In a timely coincidence, Val and I had dinner last night at Marlena in San Francisco, the day before it was featured as the lead article on SFGate. I was considering writing a brief description of the restaurant here, but the article captured it exactly, so a link will do.

I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a balance between high-end food and down-to-earth atmosphere. For me, the highlights were the service and the Glenn cherry with sour cream lemon sponge, pistachio crumble and fresh ume desert course.

Check out this wonderful pic and entertaining story.

John Gruber nails it:

HBO’s old slogan was “It’s not TV. It’s HBO”. That slogan captured HBO’s prestige: unedited major motion pictures, best-of-breed original content, all without commercial interruptions. HBO’s new slogan might as well be “It’s not TV. It’s a tab somewhere in the Max app.”

Yikes. The observation that “Max” harkens ever so slightly to HBO’s longtime competitor Cinemax is astute. That it has more Cinemax than HBO now is a crime.

What a terrible choice. For many years, “HBO” has meant premium, quality shows. Its parade of new corporate owners have been chipping away at that legacy for awhile now, and they’re apparently at the point where they’re willing to toss it. It’s a shame to see.

This is terrible news. I’ve been a Kitsbow customer for years. They make pricey, but excellent stuff. My favorite shirts ever are their Pendleton wool Icon shirts (I have four of them!), and I have replaced all of my biking shorts and liners with Kitsbow over the years. I’ve spent enough with them to be a “Kitsbow 100” customer, which tells me that I shouldn’t add up how much exactly we’re talking about!

But it wasn’t enough. I was happy to support a local brand that focused on making very high quality, mountain bike focused apparel. (Local for most of the time, anyway; they were located in nearby Petaluma, moving to North Carolina a couple years ago). Their good work as an employee-owned, just-in-time manufacturer was great to see and support.

Unfortunately, the current economic situation got to them, and I’m going to have to wear my current inventory for as long as I can. Hopefully someone else picks up the torch and commits to making equally excellent cycling gear—matching Kitsbow is a high bar to clear.

Update March 24, 2023: Jeff Kendall-Weed, a long time Kitsbow-sponsored rider/content creator, make a video with a lot of history and context about this.

I’m really sorry to see this. DPReview has been influential in the photography world from a gear perspective for a long time, and it’s a shame to see it end this way. Hopefully we’ll see a replacement spring up.

Update: Chris Niccolls and Jordan Drake have posted a video to YouTube discussing the closing. I’ve enjoyed their videos from back before they made the move to DPReview. They’ve announced that they will carry on publishing on YouTube with Petapixel, and I’ll be watching.

Update 2: Om Malik has a good post on the shutdown.

This is a great idea. Giving kids tools to consume media critically is probably among the most important things we can do as a society.

Speaking of new monitors, Jeremy Gray at DPReview has another interesting one:

Hot on the heels of Samsung’s new 27" 5K ViewFinity S9 monitor, Dell is joining the fray and coming after Apple’s high-end Pro Display XDR display with its new 6K UltraSharp 32 monitor.

The real question here will be price. I’d love a reasonably-priced, 32" Retina resolution monitor. (Is it too much to ask that it not be hideous looking, though? It’s like they tried to make it ugly.)

Chris Welch, at The Verge:

Samsung announced its ViewFinity S9 monitor earlier this week. With a 5K (5120 x 2880) resolution and stylish aluminum enclosure, it seems like Samsung is trying to square off with Apple’s Studio Display — likely for a lower price — and LG’s high-resolution monitors. I had a chance to check out the ViewFinity S9 up close at Samsung’s First Look event here at CES 2023, and my first impressions were quite positive.

I’m happy to see another entrant to the retina display market, even if it does appear to be mostly “me too” to the Apple Studio Display. Especially welcome is the built-in VESA mount and extra ports. If Samsung manages to get this thing closer to $1,000 than $2,000, they’ve got a compelling product on their hands.

But do keep in mind that the ViewFinity will come loaded with the same software that runs on Samsung’s TVs and Smart Monitor, so you’ll get direct access to streaming apps plus productivity software like Google Meet. Some will view that as a bonus; others might have preferred that the ViewFinity was just a standard, dumb monitor.

Count me in the latter group. I’m going to connect this thing to, you know, a computer; I don’t need or want the monitor to have its own operating system or apps. With Samsung (and other manufacturers) watching and monetizing your habits, I especially don’t want one of their systems involved in my computing.

(Yes, I know that the Apple display also has its own OS. Apple’s OS is not for end user apps like a TV, so it’s a different beast altogether. Still, I think that’s overkill, too, and I’d rather that it didn’t have one either. Why can’t we have a nice, dumb monitor to plug our smarts into?)

This is a massive, exceptional review of the new camera in the iPhone 14 Pro.

“But above all, I found a soul in the images from this new, 48-megapixel RAW mode that just made me elated. This is huge — and that’s not just the file size I am talking about. This camera can make beautiful photos, period, full stop. Photos that aren’t good for an iPhone. Photos that are great.”