29 summer movies to get excited about

There’s lots of movies I’m looking forward to this summer – Avengers: Infinity War, Deadpool 2, Solo, The Incredibles 2, Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, among others. I think having a “new” 12-year-old son helps ramp up my excitement level for some of them.

“2001: A Space Odyssey” trailer

I’ve never seen the movie in theaters and only once or twice on a TV screen. Whether it was because of that or my young age at viewing, I never understood the movie.

Spotify beefs up its free tier

My wife prefers Spotify over Apple Music (Apple Music’s selection of her favourite tunes is woefully inadequate) so this news will make her happy.

All of the songs played on “WKRP in Cincinnati” in one Spotify playlist

WKRP is one of those TV shows I loved but will never watch again. I’m afraid it won’t be as good as I remember it. It has happened to me before – I rewatched some old “Get Smart” shows I loved as a kid and thought, as an adult, it was awful. But I’ll listen to this playlist all day long.

How to make tomato paste in Sicily

Tomato paste is one of those things I use all the time but have never given its production any thought. I had no idea it was made like this.

The secret language of ships

I’ve lived in port cities most of my life and, while I’ve seen many of these markings on container ships, I never really paid much attention or knew what they represented. Turns out, they are pretty interesting.

Mapping Apple’s vast universe of space gray shades

At first blush, this seemed really silly. But on further examination, it’s fascinating how many variations Apple has had for “Space Gray”. You’d think a company renowned for its attention to detail would be more consistent in its colour schemes.

Personalized “Hey Siri”

Another fascinating article in Apple’s Machine Learning series. It got a bit dense for me at times (or, rather, I’m a bit dense for the article) but there are lots of interesting tidbits of info included.

Careers in filmmaking

James Gunn: Here’s a cool list of the different jobs on a movie set and how they fit into the system. Gunn posted this on Twitter and not only is it an interesting breakdown of the jobs on a film … Continued

The iPhone changed our lives. Now Apple needs to tackle addiction

Considering the market share, I always bristle whenever a pundit says, “Apple needs to solve this problem…” instead of at least including Google and Android in the discussion. But there’s no doubt that Apple, with its stated concerns about user privacy and demonstrated control over all aspects of the iPhone, is uniquely situated to at least begin the discussion on these issues.

Is the 3D movie trend finally dying?

To answer the headline – yes and not soon enough. There’s only been one 3D film I’ve ever thought was worth the money – Avatar. I haven’t bothered to go see a movie in 3D in five years.