Monthly Archives: January 2017

Setapp launches an 'App Subscription Service'
I’ve mentioned before about how individual app subscription is becoming the norm, and how this could potentially be consumer-unfriendly. Well, Setapp have launched what could be described as “Netflix for apps”. You pay $9.99 and you get access to all of their apps. There are 61 apps right now, a handful of which I actually use on a daily basis (Marked, Numi, Pixa, Sip and Ulysses – but that last one is a big one).

This seems like a great consumer and business friendly solution. Really hope this catches on.

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Resilient Web Design
Jeremy Keith has written a terrific primer on the importance of embracing the web we have and designing with open standards (“material honesty”) and, more importantly, content in mind. It’s a great read, even (especially?) for non-designers.

Coincidentally, over the last week or so, I’ve been making some changes to my personal websites (here and johnke.wtf) to make them more responsive and behave nicely on different devices. So this has come along at just the right time for me.

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Indie Microblogging: owning your short-form writing
Manton Reece wants to make a microblogging site for the open web and he’s running a Kickstarter to help fund that. I don’t know if another microblog can actually take on or even compete with Twitter (has anyone checked to see if app.net is still breathing?) but I’m supporting this because I refuse to lose hope in the idea of the open web.

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Films I Watched in 2016

For the last few years, I’ve been using Letterboxd to keep a track of every film I watch. According to my Letterboxd profile, I watched a total of 92 films in 2016. Which is the same number of films as I watched in 2015, which isn’t bad, considering my wife and I had a child in early January, which severely limited our trips to the cinema.

I also scored each film I watched, with a maximum score of five. Which lets me pull out some statistics1!

My year in film

The average score across all films was 3.1 / 5, which is pretty good2! The lowest score I gave a film was 1 / 5 (actually, I gave it to two films: Camino and Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse). The highest score this year was 4.5 / 5. The films I rated the highest this year were Rogue One (which I saw twice), Hunt for the Wilderpeople, Green Room and Steve Jobs.

92 films averages to 1.8 films a week. The graph of when these films were watched tells a bit of a story of the year. First week of the year, when my wife was heavily pregnant and ready to pop, we watched five films. Then, the entire month of April, when my baby was waking four or five times a night? One film.

I only reviewed 43 of the 92 films I watched in 2016, which is a shame, because my little reviews are more helpful to me in remembering why I gave a film a particular score. I could barely remember watching Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse, but my review – my little note to amuse no-one but myself – reminded me why I gave it 1 / 5.

  1. For context on the scoring, I have given nine films a perfect score of 5 / 5/a>.
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  2. Last year, the average score was 2.8 / 5, so either films are getting better or I’m doing a better job of avoiding bad ones, I guess?
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