Nothing to watch – Experimental gallery visualizing 50k film posters

I had a boss who was bought into .NET to the point where he thought maybe the future was Silverlight (instead of JavaScript, which had obviously "won" at that point) and he wanted me to make Silverlight have the features that the desktop framework had at the time. Which I told him immediately that seemed impossible, but since he was so sure about it I would be happy to try (I had just been given a contract there). So I was decompiling .NET framework or WPF libraries or something (don't remember) and trying to get them to compile in Silverlight. I don't remember how long I spent on that task. Possibly over a week.

I had another job last year where they kept asking me to fine tune an LLM to answer questions about text, but I was only allowed to feed in the raw text of a single document but not generate an actual Q&A dataset. I kept telling them that was not how it worked but they kept insisting I continue for weeks. I think in his mind he just thought I was just doing it wrong over and over and he was secretly training me by paying me to practice or something.

I guess it's kind of sad how many jobs I've had that were a waste of time. I'm weirdly used to it so looking back it doesn't bother me that much somehow.

It does irritate me in the moment though. I have a client now that wants to make an agent system for a certain platform. The previous day we had just been discussing MCP servers and what they do. But the next day he seemed to think that each MCP server was going to have an entire full custom UI and agent loop in it per agent instead of just providing tool commands. So MCP server became an agent. I think I explained how it normally worked and he seemed to maybe get it, but then I was trying to ask how we were going to allow people to use all of the existing MCP servers in their agents so they could combine them and the non-response made it seem like he thought that might not be important. Did not get an answer so far. I remain ever hopeful for our upcoming meeting though.

Is this a sign of old age? Answers to something specific just become rambling walks down memory lane? It's interesting how it seems that I am generally well adjusted to how futile my life has been.

Anyway, I'm sure it's just a coincidence that Silverlight sent me down this tangent.

When I don't know what do watch I simply check the list of Criterion Films and pick the first one that I recognize the title but haven't watched yet. So far it has worked very well for me.

If you're only interested in great movies, no others allowed, then the top 50,000 is bound to disappoint as there aren't that many great movies yet. Setting it to 10k this is what I got in my first 5 (well spread) clicks:

- Ikiru (1952): A fantastic movie, also in the above list

- A Clockwork Orange (1971): Alright, nobody is going to believe these are random if I keep pulling these...

- Tracks (2013): Haven't seen this one, doesn't seem particularly astounding but I'd probably watch it, especially if my wife was wanting to watch something we haven't seen together.

- Songbird (2020): This one looks a bit garbage to me, probably wouldn't watch.

- Osmosis Jones (2001): Watched a few times, maybe a bit of nostalgia but it has been a few years so I would throw this up. Not deserving of the top 1000 by any means... but also not Leprechaun 5: In the Hood (2001).

And that seems pretty reasonable. I'm only about 800 movies in (since I've started tracking), of those only ~400 are in the original 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die list. To me watching straight through the various compendiums of the best movies is actually more dull than mixing in other things like the latest pop films or some stuff that wouldn't make many "top" lists but isn't necessarily bad. It's a bit like touring the best restaurants in a new area - if you do them all in a row then you just lose some of the feeling of variety. I doubt Tracks will leave an impact on my soul to the level of Ikiru, but I still want to watch things like that often.

Osmosis Jones has Bill Murray. Anything with Bill Murray is likely not too bad. And so on. There are many little walking paths like that. :)

Is this the new furmark?