Bloggystyle -- The Latest

Chrome, holiday gifts, burps and phlegm

Because of a series of Internet outages, travel, my having a child in the house and other pseudo-calamities, this week's Age of Lasers episode (#004) was a bit late, but I hope no worse-for-wear for its delay.

We talk about Google Chrome OS, Black Friday tech deals, the everlasting war of the videogame consoles, and other odds and ends. At the end is a special message from my friend Lani in response to the epic social media gaffes episode of last week.

I sound absolutely awful on the podcast. For two weeks now, my family has been struggling with coughing and deep-seated phlegm and by nighttime, when we recorded the podcast, I just sound hoarse and crappy. You should have heard the coughing I did right before we started. I almost blew out Glark's ears. He returned the favor by delivering an epic burp that he doesn't even think was that loud. It was LOUD, dude. Trust me.

The podcast is titled, "It's Your Browser! It's Your OS! It's Your Browser AND Your OS!" Glark tells me it's a Chinatown reference. I've never seen it. He assures me that it is a reference that is both relevant and potent.

I also have a holiday gift guide of tech items on Television Without Pity. It's becoming an annual tradition and dovetails with a more extensive gift guide I do for the Statesman (which I'm actually trying to finish up today). In the TWOP guide, there's one really funny joke I like about a kid-related product, but I won't ruin it here.

Happy Turkey Day, y'all! I hope you get to spend it eating great food with family and/or friends.

posted by Omar G. at 11:20 AM

Talking 'bout the old style too

I kind of bombed a bit this week on the NPR All Tech Considered segment. I didn't feel as prepared as I usually do and on top of that, I've had voice/congestion problems the last two weeks with allergies. Lilly's had the same issue, so she's been up every night coughing, keeping us up, and contributing to my lack of sleep and overall ooginess.

We recorded a chunk of my segment and then went back and did it again because my energy wasn't keeping up with the Wii bowling segment that preceded it. We made it through and I feel like I skipped quite a few key points and then we ended up recording the closing a second time for lack of energy.

Also, I was late getting to the studio.

It was just a bad Monday and even though the magic of editing made it sound not-as-bad-as-I-hoped, I'm a little bummed that i didn't do a better job on this one. Anyway, here's the blog post that goes with the piece with more items than I was able to mention on the air.

On a more positive note, I was really happy with the way this Raising Austin column, about retro video game tournaments and kids, turned out. I don't write about Lilly in the paper often at all, so it was a treat to tie her in with a topic my editor and I have been wanting to cover for a while.

Also had an interesting Monday with a Twitter contest I started called "Omar's Twitter Mystery List" that very quickly got completely out of control. But in a fun way.

We're running a bit late on Age of Lasers Episode 004, but it should be up sometime Wednesday. You should know, thought, that Nov. 24 is International Day Of No Hard Feelings Social Network Cull (Second-Annual). Hurry up and start culling!

I'll also have a new Trailers Without Pity up here soon and a few other odds and ends.

Happy early Thanksgiving!

posted by Omar G. at 10:50 AM

Continually updated...