Category: Blogging

CW Streaming App – Review

This review is based off the Roku version of the The CW’s app.

A few weeks ago all The CW shows disappeared from Hulu.  This concerned me because I watch The Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, iZombie, The 100, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and I was really looking forward to season two of Supergirl.  Then I found out The CW was planning on launching their own streaming app.  Their parent company CBS also has a streaming app that costs $5.99 for limited commercials or $9.99 for no commercials.  I was afraid The CW would follow suit and I would be forced to wait until the seasons were available on Netflix.

The new app launched a couple of days ago and I checked it out last night.  First off there’s no subscription or sign in needed. The app is completely free for everyone.  New episodes are available to stream the day after they air.  There are commercials but they are short and only add about 10 minutes to the run time of a 40 minute show unlike broadcast which adds 20 minutes.

Brief sidebar about commercials:  I don’t mind them.  I’ve been watching broadcast and cable tv for 30+ years so I have accepted them as a fact of life.  Especially on a free app like The CW’s.  They have to make money either through charging for a subscription or showing ads.  I would rather watch ads than re-buy my cable subscription one channel at a time.

The layout of the app is a bit different than other apps.  Unlike most streaming apps which have copied Netflix and Hulu’s horizontal scrolling design, The Cw’s app has a vertical design.  (It is actually a copy of The CW’s other streaming app “The CW Seed”, which mostly offers older tv shows, DC Comics animated movies and shows like The Birds of Prey and Constantine, and a few new shows made just for the streaming service.)  On the left side is a small sidebar with four tabs to chose from: Featured, Latest, Shows, and About.  The rest of the screen is divided in half with the middle section for displaying and selecting episodes or shows and the right section acting as an info pane.

The app opens on a “Featured” tab which flips through screen size title cards for the featured shows.  The images do take a second to pop in making it a little jerky to watch.  The “Latest” tab is probably going to be the most useful tab since it lists episodes from newest to oldest letting you quickly see what has just arived.  Since the app lacks a favorites or queue, this is the best way to find new episodes without going to the page for every show you watch.  The “Shows” tab every show is listed in alphabetical order.  From here you can lookup all the available episodes and extras, which don’t show up on the “Latest” tab, for a given show.  And the “About” tab is just boilerplate legal info.

There isn’t much else to say except that the app works.  Playback starts after a couple of seconds, transitions to and from commercials are fairly smooth, and closed captions are available by pressing the options button.   I watched an episode of The Flash to see how long the commercials are.  Each break is about two minutes with three or four commercials and the breaks are visible on the timeline as tic marks if you pause the show.  I found them to be mostly non-intrusive though a bit repetitive as I saw the same commercials several times but this is a problem Hulu has as well.

I had a minor issue when I tried to watch a new episode half an hour after it appeared in the app(12:30 am) and got a 404 error. The new episode played fine when I went to watch it later(1:30 am).  This is probably just a first week hiccup and most people won’t try watching new episodes right after they become available.

Overall I like the app.  Hopefully the image load times will get better but it doesn’t really effect the app’s usability.  Have an app to check for new tv episodes is less than ideal but it’s better than having to wait until the season is over to catch up on Netflix. And you can’t beat the price of free.

This is a Dream

“You know this is a dream, right?”

I’m trying to get a snagged video tape out of the VCR.  My sister is sitting on the sofa.  Her kids are watching me, it was one of them who called me to get the tape out.  The person speaking is her oldest kid.  He’s almost my age, just three years younger.  This is my home and this is my family.

Except it isn’t real.  It is just a dream.  But part of me doesn’t care.  I go back to fixing the VCR until the dream changes or ends or blends into another.  When I wake up I feel out of place.  I’ve lost something again.  I spend all day replaying that moment where I was confronted with the truth of the “reality” around me and I turned away from it.

Everyone wants to believe that they could, that they would, break free from a Lotus Eater Machine.  They would see how fake the world was or realize something was wrong.

Today, I realized given the right dream I would willingly chose the dream over reality.  My dreams can feel so real that when I wake I feel like I’ve come back from a long journey. I’ve never been presented with a choice between dream and reality.  Last night, I chose a dream over reality.  It has shaken me a bit.

The Giver (movie) – Review

So, The Giver has been on Netflix for a couple of months and it keeps showing up in my “Top Picks”.  I’ve never read the book so I didn’t have any nostalgia for the story nor did I have any real idea of what the story actually was.  I had seen a trailer before the movie came out and the fan outcry that the movie was in color but that was it.

The story is pretty average for a YA dystopian novel.  After a great war/cataclysm society has been rebuilt around the idea of “sameness” and everyone has forgotten the past and takes daily injections to suppress their emotions.  Jonas is chosen to be the Receiver of Memory.  A job that entails receiving memories of the past from The Giver.  There is a minor romance subplot with Jonas’s childhood friend but the main plot concerns how the memories of the past effect Jonas.

Most of the movie is shot in black in white with color added once Jonas begins receiving memories.  This lack of color to express the “sameness” the community was built around was well done.  I liked how color is introduced slowly into Jonas’s pov instead of the movie suddenly wiping to full color like The Wizard of Oz.

There’s nothing really new in the movie.  It shares a lot of tropes with other dystopian movies.  An emotional suppressed populace like in Equilibrium.  Constant surveillance, lack of privacy even in one’s own home, and the erasure of history like in 1984.  I also noticed a stylistic resemblance to Pleasantville with the black and white suburban imagery representing the “ideal” society and color used to show characters “awaking” to some truth.

The Giver is well made and the acting is fine but you’re not missing out if you skip it.

Rating: 2.5/5

 

 

Site Update/Writer Update

So, I know that my depression worsens after summer.  I had hoped writing and posting stories every week would build momentum enough to carry my through to November when it gets really busy at my retail job.  I had planned on taking like half of November and December off from posting stories for the holidays.  But here I am in September(not even officially fall) and I can’t focus, I’m having trouble sleeping, I’m getting migraines at a higher rate(this is due to the weather not depression but it isn’t helping).

Basically I can’t keep up with the pace I set for myself during the summer.

So I’m going to try halving my output for September and October.  Instead of three stories every week(twelve a month), I’m going to post three stories every other week(six a month).

In November, my output might drop to zero because of the holiday rush and stay that way until January when regular posting will most likely resume.  That might be a good time devote to editing some stories into a small ebook.  I’ve been meaning to do that but writing the weekly stories has been the priority up til now.

I know it may seem like a sudden change but this is something I’ve dealt with for years.  I didn’t know how my plans for posting stories regularly would be effected by my seasonal depression.  This is still the first year of what I plan to be a life long endeavor.  This year I have to slow down in the fall and probably stop during the winter.  Next year might be the same or it might be better.

Trying to Own All of Myself

 

A co-worker asked if I had a boyfriend.  I said no.  She also asked if this was my only job. I said yes but I also write.

She’s a good kid.  Left work early because she needed to study for a math test.  A few weeks ago during a training meeting I said I had a migraine to get out of roll-playing, I did have a migraine, and she leaned over and asked if I was ok.  She always says hello when we meet in the break room.

I wish I had said, “No boyfriend and no girlfriend either,” and “My main story is about a trans woman fighting zombies.”  But I didn’t.  I held back.  I was scared to reveal too much.  I’m trying to not hide parts of myself anymore but it’s hard.

A week ago while we were clearing off a hanger rack, she asked how old I am.  I almost always ask the asker to guess.  It’s an easy ego boost for me since they usually say in the twenties.  When she asked I just said I was 35.  I felt good to just own my age like that.  I hope I can own more parts of myself as fully.

After I told her, she said she thought I was in my twenties, so I still got my little ego boost.

Author update

So I have been feeling depressed lately.  It’s been interfering with my ability to write so I took the last week off from posting new stories/poems.  Because Patrons get new stories a week early my week off will happen on my site next week.  The next chapter of Lisa’s Story will be posted Monday but there will be no stories on Wednesday and Friday.

I’m still kinda depressed but the week off has helped. Regular posting will resume the following week.

Quick thoughts on Roadhouse

So I just watched Roadhouse for the first time(? I might have seen part of the beginning several years ago).  I thought I had seen it before but as I got further and further into the movie I realized no I had not.

The rich guy extorting and controlling the town was not a plot I expected but it unfolded in an enjoyable manner.

The fist fights are almost painfully slow by modern standards with clearly telegraphed punches and kicks.  They are easy to watch since the camera isn’t constantly shaking or cutting to a new angle every second.

There is plenty of nude women as one would expect from a movie of this era.  Swayze also has his share of shirtless scenes and butt shots as well.

Overall I’d say it’s worth watching at least once for 80’s and Swayze nostalgia.

 

Gillian on Pokemon Go

Back when Pokemon Go was announced I thought I might give it a try.  I didn’t think it was going to be that big of a deal.  I figured I might get my roommate to play for a little while and maybe meet a few other players.  In the past few months I’ve barely heard anything about it’s upcoming launch.  I didn’t even hear about the beta test.

2016-07-10 07.37.49Then a couple of days ago someone posted a screenshot of the game.  Then my roommate came home a level two trainer.  Then I found the Facebook group for my city with just over two hundred members (there’s probably a couple times that many in the city).  Then a girl I work with walked into the break room and caught a Zubat before our shifts.

You obviously don’t need me to tell you game has exploded and I love it.  Well, I love the game but I hate the scorching Texas heat.  I’ve only gotten to level six because of app glitches.  I lose the ability to connect reliably to the servers in the afternoons.  It might partially by my phone because my roommate’s Iphone doesn’t have the same problems.

I especially love how it’s created a common activity for people to bond over in real life.

When I got off work tonight, I held a mini Pokemon Go seminar for a couple of the girls in parking lot.

Then later, I went to pass by the three pokestops, all located at churches, near my apartment to get more items.  As I got close to the first one, I noticed someone had put a lure on it to attract more pokemon.  I caught a bulbasaur as I walked up to it.  I said “Hi.” to the two 18-25 ish guys next to the parked pick-up.  One of them noticed I had my phone out and called out, a little uncertain, “Hey, are you playing a game?”  I smiled, flashed him my phone which was still on the pokestop and said, “Yep, Pokemon Go.”  They told me I could stay and take advantage of the lure but I wanted to hit the other pokestops first.

On the way back they were still there, along with another car full of Pokemon Go players, one of whom called out, “Hey Pokemon girl.”  I stopped and chatted with them about the pokemon in the immediate area (mostly Dodou and some others but mostly Dodou).

On a side note: I find it interesting that there are places where you find a lot of one kind of pokemon.  Our mall, for instance, is full of Zubats.

I really hope the server issues get fixed so my walk to work can at least count toward hatching eggs.  I missed out on a little more than a kilometer today.

LGBT Movie Night: “Do I Sound Gay?”

I went to a LGBT movie night hosted by the local Unitarian Universalist church.  Quite a few of the regular members are LGBT so it’s a pretty accepting church.  I went for a while but I’m not one for getting up early on my days off when I have Sundays off but I’m still friends with a lot of them and show up to events.

We watched “Do I Sound Gay?” which is about a gay man investigating why some gay men have what most people identify as a gay sounding voice.  Also, throughout the movie he is talking to speech therapists to try to change his voice to sound less “gay”.  I kind of didn’t like how the movie was framed around him not wanting to sound “gay”.  I wish it had just been about what sounding “gay” was and how gay men related to it, instead of framing it as a bad thing from the start.  Besides that it was an entertaining film.

As a trans woman I have a complex relationship with my own voice.  I’ve gone from not caring to hating it to accepting it.  I still have days when I don’t like my voice but I accept that it’s what I sound like.  I’m lucky to not have a super deep voice but I do get sired on the phone.  It’s too much to really unpack in this post.

I would love to see a film called “Do I Sound Like a Woman?” about trans women and how we relate to our own voices.  Not from the point of view of someone trying to change their voice though.  Just interviews or round table discussions about how we have or haven’t changed our voices.