...in which I learn to stop worrying about Google and love the constant surveillance.

Wow — has it really been that long since my last post?

I recently adopted a new policy about Google, and wanted to share. Not the earth-shattering topic one would expect for my first blog post since late May, but maybe my serious lack of earth-shattering topics is why I haven't done anything here in a while.

Anyway, for years, I have been Mister Privacy when it comes to what I share with Google. Like most people, I had flirted with a couple of the company's offerings; I had a Google+ account along with my Gmail, and had experimented with things like Google Docs and its Calendar. But I sharply limited what I let the company know about me and my Internet habits. I had saving my search results turned off, I used other search engines when I could. and I certainly, certainly didn't let Google track where I was as part of its Google Now program — an initiative that tries to present you with necessary information based on what the company knows about you from it's myriad technological tentacles. 

A lot of the reason for this is because I am a die-hard Apple enthusiast, and am frankly distrustful of the company, largely because of the way that Google, in my opinion, blatantly ripped off the design of Apple's iPhone for its Android software. The theft made me mad, and distrustful of the search giant's motives. Any large company, even Apple, shouldn't be trusted too far with ultimate world power, and the theft made me very suspicious indeed of Google's famous "Don't Be Evil" mission statement.

So for years, I kept my Gmail use to an absolute minimum, kept my searches secret from the company, and avoided Google+ like the plague. Not that anyone I cared about ever really used Google+.

Here's the thing, though — Google has some really, really smart people working for them, that make some really cool stuff. And the stuff they offer is not only free (to users like us), it's also pretty useful. None of it was anything I couldn't do better with Apple's ecosystem, but the tech geek in me still thought it was neat.

A couple of things happened this week to make me give Google another look. 

The first was this posting from Chris Messina, a former Google+ developer, which I'm linking to here with a profanity warning. In it, he offers the first defense of Google's jealous hoarding of user information that I actually found reasonable. He talks about things like the digital identity in such an urgent, idealist way, I find myself actually wanting one. Mind you, he thinks that Google+ has failed, and that Google is rapidly squandering its chance to keep Facebook from being the only digital identity site out there. But he makes some good arguments as to why letting someone like Google build up a huge amount of user data can, and is, a good thing. 

What he doesn't say, to the best of my memory, that this experience comes at the expense of user privacy so they can sell advertising. But I already knew that. What impressed me was his real, genuine wish to give people something genuinely valuable in return. He still passionately believes in the work he did with Google, even though he thinks the Google+ project has lost its way. 

If he'd still been an employee when he wrote about how great data collection is, I would have been much more skeptical about his arguments. But the fact that he's not and employee, and that he still seems to have genuine regret that more people don't avail themselves to the benefits of being "data positive," as he puts it, gave me pause. And when he said that we are, to companies like Google don't really care about our data, specifically, I very nearly believed him.

And please, before you pass any judgements on my mangled paraphrasing of his arguments, you owe it to yourself to go and read what he actually said. As a college history teacher of mine managed to convince me, primary sources are nearly always superior to secondary sources.

Here's the thing: I know for a fact that there are many apps that have a legitimate need for your personal information. A mapping app that doesn't know where you are is twice as hard to use for directions, for example, and impossible to use safely when you're driving a car. It's possible that good things can come from letting the machines know more about us, as frightening as that is to say out loud.

Mind, I think there's still a huge potential for abuse if you hand over information about yourself to complete strangers. For example, a lot of the apps on my phone have absolutely no reason to be able to track my location. But everything Google wants from me can, with a few clicks, be turned off and erased. I know this because I've done it. Of course, the company's apps were practically screaming at me not too the whole time (and, by practically screaming, I mean there were repeated warnings about the dire consequences of my actions at each and every step. So maybe "screaming" is a little melodramatic). But it can be done — the genie can be put back in the bottle with a minimum of fuss.

I may be wrong, but I don't think that's the case with something like Facebook. Oh, there are privacy controls there, but they change an awful lot. I can't speak for Android users, but Facebook's iOS apps update like clockwork every two weeks. Given the company's past track record of using privacy updates as a way of switching user privacy settings to "wide open," I'm a little suspicious each and every time they update. And actually deleting a Facebook account is, when I last heard, worthy of one of the Labors of Hercules.

The other part of this is that I get a lot of enjoyment from experimenting with technology. Computers and the Internet have developed to the point where it's a form of electrical necromancy; what companies like Apple, and Google, and yes, even Microsoft, are doing often feels like magic, even though it's not. I take great joy from discovering the little wonders the programmers and developers have built into our laptops, tablets and computers. It was what made me fall in love with Apple's approach. And it's what keeps me excited, year after year, about what's coming next.

So, despite my sincere and somewhat justified misgivings about Google's past, I'm going to let my guard down, open my mind a bit, and go play in someone else's garden for a bit. I really don't expect to come away wanting to switch to Android — as Jason Snell recently observed, I still bleed six colors, and think I always will. But I hope, if nothing else, it will be fun. And just maybe, it'll make it easier to see the other guy's point of view. And, heaven knows, we could all use more of that.

I have a bad feeling about this

I've always been of the mind that any new Star Wars story, even if it was bad, was inherently a good thing. After all, it's chance to take a fresh trip into that world, even if it doesn't tell a story with the same magic and excitement that the Original Trilogy.

I suppose that is why it's always been easier for me to overlook the flaws of the Prequel Trilogy, and yet be so harsh on those of the EU. The prequels were, at times, bad story telling, most of which I lay at George's feet. I had quibbles with the world — for example, I never liked the fact that most of the human Jedi on Coruscant dressed like they were on Tatooine. Oddly enough, my favorite Jedi uniform came from a comic book, which showed Obi-Wan Kenobi in a flashback to his days as a Jedi Knight. His dress? The same black outfit that Luke wore in Return of the Jedi.

If you will allow me a brief side-trip, I will always think that George missed a great chance when he based the Prequel Jedi uniforms on what Ben Kenobi was wearing on Tatooine, rather than what Luke was wearing as a Jedi Knight in Return of the Jedi. Ben was wearing that because he was on Tatooine. It would be silly in the extreme that a man hiding out from the Empire walk around in the same outfit he wore as a famous Jedi Knight. I think George missed two "oh, cool" moments in the prequels — the first, when we see that the old Jedi are dressed like Luke Skywalker did at the end of the first trilogy; and the second, when we see Obi-Wan leaving Luke with the Lars family garbed as Ben.

But, like it or not, the Prequels are Star Wars, so whatever we are not comfortable with in those stories must somehow be reconciled. Not so the EU. I won't waste time recounting what I found troubling in the EU, since I've already done it elsewhere. But in the end, it doesn't matter; all of those many tales were never part of the official story, painful as that is for the people who loved them. I never thought they were part of the "real" story, even though there were some in the Lucasfilm world who have said so.

For better or worse, that changed a few weeks ago. The announcement that the now non-canonical EU would be rebranded under a new Legends banner was a welcome development for me. I stated in my earlier blog post why I never thought those stories were canon; to have that authoritatively in print was a welcome development.

That announcement was coupled with a second one: that a second EU would be created: one that absolutely would matter, and which would bear equal weight to the films. At first, I was encouraged by this; I always had a sense when I was reading a Star Wars novel that I was, in some sense, wasting time because, in the end, it didn't really matter. It was fun, but it didn't really count — only the movies did. This is a lesson that was brought home to me rather early on, with the first EU book, Splinter of the Mind's Eye. I loved Splinter when it was released. It was both the priceless gift of new Star Wars, and it was absolutely the way I wanted the romantic triangle of Han/Luke/Leia to pan out. Plus, it was enormous fun, or so I thought at the time. Despite that, I had no trouble jettisoning it as a harmless bit of fun when Empire was released a couple of years later.

So it sounded like a good thing when Disney said that, from now on, the books were going to join the films as part of a larger story. It would, I though, be nice to read a book and have it be part of your experience with the films. Do you have a hunger for more Star Wars after the last movie? A book can now add to that experience. For example, the first New EU book is a prequel to Star Wars: Rebels. I may not be interested in it before I see the first episode of that series, but if I like Rebels enough, you can be sure I will be seeking it out after the fact. How much more will this be the case after a new Star Wars movie, when I am seeking out as much to do with that movie as I can afford to lay my hands on (as George's accountants know all too well).

Then a couple of things changed my mind; or, at least, made me think twice.

The first was a comment that a couple Del Ray book representatives made during an interview on  RebelForce Radio. To paraphrase, he said that everything counts now — movies, television shows, novels, comic books, games, and even children's books, are all on equal footing. What happens in one now affects the other.

As I listened in the car, that sentence kind of echoed as I mulled the implications.

Movies...

Well, yeah, sure — the movies have always been canon. For most of us, anyway. If you want to throw away half of them, that's your affair.

…television shows…

Okay, sure, I guess, if they're done well enough. Clone Wars didn't strike me as canonical back when it started (Anakin with a padawan? Really?), and I still haven't seen the bulk of it. But it was really, really good when it left the air after the Disney acquisition, and if anyone can do canon-level Star Wars now, it's my fellow Pittsburgh boy, Dave Filoni.

…novels…

Umm, okay, if you say so. I've been burned a lot in the past on this score, but I'm just going to have to trust you.

…comic books…

Seriously? With the sheer volume of comic book stories, that's a lot of plot line to have to keep straight.

…games…

Uhh...no. I still remember the scene in The Force: Unleashed where the main character pulls a freakin' Star Destroyer out of the sky by using the Force. A STAR DESTROYER!!! None of the other characters in the movies, not even the Chosen One or Master Yoda, even hinted at abilities of this scope, yet this character whose name I can't even remember could do it. Yet it worked within the game, because games are supposed to be fun, and big-league Force powers were a big part of that game.

…children's books…

Okay, you've left the planet on this one. Who drops a key plot point in a children's book?

For me, the idea that The Force Unleashed could hypothetically be on an equal canonical footing as The Empire Strikes Back is beyond ludicrous, and somewhat frightening. I don't know how Disney plans to make this work, but there is a huge margin for error looming on the horizon that, frankly, frightens me.

I am also concerned by the shape of things to come in what I'm already seeing going on the Marvel Universe. As you may have heard, the excellent show Agents of Shield is now tracking the same storyline as the Marvel movies. This was brought rather forcibly home with the April 8 episode, which tied in with the also-excellent film Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Fans of the show were given precisely one week from the April 1 episode, which ended with a scene from Winter Soldier, to go out and see the movie before key and crucial elements of the plot were laid bare in the next episode. Watch that episode, and you would be completely and irrevocably spoiled for Winter Soldier.

Fortunately, my wife and I were warned in time, and endured a six-week hiatus from that show until we could manage to make it to Winter Soldier before it left the theater altogether. If we hadn't, we would have had no choice but to delete all of the episodes we had DVRd, and wait for the release of both Winter Soldier and the Agents of Shield boxed set before we could catch up.

It felt more than a little like narrative blackmail — to enjoy this story, you must go out and purchase this one. If you don't, well, you won't mind knowing every big surprise that's in it, will you? After all, you didn't see it as soon as it came out, so you must not care.

Disney has practiced this sort of thing before. I'm still annoyed at the forced demand created by their "back into the vaults" practices with the DVD and Blu-Ray releases. If I'm remembering correctly, an average of seven years elapses between these releases. Want your five-year-old to see of Beauty and the Beast but didn't buy the DVD release two years before she was born? That's too bad. Maybe she'll still want to know about Belle when she's older.

Don't get me wrong: I truly love Disney. I think the people who are a part of it really, passionately care about quality, and giving their audience a good experience. But they are a corporation whose goal, at the end of the day, is to make money. And if they can do something like they just did with Captain America, it's only a matter of time before they do it in Star Wars.

An unexpected turn of events

I had intended this post to be about the unexpected resurgence of my interest in Star Wars. It was supposed to be about how the simple announcement about the EU being jettisoned had rekindled my enthusiasm for the Saga. I was even going to talk about how I, after a long-time and publically-documented indifference to the EU, was considering reading some of the "new canon" books, and was even eager to do so.

I even had a name for the post — Yesterday's News.

Then things changed.

As I began to write, the fine folks at starwars.com finally did what Star Wars fans around the world have been waiting for months for them to do — they announced the cast of Episode VII. 

I immediately penned some initial thoughts, determined for once to be A) quick, and B) timely. Unfortunately, through a combination of family and work concerns, I was neither. However, I'd still like to put my thoughts out there, so that my dedicated audience of Canadian pharmacies and work-from-home opportunities aren't deprived of my witty and wise repartee.

First, I know next-to-nothing, if not actually nothing, about new cast members John Boyega, Daisy Ridley, Adam Driver, and Oscar Isaac. I also have no clue about what roles they are supposed to play; whether they are good guys or bad guys, etc. My initial impression from their IMDb pages was that they were a vaguely diverse looking group. They are also, to a man, relative unknowns — just like the original trio was back when. I'm actually happy about this; unknown actors mean a clean slate. It will be much easier to see them as their characters, rather than "that guy from x"

I'm very happy about the new names that I do know. Domhnall Gleeson is on my radar because he played Bill Weasley in the Harry Potter films, and Andy Serkis is a modern-day Lon Chaney who's very presence on this film is, for me, highly reassuring. I don't who, or what, he's playing, but I can't wait to see it.

Finally, there is Max Von Sydow. Again, I'm not sure what role he will be playing. I'm guessing it's a heavy, but as he's known for villains (his turn in Needful Things was a particular favorite) and good guys/mentors (he's played both Jesus and St. Peter, for crying out loud), it could easily go either way.

Finally, there were a few names that brought a broad smile to face just by reading them: Kenny Baker, Anthony Daniels, Peter Mayhew, and, most importantly, Carrie Fisher, Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill.

I've written elsewhere of my desire to see Leia Organa-Solo, Luke Skywalker and Han Solo as older, wiser versions of their young selves. Now it appears that I will get that chance. Whether I will like it or not when I do is another matter. For now, for today, I am going to pretend that I will, and hope for the best.

While I have always been, and shall always be, much more of a fan of Luke Skywalker than of Han Solo, I am actually just a little bit happier that Ford has returned. For one, he was always very vocal about disliking the character, and never wanting to do Star Wars again. So just the fact that he's gotten past that, for whatever reason, is good news. (I'm sure there was a large check involved at some point, but I hope it's more than that).

The second reason is more selfish. I never really "got" the character of Han until much later in life. When I did, the sheer "wrongness" of what happened to his character in RotJ became much more painful. He was a different character, and largely good only for comic relief. And I still cringe at his final 'romantic' scene with Leia — from the way he kissed her at the end, you'd think he was her brother, and not Luke. He started out a dangerous space pirate who accidentally fell in with the good guys; he ended as an emasculated buffoon.

I try to rationalize it by saying Han came out of two-plus years of carbon sleep a radically changed man, but I suspect most of the blame can be laid at the feet of the late Richard Marquand, the director, although George Lucas probably bears a good share of the blame himself.  My wife thinks it's because they wanted to make Solo safe for kids in Jedi, which is also a good theory. I think it probably came from a combination of bad directing choices, and an actor that just threw up his hands, and resigned himself to getting through filming so he could move on to other roles.

Whatever the reason, it no longer matters. Because now, finally, Harrison Ford is going to have another crack at Han Solo. Hopefully, we'll see flashes of the same guy we knew from A New Hope and Empire. Time will tell. Whether we do or not, I am excited about the possibilities for this film, and still largely (albeit cautiously) optimistic for the future of Star Wars in general.

Having their cake...

I just went to starwars.com for the first time in a while, and I admit to being equal parts excited, disgruntled and confused.

I'll deal with the excitement part first. I just noticed that they've updated the front page of their website, which for some reason, gave me a little thrill of excitement when I saw it. I've been following Star Wars long enough to have been through home page redesigns, so I don't know why this one is any different. Maybe it's because I've been doing it long enough that "new look" is somehow associated with "new Star Wars movies." I only know that it was the first flair-up of the old excitement for the Saga that I've felt in a long time.

The confused bit came from two stories on that saidsame website. The first was the official announcement that the massive Expanded Universe of novels, comics and games that take place after Return of the Jedi officially, once and for all, is not canon. J.J. Abrams & Co. will not be forced into trying to incorporate Grand Admiral Thrawn and Mara Jade into whatever story they're making if they don't want to. They can do so if they wish, but the filmmakers, wisely, have been given a clean slate to create a new, and hopefully, exciting story.

So far, this is exactly what I've been hoping for. My official position on the EU can be found here, but in short, I follow the same take that Lucasfilm claims to be taking; namely, that the six Star Wars films are, once and for all, IT when it comes to the story of the Skywalker family. That is the only part of the massive fictional output of massive narrative factories of Lucasfilm from the past 37 years that cannot be ignored. Sorry, Jar-Jar haters — that means the Prequels, too.

Except that they left themselves a rather large loophole. The filmmakers are free to use whatever part of the EU they wish. If they want to use elements from the EU, they can — the same way that Lucas himself took the name of Coruscant for the capital planet of the Republic/Empire from the Zahn trilogy.

The confusing bit comes from the fact that they have, in one stroke, thrown out the entire EU for the filmmakers, but allowed them to keep the parts they wanted to use, while creating a NEW EU that will be overseen by a new story department to keep it in harmony with the films, but they're still going to keep publishing stuff from the OLD EU because they can still make money on it.

Did I miss anything?

So now we have two EUs, not one. One is a "real" EU, and the other is basically professionally produced fan-fiction. It is not the canonical Saga that the people who have loved it for so many years have maintained that it was. That is now the job of the new EU, which will produce officially sanctioned back story for the characters.

Forgive me for being cynical, but Lucasfilm has tried this before. When Star Wars fiction came out, they took a hard look at the morass of unconnected stories that made up the Star Trek novels, and decided they were going to have all the EU novels be part of one, big story. My main problem with the EU stemmed from this decision, because what was laid down by these authors as canon was, in my humble opinion, unworthy of so great an object. So even if you hated one of the books, you were stuck with it, because it became canon for the other writers. This was especially true for the granddaddy of the EU, the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn, which created characters and situations (Luke's wife, Han and Leia's kids, etc.) that dominated all the other books, good or bad.

So now, all that is gone, and we're going to try again with a new set of books. Only it's going to count this time. I understand that this is probably being done to give the books an added sense of weight; of importance. With fan fiction easily and cheaply available, both really, really good, and really, really bad, the stuff that you pay for has to be worth it; you have to get something extra from it. So the first book will be an official backstory for two primary characters in the new Rebels series. We'll see how it goes, but the whole thing smacks of having your cake, and eating it, too.

The disgruntled part comes from the great, gaping void of news about the new Star Wars movie. It has, according to most reliable sources, has not only been cast, is set to begin shooting in May. The official site has next to nothing on this fact. The only information on Episode VII was this press release, which promised a "trio of new young leads along with some very familiar faces."

I really, really like following selected things about the filming of any new Star Wars film. It helps feed my interest over the long haul, and even helps get me excited about it, in moderation. I try to stay away from spoiler-ridden sites like theforce.net, especially as the release date nears and entire shooting scripts find their way onto the site, and instead confine myself to the Official Site. Usually, about a month before release, I decide even the Official Site is too dangerous, and adopt a strategy of plugging my ears, putting my hands over my eyes, and saying "La-La-La-La-La" as loud as I can. Which makes driving kind of tricky, as you might guess.

I have the exact opposite problem right now. There is absolutely NOTHING out there to whet my appetite for a film that will supposedly be released at the end of next year. Rather than turn to dubious "news" sites, or even the semi-official Force.net, I am, for the moment, opting to wait. I'd really like to start thinking about the "what ifs" of this film; to pleasantly mull the future from a few tantalizing clues about what is to come. Apparently, Mr. Abrams and Ms. Kennedy have decreed that we must still be patient. Unfortunately, for the moment, I have no choice but to do otherwise.

Maybe I should read an old Star Wars novel while I wait.

Still here

It's Opening Week here at my house; only the second I can remember paying attention to. When Opening Day broke last year, I was a baseball neophyte. I was getting reacquainted with the team, the players, the stadium and nearly everything else about this new version of the Pttsburgh Pirates. There was also a metric ton about the game itself that I was ignorant of. 

To my surprise, I had the good fortune to re-discover the game during the best season the Pittsburgh Pirates had had in two decades, getting all the way to October before falling to the very skilled, and very determined St. Louis Cardinals. I have the good fortune to know a fiercely loyal Cardinals fan through my work, and I spent much of last year, and have started this one, with an enjoyable mixture of friendly rivalry and mutual respect.

All through last year, and through the winter I expected the love for baseball to disappear, only to be replaced by something else. My typical pattern is to be captivated with a subject like, say, Star Wars, for a brief and intense period, only to see it slowly diminish, and be replaced by other subjects. For some reason, I always kept expecting that to be the case with baseball — "last year was fun, but I'm kind of over that; that was then, this is now."

Brother, is that not the case.

This year, I seemd to have graduated from neophyte to acolyte. For the first time, I watched Spring Training, and actived the MLB At Bat 14 app the morning it was released. I followed the Bucs, not through just a few spring training games, but through the entire 30 days — a period that another vastly experienced fan at work disdains as "practice." By doing so, I got to know some of the players in our future, and was even sorry when some were sent back to the minors. Last year, I was somewhat amused by fans who knew minor league prospects — now, I are one.

Last year, I was timid about started my subscription to At Bat, worried that I'd never use it enough to justify it. This year, I am eyeing both the MLB.tv Internet streaming service and the MLB Extra Innings package on TV. I doubt my finances will allow me either, but if money were not a factor, I would do it in a heartbeat. 

So, here I am, grateful to still find myself a fan, and for the second straight year, looking forward to the new season with a sense of optimism and excitement. Let's go Bucs!

Old habits die hard, new habits die easily

We are two weeks into the new year, and I find myself with a welcome sense of optimism as I face 2014. Per my usual custom, I ended 2013 with a review of my journal, and a final, reflective entry on New Year's Eve day. I began New Year's Day, again, according following tradition, by creating a new journal file for 2014, which I began by stating my hopes and goals for the coming year.

Please note that I do not call them "resolutions,' even though that is what they are. Perhaps it is because I associate New Year's resolutions" with words like "abandoned" or "failed."

One of my goals for 2014 is simply to exercise more. I'm no one's gym rat, and my exercise regime has, so far, been confined to walks in the park, and extremely sporadic work with free weights. Hardly an Olympic champion's daily routine, and not even a proper maintenance regimen for a normal human being.

So my goal for this year is to, no pun intended, step up my game. I'm eschewing goals like walking every three days, or five times a week. Those are for later. For now, I'm aiming at simply exercising more this month than I did last month. Since last month's total was exactly three, and I'm already at two this month, I have to like my chances.

Helping me will be some nice little high-tech tools, I do not run, but I have a Nike+ app that tracks my indoor and outdoor walks, even though it insists on calling them 'runs.' It's been a vaulable tool to document my exercises, and it's only gotten better since I first downloaded it.

Another new tool is access to a new treadmill. In an invaluable bit of timing, my father's old treadmill broke down just as I was eyeing using it again. It was replaced by a new, whisper-quiet treadmill, that now sits next to the inversion table I use to treat my back. I call it "Dad's Gym," in a nod to the Gold's Gym franchise. All we need now is a weight table, and we can start charging admission.

I've always tended to reconsider my fitness level (or lack thereof) after Olympiads, so I'm pleased that I'm starting this newest push before the Sochi Games. Getting ahead of it for a change, unprompted by (justifiably) moving stories of dedicated athletes, or even by Nike ads.

This is the easy part. I'm enjoying my workouts, and getting famillar with a new treadmill. It's easy to keep coming back to new things. It's when the newness wears off that it fades into the background. In the case of exercise, it's when you find reasons not to work out, and eventually, forget to entirely. It's when resolutions fail.

So here's to the hard part. This year, I am going to try to ignore that voice that says "I don't have time for that," or "I don't feel like it." I'm going to try to put the work in. And I'm saying so publically. 

It would be nice if I ended this year with a couple inches off my waist, and 20 pounds off my frame. But  I'd be happier if I was able to turn exercise from an occassional thing into a full-blown habit. I'd just like to say I put the work in, and take whatever results came from that. It feels easy enough now, when I'm enthusiastic about it. I promise to check back in three months, and tell you how it's going.

Wish me luck.