"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

"My God... it's full of *ads*!" - Thoughts on "Ralph Breaks the Internet"

I finally watched "Ralph Breaks the Internet", and thanks to my obligation from the early, early days of this blog to review every Disney Animated Canon feature film, I must now review it.  Thing is, I've got a lot of conflicting thoughts here, so I guess I'm going to just transcribe my internal dialogue, kind of like I did with "The Muppets" all those years ago.  Strap in...

First Thoughts: "It's good!  'Ralph Breaks the Internet' is very good!  It's as funny and heartwarming as the first film and it does everything a good sequel should do.  It brings back the characters we love, sets them off on an exciting new adventure with fun new characters, and has them grow and change and learn from their new experiences.  This is a damn good movie."

Second Thoughts: "I know right?  We know fellow Disney nerds who were wailing about the end of the world (or at least the end of this recent streak of good Disney Animated Canon films) when this movie first came out, so it's really nice to finally see it.  Goodness, this is that not-quite-as-rare-as-everybody-thinks sequel that's as good as the first movie.  Heck, we might even like it a little bit better than the first movie!

"... ... ...But..."

FT: "I'll let you get to that 'But' in a minute.  We need to talk about sequels, and Disney sequels specifically.  Even though we live in a world of franchises, there seems to be a particular feeling of dread associated with 'Ralph 2' and 'Mary Poppins Returns' and 'Frozen 2'."

ST: "We're all still traumatized by the DTV Disney sequel era."

FT: "Right, right."

ST: "A lot of that dread seems to be building off all the damn Live-Action-For-An-Extremely-Strange-Definition-Of-Live-Action Remakes.  Which, by the way, we will not be considering part of the Disney Animated Canon.  Direct theatrical sequels to films we've already reviewed here are fine, but remakes?  Ugh, no.  Anyway, this can be a nice segway into my 'But...'"

FT: "Yes, go ahead."

ST: "But on the other hand, this very funny and heartwarming movie is also very definitely what Disney has been referring to as a Brand Deposit.  So are all the sequels and remakes and whatnot.  Hell, 'Ralph 2' is particularly blatant about it: There is a whole sequence set inside the official Disney website and so help me if the opening to that sequence, taking in a vista of everything Disney owned the rights to circa last Thanksgiving, doesn't feel like 'Look upon how much pop culture we control, ye mighty, and despair!'"

FT: "I mean, that's true.  But didn't the first 'Ralph' have a lot of (ahem) Brands involved as well?  All those officially licensed video game characters hanging out?  And anyway, without that visit to the Disney website, we wouldn't have the amazing Princess hangout scene, which we loved!"

ST: "It is a great scene, but consider this dismaying observation: Disney's not only all about Brand Deposits but about Brand Integrity; the fear is that if they don't take all their property super seriously, nobody will.  That means no more 'Star Wars' characters shaking their butts to pop songs and a 'What if all the Disney Princesses had a slumber party' scene that feels like a really heckin' neutered version of a killer idea.  And it cost us a scene where Vanillope would've been all, 'Ah, shut up, Emo kid' to Kylo Ren and tell me we wouldn't do anything within reason to see that."

FT: "Oh damn.  But we still really like this movie, even with all this... this stuff that's making us slightly uneasy."

ST: "Yes, yes we do.  Still, uneasy is a good word for it.  Heck, we have 'Mary Poppins: 2 Practical, 2 Perfect' up next and, honestly, the fact that it seems to have had NO pop culture impact at all, good or bad, is worrying.  I don't think we're going to like it as much as 'Ralph 2'."

FT: "Probably not, but if it sucks, we'll have fun ranting about it."

ST: "Same format as this?"

FT: "God, no."

For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Art of the Day!


I saw a trailer for another movie about video game characters getting into various shenanigans and made this regretful thing:

What Were We Listening To and Playing in 1993?

TV Guide's Summer 1993 Parent's Guide to Children's Entertainment Issue had some... interesting recommendations as far as what kids would be jamming out to in the summer of 1993.  Speaking for myself, I'm pretty sure I was still wearing out "Rhythm Nation" and my New Kids on the Block tapes back then.  I didn't really start geeking out on music until a year or two later, then became disillusioned with current popular music shortly after graduating college. 

That's when I really started liking the mentioned bands I grew up with like Van Halen and Duran Duran but they just weren't on my preteen girl radar back in '93 (even though this article is weirdly insistent that we dug those bands because they were cute, to which I can only say "Euw, they're so old!")  Of course now, I really want to track down that Coverdale/Page record.  I also wonder what happened to all these kid-led bands...





You know what entertainment writers really had a hard time writing about back in the day was video games.  This article emphasizes the potential educational value of games, which is fine; parents really did need to be assured that this new media that they did not understand and that their children were obsessed with wouldn't rot their brains.  It also suggests that the big hit games of the summer would be "Bubsy" and "Mario Is Missing".  Um...



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Draw of the Day



This was from the day we all learned about Tyco's short-lived (and I cannot for the life of me imagine why) Little Miss Dinosaur toys...

"... ... ... I *love* it! I LOVE IT I LOVE IT I LOVE IT!!!!!" - Thoughts on "Wreck-It Ralph"

But first, I'm 35 years old today.  I refuse to stop loving Disney animation, thank you very much.

Movie # 66: "Wreck-It Ralph"

Well, guys, this is going to be one big old gush session, because "Wreck-It Ralph" is SOOOOO GOOD, YOU GUYS!!! You guys! Guys! It's so good!

This is by far the best-looking CGI Disney feature of all; the entire second half of the movie, set in a "candy-coated heart of darkness", is a veritable feast for your rods and cones and both the characters and the worlds they venture through are top-shelf designs.  The script is terrific and (as demonstrated) it's as quotable as classic "Futurama".  I'll thank director Rich Moore for this as he is responsible for some of the best loved early episodes of both "The Simpsons" and "Futurama" -- though not, as often reported "Jurassic Bark".  It's easy to see where the confusion could come from, seeing as "Ralph" has it's own scene where, if it didn't hit you right in the enteric nervous system ("The Feels" as the kids say), I don't know if I can trust you.

On that note, I'm glad to see Disney make a feature that is overall just so joyous and fun, but isn't afraid to get dark as f*** when it needs to.  It's all in service to the story and characters, and the characters themselves are wonderful.  A few critics complained that Ralph himself is too reminiscent of the title character in "Shrek", but I have to say I loved him immediately, while I can never say I even really liked Shrek over the course of four movies.  Part of this is because Ralph isn't a misunderstood cranky innocent; the whole conflict in the movie is due to him screwing things up for selfish reasons, and his redemption arc is ultimately incredibly moving. 

Best of all, this is the first Disney movie in years where I don't feel like I have to go on and on convincing you all to watch it, because this is the first universally-beloved-by-almost-everybody-I've-met Disney movie since the heyday of the Bronze Age.  Finally we are at the point, and I am so happy to be able to say this, where I can say that the most recent major animated feature from Walt Disney Animation is the best since the last one.  I'm going to tentatively go ahead and say we're finally, finally in the Iron Age of Disney.

It's been a long rough road since the end of the Bronze Age, hasn't it?  But I think we've finally hit the end of it since Disney is finally back to knocking it out of the park each time.  "Enchanted" was quite good.  "The Princess and the Frog" was terrific.  "Frankenweenie" was good, "Winnie the Pooh" was very good, and "Tangled" was outstanding!  Hell, I even liked "TRON Legacy" a lot, and it was a sequel to "Tron"!  As for "Ralph", as I said, it's excellent; made me feel brand-new at the end of a long stressful day.   I had a big stupid grin from the sixteen-bit Steamboat Willy studio logo to the "Kill screen" at the very end of the credits.

For more posts in this ongoing series, go here, or click the Chronological Disney Animated Canon tag below.

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Art of the Day! Speaking of Disney and video games...



(I'll be the first to admit this really applies better to the later games in this series.)

So here's our "Wreck-It Ralph" trailer! And an Announcement!

I don't think I can embed it so watch it at Jim Hill Media at the highest definition your computer can stand.

Holy crap, this looks beautiful.  Colorful and with an interesting design aesthetic.  There are a ton of great sight gags (Tiny!) and this is shaping up to indeed be the "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" of arcade games.

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So...there are some THINGS happening in real life that are disrupting my posting schedule.  I'll try my hardest to get one up every week.  They won't be long, but they'll be something.

This month probably won't be the best one to start my next Big Ol' Watch and Then Write About a Bunch of Related Animated Films in Chronological Order Project, but I want to announce it anyway because you never know (plus the movies in question are starting to pop up in my queue). I am proud and somewhat apprehensive to announce My Summer of Sequels.  Which is to say, I will be watching every direct-to-video Disney sequel that Netflix carries.  

I reserve the right to skip the genuinely horrible ones and/or add in some technically theatrical sequels to take the edge off.  I will also very definitely not be viewing any non-Disney sequels.  Yes, I know there are some deeply fascinating train wrecks to be seen there, but that would mean acknowledging that there are such things as "The Land Before Time: Time of the Journey to the Mystery of the Secret to Some of the Dinosaurs Turn Out to be Aliens. No I am Not Kidding. That's What 'The Land Before Time' is Now".

I am actually kind of looking forward to a few of these DTV sequels.  Admit it, you want to see how in the hell the "Atlantis" sequel even works too.

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Sketch of the Day!

Let's Play as Much as I Can Stand (which isn't much) of the "Animorphs" GBC Game!

What? You expected an immediate "Terra Nova" reaction? Well, sorry; there's something much, much more important on our plate right now.



I mentioned this game in the comments for the precursor of the wonderful wonderful Cinnamon BUNZUH! blog/project. I have no idea what the story is behind the game, where it fits in book continuity (not at all; check out Lion!Rachel), or why I happen to own a copy of it. All I know is that in the middle of the four-day power outage we suffered after Hurricane Irene, I was bored enough to play it, as I promised I would.



Here, then, is (I'm sure) the Internet's first and only attempt at a playthrough of the "Animorphs" Game Boy Color game. Yes, Game Boy Color. I'll be playing it on my trusty Game Boy Advance. I should warn you that I haven't the slightest clue how those neat, clear screenshots of GBA screens in handheld game-based Let's Plays are done.



So here's the first thing you see when you pop your game in. Note the barely-visible "continue" option. I will spare you, but I got to see it an awful lot.



This is as good as the graphics get in this game. If I had perused my very brief childhood fixation with needlepoint, I'd cross-stitch this and applique it to a pillow. (Nice hair, Marco.)

And heck yes, I am ready to become an Animorph! Man, it has been a while since we had a game where your player character was an animal-based shapeshifter, hasn't it? Will this be as complicated and kind of mind-blowing as "Evo: Search for Eden"?



No. No it will not.

The small blob in the upper-left is a mouse. The giant green towel is a "Note from Dad" telling us that animals have been acting strange lately. The blue thing is Ax and the bird is... well, more on him in a second.

That little yellow blob-thing is our player-character. We start the game as Cassie, and here is, all things considered, the weirdest observation I have about "Animorphs: the GBC Game": Name another game where your player character is a black woman. (The fact that the only other one I can think of is half of that crazy "Matrix" tie-in thing means that something is dreadfully wrong.)

Tobias J. Emohawk will be our Navi ("Hey, listen!!!") equivalent for this evening, flying and bossing us around. Having Cassie make him repeat what he says here ("Talk to everybody! Even though we are the only resistance against a secret invasion!") leads to this amusing screenshot:



I have a new Crack Pairing.



Although, come to mention it, my real Crack Pairing is Cassie/Ax... Oh, hey, an Original Song (hey, the last video game had a song, this one must have one too.)

CASSIE: "Four! Eyes! Hypnotizing!
Could you be our savior? Could you be a Centaur?

Your! Powers! Are tantalizing!
I don't understand them, but I wanna have them!

Share! Them! A-with me!
Cause I want to transform! Don't want to be the norm!

A! Cquire! DNA!
I don't get how that works.

"You're from a war out in space
with hideous brain-worms!

But since you're at my place
wanna make love with someone who shares the same fa-ace?

(Chorus)
"TOUCH! ME!
ACQUIRE ME!

Visitor from the 'bove!
Let's redefine 'self-love!'

TRANS! FORM! INTO ME!
Let's destroy some barriers! Fly like Northern Harriers!

"You're an ALIEN!
You're so outa sight!

I'm an Animorph!
You're an Andalite!"



AX: "Got me horny like a Hork Bajar!
they go run around the trees eatin' BAH-A-A-ARK!

Got a tail blade could kill a T. rex!
Folks are like, 'yeah, that what she said.'

Shapeshfting squick is good, clean fun!
Tell me what's next? CINNAMON BUN!

They call me a Centaur
four-legged, horny, tough!

Maybe it's cause your boy
Axie's in-to weird stuff!"

(Chorus ad nauseum to end.)

Making sweet, boundary-defying love to Ax nets us our first password, and one of the game's stranger mechanics:



The game has no Save option. At all. None. Instead, whenever a major plot point happens (or not), it spits out a password for you to input after hitting the "Continue" option. Too damn bad if you don't understand what's going on here or forget to write the thing down.

I may have mentioned that I am an obsessive-compulsive Save-er.

So, about the mouse I mentioned earlier. Let's go near it and see what happens.



We are suddenly in an epic struggle between girl and mouse! Yes, here we have the game's strangest mechanic: to Acquire the form of an animal, we need to fight it while in the form of another animal.



Our first Morph, or "Starter" if you will, is a redonkulously overpowered dog.



Let's see what attacks we have:



You wonder why dogs are so popular, given all they do is kick things and scream all the damn time.

Anyway, kicking the crap out of the mouse allows us to transform into it. Just like it works in the books.

So we now have Mouse and Dog at our disposal. We can have six forms at a time, including our human form. Each form, in turn, has it's own health bar. Also, each animal has four -and only four- special moves.

This is the single most original game ever created for a Nintendo handheld system ever ever!
(Not even halfway through the review and I really hope everyone has their Sarcasm-detector on by now. Otherwise, I am in for some interesting comments.)

Let's head outside and see if we can't save more animals by beating them up and stealing all their DNA!



Ah, nature. Hey, is that indistinct blob in the upper-left a goat? I like charging into things; that could be useful! Let's see what moves it has...



Later on, although I did not get screenshots, we will learn that elephants can punch. I don't even want to know with what.

A word about the moves in this game. Some of them are evasion moves and some of them are attacks. You will not know which is which until you use them and they actually hit. That's the other thing: accuracy in this game is for sh*t. There's also no consistency with regards to which attacks (or creatures!) are more powerful than others, but we'll get to that soon enough.

Tobias tells us to get over to the pet store:



Here we get the useful Chimpanzee (with a tail?) form...



Oh wow. This game...



Aw, come on fishies! I just want your DNA!



The pet store also nets us the useful Generic Snake (Swim/Burrow/Climb/Venom yeah) form, which we'll use to sneak into the Zoo and...



Oh God dammit.



Even though the books went on to be more nuanced about them, here the Hork-Bajir are Goddamn Spiders. Any one of your attacks merely chips pixels off their health bar (except when and if it randomly doesn't), while they merrily stomp each of your forms without a care.

By the way, every time one of your animal forms loses all of it's hit points, you lose that form for good unless you can fight the animal and Acquire it again. Lose all of your forms and you lose the game, so you're essentially playing a forced Nuzlocke Run. With an impossibly wonky attack system and enemies who are ridiculously overpowered, right from the very beginning.



Thanks largely to the Hork-Bajir, we get to see this screen a lot:



We will skip over the part where I forgot to write down the last password (FUUUUUU-) and proceed directly to the Zoo/Gardens.



Tobias neglects to tell us exactly what we're up to here, but it could only involve acquiring as many species as possible, right?



Gettin' Cassie's trademark Wolf first. I will use Wolf to nab what is surely the best form early on in the game:



So majestic!

Now, unfortunately, walking within fifty feet of an animal starts a battle with it, even if you've already fought it. Wikkid, wikkid fun when you just barely survived the last fight. Also, it results in things like this happening:



There's lions in the zoo too! Now that's going to kick some ass. Surely, if I attempt to fight him, he won't kill each of my powerful pain-in-the-ass-to-acquire forms in a row while they make not a dent, leaving me with only my least-powerful form to fight with, which he will them smash easily, right?



This f***ing game.

("Continue", password, re-get every animal, see that a bat is available -a flying form!- attempt to acquire and...)



This. F***ing. GAME!



Yeah, I have no idea where to go. I leave the Gardens and wander around for a bit -- as Wolf!Cassie!



This mountain has a glitch that gets me stuck and unable to move.



Working my way free, I head upwards to... a plot point, surely! The Sharing is the creepy Yeerk brain-slug cult thing where visitors are merely instructed to walk around without a helmet. Maybe I'm supposed to enter this building and...



No.

Yeah, uh, I'm going to quit here. Because there's probably three more levels of this B.S. and I'm done. Just one last thing before I go...



Batmanning like a pro! Until I get stuck beside this bush. *sigh*

...

...

...

Oh, what the hell.