Went to see Avengers: Infinity War earlier today, and have to say I was quite impressed. I am hardly an expert, though I do tend to critique stories in movies and other media, but I could not find any fault in the story or execution. The team behind it did that superb a job. (Well, okay, Thanos' logic for his actions is flawed, but he is very sincere about it and I doubt most people would find the flaw, so I'm okay with letting that slide. So often such dogmatic people do not see similar flaws in their reasoning, so really, it is not an issue.)
I do not want to spoil anything, but I will say there were a number of good moments, from the interactions between the different characters and some of the twists presented. Definitely the guardian/keeper of the Soul Stone was a great twist I hope will be taken advantage of in the future.
I doubt I will get a chance to see it again in a theater, but I feel like this might be a movie for me to watch more times before I can get everything out of it. There is much there and I am looking forward to seeing what comes next.
You know what, there is something I can criticize, and that is the graphics. Seriously, there is at least one point that it just looks bad. hopefully it will be fixed for the disc release, because I know I would be deeply unhappy if I were directly involved with that portion of the project.
And on a related note, my suspicion for Agents of Shield is that there will not be any real crossing between the show and the movie. Why? Because I don't think they will want to spend the money on the graphics necessary for the tie in. The graphics on the show are also quite lacking.
Come on Marvel, at this point do you not have enough money to award hefty contracts to the graphics teams you use? Give them the time to get the jobs done well too, if you can, and a lot of people will be much happier.
Sunday, April 29, 2018
Sunday, April 15, 2018
R is Such a Fun Letter
I might identify it as a letter, but I am actually referring to the R statistics environment, something I taught myself to use a bit more than a year ago, and continue to put find new ways to use it and learn more.
This past week I did a number of things with it, including putting together some complex graphs. Had to fight with it to get what I wanted, but once I had the results, and threw in some more data, I think I see a pattern that is intriguing, at least to me. Still have a lot more data to collect, but what I have at least serves to develop the scripts I will use.
Something else I figured out how to do just today makes one step of processing the heart-rate data I collect easier. For the Body on Games videos, I keep the recorded data and upload the CSVs for people to view, if they are interested. To help look at the data, I make a column that shows the time in the video the specific measurement is for (helps the measurements are made every second). Have I have been doing this involves loading up Excel, typing in a couple entries, and dragging the pattern down. I figured there had to be a way to do it in R, which I already use to generate a graph and histogram data, and again I had to fight some, but ultimately ended up with a script to do the job for me. It is just so much more convenient this way. The reason I had to fight with R is because of the, to me, convoluted way it handles time, always requiring a data. All I wanted was a hh:mm:ss sequence starting from zero and counting up by one second, but that is not something it wants to do. I figured it out though and am glad I did if only because I enjoy finding ways to move away from Office and Office-like software to more powerful, if more complicated/hard to use, FOSS solutions.
This past week I did a number of things with it, including putting together some complex graphs. Had to fight with it to get what I wanted, but once I had the results, and threw in some more data, I think I see a pattern that is intriguing, at least to me. Still have a lot more data to collect, but what I have at least serves to develop the scripts I will use.
Something else I figured out how to do just today makes one step of processing the heart-rate data I collect easier. For the Body on Games videos, I keep the recorded data and upload the CSVs for people to view, if they are interested. To help look at the data, I make a column that shows the time in the video the specific measurement is for (helps the measurements are made every second). Have I have been doing this involves loading up Excel, typing in a couple entries, and dragging the pattern down. I figured there had to be a way to do it in R, which I already use to generate a graph and histogram data, and again I had to fight some, but ultimately ended up with a script to do the job for me. It is just so much more convenient this way. The reason I had to fight with R is because of the, to me, convoluted way it handles time, always requiring a data. All I wanted was a hh:mm:ss sequence starting from zero and counting up by one second, but that is not something it wants to do. I figured it out though and am glad I did if only because I enjoy finding ways to move away from Office and Office-like software to more powerful, if more complicated/hard to use, FOSS solutions.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
Definitely Dropping the Ball
I wish i knew why I keep forgetting to post here, because I do want to put something up each week, but sometimes it slips my mind as I am busy with so many other things. On the bright side, I have had time to think of something to write about (and actually remember it!).
This is actually something that entered my mind a week or two ago, and I cannot help but still have it there. From the beginning, I have been watching Marvel Agents of Shield, and while I can put up with a lot of the less-than-good aspects of it, especially in the more recent seasons, some of the more recent episodes are really annoying me. One example would be in an episode that has a ship floating in the air, and there being a concern about visually finding it. Apparently not only was RADAR not a thought (within the show or the writers' room) but as it was stated to have been there for years, the concept must not exist either. Some episodes later we also learn that Hydra, the secretive global-domination minded organization is really evil Hogwarts without magic, but still uniforms including crests stitched on. No one is supposed to know this group still exists, but they have a school and school uniforms. Really makes it hard to believe Hydra went unnoticed for decades.
It feels like a lack of respect for the previous content for the show, the viewers, and a desire to always outdo the previous climax are hurting it. The stakes can increase without making the danger greater, but by making them more personal, and leaving the stakes the same is viable too. Seriously, we don't need an escalation in threat every season because it can always just be a threat to a newly found/exposed weakness. It is possible and I wish this would happen, to give us all something better. (Also, it would be nice if it could be unified with the movies as well. There are still plenty of stories that can be told while acknowledging and connecting to the movies, without compromising the show's integrity as a separate entity.)
This is actually something that entered my mind a week or two ago, and I cannot help but still have it there. From the beginning, I have been watching Marvel Agents of Shield, and while I can put up with a lot of the less-than-good aspects of it, especially in the more recent seasons, some of the more recent episodes are really annoying me. One example would be in an episode that has a ship floating in the air, and there being a concern about visually finding it. Apparently not only was RADAR not a thought (within the show or the writers' room) but as it was stated to have been there for years, the concept must not exist either. Some episodes later we also learn that Hydra, the secretive global-domination minded organization is really evil Hogwarts without magic, but still uniforms including crests stitched on. No one is supposed to know this group still exists, but they have a school and school uniforms. Really makes it hard to believe Hydra went unnoticed for decades.
It feels like a lack of respect for the previous content for the show, the viewers, and a desire to always outdo the previous climax are hurting it. The stakes can increase without making the danger greater, but by making them more personal, and leaving the stakes the same is viable too. Seriously, we don't need an escalation in threat every season because it can always just be a threat to a newly found/exposed weakness. It is possible and I wish this would happen, to give us all something better. (Also, it would be nice if it could be unified with the movies as well. There are still plenty of stories that can be told while acknowledging and connecting to the movies, without compromising the show's integrity as a separate entity.)
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