with this." He can really be inconsistent when it comes to when he thinks it's worth it to spend money. He's gotten annoyed when I just spend four bucks to rent a movie from Amazon. Now he's encuraging me to spend two and a half thousand.
Anyway once I was done we had just enough time for us to catch up on this week's episode of
Barry.
— पांच हजार चार सौ —
[posted 12:30 pm]
