Tops of 2009:
[Fandom Edition I]
“For me, the cinema is not a slice of life,
but a piece of cake.”
~Alfred Hitchcock
Welcome to my Tops of 2009: Fandom Edition I. Complete with my favorite movies, tv shows, and episodes new and old of 2009. Here are my favorite visual stories both long and short:
+Movies
+TV Shows
++Episodes
Upfront week for the main networks has come and gone. I haven’t even had a chance to look at the shows and schedules til now. But like every year, I’m here to present my choices, interests, and thoughts in the offerings for the upcoming season. And as always, complete upfront information for each channel can be found at TheFutonCritic.
2009-2010 Schedule
Sunday
I usually like starting my week on Monday, but seeing as there just isn’t much to see on Sunday… Basically we’ve got Brothers and Sisters on ABC returning at 10PM. And then at 9PM we have Three Rivers on CBS, which is a new medical drama that goes inside the emotionally complex lives of organ donors, the recipients and the surgeons at the preeminent transplant hospital in the country where every moment counts.
Monday
At 8PM I’ll be watching Gossip Girl’s third season on the CW. I’d say the CW network’s best and most promising show. I’m most looking forward to seeing whether Chuck and Blair will actually stay together for a while? And how the show will run now that the gang are in separate colleges. Heroes is also back at 8pm on NBC for another year of pain and watching the beloved show of first season slowly waste away each year. Can the show ever go back to the greatness of first season? I doubt it. And our beloved Chuck will be replacing the show in the spring. House is also back at 8pm on FOX. Not sure how much life is left in this show either. Although I am interested in seeing where the events of the season finale lead the characters next.
Then at 9PM on CW we have One Tree Hill, the show that won’t die. Especially after they’ve lost two of their main stars going into the new season. Besides that we’ve got two new drama offerings on NBC: Trauma, an intense, action-packed look at first responder paramedics. Perhaps the next ER or maybe Grey’s Anatomy? And Day One, this season’s Jericho on dealing with the aftermath of a catastrophic event. Day One will actually be replacing Trauma in the spring. And we also have Lie to Me on FOX, which apparently will be having it’s second season even though I didn’t even know it existed til now. The premise sounds interesting though, so maybe I’ll have to watch it a bit.
Tuesday
At 8PM we have 90210 back for a second season on the CW, which will hopefully be better than the first season. Otherwise, zzz… And that’s about it for me.
Following 90210 at 9PM we have 90210Redux also known as the CW’s new show Melrose Place. Will it be any good? We’ll have to wait and see. But Sarah Connor Chronicles‘ Stephanie Jacobsen will be in this new show as well as Ashlee Simpson-Wentz. We also have another new offering from FOX called Past Life about a pair of past-life detectives who investigate whether what is happening to you today is the result of who you were before in another life. I don’t know about this FOX…
Wednesday
We have a new offering at 8PM on NBC that features a star-studded cast (among them are Maura Tierney, Erika Christensen, and Peter Krause) and sounds like it may be this season’s Brothers and Sisters. Parenthood is about a financially strapped single mother, returns home to her parents and siblings in Berkeley, Calif. after packing up her Fresno apartment and uprooting her two inconvenienced kids. Most likely one of the season’s biggest hits. Replacing it in the spring is another medical drama Mercy, portraying the lives of the staff at Mercy Hospital as seen through the eyes of those who know it best — its nurses. Michelle Trachtenberg from BtVS and Gossip Girl can be seen in Mercy. I don’t see myself watching either of these shows, but we’ll see.
At 9PM we have the much hyped Glee on FOX, which actually has the pilot available for viewing already. I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet however. Replacing it in the winter will be Human Target based on a comic book. Mark Valley from Fringe stars as Christopher Chance, a unique private contractor/security guard hired to protect by completely integrating himself into his clients’ lives to become the human target. Meanwhile on CW, Mischa Barton returns to television on The Beautiful Life about models, and which sounds kind of yawn-worthy.
Thursday
First at 8PM we have Flash Forward on ABC which may be one of the most interesting scifi/fantasy options this season. When a mysterious event causes the entire world to black out, humanity is given a glimpse into its near future, and every man, woman and child is forced to come to grips with whether their destinies can be avoided or fulfilled. Another new show is CW’s The Vampire Dairies about a girl and two vampire brothers. The added bonus is seeing Paul Wesley on tv again. I’ve been watching him for a while in different shows like Wolf Lake, Everwood, and the Fallen miniseries. Could be an interesting show, but we’ll have to see. Then, of course there is Bones on FOX returning for a fifth season.
At 9PM we also have the return of various fan favorites: Grey’s Anatomy on ABC, CSI on CBS, and Supernatural on CW. Plus, we now also have FOX’s Fringe which will be battling these other three shows for ratings in it’s new time slot. I’m not sure this is a wise decision to pit against the other three already established shows.
Friday
Smallville is another show that has gone past it’s shelf life. So, instead of canceling it, it’s been banished to Friday where shows go to die.
Meanwhile, at 9PM Ugly Betty on ABC and Southland on NBC have also been sent to Friday. And Medium while finally getting an earlier time slot, has also been sent to Friday. And Dollhouse on FOX, while it managed to get another season was not given a vote of confidence by moving to another night. And now it has another three new shows to compete with in the same timeslot that it didn’t have before. Perhaps this season Friday will not be where shows go to die? Maybe the networks will establish a new night of television?
First, there was Myspace. And all your friends joined it. You uploaded all your pictures, updated your statuses, and wrote all your blogs. But wait, now there’s Facebook. Time to upload and update everything on yet another site. Maybe even both at the same time. Weee! Welcome to Web 2.0 and Social Networking.
Now I don’t know about you, but I get tired of having to check more than one site. Or update my status on more than one site. Or upload pictures to more than one site. Etc. etc. So, I don’t. So, what do I do?
Social Networking: Tips and Uses
Well, first I believe in using just one site for each purpose. One site for status updates, whether it be Twitter, Identica, etc. One site for photos: Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa, etc. This way each site has their own specialty and thus their own development, features, etc. designed exactly for one purpose. Plus, this way you don’t have to move things to each new social networking fad. Or upload things more than once.
Second, I believe in using a lifestreaming site to tie all the different sites you’ve updated/uploaded together and be able to share your identity all in one place. From Wikipedia: “Lifestreaming is the practice of collecting an online user’s disjointed online presence in one central ‘location’ or ’site’.” Thus making it easier for you to keep track of everything your friends are doing or vice versa.
The Sites
The best thing about social networking is being able to keep up-to-date on the web pages, photos, videos, music, etc. that your friends and family are interested in and sharing even if you’re not around. As an added bonus, you also get to discover and discuss new things.
First let’s check out some options for social networking sites. Now these are the sites that I use on a regular basis and make up my lifestream, but of course there are other options out there as well.
What am I doing? Yes, Twitter still has technical issues it needs to overcome. But it’s still the most widespread of all the status updating options. You can find a variety of people and celebs, tv stations, etc. adding to the masses. Plus, there are lots of ways to post and apps to keep track of all your friends’ tweets.
If you want you can even update your Facebook status with Twitter. So, why not create a Twitter account and use the Twitter application to update your Twitter and Facebook status at once.
I’m sure people have their reasons, but I don’t understand why someone would still use hotmail, yahoo, etc. for their email when they can use Google.
I love Google’s GMail, which allows me to add things widgets to the sidebar and tweak the way I see my mail. Plus, I can even filter my email automatically as it comes in. Or add labels (like folders) to tag my email as it comes in or when reading my inbox. Or I can even star an email for later. And
I also love their GCalendar, which allows me to create multiple calendars and set levels of privacy on those calendars and the events within them. Then, I can share my calendar easily with friends.
What articles/news am I reading? And I also love their GReader, which allows me to keep track of the feeds on lots of different sites, tag them, star them for later, or even share them with friends. I use all three of them everyday. I’m Google all the way.
Do you see what I see? The granddaddy site of photo updating. Options for privacy, tagging, geotagging, etc. And you can add photos by web, email, phone, etc. Now, you can even add short videos.
My thoughts. My choices. My words. Livejournal is still my choice for blogging. Especially for private blogging. And especially for interacting with fandom. Livejournal allows you so many options for layouts. It also allows you to blog by web, email, txt, etc. I can even blog from an external blog like I’m doing now, and then crosspost it to Livejournal. And the best part, the levels of privacy. I can create different groups, place different readers in each of those groups, and blog to whichever group I choose.
What are you listening to? It’s as easy as creating an account, adding the app to your computer, and listening to music. Everything you listen to will be added to your profile. You can also ‘love’ your favorite songs.
What have I seen/read/bought? I use one site to keep track of all the movies, books, CDs I buy and watch. Listal allows me to mark something as owned or watched, and even provides an RSS feed or widget to display it on other sites.
What have I watched on tv? Lots of tv to watch and hard to remember what I’ve seen and what I haven’t seen. Orangutag is an easy way to keep track of all of it. Plus, it comes with an RSS feed to display it on other sites.
What have I bookmarked? I love Delicious. Before I used Delicious, I didn’t know how I’d keep track of all my bookmarks on various computers at home and away as well as my iPhone. But now I have them all stored in one place. You can tag the bookmarks. You can choose to make them public or private. Etc.
The place to upload and watch videos. Enough said.
Tasks and To-dos. You can add to it from Twitter. And you can even add it to your GMail page. My favorite to-do app.
Wrap It All Up
So many sites, so little time. Now, it’s time to introduce you to my weapons of choice for keeping track of it all and lifestreaming.
I love Netvibes. I’m able to manage all my social networks from one site and one page. Netvibes allows you to create a startpage made up of widgets that correspond to each site you use. For the widgets I just use a mobile version of each site I use. Very useful. Then, you can either refresh your startpage and all the widgets are updated at once. Or you can refresh each widget individually.
Now, you can create your own startpage by going directly to the Netvibes site and addding/subtracting widgets. But may I suggest checking out my Netvibes startpage and building from there? You can see the layout for my personal Netvibes here.
Another way I keep track of everything is through this best kept secret. With FriendFeed you can get a feed or lifestream made up of all the content that your friends shared. FriendFeed automatically imports shared stuff from the sites you and your friends use across the web, so if your friend favorites a video on YouTube, you get an entry with a link and a thumbnail of the video in your feed. And if your friend uploads a picture on Flickr, you get an entry with a link and thumbnail in your feed. All the sites I mentioned above are a part of my FriendFeed.
Plus, there are so many ways to navigate FriendFeed. FriendFeed is also fully searchable, filterable by service, or hidable by service/user. This allows you to let’s say, filter and see just the photos your friend John posted. Or filter to see the photos all your friends have recently posted. And the hide feature allows you to hide a particular friend, a particular service from a friend, or that service in general amongst all your friends.
And let’s say a friend of yours doesn’t want to use FriendFeed, well you’re not just out of luck. Just create an ‘imaginary friend’ of your friend and add all the sites your friend uses to it. You can still follow everything your friend does without them even creating an account.
The imaginary friend feature is also useful for following other sites or LJ communities. Add an RSS feed to an imaginary friend and you have an automatic way to track the most important sites you frequent. Let me suggest adding these two RSS feeds from Facebook as an imaginary friend. The first is the Facebook notifications feeds and can be found here. The second is the Facebook Friends’ Status Updates and this one is a bit trickier. First go here and then when you click on the feed link for My Friends’ Links, replace share_friends_posts in the URL with friends_status. It used to be easier to find, but Facebook decided to disable it by hiding it. Oh, and don’t forget to create an imaginary friend for your Twitter replies as well.
FriendFeed is pretty easy to use once you get started. So the best way to learn about it all is just to dive in and have a looksie at the FAQ. And once you’ve gotten started, you can even get FriendFeed to update in real-time from your Firefox sidebar. ;) This way you can work and surf other sites and still keep updated in real-time. Trust me, FriendFeed is the awesome.
And I know this is a lot of information. So if you have any questions/suggestions. Let me have them!
Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone!
Don’t pinch too many people too hard.
Oh, and let me know if you’re not wearing any green,
so I can have a chance to pinch you, too.
Since I’ve had a couple of people asking for it since yesterday, here’s the low down on my new quest to use the iPhone/iTouch for reading everything from pdfs/html/etc. to of course ebooks.
Personally, I’ve had my iPhone for a little more than a year now and have been reading everything from fanfiction to books in html/pdf format on it for a while. However, it was done through a bit of an arduous process and only useful in places where I had access to the internet. I would download a pdf to my computer, upload it to my website, and then point the iPhone browser to the location where it was stored. I called this the long way around. Imagine having to find your place again when reading a long pdf and you had to restart your browser…
I was tagged for this meme in Facebook. But like most things, it’s better done outside of Facebook. And I changed the instructions a bit to make it more efficient for viewing and sharing purposes. Now, if you choose to do the meme you won’t have to take out all the *s and Xs. ;)
And yes, I was an English major. And I have read excerpts and large pieces of most of these. But I’m not marking it as read unless I remember that I’ve read most of it and know what it was about.
—–
The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Tally your total at the bottom
3) Italicize those you plan on reading
I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Valentine’s Day.
I love all of you and am thankful for everyone that is in my life.
Have a wonderful day!
*hugs*
When a year ends sometimes it’s hard to remember where it began. Sometimes the time goes by slowly, and other times it goes by fast. And in the years to come, you’ll struggle to remember what you did that year and the things that defined you. It’d be nice to remember what you invested your time in, what made an impression, and what represented you as a whole for that year. That’s why I bring my:
Tops of 2008
Currently living in LA and jobsearching.
e: araceli[at]mysticalmagick[dot]com
