I learned today that Flickr limits its display of its users' photostreams to 200 pictures. I wasn't aware of this when I created my Flickr account, and I'm disappointed that in order for all of my pictures to be displayed, I would have to upgrade (pay for) Flickr's pro version. Well, that's not going to happen.
Consequently, after a bit of poking around different free picture services, I decided to go with Google's Picasa service. It has a limit as well, but one gigabyte is plenty for my purposes (it took me about a year to upload 180 pictures to Flickr).
Thanks to a small freeware application, Migratr, I was able to quickly export my pics from Flickr and import into Picasa. Migratr can be downloaded here.
So, although Flickr is likely more popular at the moment, Google wins out in the end, as it does so many times.
Monday, May 25, 2009
Star Trek 2009
This isn't a review so much as a couple of thoughts I have after seeing Star Trek. Overall, the film was borderline okay/good. The actors did a good job of portraying the original cast. Chris Pine played more to William Shatner than to making his own character of Captain Kirk, and I'm glad he did. Karl Urban did the same for Dr. McCoy, and he did a good job as well. The last thing we need is a reinterpretation of the characters that we know so well.
The special effects were also well done. No obvious signs of CGI like in the Star Wars prequels, and nothing beyond belief. Just simple effects that did not overpower the film.
The actors and the effects carried the movie, however. The time-travel story line didn't work very well. Having Kirk take directions from future-Spock took away from the inventiveness we expect from Kirk. And having Scottie learn his own equation for beam-transport-while-moving knocked Scottie down a notch. Then there was no discussion of the existence of the alternate timeline, where the future Spock shouldn't exist and Kirk's father should be alive. In addition, the meeting of the present- and future-Spocks was uncomfortable and unforgivably broke the rule against meeting oneself in a time-travel scenario, much like Life on Mars did.
It was neat for a non-Trekkie like me, though, to see how the principal characters met each other, and perhaps some of my criticisms can be explained away by inside-stories from the original series and movies that I am unaware of. I'm glad I saw it, but that will probably be the only time until it shows up on TNT some Saturday afternoon.
The special effects were also well done. No obvious signs of CGI like in the Star Wars prequels, and nothing beyond belief. Just simple effects that did not overpower the film.
The actors and the effects carried the movie, however. The time-travel story line didn't work very well. Having Kirk take directions from future-Spock took away from the inventiveness we expect from Kirk. And having Scottie learn his own equation for beam-transport-while-moving knocked Scottie down a notch. Then there was no discussion of the existence of the alternate timeline, where the future Spock shouldn't exist and Kirk's father should be alive. In addition, the meeting of the present- and future-Spocks was uncomfortable and unforgivably broke the rule against meeting oneself in a time-travel scenario, much like Life on Mars did.
It was neat for a non-Trekkie like me, though, to see how the principal characters met each other, and perhaps some of my criticisms can be explained away by inside-stories from the original series and movies that I am unaware of. I'm glad I saw it, but that will probably be the only time until it shows up on TNT some Saturday afternoon.
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