I earned this (Credit: Lance Ulanoff)
How was my week?
Glad you asked. I did this thing called Amazon Prime Day. No, I didn’t run it. Instead, my site, TechRadar, covered the two-day frenzy of discounts like Space.com covered the latest Webb Telescope images (more on that later).
Amazon has essentially co-opted the entire web for two days every July. These are good sales on a bazillion different items and sites like TechRadar serve the purpose of separating wheat from the chaff.
That’s what I did. It’s an intense and eye-opening experience and, while I can’t share the secret sauce, covering Prime Day is a lot more than just posting hundreds of deal stories. It’s a real art. It’s also hard and requires almost 24/7 coverage. So, pardon me if I’m a little woozy.
I was also among the millions who watched as NASA JPL released its first JWT (James Webb Telescope) images. As a longtime Hubble telescope fan, I can tell you that these are next level. Stunning, beautiful, and full color.
If anyone asks you, the answer is yes, these are the real colors…sort of. It’s an interpretation based on the way the Infrared cameras capture the RGB values and how the computers interpret them. Oh, and how the Photoshop artists clean them up. They do not add stuff or alter the representation but make sure the colors are right and clean up artifacts and anomalies.
I loved the star nebula nursery image so much that it’s now my desktop image. With all that’s going wrong here on earth, it’s inspiring to see something scientists around the world work on sending us messages from the far reaches of space about the literal beginning of time.
Makes you think, right?
I also spent time with some new technology
I’m talking about Apple’s new and completely redesigned MacBook Air. As a longtime fan of the original MacBook Air design, I can’t decide if I like this squarer look as much.
Still, the screen is big (13.6-inches), gorgeous, and colorful. The notch for the 1080p camera isn’t terrible. It’s still light (sub 3 lb.) and thin. The highlight, of course, is the powerful, new M2 chip, Apple’s second-generation silicon.
Of course, I was so obsessed with the design changes, I needed to compare every part of it to the last MacBook Air (M1) design.
Musk Watch
I’m still tracking the whole Elon Musk Twitter mess, though my sense of it is that with Twitter suing and Musk digging in his heels, this could be a long battle. I just hope Twitter survives it. It’s still my favorite social media platform, even when it tries out oddball features like CoTweeting. Yes, you can tweet with someone else. No, it doesn’t make any sense.
Star Wars Doc
I recently caught the first episode of Icons Unearthed: Star Wars. Episode 101,“ a six-episode docuseries on the making of Star Wars. I know, do we really need another retelling of the telling of how this iconic movie series was made? This one, though, has a difference: Marcia Lucas.
George Lucas’s ex-wife doesn’t do interviews and, to my knowledge, had never sat down for an on-camera interview regarding her time with George and work on the film.
Marcia Lucas is a film editor in her own right and, by some accounts, she’s what ultimately made Star Wars Star Wars. Without her guiding hand, it might’ve been an incomprehensible mess. I suggest you read Chris Taylor’s insightful How Star Wars Conquered the Universe for more details on this.
In any case, Marica Lucas is featured in the first episode (it’s on Vice TV 🤷♂️) along with Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) , ILM’s John Dykstra and others with direct involvement in the film. It also features a handful of talking heads who had nothing to do with the making of Star Wars but are so-called experts. There’s a sociologist, for example, who seems to know a lot about making movies.
In any case, the teaser clips at the beginning of episode one, which appear to cuts through all six episodes, indicate that Daniels and Marcia Lucas will be spilling some tea.
In the first episode, though, which literally races to get from George’s beginnings to the creation of Star Wars, the revelations are few and far between. It’s fun, but is not exactly a serious documentary, with an annoying and editorializing voice-over that refuses to let the story speak for itself.
For Star Wars fans, it’s still a treat. I did suspect that Marica Lucas, who has never gotten the credit from George she deserves, will spill more in future episodes, and there is some neat arrival footage (along with too many overused photos of some subjects, like the only one they have for George’s dad).
I also think it could’ve been a better doc if they had talked to Chris Taylor.
Stay safe
See you soon