Simplifying the distance filter

I don’t know when it happened, but I recently noticed a change Foursquare made that totally simplified what once required thought.

I remember using an early version of the app that had an explicit distance filter. As in, if you’re searching for coffee, choose or enter a numerical value for the area you want covered. OK, it’s not THAT complex a load for your mind to handle, it was just kind of annoying to be that precise, or give the perception that you needed to be. Don’t make me think, and all that jazz.

Now I get a much more tangible distance filter. A map.

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Goodbye Posterous, Hello WordPress

Moving blogs is more painful than moving homes. Note, I did very little in the one home move I was involved in.

I really did love the simplicity of the Posterous default theme. Sadly, the writing was on the wall when Twitter acquired them. Twitter as a service is my favourite social network ever, but they’re quite the scumbags to third party developers, and I might as well blame them for the pain endured in migrating my blog over.

I tried JustMigrate and it completely fell apart. Images in posts transformed themselves into individual posts on Tumblr, everything was made public by default, random images started getting reblogged; I felt totally out of control, ultimately deleting every single post. A terrible experience.

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Double tap to like and Discoverability

instagram screenshot

One day, a few months ago, I was watching @jymmysim use Instagram and he double-tapped a photo  to “like” it. I asked why he double-tapped instead of tapping the heart, but I can’t remember what he said. I’ve been subconsciously doing it ever since.

It’s easier, really. There’s a gigantic image, nicely filtered, so why wouldn’t you double tap it? Why would you try and pinpoint a finger towards that tiny button instead?

Today I was wandering aimlessly and I finally asked myself, how the hell did he discover it?

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SXSW Film 2013: An Unreal Dream

You know what makes a film festival special? Watching the unbelievable true story of a man wrongfully convicted of murdering his wife, spending 25 years in jail essentially coming to terms with his situation and accepting it, then finally being set free by saints that relentlessly fought for him.

OK, no, that’s a darn good story. What makes it special is the man himself, Michael Morton, walking on stage with John Raley, the attorney that worked pro bono for 7 years, and the director of this story, Al Reinert. The audience stood clapping for a good five minutes, tears flowing from basically everyone. His spirit and attitude to forgiveness during the Q&A was something to marvel. Being part of that moment, with those people, is an incredible feeling. It elevates a film to an experience, and that’s what film festivals are all about.

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2012: The year in movies

A list seen this year in Australian cinemas, at SXSW, and the Sydney Film Festival. I group this list by star-rating, and alphabetically within the groupings. It’s too difficult to rank linearly.

I’ve seen a lot this year, and a lot of old films too! 110 in this list plus at least 30-40 oldies. I’ve even tried my hand at filmmaking through the awesomeoness of Kino Sydney, and made two really bad short films; ‘Tearjerker’ and ‘Swings & Roundabouts’.

As to the ratings, I overwhelmingly loved and/or connected with each and every one of the films I’ve given 5 stars to, for many different reasons. If there were faults in them, I did not see them. So yeah, it’s all relative, and stacked top heavy. I rate them as soon as I see them, to avoid any normalising and brain hurting come end of year.

I thought about including original tweets, but looking back at them in retrospect, they’re too uneven, so unless I start writing seriously about every single film, at least the 5 and 4.5 star ones, I’m keeping it as just a list. All my ratings and extended thoughts are on Flixster or against the movies tag on this blog.

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End of Watch [spoilers, duh]

‘End of Watch’. Pena and Gyllenhaal have the best on-screen relationship of the year. One of the finest films this year. Wow.

Every moment between Pena and Gyllenhaal is so damn natural. To create a bond like that so quickly requires incredible writing and acting, but even more than that. A real sense of unequivocal mateship and brotherly love. Someone you would do literally anything for, without considering the gravitas of the situation, for better or worse. “Follow me into the house, man. Follow me in.”

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Argo [spoilers, duh]

‘Argo’. Ben Affleck, take a bow. A magnificent achievement in pacing and tension, bringing an unbelievable true story to life.

There’s a line towards the beginning, when they’re trying to sell The Hollywood Option, that goes something like, “And everybody knows they’d shoot in Stalingrad with Pol Pot directing if it would sell tickets.” 

This cynical undercurrent that still permeates through Hollywood today, arguably more so, grounds this film in a believability that would be hard to artificially create solely for this film. It’s one of the many cheeky shots the film takes, having a go at acting, directing and everything in between. 

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