New Thing #363: Netflix

Earlier this year my wife and I watched (or, as we later figured out as we saw familiar episodes for a second time, mostly re-watched) Arrested Development. We DVRed all of the episodes that were run over the summer on IFC in advance of the Netflix release of the fourth season of the show.

We figured at some point we'd get Netflix and watch that fourth season, and I hoped that it would happen before the end of the calendar year so it could be a New Thing.

That, as you might imagine, was looking pretty unlikely with December coming to a close.

And then my brother gave us our Christmas gift.

Surprise! It was a six-month subscription to Netflix!

This is something I thought about for a really long time - friends had been talking up Netflix to me for a really long time.

I was never really interested in it when it was the DVD-through-the-mail business (it was, right? I'm not imagining that?), but once it started the streaming stuff I was intrigued.

I've written about this numerous times - I'm not a huge movie guy. If I'm spending a few hours on something, it's going to be sports. But I do watch a lot of TV, and I'm interested in good TV when I hear about a show that's worth watching.

So I'm not sure what kind of use I'll make of Netflix.

We're starting with Arrested Development, that's a sure thing. Saturday night we did our first Netflix watch, dialing up the first episode of the fourth season. (It took me a minute to figure out Netflix - I clicked on Arrested Development and the pilot started playing, so I had to figure out how to navigate the site.)

As we were driving back from New York, though, I was thinking of other ways I could use Netflix. These next six months (and beyond, because let's be honest - I have a feeling this will lead to us ordering a subscription - I think it's going to be great) could be a great opportunity for me to watch all of these movies that I just haven't watched in my life. I immediately searched for Mel Brooks stuff - but that's not on there.

I'll have to make a list of movies and shows I should catch up on or know about and then search to see if they're on there. I'll start with shows friends have raved about for a long time - Bob's Burgers is one that comes to mind. Then I'll work my way up to some movies.

The timing of this gift is perfect. Sure, we're watching a lot of Modern Family on DVR these days, but the NFL season is winding down and I don't generally watch a lot of winter sports. It's a good time for me to explore Netflix.

I'm excited about it…and if you know me you won't be surprised to learn that I'm also a little overwhelmed.

If you have suggestions for what I should watch, let me know.

New Thing #341: A YouTube Account

Here's a terrible thing that's happening more and more lately: I keep forgetting certain passwords.

Not like e-mail or Facebook passwords - ones I use often.

The ones I use more rarely are the ones that don't stay in my head.

Two factors contribute to this - one being that I always log out of a site when I leave it, and the other is that I use different passwords for most sites.

I think I might have to change my approach, because it's preventing me from signing up for new online accounts.

But I tell you all this because I have yet another account to keep track of.

Last week I tried a New Thing with video attached to it.

And I figured the easiest way to share it with you (coming soon!) would be to put it on YouTube rather than upload it right here.

But in order to do that, I needed to have a YouTube account.

Now, you know I'm no stranger to YouTube - I've embedded plenty of videos from it on this site over the course of this year.

It's just that I've never had an actual YouTube account before.

Except I have, apparently. Sometime in the past couple of months I started to get YouTube e-mails on my gmail account. I don't remember signing up for them, but when I clicked onto YouTube to sign up for an account, it brought me to gmail.

So I signed in with my gmail account, and automatically I was on my YouTube account, where I could apparently set up video stations and all manner of things.

And I could upload video…which I'll do sometime this weekend, and then I'll post on Monday here a link to what I uploaded over there.

The best part of this whole YouTube thing?

Since it's the same as my gmail account, I don't have to think up another new password.

New Thing #320: Contributing To A Kickstarter Campaign

Every so often, if I can, I try to contribute to the fundraising campaigns for my favorite podcasts. I paid for an app subscription to WTF a while ago and caught up on all of the episodes using it.

I plan on doing one of those texting donations to This American Life the next time one of those rolls around.

The winner of my most recent philanthropy is 99% Invisible, which is running a Kickstarter campaign to increase the number of episodes it puts out as well as its staff…as well as to provide benefits for its staff.

It was a cause I really wanted to contribute to.

I really like 99% Invisible. You should listen to it. It gets me to look at everyday things in a different way. And it's a short podcast, relatively speaking. There's no reason not to listen to it, really.

But this isn't really an advertisement for the podcast. It's about how I was able to contribute to something I really enjoy.

The deal was, if the podcast got 10,000 backers on Kickstarter (at any denomination), one of its sponsors, Mail Chimp, would kick in an extra $20,000.

I figured, I have some money in a Pay Pal account that I don't have designated for much, and I would love to give it to this cause.

So I created my Kickstarter account, popped onto the 99% Invisible page, and saw that Pay Pal was not an option. It actually all runs through Amazon.

But I still gave my money. (I'm even going to get a gift - a little notebook - thrown in, which is totally unexpected.)

I was donor number 9,028 or so - somewhere between 9,028 and 9,040, best I could tell.

I gave on Wednesday night - by Thursday night, less than 24 hours later, they had hit 10,000 backers.

I'm really glad to be a part of that.

New Thing #316: All The Buildings In New York

Remember when I told you about 99% Invisible way back in February? Well, I still can't recommend that podcast enough - or its accompanying website, which gives some visuals to go along with the audio.

But what I'm here to tell you about today is a website one of the most recent editions of the podcast opened my eyes up to.

It's called "All The Buildings In New York", and it's one man's attempt to draw the more than one million buildings in New York City.

There are a couple of reasons, I think, that this project speaks to me.

One is that it has that element of counting things off, which is such a part of my personality and I don't quite know how to explain what that means to me other than you can see by this year's project of mine that anything that allows me to number as I go is satisfying to me. (Although the lack of numbering on this New York project makes it a little hard for me to follow…unless they're numbered somewhere that I'm just not seeing.)

The second is that it features New York City, which I love. I heard on the podcast that the drawings span all five boroughs, and I wondered exactly what "all the buildings in New York City" meant - would the artist be drawing the private houses in places like Astoria?

Well, as that picture at the top of the page indicates, it looks like he is. I was thrilled when I clicked on the "Queens" tag to see that among the very few Queens buildings he drew was this one, which, though it doesn't show up on the map he has on the site (I'm not sure he has them all recorded there, because I'm sure of what I'm about to say), is roughly five blocks from where I grew up.

There were some sentiments that the artist, James Gulliver Hancock, expressed in the podcast that hit home with me too. He referred to his project as a diary, and there have been times that's how I've felt about what I'm doing - this 365 New Things In 2013 has been kind of like a daily journal. And as he says, while mine is in words, his is in pictures.

He also said that sometimes he looks at the skyline and different buildings as he goes through the city and feels anxious, because the task is so overwhelming. He wants to spend time, he says, drawing all of the different buildings. He doesn't realistically think he'll finish, but he knows what's before him - and joked that he would pass the project down to his son so it could be completed. (I've thought that about my World Series and Super Bowl matchups chart.)

I totally know how that feels.

But I also know how it feels to get positive feedback on what you've already done - and it helps make that hopeless chase of doing everything feel that much better.

Which is why I so appreciate all of the positive feedback I've received these past 315 days on this march to 365...

..and why I'll keep checking back on 'All The Buildings In New York' to check in on the progress and to see what other buildings I recognize.

And to simply appreciate a good, fun project.

New Thing #305: Lumosity

One of my favorite podcasts ('Stuff You Should Know') had a new sponsor this week. I don't usually pay attention to the ads on the podcasts for the most part - they mostly become background noise.

But, like when there's silence after a long stretch of noise, or another kind of change in a sound pattern, when there's a change in the ads it catches your attention.

That's how I heard about 'Lumosity'.

The tagline was something like 'Improve your brain performance and live a better life.'

Who can say no to that?

The website, if you sign up for a trial run, gives you a personalized training program.

You answer a number of questions about the type of memory or skills you want to improve - remembering people's names, improving long-term memory, practicing problem-solving skills, improving focus - and then they spit out a few activities that help your brain.

One of the memory activities was like the old Nintendo game 'Duck Hunt'. They flashed a number in the middle of the screen, and then a duck somewhere else. After the number and bird go away you have to click the place where the duck was and then type in the number. As you can probably guess, it gets progressively harder.

The activities are not unlike those brain games you play where you look at a list of colors and you have to tell the color of the words when they spell out a different color. ('Green', written in 'Blue', for example. If you've never done it, it's hard to say the right thing.)

The game pictured above was easy - it just involves quick thinking and arrow-clicking.

But I had trouble with some of the games. There was a pattern game that got very difficult - you were supposed to remember which squares on a grid lit up and re-create the pattern. I did OK on the small grids, but as they got larger it got too hard for me.

I'm always game for activities that make me feel like I'm improving the way I use my brain. That's why I became such a fan of crossword puzzles in recent years.

And there's an iPhone component with Lumosity that I was excited about as well.

But, as I feared, the initial sign-up was just for a trial period. And a subscription is more than I'm willing to pay right now.

So I guess improving my brain with Lumosity is just not in the cards.

New Thing #238: Music Videos

I remember the good old days, when MTV and VH1 actually played music videos. Well, that's what you're supposed to say, anyway, when you're about my age and you talk about music videos.

Truth be told, I didn't watch very much of those channels back then anyway.

The only videos I cared about were Billy Joel's, and I had most of those on VHS tape.

Nowadays, MTV and VH1 might not play a bunch of videos anymore, but their affiliated channels certainly do (MTV U, VH1 of many different varieties)..and then there's the other music stations.

But I don't usually watch those channels - because you can find any music video you want at any time on the internet.

I know I'm not breaking huge news here. I'm sure many of you have been watching music videos on the internet for years.

But I haven't. Other than the videos my brother posts every now and again with his music or that of his friends, I just don't watch many music videos.

And as a result, in doing my Music Monday posts each week, I've probably watched more music videos in these past eight months than I have in the past eight years.

And I've enjoyed them. From the flash mob bit (and the story behind it) in Sara Bareilles' Brave to that thing Anna Kendrick does with her hands in Cups to the weird video for Little Talks by Of Monsters and Men, I've liked seeing what people are doing in their music videos now.

I've liked, too, when I'm on YouTube and I come across an old video and I watch that and it leads me to another music video that I've never seen before. Because there are a lot of those - both then and now - that I've missed.

But as far as videos from this year go, it's a callback to another Music Monday from very early in the year that takes the cake.

I still like Mumford and Sons - I still listen to their albums quite often. That said, I've never seen them play live enough to get an idea of just how much of a parody their video for Hopeless Wanderer is. But I think it's a riot that they've allowed this parody of themselves, and I still get a huge kick out of the video.

And I'm not sure that if it came out in any other year that I would have watched it. So for that, I'm glad. Here's what I'm talking about:

New Thing #210: VH1 Track By Track

I haven't listened to much (any) new music this week, because I'm still pretty obsessed with Sara Bareilles' new album. For the first week I was pretty focused on the first half of the album.

Now I can't get the second half of the album out of my head. (Particular favorites are Cassiopeia and I Choose You - which appears to be the new single...and also is probably soon coming to a wedding near you.)

I've also been poking around her website a bit this week - and that's how I stumbled across this week's Music Monday New Thing.

The main reason I went to the site was to find out Bareilles' tour dates - I mentioned last week (which includes my thoughts on the album, if you want to click back) that I would love to see her live - and I was disappointed to see that at least at the start it's only taking her to the western part of the country.

But while I was on the site I poked around and came across some really good stuff...and one of them made devoting two Music Mondays to Sara Bareilles worth it. (That's how much I like the album - I haven't even devoted two Music Mondays to my brother. Well, I kind of have. And maybe it's worth mentioning that he played at the Newport Folk Festival this weekend with The Lone Bellow - it's like Music Monday worlds colliding!)

In addition to a bunch of video of Bareilles promoting The Blessed Unrest, there's a link to a series of interviews she did with VH1. (The channel seems to love her - I think they take partial credit for "discovering" her and she is one of their featured artists. I wouldn't know - I haven't watched a music channel in years.)

(Also parenthetically, I tried to find more video of this VH1 series. It doesn't seem to be something they do regularly, but I hope they consider doing more of it. I searched their site for 'track by track', and this is what the search engine spit out - there might be some stuff there worth checking out. They also have pages devoted to certain artists, and Sara Bareilles is one. Another series of videos worth checking out are "Sara Bareilles Makes A Record" - there's 6 of them, and it's a quick inside look at the production of an album.)

Anyway, in the 'track by track' videos, Bareilles spends a minute or two talking about each of the tracks on the new album.

This is something I always wonder about - in fact, I speculated about the meanings of some of the songs in what I wrote last week. I was wrong in some cases, and I liked hearing the real stories, like:

-It turns out, disappointingly, that Bareilles was at a wedding in Germany when a friend texted her about a jog he took through a Queens cemetery, with the skyscrapers in the background. She has not yet even been in that cemetery, though she might if they film a video for the Chasing The Sun.

-As I grew to like Cassiopeia I decided to watch the video of Bareilles talking about each of the tracks. The more closely I listened to the song the more I thought, "Is this really a love song for stars?" When I saw her talk about it I realized, yes, it is.

-The fact that December is her favorite song on the album. I always wonder if artists have favorites.

-Finally, Bareilles talked about making the video for Brave. Fun fact - Rashida Jones (of Office/Parks and Rec fame...and many other things as well. Google it.) directed the video. It is a really fun, uplifting video.

I recommend three things: 1) Get the album. It's so good. I'm thinking, at this point, I like it even more than Kaleidoscope Heart. 2) Check out Sara Bareilles talking about each track at VH1.com. The link is above, but here it is again - this one will take you to 'Part 2' - the second half of the album. I just think she's the coolest. 3) Watch the video for Brave. I'll make it easy for you:

New Thing #204: The MMQB

I have a vague memory that years ago I read Peter King's 'Monday Morning Quarterback' pretty regularly. Don't ask me how I forget something like that, but there was a time in my life that I dove headfirst into anything sports-related...and I guess it all gets jumbled up in my mind.

But for whatever reason, it had been years since I read Peter King's Monday column...until last August or so.

I began in the off-season, carried right through the regular season, stuck with it in the post-season, and then dropped off again.

But with football season fast approaching, I need to get back to it.

And just in time, there's a brand-new website for it.

I know Peter King has his critics (man, everyone on Twitter is a critic of everyone), but I love what he does. I think, deep down, I stopped reading him because I wanted to be him with my work the past nine or so years. Without, you know, the intense reporting and all-around knowledge.

The sheer volume of King's work every Monday is probably what impresses me the most...but is also the number one reason that I can't commit to reading it all the time. I kind of need a rest from it...and sometimes I just don't have the time to dedicate to reading it.

So that all was when King's column appeared on Sports Illustrated's website. For a year or so now King has been talking about an affiliated but separate website that he's running - themmqb.com.

It debuted on Monday, as NFL camps set to open up.

And as you can imagine for someone who felt overwhelmed by a column, the site is a little overwhelming. There is so much content.

But it's good content.

It's all football, all the time. (I think my dream would be someone like Buster Olney developing a baseball site like this.) And I'm not all that into football right now - I'm still 100% baseball-focused...but I couldn't get enough of the site on its first day.

There was King's regular 'Monday Morning Quarterback' column, an entry from Greg Bedard (late of the Boston Globe, who I really grew to like in his 2-and-half years covering the Patriots here...he went from dumping heavily - often - on the Jets to becoming a really well-rounded writer...although he was probably always a well-rounded writer, he didn't always show it) about the way the Patriots go about business no matter what is happening off the field, and Jenny Vrentas with a pictorial of Larry Fitzgerald's off-season travels and another article about the Dolphins. My favorite was the first of what will be a regular feature - 3 at 3 - in which some football-related figure (or high-profile fan) answers three questions at 3pm daily. Monday's was Joe Namath. (Wednesday's will be Rex Ryan! UPDATE/CORRECTION: I forgot...Rex Ryan will actually be doing the '10 Things I Think I Think' segment. I think it's Wednesday, but I'm not sure. Also another good segment, by the way.) The accompanying picture of Namath is one of the best old-time NFL still pictures I've ever seen.

I read all of the content in the above paragraph. That still leaves a bunch of content on the table that I didn't read. I'm going to have to pace myself, and figure out a way to get past my desire to dive into something like this website 100%. My instinct is to read everything put on the site. But I know I won't be able to keep that up.

I'm going to need to settle into a routine and figure out which articles I'm going to read. And when. (That's another thing - there are updates with new stories every few hours on the site.) And next month King will start up his podcast again, and he wrote Monday that there will be other site-related podcasts.

It may seem daunting, but I'm sure I'll figure out a way to face down this adversity and make the best of it.

I am a Jets fan, after all.

________________________________________________________

A couple of notes about the beginning of a new site like this:

-I went to the site over the weekend, when the domain name had been released but before it was supposed to have content. I thought it was interesting that this high-profile venture starts out just like any regular joe's website:

-And then there was this - I typed mmqb.com into my browser early Monday morning - some Mondays during the school year I would read Peter King over breakfast because I wouldn't have another chance all day. I figured I'd try that with the new site. And this is what I saw:

It looked spottier than I expected, but I figured they were working out some bugs, so I clicked what I thought was King's article and I got this:

I'm embarrassed to admit I thought it was for real. At no point did I even come close to considering paying money for the content, but I was furious. "How can they go from offering this content for free at SI.com to making people pay this much for it! That's terrible business! Who's going to pay that?!" Then I took a breath. I realized that I had never heard this was going to be a site that charged money. I went to Twitter and it didn't look like, from there, the site was up yet. So I waited. And later that morning I saw the real thing unveiled.

But I wonder if anyone who is slightly more gullible than me - enough to pony up money immediately - fell for the fake site.

New Thing #185: Boston 1775 Blog

The 4th of July seems like a good time to tell you (remind you, in some cases) that if I could travel through time to any point in history, it would be Boston, circa 1775. Sure, there would be less of the creature comforts I've grown so used to.

I'd have to adjust to the food.

And boy, would it be smelly.

But I just think, knowing what I know about that time period, it would just be so exciting.

Time machines, as you may or may not know, do not exist.

But I might have come across something just as good.

The Boston 1775 blog was cited often in Nathaniel Philbrick's Bunker Hill. It appeared so often in the Notes section of the book that I couldn't ignore it - and then every time it was mentioned it was about the most interesting topics.

So I made a mental note to check it out when I finished the book.

There is a ton of information on this blog. It's written by J.L. Bell, a Massachusetts writer who, says his bio on the site, specializes in the start of the American Revolution in and around Boston. (My kind of guy!)

The blog was started in May, 2006, and Bell has posted almost every day since then.

I wouldn't exactly say I'm overwhelmed by the content on the blog...it's more that I'm pacing myself. I've only read a few of the entries at this point, but I plan on making my way through the entire thing. (I'm starting in May 2006 and working my way forward, but there doesn't seem to be a need for chronological reading. Probably like my blog - you can essentially pick it up anywhere and go in either direction. But I like chronology.)

I kind of feel the way I do when I have a bunch of shows I want to watch on the DVR (or podcasts in my queue) - at any moment of down time I can just pop onto the Boston 1775 blog and read a few entries. And I'll probably feel a big sense of accomplishment and a small bit of sadness after I make my way through...although the good news here is that there will be a new post almost every day...so long as Bell doesn't decide to quit blogging now that I've decided to start reading.

The entries seem to include everything from short bios and informative texts to primary sources or links to related articles to events taking place today related to the study of the American Revolution. There's also an extensive list of tags on the right hand side of the page so you can click a topic of interest - almost anything or anyone imaginable connected with the Revolution.

If you're interested you can find the blog at Boston1775.blogspot.com.

New Thing #83: Drawings Of The Presidents

My friend Dave (living in Jersey City, formerly of Michigan, Los Angeles, and Boston...I think I've mentioned him) sent me an e-mail last week. The subject line: "Do this as a new thing"

A command - not even a request.

But it's cool...I didn't take offense.

I just clicked the link and made it a New Thing.

I don't know anything about the site - 'The Rumpus'. (Maybe New Thing #83.5 will be   me further exploring 'The Rumpus'.)

But I do think this link is pretty great - where the guy completes his daughter's doodles and turns them into all of the presidents. I endorse that kind of fatherly creativity.

And it also hit close to home. I think I've mentioned before how my oldest daughter has recently been very interested in the presidents. She's good at listing many of them in order, and she loves reading about them. (Remember, too, it was due to this recent obsession that she picked James Madison University to win the NCAA Tournament.)

Around Presidents' Day, she also started to draw the presidents - kind of like baseball cards, except showing pictures of the presidents. I think she planned on making a complete set - but as it stands, she's only through three.

I think it's brilliant, and seeing this post on The Rumpus inspired me to post it here:

New Thing #78: The A.V. Club

My friend Justin, who you know from Music Mondays, isn't just a one-trick pony. In addition to knowing a lot of different music, he also watches a lot of different television. (He's a real renaissance man.)

Just kidding. He is also extremely smart and has a wide variety of interests.

And we share many of those interests.

That's how I knew, when he mentioned The A.V. Club to me, that I'd probably enjoy it.

I suppose this isn't 100% new in 2013 - I think Justin told me about the website back in November.

But it's only been in the past month or so that I've been regularly checking in on the site, seeing what they have to say about my favorite shows.

There's a wide array of content on the site - I know I've only just scratched the surface of what they have to offer. But what I use it for generally is to read their recaps of the shows I like.

I like to check in and see if what I thought about an episode of The Office, or Parks and Recreation, or The Americans is the same as the general consensus.

Or, as Justin puts it, "AV Club recaps are great because they tell you what to think."

I've begun following The A.V. Club on Twitter recently too, and that's where I've found some interesting articles. They play on nostalgia every so often, and if you, like me, enjoyed watching DuckTales and the 'Disney Afternoon' shows growing up, take some time to read this article about how TV was changing at exactly the time DuckTales became a success. I loved it.

I don't really need someone to tell me what to think. What I do occasionally need is a nudge in the direction of something I might enjoy. So that's the good part about visiting this site more than once a week - while searching through to see what they wrote about a TV show, I might come across something else that I never would have otherwise read about.

My wife and I often fall behind on our favorite shows. It used to be a feeling of satisfaction for me when we caught up on the DVR.

Now, that's just step one for me. I don't get closure on an episode until I read the A.V. Club wrap-up.

New Thing #68: Clicking The Link

For many years, if you sent me a link on the internet to check out, I'll be honest: I probably didn't check it out. I'm not really sure why.

If it was an article, I probably didn't think I had the time to read it.

If it was a video, I probably didn't think I had the time to watch it.

If it was a sound file, I probably didn't think I had the time to listen to it...or the appropriate plug-ins to play it.

OK. I guess I kind of know why.

But in 2013 I've made more of an effort to check out the links.

I've started to change my mindset from "I don't have the time" to "If they had the time to watch it, and thought enough to send it to me, then I have the time to watch it." (Of course there are levels of this: If you're the type to post any link you come across, I kind of see it like the boy who cried wolf, and I'm not going to click.)

As a result, I've seen a lot of the popular videos that everyone likes to talk about.

Like the goats that scream like humans.

And the celebrities that sing with screaming goats.

And the game-winning steal and three-quarter-court game-winning shot.

Or the half-court cheerleader flip shot.

In the past I might have ignored a tweet from Jad Abumrad (from Radiolab) that said "Oh my god this footage of a Cheetah in slo mo will make you weep," but this week I clicked on the link, despite the inevitable nightmares that will probably result. (It did not make me weep but it is tremendously impressive. Jump to the end if you get tired of watching the cheetahs [they're almost kangaroo-like! I didn't get tired of it!] and see how they filmed it.)

I even devoted the necessary 7 minutes to the Mila Kunis interview that everyone says reveals how charming she is. And I was charmed. (But I'm not buying that the interviewer didn't know exactly what he was doing.)

I think you get the picture.

Although maybe you don't. Because I don't know that in a post like this, with multiple links, that I would click on all of those links.

But it's baby steps for me. I'm getting better at clicking.

And I guess I should note this: I don't click on everything.

If something reaches annoying levels of popularity and gets posted way too much, I won't click on it just out of spite.

And that's why I still have no idea what the Harlem Shake is.