Pinterest: First Impressions

With all the buzz around Pinterest, I wanted to check it out and see why some people are saying Pinterset is going to stick around. Here are my first impressions of the latest site to break into the top ten social networks.

Pinterest is still in open-beta, so I asked for an invite to join. Three days later, I received a link in my email. At the moment, you need a Twitter or Facebook account in order to join Pinterest. I understand this helps reduce spam accounts and makes finding your friends easier. That's all well and good, but I'd rather have an account that stands on its own and doesn't depend on another site.

After registering, a page with pins (essentially images) loads and you click on what interests you. Pinterest uses your choices to generate people for you to follow. I like that Pinterest embraces new users by connecting them to people on the site, but I wish the suggestions for people to follow stayed suggestions. Pinterest automatically subscribed me to a dozen people based on my few clicks. I would rather see the suggestions and then choose if I want to subscribe to people. One image that I liked doesn't necessarily mean I will like the rest of the content that person posts. I ended up going through each profile of the people Pinterest gave me to follow and unfollowed them. Then I browsed pins by category and found people that I actually wanted to subscribe to.

I've seen taste preferences done better on Etsy. When you join Etsy, the site asks you to choose items that you like from a random selection on the page. Based on your choices, Etsy will suggest other items you might like. Suggested content based on previously-chosen content. Pinterest, though, suggests people to follow based on your content choices. Pinterest's suggestions can't match your preferences as well as Etsy's can.

On the positive side, I've seen more activity on the content I posted compared to a new account on other social networks. But that's not enough to make me check in often. It might be because I'm new and still poking around, but I've been going on Pinterest about once a day. Compare that to Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr, where I check in multiple times each day. Pinterset doesn't have that much of my attention yet, but the coming months might change that.

If you'd like to see what I've done on Pinterest so far, here's a link to my profile.

Sherlock: Post Reichenbach Fall, Take 2

I re-watched The Reichenbach Fall again today. Moriarty said something to Sherlock that stuck out to me:

"That's your weakness. You always expect things to be clever."

What if that was a hint to us? Maybe the way Sherlock faked his death is simple and clear-cut. Clever enough to fool the snipers, but not complicated. No drugs. No muscle relaxants. No editing tricks.

After my previous post, Robinson (whoever you are), commented that Sherlock did jump off the roof, but into a padded laundry truck. I didn't notice the truck the first time because I was watching John, but the truck drives away from the body on the ground...presumably, the double's body. The double was already dead and bloodied to look like he fell from the roof, when really he fell from the truck. Molly is going to examine the corpse, so she can lie about the body's actual time of death. It fits.

Sherlock: Post Reichenbach Fall

It's been only a few hours since I've seen the Sherlock finale, but here's the theory I've pieced together. It isn't solid, but I think it's plausible. Spoilers after the cut.

Non-Spoilery Thoughts on The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

I finished reading The Fault in Our Stars tonight, sooner than I thought, because of one quality John’s books all have. I want to keep listening to his characters.

His writing is transparent and simple. He captures teenagers’ conversations and interactions believably and yet while I’m reading, I have to stop and stare at the page every now and then because suddenly there’s a sentence that says “I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once.” Sentences like those are beautiful, stand out against the rest of the narrative, and yet they feel completely natural. Totally organic to the story.

I’ve read John’s previous novels and while each deals with different themes, all of them dig deeper to show something about humanity. The Fault in Our Stars is no different.

Half of one of the bookshelves in my room is dedicated to the Books You Read In High School (Or Should Have Anyway). I’ve got The Great Gatsby up there. Catch-22 and Cather in the Rye. Some Vonnegut, some Hemingway. John’s novels are there too because they belong with thoughtful literature.

Done with Kill Arthur plots

Or, The Futility of Lethally Endangering the Protagonist in his Origin Story

*Spoilers for season 4 of Merlin*

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Besides not having a magic reveal, my major disappointment in season 4 was the repetitive plot of someone trying to kill Arthur. We could have seen more diverse stories than the villain of the week with a plan to kill the King.

After one or two episodes where Arthur might have died, it’s silly to keep writing that sort of plot. The audience knows that Arthur can’t die because he hasn’t become the Once and Future King yet. Arthur, Merlin, and (probably) Gwen are safe in every episode.

We know they can’t die, so we know that they’ll make it through any trouble that comes up. It’s interesting to see the characters react to fatal situations, but the threat of danger does nothing for the audience. After we’ve seen what characters do when their friends are hurt, we’re done with that story and that development. There isn’t any more to cover there.

This is the difficulty in origin stories: you can’t do any permanent damage to the protagonist. You have to find a way to develop characters without putting them in danger all the time.

Merlin: The Sword in the Stone Review

I like Merlin, but I also forgive poor characterization, plot holes, and general stupidity when it happens. The acting and the beautiful cinematography usually make up for it. Unfortunately, I was doing a lot of forgiving for the finale.

Spoilers after the cut.

Fixing the Future

I watched Back to the Future parts 1 and 2 earlier this week (for the thirty-fifth time, probably), and this is the first time I realized the problem with the part that takes place in 2015.

Marty can’t make changes in the future that will stay permanent and set, not if his timeline (and by extension, his family’s) is in flux.

There are two basic theories of time travel. One, everything is in flux all the time, so you can make changes anywhere on the timeline that will affect other parts of the timeline. Two, everything is fixed so no matter when you are and what you do, you cannot change what is supposed to happen.

The Back to the Future trilogy seems to follow the first theory, except for when Marty and Doc Brown go to 2015.

Marty poses as his son to save him from getting caught up in gang activity and going to jail. But just because Marty saved his son in one instance, that doesn’t mean his future is all right in every instance.

I understand when Marty meets his teenage parents in 1955 and his interaction with them changes who they are in 1985. The past affects the present. Makes sense.

But 1985 Marty can’t go to the future and make permanent changes. When Marty goes to 2015, he’s going to the future that results from the moment he left in 1985. The choices that he makes in his life will always be tweaking his future. If he chose to go to 2015 from a different point in his life, he would be going to a different 2015. So saving his son once doesn’t save him in every possible future.

If Doc Brown wanted to help Marty and his family avoid bad things in 2015 (one possible 2015), all he had to do was tell Marty what happens and when. Then Marty could take the appropriate action when the time came, instead of jumping to the future to make changes. And maybe all along, with Marty knowing what could happen to his son in 2015, he’s making changes to his life that bypass the problem Doc Brown saw in the first place.

That’s the flaw in Back to the Future’s plot: characters from the present make changes in the future that are supposed to take hold.

I was thinking about another character who interferes with his own timeline: John Connor in The Terminator. But his situation is different. Future John sends people and information back in time to help his younger self. Future John is making changes in the past, but we see the story from the younger John’s perspective. Even so, there’s a paradox here: if Future John is changing his past, he is changing himself. All the changes he makes to younger John’s life should result in a different life for and a different John in the future. If that’s true, then how was there the Future John who made those changes in the first place? The other option is, John’s timeline is fixed and The Terminator follows theory 2. But then Future John would realize that no matter what he changed in the past, the same events happened and he ends up in the same position. It would be pointless for him to keep interfering with his past if he knows he can’t make a difference. Paradoxes, time loops, alternate universes. These are themes in most of the stories I enjoy.

I’ve been watching a lot things that deal with time travel and alternate universes (or the things I’ve watched have had this common thread running through), and I find myself using theories from one show to explain events in another show.

Kyle Reese and John Connor’s birth never made sense to me until I watched “Blink,” an episode of Doctor Who where the Doctor explains that time is not a straight line but rather “more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly... time-y wimey... stuff.”

Peter Bishop (Fringe) linked two universe to avoid destroying both, but in the process, he deleted himself from existence. Or, nearly. But where was he in between his non-existence and his return? The Doctor rebooted the universe and now Amy has parents when she didn’t have them before. Or did she and she doesn’t remember? I’m still working those out, but I find myself thinking of all these characters and ideas together. I sort out which theory explains which situation.

But Amy has an interesting situation. Mad, Impossible Pond. When we first met her she was a young girl who lived in a big house with no parents and an aunt that was away. But she doesn’t know what happened to her parents--she just never had them. Did they abandon her? Were they erased from existence? Where did Amy come from? She’s been in two seasons of Doctor Who, and we still don’t know. Then, more confusion, the Doctor rebooted the universe, and now Amy has parents. Where did they come from? Or did they come back? Amy tells the Doctor she’s scared/worried/frustrated/concerned because she remembers both versions: her life when she didn’t have parents and her life when she does. Both feel true to her. Amy gains a set of parents, and that makes no sense to me even though it shouldn’t matter. Rebooting the universe has nothing to do with timelines. The Doctor didn’t change anything about Amy’s past or future. He pushed the universe’s reset button and some things came out differently. But because we’re watching the episodes sequentially, I feel like Amy’s parents came out of nowhere because we knew her without parents first. But that’s not the right way of thinking about it. New universe, so things can be different. There doesn’t have to be any continuity or progression.

But there’s still the question of existence and non-existence. Either Amy didn’t exist and then she did (and still does) or her parents did exist but then didn’t (and now do). And the Doctor knows Amy is impossible. He knows her life doesn’t make sense and that’s why he wanted to travel with her. But I wonder, is he trying to figure out why Amy doesn’t make sense? Or is he content with the nonsense (and should we be too)?