The Great Gatsby (2013)

Some beautiful visual moments.  The inclusion of anachronistic popular music doesn't work for me, especially when there's so much good music from the Roaring 20's to work with.  It worked for me in Romeo + Juliet to take Shakespeare's words and put them in a modern setting, along with a modern soundtrack.  It mostly worked for me in Moulin Rouge! to include the modern pop music, because the setting was tied to that place and not strongly attached to an era, and the inclusion of pop music was a bit of a conceit in a movie that had a lot of comic elements.  The Great Gatsby very definitely has a Roaring 20's-era setting, and is dreadfully serious about itself.

Not quite smart enough for its own good (Gmail detecting missing attachments division)

Gmail is attempting to stop e-mails with attachments that don't actually have attachments.  It's a noble goal, but it's definitely not there yet.  I really don't like having to click OK after I've clicked Send.

Darn Tough

For many, many years I wore Thoro socks because they had far and away the best padding for me.  Unfortunately, I still wore through them all too quickly.  Then I discovered Darn Tough. Not much more expensive than the Thorlos, good padding, local company, and guaranteed for life?  Sign me up.


I wore through my first pair in less than two years (though this particular pair wasn't as heavily padded as some of their other styles).  It was incredibly easy to trade in for a new pair at the Outdoor Gear Exchange, a great customer experience overall, but I hope that I don't wear through future pairs quite so fast.

One Last Dance (2003)

The opening scene of One Last Dance is highly promising, there's some beautiful dancing by the professionals, and a few great monologues delivered by Lisa Niemi, but the rest of the movie is a series of inexplicable mini-melodramas punctuated by some truly atrocious acting from Patrick Swayze.  I can't tell whether he can't settle on an accent or if he really talks like that.  This is a shame, because it's obviously a labor of love, and I wanted to like it a lot.

I did like that we finally get to see them dance (almost) the entirety of the piece without interruption, which is quite a long stretch of film, but in the end, I don't understand at all why the has-been dancers were the principals in the first place, rather than teaching the younger dancers the piece. Revivals are typically adapted to the current composition of a company.

Oh! Joy and Rapture! I can organize my Google Apps quick links

Back in October, I was complaining about the loss of the quick links at the top of the various google apps. This was exacerbated by the fact that the App launch widget mostly showed apps I didn't use or were easy to otherwise get to (why do I need G+ to appear first in the App launcher when it's the only app that still has a quick link?).  Needless to say, I was delighted to see this notice today: 

Drag and drop to rearrange your apps.

Woo-hoo!!
 












Even better, you can add shortcuts to apps that only appear on the "Even more" link.  Well, most of them, anyway (sorry, Orkut and Bookmarks)