Nels Lindahl — Functional Journal

A weblog created by Dr. Nels Lindahl featuring writings and thoughts…

Category: Movies

  • A bit of blogging on the 4th of July

    Today a little bit of blogging on the 4th of July is going to occur here in this post. I did sleep in (overslept my alarm) for 2 hours today. We are on vacation and I simply could not muster the will to get going when my Fitbit alarm went off at 0530 hours. Part of that is due to our evening plans the night before.  

    Yesterday starting at 2130 hours we watched the late showing of “Top Gun: Maverick” at a ScreenX theater. It was interesting to see the 270 degree panoramic scenes. It is sort of strange that sometimes the movie went triple panel and others it was just the center screen. I had never seen a ScreenX theater before and it was an interesting visual experience. I’m all for improving theater going technology. My strong preference when seeing a movie is to have the biggest screen possible. I book Dolby Cinema or IMAX tickets for the most part when going to see a movie. At this point, I would add ScreenX technology to the list of big format screens that make for a solid movie going experience. Based on the box office numbers at this point in time it appears that the 2nd installment of “Top Gun” has grossed over a billion dollars. 

    This post was never intended to be a movie review. It was just an observation about the movie going technology involved. At the movement, I don’t really have any reviews of anything in mind. Two shots of espresso were made and a few words were written. This post really is just a little bit of blogging on the 4th of July. Here in Kansas City the humidity and perceived temperature have been much higher than Denver. You can really feel it walking in and out of the house. I did not think it would be so noticeable, but it really is very noticeable. Today I’m going to reflect on things and enjoy the holiday. I have the independence to write about pretty much whatever I want and the opportunity to engage in reflection today. That is something to celebrate. 

    Maybe the roughly 355 words written so far are not the best and most effective use of that independence. Certainly at this point in my writing career I could muster a little bit higher quality of prose for such a resplendent occasion. As it turns out, that was not the case and the words you have read so far are what showed up to the party. Maybe it was a triple shot of espresso morning that fell a shot short. Perhaps it was just one of those days where my intentions were better than my output. This is the 5th day in a row that I have sat down and worked out of this document instead of going back to my previous routine of working out of a new Google Doc each day for the general creation of content. Taking just a little bit of solace in that new direction just might be enough to help move things along. 

    One of the things that I have noticed about working out of a typeset document is that right now for example I’m aware that I only used the top part of this page and stopping right now would leave a bunch of blank space in the finished printed product. Given that outcome seems a bit unsightly I have taken to writing about it here as a rather meta level observation about the nature of my writing output oddly enough contained in my writing output for the day. For those of you who read these missives on the weblog that observation won’t really make sense. You would need to have a final copy of the print version of this content to really experience the truth of this prose. 

    I’m about to shift over and go back to work on writing my introduction to ML syllabus which happens to be comprised of 8 lectures that are actively being written. Each of those lessons needs to be a of a certain level of quality to ultimately be useful. I’m going to need to step up my writing game to make that happen. 75 weeks of research and writing were done to get to this point and now it is time to work to make all of that effort pay off toward a glorious final product.

     

  • Watching some Andromeda

    Apparently, some type of streaming service called tubi exists and has Andromeda (2000) loaded up for streaming with commercials.[1] I had never run into this service before, but it appears to be owned by the Fox Corporation and is a real no subscription required streaming website. My surprise at being able to watch Andromeda with no purchasing or login friction aside, the streaming service seemed to be ok. I was able to watch season 1 episode one “Under the Night” without signing up or really doing anything outside of clicking.  

    Footnotes:
    [1] Andromeda https://tubitv.com/tv-shows/385390/s01-e01-under-the-night