Max Siegel

Jason Snell and Myke Hurley answered my silly question on episode 440 of Upgrade! This made my day 😻 (Hint: it involves Eddy Cue) Link to timestamp in the episode Eddy Cue’s famous line at WWDC 2016

A brief review of 'Avatar 2'

We all know that screenwriting and dialogue aren’t Big Jim Cameron’s strengths. If the good guys checked their sixes and stopped getting themselves kidnapped, this movie would have been two hours shorter. I’m not exaggerating! Yet no one else — except possibly Spielberg — knows how …

My beast of burden 😴

Spot the difference: the Death of Stewie or The Death of Marat?

I just received my copy of @alexbstoddard’s first book “INSEX.” I often did double takes on the astounding images, which in my experience, is a sign of great art. Even Stewie approved 👍

Craig Federighi replied to my email

As of macOS Ventura 13.1… if you select a Shared Album in the sidebar of Photos and hit the delete key, the album will disappear. As if you suddenly deleted it 🙀 I accidentally did this on Dec 11. It was a scary enough experience, that I felt compelled to email Craig Federighi, Apple’s Senior VP of …

I Don't Know

Eli Wiesel, KBE In April 2012, Elie Wiesel visited Chapman University to take part in an extensive Q & A session. From my vantage point in the auditorium, it seemed that half of the questions, mostly asked by students, centered on morality in fictional scenarios. For example, In a fire, is it better …

Grandma and the Pope

It was Christmas Day, which fell on a Wednesday in 2013. And Grandma Paula—82 years old and drifting toward the end of an agonizingly long battle with lung cancer—was only now catching up on the The Times' Sunday edition. I sat next to her at the kitchen table, keeping her company while futzing …

Dangerous Design

1: Mindy On a recent morning, I attempted to drive my trusty old Prius, Mindy, and by instinct, toggled the gear selector into [D] (as in “Drive Mode”). It was at this moment that Mindy decided to go sentient, filling the cabin with an incessant, deafening tone, accompanied by a surfeit of red …

Back to the Frame Rate

N.B. #1: A couple years ago, I wrote a nerdy article for Yahoo about the history of and technical challenges surrounding frame rates. Unfortunately, Yahoo removed its Featured Contributor website, so the articles I wrote for them no longer exist. This is a fragmented attempt to reconstruct and …

Thoughts on Pono

Let's delve into a new and superfluous bit of technology: the Pono Player. Yes, it looks like a Toblerone. And something about the design harks back to the Game Boy Advance SP. The oversized "Plus" (aka, "volume increase") button looks so much like the Game Boy's D-Pad, I absentmindedly kept …

David Getman

Erin Sherbert, writing for SF Weekly on Wed, Aug 27: The Medical Examiner’s Office this morning said it was 22-year-old David Getman who was hit and killed by a Muni bus earlier this week. According to police, Getman, a Berkeley resident, was walking along Lyon Street near Geary Boulevard early …

LACMA on Kubrick

It would be an understatement to say I’m a fan of Stanley Kubrick. A Clockwork Orange, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove and The Killing are among my favorite films. And Kubrick is directly responsible for sparking my passion for cinematography. I found the Stanley Kubrick Exhibition at LACMA a …