Liked it, will see it again and buy it. On track. Not as fresh as 7 or Rogue, but these are the middle innings.
A few missteps and this could have been a dud. I blame Disney for everything out of band for Star Wars.
I’ll get this out of the way now: Whoever wrote the “towel” line needs to go stand in a corner until they are very, very sorry for what they did. That line was the skunk at the garden party. That’s a Poe line, not a Rey line.
OK - stop casting characters qua retail items in movies. In the beginning, there were Wookiees. I like Wookiees. But the Wookiees begat Ewoks. And the Ewoks begat Gungans. And the Gungans begat Porgs. They're going to sell a lot of Porgs. I get it, but *sigh*
Characters: *Rey is setting up to be a fine parallel to Luke. I was hoping she was going to be another Solo - still could be. She needs her mentor like Luke had Yoda. Hope Luke comes back, but not holding my breath. Her motivation is still a bit uneven, likely a result of wanting to keep some suspense about her background. *Poe is the new Han, he's slotted right in where he needs to be, character is developing well. Needs to do a bit more swashbuckling having had to stand down from Holdo and having all his ships squished and the cave sequence. *Luke is right what he needs to be. I know there is an interview where he says this is “not my Luke” - but it had to happen and he did it with grace and bravery and smarts. *Ben/Kylo is riveting. This is going to be a great character arc if they keep it up. Pity he wasn’t Anakin in 2 and 3, but glad he’s here. *DJ - loved it. So hang me.
Plot: Say what you want about 1 2 3, but Lucas knows how to tell a story. The four-parallel-story closing act in 1 was so well done you barely noticed it until it was well underway or finished. I need to go back and look at it, but I believe what made it successful is that each had a unique tone and design so that you could follow the shifting shots. Johnson tried it here, and I think it just made it confusing, largely because the tones were not distinct enough. The ships, the caves, etc. in the last half hour kind of muddled together. In general I think they went for visual complexity at the expense of story progress - see “editing” below. The mirror sequence is a good original thing that went nowhere. There is enough meat here for an episode 6.5 with Luke and Ben/Kylo, but I won’t hold my breath. With Snoke gone, Kylo/Ben in 9 needs to be the baddest baddie since his grampy.
Questions: *I lost count of how many Luke lightsabers there were, working and busted. It was midnight. *Rose can fly stuff? *Did Finn feel the force or did he just wake up?
Editing: This was my biggest issue. I'd make a director's cut a half hour shorter. There was a bunch of exposition that was just too much. It's hard to show the continuing effect of a slow speed chase, and they did too much of it. The find-the-codebreaker sequence would have been half as long in the original trilogy, and had a lot of fluff - save the animals, etc. Likely an better / shorter / less preachy way to set up the kids at the end. Who cares if it’s salt on the surface? The fishwives and the cow-thing on the exile island? Ennhhhh. Tighten it up. More of this: Holdo’s jump-attack is the most magnificent visual of the movies so far. The rest of the visuals look positively byzantine in comparison. I think Abrams would have made a tighter movie, but hey.
Flotsam: So let me get this straight - we have two live actors whose characters are dead, and one dead actor whose character is alive?
Gaming? 14 year old? Get a console - any console - and get them used to playing on the console and working on the laptop. Blur that line and near-enough-to-zero work will get done on the (desktop | laptop | tablet | phone) and you'll be shoveling against the tide to get it back.
7.5 or 9 - you'll wake at the time your body is ready to. I have long suspected that 8.25 was the arithmetic mean of reported sleep spans and since the public hates decimal points, it was short-handed to 8, which is exactly when you should not be waking.
Great reliability. I ended up with a Surface 3 at home... Windows 10 on Surface is a great thing, but the unit? It's now been deader than Elvis twice and I'm pretty sure it will be replaced with an iPad.
decades ago. Excimer, I believe. Took out the middle third of a Titan II that was standing on a launch pad. Out. As in disappeared and the top third fell onto the bottom third. Pretty impressive even back then.
As it was explained to me, Arne Nashbar made a great decision by expanding his bicycle mail order warehouse mere feet from a UPS facility. For as long as that was true he revolutionized buying bike parts. As it was explained to me, Amazon now has a live bidding system for shipping as your order is processed. Surepost seems to low bid/ win out a lot. That means UPS gets it as far as your local USPS PO, where it languishes because their schedules don't sync. Amazon waiting until a first-leg truck is full enough to roll doesn't help either.
Professionally? One of my assignments was running a edu lab with 16 Macs and 4 PCs. It took us the same amount to time to care for the 4 PCs as for the 16 Macs. Reason enough for me. YMMV.
Personally? I go through a MacBook (minus the value of the previous one sold or parted-out) for about $900 every five years. In that same time, my wife goes through three $300 Windows laptops. Same net cost.
I can move between a MacBook, iPad and iPhone seamlessly with everything in sync as soon as each hits the network.
Alan Kay said the goal is to make technology work very well, then make it disappear. I'd mode that to at least blend into the surroundings, with good industrial design, durable materials and as much intuitive operation as you can muster reasonably.
Slashdot Mirror
Phone is a phone and GPS and health tracker. No browser, no news, no mail.
No smartwatch.
Main personal device is a tablet. Browser, newsreader and social media app. eMail. eBooks.
"Computer" for work and last resort for personal stuff.
Notepad, reminders, calendar sync across all.
Liked it, will see it again and buy it. On track. Not as fresh as 7 or Rogue, but these are the middle innings.
A few missteps and this could have been a dud. I blame Disney for everything out of band for Star Wars.
I’ll get this out of the way now: Whoever wrote the “towel” line needs to go stand in a corner until they are very, very sorry for what they did. That line was the skunk at the garden party. That’s a Poe line, not a Rey line.
OK - stop casting characters qua retail items in movies. In the beginning, there were Wookiees. I like Wookiees. But the Wookiees begat Ewoks. And the Ewoks begat Gungans. And the Gungans begat Porgs. They're going to sell a lot of Porgs. I get it, but *sigh*
Characters: *Rey is setting up to be a fine parallel to Luke. I was hoping she was going to be another Solo - still could be. She needs her mentor like Luke had Yoda. Hope Luke comes back, but not holding my breath. Her motivation is still a bit uneven, likely a result of wanting to keep some suspense about her background. *Poe is the new Han, he's slotted right in where he needs to be, character is developing well. Needs to do a bit more swashbuckling having had to stand down from Holdo and having all his ships squished and the cave sequence. *Luke is right what he needs to be. I know there is an interview where he says this is “not my Luke” - but it had to happen and he did it with grace and bravery and smarts. *Ben/Kylo is riveting. This is going to be a great character arc if they keep it up. Pity he wasn’t Anakin in 2 and 3, but glad he’s here. *DJ - loved it. So hang me.
Plot: Say what you want about 1 2 3, but Lucas knows how to tell a story. The four-parallel-story closing act in 1 was so well done you barely noticed it until it was well underway or finished. I need to go back and look at it, but I believe what made it successful is that each had a unique tone and design so that you could follow the shifting shots. Johnson tried it here, and I think it just made it confusing, largely because the tones were not distinct enough. The ships, the caves, etc. in the last half hour kind of muddled together. In general I think they went for visual complexity at the expense of story progress - see “editing” below. The mirror sequence is a good original thing that went nowhere. There is enough meat here for an episode 6.5 with Luke and Ben/Kylo, but I won’t hold my breath. With Snoke gone, Kylo/Ben in 9 needs to be the baddest baddie since his grampy.
Questions: *I lost count of how many Luke lightsabers there were, working and busted. It was midnight. *Rose can fly stuff? *Did Finn feel the force or did he just wake up?
Editing: This was my biggest issue. I'd make a director's cut a half hour shorter. There was a bunch of exposition that was just too much. It's hard to show the continuing effect of a slow speed chase, and they did too much of it. The find-the-codebreaker sequence would have been half as long in the original trilogy, and had a lot of fluff - save the animals, etc. Likely an better / shorter / less preachy way to set up the kids at the end. Who cares if it’s salt on the surface? The fishwives and the cow-thing on the exile island? Ennhhhh. Tighten it up. More of this: Holdo’s jump-attack is the most magnificent visual of the movies so far. The rest of the visuals look positively byzantine in comparison. I think Abrams would have made a tighter movie, but hey.
Flotsam: So let me get this straight - we have two live actors whose characters are dead, and one dead actor whose character is alive?
They have this much time on their hands?
Gaming? 14 year old? Get a console - any console - and get them used to playing on the console and working on the laptop. Blur that line and near-enough-to-zero work will get done on the (desktop | laptop | tablet | phone) and you'll be shoveling against the tide to get it back.
Is that you?
Oh, right: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
but these puppies are my go to wintel machines. You can pound nails with them, they keep up with features, and hit a sweet spot.
like maybe Isla Nublar?
Kinda catchy.
7.5 or 9 - you'll wake at the time your body is ready to. I have long suspected that 8.25 was the arithmetic mean of reported sleep spans and since the public hates decimal points, it was short-handed to 8, which is exactly when you should not be waking.
rocket scientist edition.
MS has purchased / absorbed a competing / NIH product an later crippled / killed it? Hoping this does not become a trend.
Charts in mobile is there.
The new web based chart editor is nice.
Great reliability. I ended up with a Surface 3 at home... Windows 10 on Surface is a great thing, but the unit? It's now been deader than Elvis twice and I'm pretty sure it will be replaced with an iPad.
The Eisenhower Interstate Highway System comes to mind for one...
decades ago. Excimer, I believe. Took out the middle third of a Titan II that was standing on a launch pad. Out. As in disappeared and the top third fell onto the bottom third. Pretty impressive even back then.
as long as the money is used to make cycling infrastructure better and safer.
but I get what the story means.
As it was explained to me, Arne Nashbar made a great decision by expanding his bicycle mail order warehouse mere feet from a UPS facility. For as long as that was true he revolutionized buying bike parts. As it was explained to me, Amazon now has a live bidding system for shipping as your order is processed. Surepost seems to low bid/ win out a lot. That means UPS gets it as far as your local USPS PO, where it languishes because their schedules don't sync. Amazon waiting until a first-leg truck is full enough to roll doesn't help either.
Morocco is a pretty happening place.
Is the beginning of an infinite sequence.
Kevin Costner and Jeanne Tripplehorn, on the double!
Professionally? One of my assignments was running a edu lab with 16 Macs and 4 PCs. It took us the same amount to time to care for the 4 PCs as for the 16 Macs. Reason enough for me. YMMV. Personally? I go through a MacBook (minus the value of the previous one sold or parted-out) for about $900 every five years. In that same time, my wife goes through three $300 Windows laptops. Same net cost. I can move between a MacBook, iPad and iPhone seamlessly with everything in sync as soon as each hits the network. Alan Kay said the goal is to make technology work very well, then make it disappear. I'd mode that to at least blend into the surroundings, with good industrial design, durable materials and as much intuitive operation as you can muster reasonably.
but the more I think about it, I believe you're closer.