Preserving a Moment

Hey all, sorry AGAIN for the absence. My family and I are currently on vacation in South Korea. Today's topic comes from something that I've encountered a lot while on vacation. And that is people desperately trying to save a moment for later and losing it in the process. That probably makes no sense so as per usual, I'll do a random line break and start a new paragraph where I go into detail.

When experiencing things that one has never before, it is almost customary these days to take a picture. If one has never seen snow, it can be assumed that when that particular individual does see snow, they will take a selfie with the snow in the background or whatever. I myself am an avid photographer so I can appreciate and understand this. However, there are some instances where this "preserving" of a moment should not take priority over actually experiencing it. Yesterday, I went to a banquet and at the end of the meal, there was a traditional Korean dance performance. There were many people in the room so it was already quite hard to see everything that was going on. That's when I noticed that the reason I couldn't see anything was because around 40% of the attendees were standing on their chairs with their cameras raised over their head recording the performance. The filmers all arched their head back to the point where it looked painful just see that they were getting a nice shot. These people where so intently focused on their recording they didn't even blink an eye when the highlight of the performance happened because they didn't even notice. I mean, if you're going to have the option of watching the performance first hand or watching a shaky recording of it, why would you choose the latter? I see this happening way too often, soon enough you'll see people going to a concert with friends only to record it! I mean who does tha-- oh wait. At the same time however, if you can record something while not distracting yourself and others, go for it. I mean, why not? I'm never going to be 100% against or for something because it is a rarity for things in life to work that way. (just contradicted myself there by saying never). There's always a happy medium. My main problem is with people that are so worried about losing a moment that they focus so hard on preserving it that they lose it entirely. If you're not totally confused on what my advice is to you and where I stand on this matter, just take this for a summary:

Take each moment in life as it comes and if it is something truly special, you will remember it better than any picture or video can.  

Movie Thoughts - Guardians of the Galaxy

Hey all, I'm thinking of starting a new "series" ish thing. One of my personal interests is media. Whether it's tv, movies, or music, I love it all. Well, then again, it's pretty hard to find someone who isn't interested in either of the three. Anyways, I thought it would be fun if I talked about my thoughts on movies that I've watched recently. So if you would be interested in reading that kind of stuff, please comment below. Oh, and also comment whether you want the thoughts to include spoilers or not.

To start off this potential series, I am going to be giving you my thoughts on the new Marvel movie, Guardians of the Galaxy. I chose this movie because it is not plot driven at all so I can do a spoiler free-ish review while still talking about certain points in the movie. And that bring me to the first thing that I really enjoyed about this movie. The characters.

Guardians of the Galaxy does a fantastic job indulging the audience into all the characters and their respective backgrounds. Although Groot (big tree thing) doesn't really talk in the movie, you still learn his character and for some reason, find a connection with him. This is where I found Avengers fell apart a little. Aside from Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, I honestly was not interested in the rest of the gang and couldn't care less about them. I don't know if it's the goofy mood of the movie or something else, but you will truly care about these characters and be invested in their storylines. Without giving away too much, the five main characters all have their own identifiable personalities with quirks. Pretty much after watching the movie, I could write you a line from the movie and you could identify the speaker just by the content of the words. This is one you may know before watching the movie. "I am Groot" Wanna guess who says that one?



The next thing I want to discuss is the very unique approach to a superhero movie that we see in Guardians of the Galaxy. Unlike other sci-fi/fantasy superhero/fighting - esque movies that we see a lot today (Star Wars, Superman, Thor, Star Trek, Green Lantern), this movie takes itself as a enjoyable fun comedy that will make you laugh rather than feel too tense. Don't get me wrong, I love a thrilling and thought provoking action movie as much as anyone else (Dark Knight right? Whoop whoop) but aside from more modern day action movies such as Kick-Ass, Guardians of the Galaxy is the first movie I've watched where the sci-fi thing is taken as a joke. One of my favourite scenes is in the trailer where StarLord (AKA Peter Quill) is caught by this guy and he tries to sound cool by saying he is also known as STARLORD in which the other guy is unaware of the name. It probably isn't funny in words but click here to actually watch it (I already sent it to the right scene, I gotcho back homie). It was pretty refreshing to see a movie question the ridiculousness of some sci fi names (I'm looking at you Khan). All in all, Guardians of the Galaxy serves as a nice break from the oh so common dark movies that we see a lot of now.

Who?

Finally, I want to discuss the actual plot. I already said how the movie isn't plot driven. That pretty much means that the majority of the movie is the characters interacting with each other and developing their personalities rather than it consisting of this crazy journey (which does happen). I'm not saying that the entire movie takes place in one room or anything because there is a pretty big adventure across the galaxy but that isn't the main thing that stuck out to me in the movie. The first thing I said to my friends (who were watching it with me) after the lights turned on wasn't "Wow what a chase" but one of the jokes one of the characters said that was my favourite. I heard that there is a sequel planned already so I'm expecting that one to focus more on plot. All in all, the plot is not the main gem from this movie but that's okay because it is the origin story of the group.

To conclude, Guardians of the Galaxy is a character-centric comedy superhero movie that was an enjoyable and fun ride throughout all 2 hours and 2 minutes. It is unique because it breaks away from the popular dark hero origin story that although is good, requires a break from time to time. If you're looking for a good time, Guardians of the Galaxy is definitely a movie for you.

Make sure to comment below on which movie you want me to talk about next and I'll catch you guys next time!

A Rather Alarming Story/PSA

I've been gone again haven't I? Well, last week, my family and I went to New York State to stay at a cottage. Interestingly, we stayed not too far away from the place that Tony Stewart killed a man during a race. We were going to go watch the race originally but we ended up not going. Anyways, that gives you an idea of where we were staying. So after coming back from the cottage, I was ready to re immerse myself into the digital world like all people do after sometime away from it all. And then something alarming happened.

I had decided to start by checking Facebook to catch up with my friends and such. It was a pretty typical day on Facebook with the constant scrolling with the occasional funny picture or so. I should probably introduce two characters here before continuing. I will change the names here for privacy reasons. Person A, or "Adam" and Person B, or "Bobby". If you have read my introduction a while back, you would know that I spent around 2 years as an international student. While there, I met people from around the world. I met Adam and Bobby during this time but Adam and Bobby had never interacted with each other. Years have passed and Adam and Bobby are several countries away from each other yet they have become "friends" with each other on Facebook by adding all their suggested friends.

So while browsing Facebook, I see a picture that Adam posted with him and his friends. That's when I notice an overlay over the picture, saying: "Would you like to tag Bobby"? That was really strange to me because how and why did Adam write that without knowing Bobby? Hovering over the yes-no of the suggestion showed me that they had boxed out one of the people in Adam's picture as Bobby. Now this was obviously not actually Bobby but someone who looked strikingly similar to him. That's when I realized that Facebook analyzed everyone in Adam's picture and when I viewed it, they compared the analyzed faces to our mutual friends. Since one of the people in Adam's picture looked like Bobby, they thought that Bobby was the person in Adam's photo and thought to do me a favour by letting me tag Bobby with a simple click. This may seem like a cool feature that Facebook has implemented but is it really?

What does this event show Facebook knows already? This means that Facebook knows what all of its users look like based off of analyzing and recording all tagged photos. It knows how we look to the point that it can identify a user in a picture almost perfectly.

What does this implicate in the future? This technology is quite powerful and it will definitely be used in the future. There are good and bad things that can come from this. In terms of "good", there are a lot of cool services that can be made a reality. One that I thought of off the top of my head is shopping. For example, if you wanted to see how a certain jacket looks on you, this technology could possibly generate a model/image of you in the jacket so you can see if you want it. On the otherhand, if Facebook sells this information (like it does with a lot of other user info), ads could become a little creepy/annoying if a picture of you in the Bahamas pops up in every page saying "LIVE YOUR DREAMS" or something like that. Another useful service Facebook could make is and identification service. If a someone robs a bank and it's on security tape, the service (if sophisticated enough) could help identify the robber. It's like something straight out of modern day spy movies. But like the shopping service, there may be some sort of ethical line being crossed if this becomes a reality. The main cons I see with this service being more prominent in the future is the loss of privacy and anonymity. People are already complaining about how their IP is always being tracked and the whatnot but if your facial details and physical measurements are being recorded, is it that much of a stretch? I personally think that recognizing faces is not that much of a stretch from recording where you are and your interests (like Facebook already does) but ethically, this discussion should have never happened. Ever since Snowden, it's a well known fact that online privacy is no longer a thing. Simply by opening any webpage, someone somewhere can find out where you are. This should not have ever happened (ethically speaking) but there is too much potential for business with the technology so it happened. The same thing applies to facial recognition. We can get the cool services that I listed above but with it, we're giving away another part our ever diminishing online privacy. And with that, I leave you to make up your decision whether or not facial recognition is crossing the border.

TL;DR Don't get Facebook


For More Info on Tagging Suggestions that Facebook implemented in 2013, click here.