RunPee Weekly Newsletter 10th edition (May 20th, 2020)

Combine the best of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with the potential of stories to be told in the Star Wars galaxy, and maybe we’ll get what we wanted all along. Why did Star Wars fail at the end? How did The Mighty Thor go from meh to must-see? Here’s why Taika Waititi is the perfect choice to make things right.

Tenet and Mulan to Hit Theaters in July
If we’re really good, and really lucky, we can have nice things this summer — new movies at cinemas near you. And genuine blockbusters! YAY…drumroll….for Tenet and Mulan! Here are some bits and notes you may not have known about these films. Read more.

Passengers Rewatch Review
This movie gets better and better with each rewatch. Here are my thoughts this year.

Plus, my 5 favorite science fiction movies of the 2010s. Read more.

Movie Theaters Slowly Reopening, But With What Movies?
Good news, right? But, with Hollywood closed down, what are theaters doing? Most new films are postponed until Fall and beyond. Here is the state of the movie-theater world and what to expect when we go. Read more.

Should We Carry On?
There’s a new TV series scheduled to Carry On the tradition of the hit British TV show, but should they?  Read more.

Weekly progress diary on RunPee:NX
We are rebuilding the RunPee app from scratch using Google Flutter. Here’s a brief report on our weekly progress:

Progress has been slower than I’d like this week, primarily due to my unfamiliarity with Flutter  — I’m not close to being fluent in it yet. The existing RunPee app is written in Actionscript/Flex. I’ve been working with those for over 13 years and I know them really well, so coding goes fast. Now that I’m learning a new language, I have to stop and pause frequently just to look up simple things.

But that’s how it goes when learning something new.

What’s most crucial is the code I’m writing is rock solid. Of course, no developer ever wants to have bugs in their code, but we all know bugs will happen.

However, I’m working on the real fundamentals of RunPee:NX right now, like loading movies from the local database, updating the local database with movies from the server; things like that. These things have to be perfect: meaning they can’t fail under any conditions. So it takes a lot of testing and trying to find ways to break it, so that the new app is built on the right foundation.