Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Life After Life ( Amazon | Local Library | Goodreads)
by Kate Atkinson
Kate Atkinson, along with Terry Pratchett, Jasper Fforde, and several other writers, are ones whom no matter what argument I make to save cash, I always pre-order their books when said boks are released. For Atkinson this year, I found out a friend was going to give me an ARC she had received of Life After Life, so I dutifully canceled my pre-order. Except, I apparently didn’t. The pre-ordere arrived before my trip to see my friend, so I kept it in the hopes I could get it finished before heading to see her so we can talk about the book. It didn’t quite work out that way for it’s two months later and I’m just now getting started on the book.
While I would describe myself as an ardent Atkinson fangirl, I’m only 25 pages in to this title and have no opinion of this offering as of yet. But at least I’m reading, and that’s something.
Watching
Case Histories, Season 2
I found out season 2 of Case Histories was being shown in the UK by accident, even though I had thought I had tapped myself into the places that would keep me abreast of such things. I greedily watched all three episodes in two sittings, and I can’t get enough of Jackson Brodie or who he is or what he does. Sure, sure, Jason Isaacs isn’t bad to look at, but the tortured soul of a man who walks (rather runs) to his own moral code is amazing to behold. I don’t know if there are plans to show it in the US on PBS this year or if there will be a third season or if Atkinson has plans for another Brodie book. I’m really hoping all of those things become true, the Brodie world of Edinburgh is one where I want to live.
True Blood
Speaking of tortured men with complicated pasts, True Blood started its sixth season this past Sunday. To me, TB is always the start of the summer, the days feel better knowing I have TB to watch on Sundays. As for the plot, well, what’s being set up in the first episode of S6 is slow. TheHusband and I raised several eyebrows during the hour and we’re hoping TB picks up some speed (and interest!) during the forthcoming season. TheHusband put forth the show has finally jumped the shark, but I don’t think that’s happened. Yet. I DO wish they would clarify more on Pam’s dick whipped attitude towards Eric, since it’s been made pretty clear they were never really lovers in so much as BFFs during their 100 years together. Pam’s randomly shown weakness for Eric when certain conditions apply (but not all conditions that match, just some) is annoying.
Sons of Anarchy
I had no interest in this show, really, until Beth forwarded me a video of Walton Goggins (Boyd Crowder on Justified) as Venus Van Dam, a transvestite prostitute on SOA. After getting over myself of extreme jealous of how beautiful Goggins makes as a woman, I decided to check the show out. I had been working on finding a nice long show I can get into while I do things around the house, knit/cross-stitch, or fall asleep to and SOA fits that bill. TheHusband, on the other hand, was razzing me that I seem to be haphazardly watching all the FX originals as I come across them (The Americans, Archer, Justified, Louie (TheHusband’s choice), It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (TheHusband’s choice)), but hey! That’s ok. FX has created really great content in the last few years and they are pushing the boundaries of what network television should look like. Other networks better start taking notes.
Nurse Jackie
Just when it looks like Jackie’s life is finally getting under control, a twist. There is always a twist. While I do like this show, this season was definitely not the best and it ranked pretty poorly. Dr. Roman? She just needs to go. Though I do love Zooey’s new love interest and that made me very happy how that panned out.
Fitbit Flex
Lisa-mas was a few weeks ago and presents were still rolling in so I decided to divvy up the reviews over the next few weeks to not overload this post. This week, it’s the Fitbit Flex.
I know Fitbit has been popular around the social sphere for some time, but what got me interested was when Kate and I were discussing fitness regimes and she mentioned the Flex, a Fitbit product designed to be a bracelet with the Fitbit unit cleverly hidden and unobtrusive. I’ve tried pedometers in the past and found most of them lacking. I know some friends have had good luck with phone apps for sleeping and pedometering, but I found this was not a particular good solution since many pairs of my bottoms don’t always have pockets to put the phone in and the way some pedometers are designed to be clipped, also doesn’t work with how my body is shaped.
The line of Fitbit products are designed to track, learn, and help you manage:
Fitness goals
Food consumption
Water consumption
Sleeping
Much, much more
Much of this is done by your input on the website or app but the core information, steps walked/calories burned, is done by the device. You can manage, within the app and website, all of your health needs fairly simply and easily, which is of great interest to me. It is also shower proof and mostly water proof (though, I’d probably take it off for swimming).
What I really loved is the Flex, because it was something I could wear, like jewelry, and only time I’d have to take it off is to recharge the Fitbit unit, which is about once a week. When I wore the Flex to work, one my student workers thought it was a post-modern bracelet, another person though it was a fancy watch. Inso far as design aesthetic goes, Fitbit gets top scores.
TheHusband ordered the Flex and the accessory bands from Amazon, and the items was on massive back order until mid-late July at Amazon and at Fitbit.com. So imagine my surprise when I received the Flex a few days after my birthday! But the accessory bands, which were scheduled to arrive first, still haven’t arrived and are still marked on backorder.
The package comes with the Fitbit unit, two bracelets sized small and large in a single color (you can choose between black or slate, TheHusband ordered slate), charging dongle, and wifi synch dongle. Setting up the Fitbit was fairly easy, as well as setting up an account. I choose to create an account rather then use Facebook or Google as the login. You can also find friends via Facebook/Google but Kate and I found this was kind of a pain in the arse (Kate had ordered another Fitbit product a few weeks prior). In addition to the website dashboard, there is also an app, available for iOS and Android. You can also sync with other products, like MyFitnessPal, which rocks if you’re already using MyFitnessPal to track your food.
Downsides:
You can sync your Fitbit to your phone using bluetooth when you have the app installed, and you can synch the Fitbit when the dongle is plugged into a computer, but you cannot synch it with any other mobile devices using bluetooth. This means if you want to synch it to your iPad or another device, you’re out of luck.
The iOS app is available on the iPhone only, and while you can install it on the iPad, it’s clunky. You also don’t have all of the options available you do when it’s in its native environment.
The Fitbit Flex system includes the bracelets, Fitbit unit, charging dongle, wifi synch dongle, and yet they did not include a pouch or any kind of carrying case for travel. I was able to find a small pouch to use to hold all the accouterments (and have space for the other bracelets), but it just seemed odd the pouch/carrying case was not included or even made available in the store as an accessory.
Going into sleep mode, to track my sleep habits, can be a bit wonky.
The dashboard via the web is different than the app version, which is okay, but some of the options available on the website are not available on the app, which is annoying. This always seems to be the biggest problem I run into with software developed for the web and the mobile apps come later: it’s assumed behaviors are not the same in both places, or expectations, when many of them are.
Overall, I really like the Flex. My goal is to figure out what I’m doing now and then improve on it to get more healthy. I also love that I can sync MyFitnessPal with Fitbit so that makes things easier for tracking food/exercise. Fitbit also uses gamification, which can be fun, but since I’m still pretty low on the totem pole on some things, it doesn’t seem to have the thrill yet. I do like how I want to walk everywhere to improve my total steps per day, but step count on the app is slightly off I’m a spaz and move around a lot without necessarily walking, thus the Fitbit counts those as steps. But so far, out of the other things i’ve tried, this is a really good way to get started getting fit.
x0x0,
Lisa
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Burn Notice
We have a love hate relationship with this show: Fiona kicks ass, as you do, and Sam’s “Oh woe! Look at my handsome aging face and note I’m just here to get royalties” schtick is not as grating as one would think, but after awhile, the over arching storyline seems to get more muddled with each passing season. This will be the last season of Burn Notice, which it turns out, makes me sad.
Game of Thrones
If you’re paying attention on the Internet, you know what happens in the second to last episode of GoT, also known as Red Wedding. Because of this, the final episode for season three was very anti climatic and seemed to be almost, but not quite, a throw away. Some things are finally realised, through I do wish someone would just kill Theon Greyjoy and get his bit over with – he seems to be a pretty useless addition (and interestingly, only a very deep back ground filler when they can’t rustle anything else up to kill time) for the show. TheHusband sent me a link after the season finale to a great story on Grantland that is incredibly invaluable to anyone who has not read the series. Despite of some of the many flaws in the show, am I eagerly awaiting season 4? Do bears shit in the woods?
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
Escape to the Country
Set up similarly to House Hunters, the idea behind Escape to the Country the buyer is looking to make a move from city to the country, sometimes from one part of England to another. Three houses are shown: Two that are known, and one that is the mystery house. The buyers can choose to buy any of the houses shown or choose not to buy any – which is the big difference between it and HH. The ending of the episode is not always stainless steel appliances and granite countertops.
Great Houses with Julian Fellowes
Fellowes, he of Downton Abbey, takes his expertise and pedigree and tours the great homes of the United Kingdom, giving not only a historical entree into the house but the people, the land, and the era that surround it. I felt like I was watching an episode of History Detectives except with British accents at times, for I thought Fellowes spent a lot of time on the social history of the area rather than on the house itself. Only two episodes long, the show felt oddly rushed and compact.
Doctor Who
I don’t even know where to begin with this show. The ending? Then the departure of Matt Smith? The whole season felt forced and unnatural to me. Like it was stretching to be filler rather than tell a good story.
Rectify
The season has ended, as it begun, not with a bang but with a precipitous crawl. Will I be watching season two? You bet. (A summary can be found here.)
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Eurovision soundtrack
Eurovision is everything American Idol wants to be, but amped up 100 watts and on speed. Nearly 40 countries from around the European block (and then some) compete in a song off where each country submits its own entry to the contest. Over the course of three nights, two semi-finals and the grand finale, all of Europe votes for their favorite entry. The songs are often ridiculous, over the top, and borderline absurd. But that is what makes it so goddamned much fun. We caught Eurovision for the first time in the spring of 2010 when TheHusband and I were on our honeymoon and were able to watch it live. We were entranced. Every year we track down ways to watch, most often on delay. We are seriously considering planning our 2014 vacation around getting to a country to see it live (and by live, we mean live telecast). Eurovision has kindly put the videos of all the contestants up on YouTube for your enjoyment.
Elementary
Much to my chagrin, I found I rather enjoyed Elementary. The gender bending of Lucy Liu’s Watson and Johnny Lee Miller as Sherlock is fantastic, even more specifically Miller’s Sherlock is a mixture of sexualization of the Robert Downey Jr. interpretation and the staid, uptight Benedict Cumberbatch version. The fact that Miller is tattooed and a bit punk rock also doesn’t hurt. The final twist at the end was a twist I certainly didn’t see coming, and it was scarily clever. I dismissed the show based on the earlier trailers and I’m glad I owned up and started watching. I’m curious now how the second season will most definitely play out.
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
The Woman Who Died A Lot: A Thursday Next Novel (#7) (Amazon | Local Library | GoodReads)
By Jasper Fforde
I’ve been purposefully making time to read every day, even for 5 minutes, so that I can get back in the habit again. I know depression and other factors have been a huge influence on my attitudes towards things, so it’s even more important I make and keep habits to keep myself inline.
I started this title months ago, and in the last week have made great strides (a hundred pages!) in getting it finished. But I am finding that depression or not, this title seems to have less of the pizazz that was so prominent in the previous novels in the series. The plot seems to center around someone is trying to kill the real Thursday, and others near her, and replace her with day clones. We know it’s probably Goliath (so we’re lead to believe…), but what is the real reason?
Thursday is also named Chief Librarian of Swindon, and one thing I’ll give Fforde many hat tips for is how he captures the essence of librarianship without making Thursday come off as being cartoonish or stereotyped.
Watching
Rectify
Sundance is now throwing its hat into the ring by starting to produce original series content. Produced by the same people who give us Breaking Bad, Rectify follows the story of Daniel Holden, a man who may have been unjustly accused of rape and murder of his girlfriend at the age of 18. 19 years later, he’s freed from prison based on new DNA evidence that shows his potential innocence. TheHusband and I found out about the show after the first episodes ran so we ended up mainlining them in toot suite order. Verdict? Show borders on excellence, and this opinion by me surprises myself because slowness in television land has never been something that caught my eye. One critic said it makes Mad Men look like a pulp action thriller in comparison, which I wholeheartedly agree with. Rectify is deep character study of not just Daniel, but his family, friends, and others around him. There is some moments of implausibility where it seems the writers are trying too damn hard to showcase the difference between 1994 and 2013, but those moments are few and far between. Watching Daniel struggle not only with coming to terms with the fact he never really grew up (he’s a man’s body but an 18 year olds brain) but also the intersection of past versus present, which is more compelling over whether or not Daniel is the killer.
Justified
Will Ava go to jail? Will Raylan and Winona get back together before the baby is born? Is Raylan going bad, or has he always been bad? Will Boyd save his woman and the world? WHY DO I LOVE BOYD SO MUCH? I love this show far too much and now that the fourth season has ended, there is a loss in my heart.
How historical figures would have looked today Apparently it took 3 motnhs to create the images, ranging from Shakespeare to QE2, but to me they look like they were badly photoshopped.
What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
Lisa
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
The Big C
I really liked this show, while TheHusband was so-so about it but after the last season, it’s really gotten awful. The dialogue is cliched and trite, Cathy is at the core a terrible human being, and the plots are all over the place. We watched the opening of fourth season and that was enough to cement we would not be watching it again. I see this is apparently the last season, but nothing can get us to finish it out. I should have some kind of feeling for the main characters, but when I can’t even be arsed to finish out the final season, you know it’s bad.
Vikings
Ragnar, Lagertha, and Floki are done for the season and I’m terribly sad to see them go. Sure this show had some growing pains, but over all, it was one of the better things on TV this past season and I’m beyond thrilled it’s coming back as a second season next year.
Evernote Hello
I’m an Evernote evangelist and just about every product of theirs I love. But Hello? Meh.
The idea is brilliant: Scan in business cards, they get OCRed, and you can assign them to meetings and add notes. Each scanned card gets its own note in Evernote, and in theory, all of the OCRed information is supposed to get populated in the fields. After all the conferneces I attend, my business card pile is inches thick. The idea of assigning cards to meetings and giving them notes is genius! Also available for free on Apple Store, AND iPhone and iPad compatible? Brilliant! Also takes advantage of your premium features from Evernote? Even better!
Except it doesn’t work quite the way
Cards are easy to scan into the software, but the OCR is off and doesn’t populate the fields as intended, so you still have to manually fill in the fields.
To start the process, you have to either scan in a card or manually add the card THEN you create the meeting. You can’t just add cards and assign them to meetings later.
Meetings are automatically set by location. So if I sit there scanning cards forever that I’ve gathered from various places, they all automatically get added to the same meeting at the time I’ve scanned them in. So then you have to go in and manually change each and every card to its appropriate meeting place/location.
Meeting locations are powered by Foursquare — which one one hand, I understand, but on the other — seems odd.
Each card becomes its own note in Evernote, so you can view them on any device but you can’t edit them in any other version of Evernote other than Hello.
I can’t figure out, after scanning in cards, how to view individual cards or cards by meeting. The cards in the HOME option act as a scroll but I can’t sort by meeting. It just tells me I have X number of cards.
Searching is only available in the HOME option, which seems clunky.
Hello is very insistant on connecting to Facebook and LinkedIn, which I don’t want to do. But it keeps driving me nuts on making connections. No. I just want to sort business cards. I don’t need you to make new connections for me.
This could be really awesome but instead, it’s just meh. It’s getting deleted. Jolidrive
Launched a few years ago as a netbookOS whose sole purpose was to turn netbooks into a cloud devices, Jolidrive has now expanded into an online service to collate all of your cloud computing apps via the browser. Sounds like a great idea: Jolidrive runs as an extension in your browser and loads in an empty tab. After logging into your Jolidrive account, you can add other services and have them easily accessible in one location. Problem is: Its execution and design is terrible. Here’s why:
Accounts are added into one of two places: Jolidrive’s applications and services tabs. Services are vendors they have partnerships with, such as Twitter and Facebook, whose application will run natively within the Jolidrive interface. Applications are vendors you can add but do not run natively within the Jolidrive interface. When clicking on an application, it will launch that application it its own tab. Clicking on Evernote brings me to the Evernote web login. In short, the applications tab is a page full of bookmarks that don’t really add any value.
If the confusion of applications vs services isn’t enough, in order to add services, you have to “share” with your friends/followers on various social networks. You’re given 3 or 4 “free” services and any services added after that require the social promotion fee to get added to your Jolidrive dashboard. This is probably the dumbest method of social promotion because it’s annoying AND you can change the content of the Tweet to be something other than they append for you. Which I did. Since the content is not hard coded, all the dashboard is registering is that I tweeted/FB something, so it unlocked applications even though the content in my tweet had nothing to do with Jolidrive as I changed the tweet to say, “sugar.”
The Jolidrive dashboard within Chrome, regardless of Mac or PC, is slow to load since it’s just a front end to drive.jolicloud.com and not a local native client.
The interface is clunky and unintuitive.
Some of applications refuse to connect or authenticate, like Facebook, despite browser/computer.
When you delete your account, you get a notice stating your account will be deleted within 2 weeks – er what?
Bottom line: Terrible.
What have you read/watched/listened to this week?
x0x0,
Lisa
Johann Georg Hainz’s Cabinet of Curiosities, circa 1666. Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons During the Renaissance, cabinet of curiosities came into fashion as a collection of objects that would often defy classification. As a precursor to the modern museum, the cabinet referred to room(s), not actual furniture, of things that piqued the owners interest and would be collected and displayed in an aesthetically pleasing manner. Collectioun of Cunnynge Curioustes is my 21st century interpretation of that idea.
Dear Internet,
This week has been insane as I prepped for and am now at C2E2, so things are a bit light in terms of watching and linking. I’ve also been off of my ADHD drugs now for about a week and it has been glorious! I feel like this is the first time in ages I have felt myself and I’ve been wrapping that feeling around me like a coat.
Watching
Project Runway
The season has finally ended and truthfully, one of the worst seasons yet. I called it who was going to win within the first few episodes, and I was thrilled to see my prediction was right. While this is a nice show for filler, can we have less crying and emotional break downs and more drama in the work room? Actually, it doesn’t have to be drama but SOMETHING, ANYTHING to create good TV because it certainly wasn’t there this season.
