This Is Me and This Is What I’m Doing – The Perspicacious Geek
Where our hero puts together the last week as he struggles to balance work, this website and have a personal life.
Fantasia 2016: So the last week, much like every week this time of year, was busy as hell for me. I mean, all you need to do is swing over to our Fantasia 2016 page to see that I’ve been a busy boy. We’ve released 8 podcasts so far with content from the festival
Sadly, this is still what most of my week looked like.
and have another 3 already recorded. Our total podcast count is probably going to be around 15 episodes.
If I’m being honest, this is not the greatest edition of the festival that I’ve seen. The lack of a third theater is a little strange, given that you would think that for the 20th Edition they would try to really “go big”. At the same time though, maybe it was a bad year for genre cinema? That’s not really on the festival organizers, they can’t just fill out a third theater’s programming if that programming just isn’t there.
Also, I’ve yet to be 100% blown away by an unknown film. Every year I look for “the one”. A movie from filmmakers that I’ve never heard of that completely surpasses all of my expectations and shoots up my list of favorite films. Off the top of my head movies like “The Dirties”, “Toad Road”, “Funeral Kings”, “The Ambassador” and “White Lightning” come to mind from previous years. Movies that I’m still talking about and recommeding to people long after I’ve seen them.
The closest so far has been “The Hunt for The Wilderpeople” but unfortunately, it doesn’t quite qualify for what I’m looking for since I’m already a big fan of Taika Waititi’s work and humour. So, regardless of if it was part of the Fantasia programming or not, it would have been on my radar. Anyhow, we’ve still got 9 days of the festival left so there’s still time.
Pokémon Go: Like apparently the rest of Canada, I got wrapped up in the hype-train for Pokémon go when it was released on July 17th. I’m nearly Level 18 now which means I can actually make a difference in a gym attack and put up a guy who can help defend it.
Is the game actually that compelling?
Not really. Let me break it down to you quickly. You walk around, scattered around the city are Pokéstops, where you can get 50 xp and some consumable items like Potions to heal your dudes and Pokéballs to capture new dudes. There are also Gyms, where you can either train if it’s the same team colour as you or attack if it belongs to one of the other two teams. Finally, of course, hidden all around the city are the actual Pokémon. When you see one, you can play a little baskeball style mini game where you shoot a ball at the dude and try to catch them.
This is most of the game.
My main beef is that other than catching like-type Pokémon, there’s no way to buff your little monsters. What does that mean? Well, basically it means that the best way to get good monsters is to level up your actual character and just go out and catch better monsters. What’s the best way to level up your guy? By evolving low-level Pokémon by the dozens. Namely Pidgeys, the Pokémon equivalent of, you guessed it, Pigeons.
So, even though it’s not the most fun way, the most effective way of playing this game is to go all over the city and catch pigeons and evolve them. Then every now and then you catch something that you actually care about.
It kind of takes some of the fun out of exploring and wandering around because if you’re taking the game seriously you NEED TO CATCH EVERY SINGLE PIDGEY THAT YOU SEE. It’s like, imagine you’re a National Geopgrahic photographer and somehow, in order to get that super sweet photo of a lioness on the Serengeti, you’ve got to take hundreds of photos of pigeons first.
Don’t get me wrong, Pokémon Go totally makes wandering around the city a slightly more engaging affair, and a number of times in the last week that I’ve strolled around the city and had some fun finding some dudes has made my time with the game worthwhile. I’m just kind of more interested in seeing what’s next for the game, which is a little sad since it’s only been out for a week.
Hopefully they introduce more interesting things like trading and group objectives and stuff to keep my attention up.
For now though, Team Instinct for life.
So is that it? Fantasia and Pokémon Go?
Yes. That’s it.
I mean, I also watched WWE Battleground, went to a picnic in the park and started watching Stranger Things, but I don’t really want to use up potential future musings.
That’s my life now. Fantasia and Pokémon go.
See you next week everyone.
Keith does all sorts of things here on 9to5.cc, he works with the other founders on 9to5 (illustrated), co-hosts our two podcasts: The 9to5 Entertainment System and Go Plug Yourself and blogs here as The Perspicacious Geek.
