In a genre of speaking

Have you noticed how crowd-sourced “genre” tags are kinda…. a thing that exists?

That is, I got some feedback on my Emacs package for keeping track of your books, and the suggestions were eminently reasonable, so now there’s more usage instructions on Microsoft Github and stuff.

But it was also suggested that it’d be useful to add support for genres, and I was doubtful. I mean, people don’t have hundreds of thousands of books (except the ones that do), so what would the actual utility be? And besides, adding genre markers yourself would be actual work, and that’s ewwww. Work! Yuck.

Alors, I remembered that Goodreads has crowdsourced genre tags, so I could just query them? So:

And I don’t know whether that’s useful, but it’s kinda fun, eh?

However, these are crowdsourced, so:

Eh. Yeah, “Autistic Spectrum Disorder” is definitely a genre that exists.

I’ve tried to filter out most of the junk by just using the two first genre tags per book — and that helps a lot, but still…

In any case, you can edit the genres manually if it bothers you. Or just ignore the genres, really.

Anyway, you can now list books based on genre, and…

… I’ve also fixed up how book details are displayed.

And I’ve also changed the data format from a very, er, “ad hoc format” is perhaps putting it too gently… to JSON:

So that should make it easier to import into other programmes, and also allow extending the format gracefully.

And there’s, of course, support for using barcode scanners, but I’ve extended that with a kinda “serverish” mode, so that you don’t have to select Emacs (or a bookiez mode) before scanning. Just pick up the scanner and *beep*.

So there you go. I think bookiez might actually be usable now… perhaps.

TSP2024: The Boys: “We’ll Keep the Red Flag Flying Here”

I watched the first two seasons of The Boys and found it moderately entertaining. And then I started on s3, and I just went “bored now”, like as if I were in Buffy.

But now I have to see this episode because of see final link in post.

Oh, they’re doing Trump, but even more Trumpier, in this season?

So they’re basically just doing current events? (This is the pizza place thing.)

Oh, Tilda Swinton is doing the voice of this octopus. Is that just this episode, or has she done that all along?

Oh, it’s three episodes… Er, I think I’m gonna say that watching this episode is enough. Yes, I’m cheating! But only because this is really boring. I mean, politically I’m all “right on”, but that still doesn’t make this entertaining.

There’s so much character development.

I just couldn’t watch the entire episode. I’m just super duper bored.

The Boys s04e03. Frederick E. O. Toye. 2024.

This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.

TSP2024: The Room Next Door

The look of this movie is quite strange. It basically looks like it’s been shot on a 2003-era digital camera? Everything super sharp and often a bit too bright.

Even the flashback scenes look like this.

See!? That’s totally a digital camera from 2003.

Hm… perhaps there’s like several layers of nostalgia going on. The actors seem and the dialogue seems to be from a Douglas Sirk 50s movie, and then you’ve got 70s Vietnam stuff, and then the 2003 video camera…

This kinda looks like CGI…

Oh, I didn’t realise until now that Swinton is trying to do an American accent.

Wow, this is really something else. I thought at the start that it was totally like a Douglas Sirk fest, but then things got slightly more ambiguous than his melodramas are like — before totally doubling down on the Sirkness. (That’s a word.)

Fantastic!

I’m still wondering why Almodóvar used cameras with that overtly digital look.

The Room Next Door. Pedro Almodóvar. 2024.

This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.

No, that’s a big whopping camera (underneath the reflector).

Heh, that’s a lot of reflection.

See? Big camera.

TSP2023: Asteroid City

Wow, he’s going for really artificial in this movie… I wonder how cinemas did the form factor changes — did they show things either letterboxed or pillarboxed or both?

Now I’m even more confused about the form factors.

I love these shots.

That’s genius.

Fantastic movie — so funny. And the way it’s filmed is unique. Presumably there’s digital elements that’s been composited in, but it’s just hard to tell. Or whether it’s indeed all digital, but I don’t think so? My guess is mostly practical? But totally dreamy.

(It’s a surprisingly traditional movie at the end of the day — they even kill off the gayest character, as if we’re back in the 90s.)

Asteroid City. Wes Anderson. 2023.

This post is part of The Tilda Swinton Project.

Yay! There’s a “making of” on this bluray!

Wow, the town does indeed really exist.

Wow! Even the mountain in the background is kinda real! I totally thought that was a matte painting. (I mean, it’s not real real, but it’s been built.)

Cool.