"Gotta Catch 'Em All": My Adventures With the "Seek" App

It was around the time I was focusing my smartphone's camera on the fly swimming in my glass of wine that I realized I might have a problem.

 

"What are you doing, Trish?" a part of my brain screamed at the rest, "That bug is going to fall in and contaminate your drink!  What if you swallow it?"

So I fished the little fellow out and was very impressed when "Seek" helpfully identified the tiny creature as everyone's friend from biology class, Drosophila melanogaster.  "Seek" is powerful enough to recognize a nearly microscopic half-drowned bug.

And that is why it's my new obsession.  When "Seek by iNaturalist" works well, it works like something from my wildest dreams.  The ability to carry a tiny computer with built-in camera in my pocket has changed the game when it comes to my wildlife observations.  "Seek" changes it even further: aim it's camera at a flower or an insect or a shell and it will identify it to the best of it's ability.  If it identifies the organism to species, it'll snap a picture and add it to your list of observations.  You can also upload photos you've already taken; it happily identified even incredibly blurry digital photographs, and I've even had success aiming "Seek" at my vintage hard-copy photos from Discovery Island and St. James Park.

In other words, "Seek" gives you a photographic Life List.  And you can bet that my Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder and I love having a very official-looking record of, if not every single living thing I've ever seen, then at least those I've photographed.  There are rewards for identifying certain numbers of birds or snails or dicots, and there are Achievements to be, uh, achieved, and they are all incredibly satisfying.  (Whether the game-ification of citizen science is good or not is a discussion for another day.  I'm fine with it since "Seek" is extremely kid-friendly anyway.)  Here's my rewards as of time of writing (a week ago), and... I'm equally impressed with and very terrified of myself right now. 😰

So there's what I love about "Seek".  Now let me tell you why I've also screamed and cried and sworn at it.  It is the best-worst app I've played with in a while.  "Seek" crashes on a whim.  It eats battery like nothing since the earliest version of "Pokemon GO".  And the blasted thing doesn't know what an Okapi is:

Okay, in fairness - a lot of humans don't know what they're looking at when they see an Okapi, more's the pity.  But then you get misidentifications like this:

That's... that's not a beetle...

A reoccurring problem I've had with "Seek" is that it refuses to correctly identify any of my many photographs of White-Tailed Deer, no matter the quality.  So then it goes and asks if this kangaroo is a deer. 😒

Now, thankfully, as frustrating as they are, misidentifications can be deleted from your record.  To end on a lighter note, the funniest incident I've had is technically not a mis-ID at all.  It's just... that's not what I was trying to photograph here?

And, since we're in New England here, I have to share my funniest ID so far:

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Art of the Day!

T'is a Catbird!  How Cute!

 

 

So, how about that "Matrix Resurrections" trailer...? O.O

Thoughts on Recently Experienced Media

It feels like it's been a while...

Movies

"Ink" - Interesting, sometimes very clever independent dark fantasy film.  I found a lot to like in it except for the twist at the end, which prompted less of a "woah" and more of a "what?"

"Mirrormask" - Somewhere out there, beneath the pale moonlight, there is a collaboration between Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, and the Jim Henson Workshop.  And it is, sadly, not as awesome as that combination promises.  It is worth a look since the film does at least have a very unusual look and the story is almost a test-run for ideas that would be refined and far better implemented in "Coraline".  (Let's see here, girl who has some issues with her family finds her way into an alternate universe ruled over by a scary doppelganger of her mom and everything is kind of whimsical but also weird and off-putting?  Yeah.)

"Madagascar 3" - The first and certainly less mortifying of two "Why the hell was this in my queue; somebody out there in Internet-land must have convinced me it was worth watching" movies I'll be reviewing today.  I thought it was pretty bad, and there were even a few moments that were downright disturbing.  On top of that, whoever came up with the seal character hates me.  They don't even know me, yet they hate me.  ME, personally.  Ye gods...

"Sucker Punch" - The second of my two "Why the hell was this in my queue; somebody out there in Internet-land must have convinced me it was worth watching" movies and hooooooooly sh*t.  This movie.  It sure was a movie.  Still images were projected at a rate that gave the illusion of movement, and there was a soundtrack.
Seriously, though.  When "Sucker Punch" wasn't looking exactly like an adaptation of Kate Beaton's "Strong Female Characters" made by somebody who didn't get the joke at all, it reminded me uncomfortably of "Cool World" of all things, probably because it's another awkward glimpse into the creator's subconscious.  You can very definitely count me on Team "If you honestly think that this film is somehow 'empowering for women', please, just, STFU."

"Upstream Color" - Then again, neither "Sucker Punch" nor "Madagascar 3" made me literally scream and swear at the TV.  Your mileage, as they say, may vary, but you may count me on Team "This wasn't so much 'confusing' as it was 'straight-up antagonistic towards the audience'".

"A Monster in Paris" - Underrated CGI feature made in France by a former Dreamworks director.  It's slight, but very nice.  I only wish the DVD wasn't so bare-bones.  The voices picked for the dub are fine enough but shouldn't this at least have a French soundtrack?

"Peter and the Wolf" (1996) - I wanted to check this out because it's a gap in my Chuck Jones education(?), and I'm sad to report that it's entirely skippable.  You need to sit through nearly ten minutes of live-action footage of a grandpa trying to impress his very 90's grandson with the titular tale to get to the animation.  When you finally do, you learn that it's not Chuck Jones' animation at all.  It's his very Jonesy late-period character designs animated by a different team of animators who were, there is no polite way to put this, not skilled enough to handle them.  The result just looks wrong and kind of depressing.

Books

Island of the Blue Dolphins, Scott O'Dell - So... I recently acquired a Kindle Paperwhite and I have been consuming books like crazy.  One of the first places I descended upon was my local library's E-Library, where I found this gem from my assigned reading in high school.  I'm happy to say it still holds up.


Ready Player One, Earnest Cline - Hey, do you remember this thing that happened in the 80's?  Cause that sure was a thing that happened back in the 80's!
Okay to be perfectly fair, this book is pretty good when, you know, it's not doing that.  But the thing is, it does that a lot.

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, Rebecca Skloot - Haunting is the word for this true story of bizarre biology, class and racial politics, and a family's heartbreaking quest to know the truth. If you only follow one of my recommendations in this post, make it this one.

3500, Ron Miles -  The deeply strange, utterly fascinating, and ultimately incredibly heartwarming story of Ron Miles and his son, Ben is now available in its entirety in book form and is well worth a read.  You'll want to hug your children afterwards, but you'll also feel a little better about humanity.

My Beloved Brontosaurus, Brian Switek -  I would guess that anyone reading my websites already owns a copy of this book (or perhaps even two: one for yourself and one to pass around to friends so they can finally be on the same page as us when it comes to dinosaurs), so you already know how awesome it is and that it's well worth purchasing the hardcover edition for the terrific artwork.

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Sketch of the Day! Man, Pokefusion is way too much fun to play with.

Tree-Free and other Green Sketchbook Options

The sad, sorry state of affairs for the ecologically (and economically)-minded artist like myself is that there were never that many good green Sketchbook options. Thankfully, most chain arts and crafts stores have recently started carry at least one tree-friendly Sketchbook brand. Still, it's much easier to find a wide variety of green Sketchbooks in specialty stores (ie, locally, Dick Blick and Bob Smith Stationers). Here are a few that I've used over the years.

Aquabee Tree-Free Hempdraw. I got this for under ten dollars at Dick Blick. It was an absolute joy to draw in. Great texture, loved watercolors and colored pencils, and it scanned nicely. Here's an example:

There's a noticeable texture with some natural fibers showing in the pages.
The only thing that bugs me actually isn't the book's fault, but the fact that certain people may freak out at the giant pot plant on the cover (seen on newer versions of the Hempdraw). Methinks Aquabee should have taken a few more things into consideration when choosing the cover art. Most of the people us art-types hang out with wouldn't care, but we all have to deal with the "Hey, are you drawing?!" crowd once in a while.

Pentalic Nature Sketch and Cachet Earthbound. Nature Sketch (after heavily modifying the cover) has great, heavy paper for watercolors. The large size does not play well with scanners, and I'm not sure if it's recycled. You'd think it would be. A percentage goes to the American Wildlife Fund so... there's that. Here's an example of what mine looks like inside:

The Cachet Earthbound is practically iconic by now. It's got unbleached, natural fiber, brown recycled paper that's durable as hell. It'd be perfect for outdoor sketching... if I could ever find a spiral-bound version. That said, the standard hardbound Earthbound can be found at WallMart and the like. Here's a drawing from mine:

 
Canson (and others) Recycled wire-bound Sketchbooks.
I won't get too detailed here. This is the first Sketchbook I ever drew in. I get all sentimental about it.

Lokta paper:
This is paper made out of a variety of natural and recycled fibers. That means you've got a weird variety of textures to draw on. Now, if you're the kind of artist who just draws for the sake of drawing, then this is fine. If, however, you ever want to look at your sketches a second time for reference -- or you want to not have to break out the hair dryer every time your Sketchbook gets mildly damp (seriously), it's not the best choice.
Which brings us, inevitably, to...

Elephant Poo Paper!
Take a minute. Let it all sink in.
Now, I may have mentioned before that I have a bit of the OCD. So my reaction to this is, "no. Just no."
But for those of you who aren't big babies who go 😱 at animal feces, knock yourselves out. Just remember what I said about natural fiber papers. You don't get much more natural fiber-y than this. I like how there's the option of Panda poo, cow poo, and horse poo.
That's a good place to end this; horse poo.
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Out of nowhere, there is an excellent Onion AV Club Blog post that takes the announcement of the long-in-development-limbo "Mighty Mouse" movie as an incentive to make some wonderfully astute comments on this "Lets turn every animated series into a movie" thing. Or as they describe them, "remaking of some childhood cartoon into a disingenuously winking, cacophonous, computer-sculpted hybrid that neither satisfies nostalgic adults nor placates their mewling, ADD-afflicted children." True that.