Essays on systems, data and film, and reviews from my Letterboxd diary.https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/enhttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/projectionist-home-lab/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/projectionist-home-lab/One small server, one weak processor, and a script that stopped someone’s film. What broke while I replaced my scripts with one service, and the rule it keeps.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTengineeringhome labprojectionistessayshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/curiosity-not-selfishness/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/curiosity-not-selfishness/At sixteen I wrote that physicists are selfish. Most of the argument holds up. The word in the title does not.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTphysicsessayshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/films-for-a-full-theatre/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/films-for-a-full-theatre/In 2019 I sorted films into two kinds: the ones for a blanket at home and the ones worth a road trip to a big screen. La La Land was my example. It still is.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTfilmessayshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/redaction-is-not-enough/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/redaction-is-not-enough/Blacking out names protects people by wrecking the data. One consistent fake identity per person keeps the conversation and loses the person, if you can first tell who is who.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTprivacydataengineeringessayshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/the-same-person-problem/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/the-same-person-problem/“Is this the same person?” takes a human a second and a program a long time. Why it is the hardest easy problem in data, and the two ways every answer goes wrong.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTdataidentity resolutionengineeringessayshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/babylon/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/babylon/Five viewings and five stars each time, starting with a 70mm screening that I can only call out of body.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTfilmreviewshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/oppenheimer/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/oppenheimer/Four viewings, two of them on 70mm. The film never lets you know its subject. It makes you him instead.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTfilmreviewshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/rothaniel/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/rothaniel/A stand-up special that made me cry through its last quarter, after more than a year of not crying at anything.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTfilmreviewshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/spotlight/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/spotlight/Two viewings, almost three years apart, and the same four and a half stars both times.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTfilmreviewshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/the-graduate/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/the-graduate/I watched it a year before my own graduation, scared of exactly what it is about.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTfilmreviewshttps://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/the-last-black-man-in-san-francisco/https://portfolio-website-sandy-five-70.vercel.app/blog/the-last-black-man-in-san-francisco/One of the most interestingly shot films I have seen in a while, and as gentle a film as I have ever seen.Mon, 12 Oct 2026 00:00:00 GMTfilmreviews