I didn't get to see this movie in the cinema unfortunately but the second it became available on streaming services, I set aside an evening and watched it with my girlfriend.
This was a couple of weeks ago. I watched the movie four times at this point and I really love it.
The Honest Trailer is great and just makes me want to watch it again.
I have to say that up until now I wasn't particularly looking forward to new Star Trek movie. Even though I loved the previous two films, the first trailer for this next chapter of the Star Trek saga looked too much like The Fast and the Furious and not enough like Star Trek.
I realise that the new movies are more heavily focussed on action and entertainment—and I'm all for that—but it'd be sad to see the legacy of what made Star Trek such an amazing universe be ignored to create another action flick.
This second trailer gives me hope because we see a few glimpses of the character development the movie might bring with it, some manner of violent commentary about the Federation's expansion, and a plot that appears less straight-forward than the first trailer made it seem.
Take a look for yourself.
This is a great review of the Fujifilm X-Pro2. It's especially good for people who want to know what's with the fuss about Fujifilm cameras.
I've been shooting with Fujifilm cameras for two over two years now and it's still interesting to hear from people passionate about photography, discover Fujifilm cameras for the first time, getting used to the "retro" way of adjusting the core settings, being subjected to the way Fujifilm cameras and lenses render colours and light, and realising that the JPEGs that come out of the cameras pretty damn good.
Head over to her website to read the written review and check out the sample photos she posted.
Found on: Tomen.de
It's been a few weeks now and I'm still excited about this discovery. For anyone interested, here's a video explaining the phenomenon and the way it was detected:
And here's the obligatory XKCD comic about it:
Really great video of Adele and James Corden doing carpool karaoke.
Two things:
I had an interesting experience on the weekend.
My girlfriend and I finally got around to watching Ant-Man together and we decided to give it a try in 3D.
Usually we're not fans of 3D, not even if it's as well made as with the Hobbit movies. There are several issues: we both wear spectacles and the 3D glasses they hand out in the cinema never fit well, and it costs an arm and a leg for something that you don't really need.
I watched the first Hobbit movie in both in 2D and 3D. While 3D was a nice gimmick, it didn't make me like the movie more. That's pretty much how I felt about any other movie shown in 3D.
Until watching the 3D version of Ant-Man… which didn't suck.
Maybe it was because we had the choice to watch it in 2D (unlike in the cinema, where movies are often only shown in 3D for the first few weeks),
maybe it was because the glasses LG has are actually more comfortable,
maybe it was the fact that we were sitting in a space controlled by us without a bunch of strangers.
It was an enjoyable experience and we'll be attempting to confirm our hypothesis that 3D movies are best watched at home over the next few months.
I've been looking for a fitness tracker for a while now. Ever since we got our dog back in August 2015 I've been seeing improvements to my fitness, because—DUH!—the little beast has to be taken for walks every day.
I wanted to build on these small improvements and decided to begin running more, again, go to the gym more, and try out high-intensity bodyweight training.
In pursuing these activities, I quickly realised that the iPhone as my tool of choice for tracking steps, storeys climbed, heart rate, and calories burned would not be sufficient. One might think that the Apple Watch would've been a natural fit for me—seeing as I'm pretty comfortable in Apple's ecosystem—but I saw too many things wrong with it to be a good fitness tracker and watch replacement:
The fitness tracker I would buy had to be better than the Apple Watch in all those areas and make it easy for me to use the data outside of the manufacturer's ecosystem (which immediately ruled out products from FitBit who think it's ok to lock a user into a platform with the user's own data).
I ended up with the Garmin vivosmart HR, a favourite of Ars Technica UK and The Wirecutter and from the looks of it the current best-of-breed fitness tracker on the market. It ticked all the boxes for me, with a waterproof body specified for swimming, 5-day battery life, and continous heart rate tracking. Garmin's platform, albeit not too pretty, also allows for downloading of all running data and it integrates with Apple Health on my iPhone.
It should've been the perfect device for me but intensively using it for a week taught me a few things about myself and my actual needs in a fitness tracking device which, in turn, brought the Apple Watch back into the equation.
Waterproofing
I don't go swimming with it (I hate swimming), so as long as it can withstand my sweat and rain (I love running in the rain), that's enough for me.
Continous heart rate tracking
This sounds like a useful feature and I'm sure it has its merits but continuous doesn't actually mean continous for the Garmin (or any other product as I found out later) as it only takes snapshots of your heart rate in regular intervals and activates continous tracking only when it detects significant changes for a certain period of time. That's still quite useful, especially when you're into sleep tracking but I'm not, which brings me to…
Battery life
I tried wearing the vivosmart HR during the night but found it too uncomfortable. There's a hump on the underside of the device that houses the optical heart rate sensor and—at least for me—it became a slight nuissance when sleeping. So, just like with my wrist watches, I took it off at night. And if I take it off at night, I might as well put it on a charger.
Then there's the fact that wearing a fitness tracker and a wrist watch at the same time felt stupid. With the exception of a short period in my life, I've always worn a mechanical or automatic wrist watch and it became apparent that the three issues that ascribed to the Apple Watch were actually non-issues.
Fast forward a few weeks and my beloved Traser P6508 Code Blue met its untimely and watery demise during a business trip. It was my favourite watch by a long shot because it was the perfect, lightweight no-frills watch that was easy to read in any light condition.
I'll definitely get another Traser watch at some point and I own another really good wrist watch but for now I'll stick with the Apple Watch and see if it's as good a fit as I expect it to be.
This experience and my first few days with the Apple Watch have made me appreciate the compromises Apple has made with the watch in terms of waterproofing, battery life, feature set, and build quality. They've built a smart watch that will satify 90% of all potential user once economies of scale and experience curve effects bring the price down a bit for the lower end models.
Neil deGrasse Tyson gives us the definitive answer:
I can't say I disagree with him.
Brian Jones, a scientist whose photography work I admire, has written an article about his recent experiences using Leica cameras again.
It's a good read that paints a picture of a brand that is letting their well-earned reputation as one of the top manufacturers for photographic tools slip away due to overconfidence and scant regard for their customers.
This is best examplified by the following passage:
The problem is, when it came time for the Monochrom to be serviced, I’ve not been able to get it back within anything close to a reasonable amount of time. The Leica Monochrom camera has been undergoing service with Leica for literally six months now. Say that with me… six months… SIX MONTHS! Imagine you acquired or invested a substantial amount of money in a product that was supposed to return either 1) satisfaction from use or 2) return on investment as a tool by not only paying for itself, but also earning you income.
As someone who has developed a serious interest in photography over the last two years, Leica cameras and optics fascinate me. The reputation the brand has and the undeniably great optics that are out there, really have me itching to buy a one of their camera and a lens or two.
Unfortunately reports like this—and I've been told similar things by other photographers—make me doubt that I will ever purchase a rangefinder camera of theirs.
I like Chucks. I used to love them but over the past two years I got fed-up with the quality and pricing of these shoes.
To my knowledge I haven't changed anything about the way I wear them, I didn't gain weight, and I still rarely wear the same pair of shoes two days in a row; but whereas before I knew that a pair of Chucks would last me about 1.5 years, I've had pairs (low top and high top) that only held up a mere six months before they fell apart.
Add to that the fact that a pair of high top Chucks sells for a ridiculous € 75.– in German retail stores (I wrote about this in detail two years ago) while genuine high tops can be had for ~ € 16.– in Beijing (as I was able to see first-hand during a recent trip to China).
These experiences have changed my attitude towards the brand and the product for the worse and caused me to actively look for more durable, comfortable, stylish, and less overpriced alternatives (… to add to my evoked set). There are a couple of sneaker companies out there that make really nice, high-quality sneakers and shoes (Pointer, Boxfresh, Nike, etc.) and over the past two years, I've bought shoes from all of them.
About a week ago Converse/Nike introduced the first major update to this product line in nearly a century, resulting in the Converse Chuck Taylor All Star II. I'm not a sneaker fan, so the initial news/hype about the new version completely passed me by and I only got wind of it when I walked past a sneaker shop in Bonn.
A quick trip to the Converse website revealed the key features: a removable, well-cushioned Lunarlon sockliner (pretty comfortable Nike technology, if you ask me), a padded non-slip tongue that is held in place by two elastic bands, perforated micro suede lining, and Tencel® canvas on the outside, which, from experience, is more durable than cotton and regulates moisture more effectively.
I'm having trouble remembering if there was every time when where there wasn't at least one pair of Chucks in my shoe rack. I always liked that you can combine them with pretty much anything, that they don't look to extravagant and they're timeless shoes at this point. For this reason I decided to give the new version a chance.
My initial impressions after wearing them in a shop in Trier are that the Lunarlon sockliner has the potential to bea lot more comfortable than the footbed of the old version, the canvas feels nice, and the overall workmanship seems to have seen significant improvements, too.
While I'm not sold on the perforated suede and the padded tongue and ankles, the shoes felt so good on my feet that I found myself standing outside the shop 15 minutes later with a box containing vivid blue high top Chucks in my hands:
Time and wear will tell whether the overall quality and durability have been improved enough during the redesign, so I'll have an easier time convincing myself that paying € 80.– for a pair of Chucks isn't completely bonkers. Maybe I will even start keeping more than one pair in my shoe rack once again.