Weeknotes #169

We finally went to the cinema! Or at least we went to the place where the nearest cinema is. In our not-very-planned-but-just-kind-of-happening easing back into normal life, we took the kids to the Oz Studio City T-Joy Cinemas (which is literally next door to the Toei Studios animation and film lot). There weren’t any movies playing that we want to see but the Super Mario film comes out in two weeks and I’m excited about taking the kids to see that (although Rowan will be too young and John might find it too scary so we might unfortunately end up having to take Emma and John separately in case a hasty exit becomes necessary).

We did go into the games arcade that’s also on-site and Emma and John played their first coin-operated arcade game, the arcade version of Luigi’s Mansion (Super Mario Wiki). Of course they got scared and we had to leave before their characters’ respective lives had run out.

I signed up for, and then promptly forgot to cancel my subscription to, Hipstamatic, the ‘retro’ photography social network from the makers of the eponymous app that rose to fame briefly in the late 2000s before being completely and utterly eclipsed by Instagram. I posted a couple of photos before deciding I disagreed with too many of the design choices. The two that stuck in my craw the most were automatic deletion of all posts after 30 days and the ‘top’ of the feed being the camera mode. I respect those decisions and can even agree they might be right as defaults but I want to be ale to customise them to my liking.

I might have stuck around for longer if the development team didn’t seem so lackadaisical. There were a number of fairly obvious changes that should have been made (the topmost being the ability to set a different default ‘action’) and instead nothing seemed to be happening even as a wave of momentum brought new people onto the platform. In retrospect, it isn’t a surprise these guys didn’t build Instagram.

My whinging about Hipstamatic prompted Martin to challenge me (well, not exactly) to try out Glass. I did and then, somewhat surprisingly, have decided to stick with it. Glass is serious to the point of pretentious but despite (or because of?) that its values are closer to mine and I find myself looking forward to opening the app and seeing what people have posted. Its biggest strength is also its biggest weakness: you have to pay to use it. That means everyone using it is pretty serious too but makes it a tough sell to friends. If you’re already a user (or if for some reason this paragraph inspires you to sign up), you can follow my account.

Speaking of photography, I neglected to mention in last week’s update that we took the kids to a photo studio for their traditional shichi-go-san photos (Wikipedia). We really should be doing it around mid-November but John will be 6 by that point and I assume it’ll be a lot more congested from a booking perspective. We haven’t downloaded the photos yet but hopefully I’ll be able to do that some time this week.

Dark Sky’s API was shut off and that broke Reporter’s ability to record the current weather. Does anyone use this app but me?

Cat Power is one of those artists I know almost nothing about. I listened to a lot of ‘He War’ (Apple Music) in 2003 but for some reason never delved more into her work. I’m listening to You are Free, the album the song is from as I write this, and it feels both sentimental and not. The music has a distance, like I’m listening to someone else’s memories.