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E-books, panel picking and a 4-year-old

14 Aug

Nook Color, one of the e-readers we mention in the guide

I have a big story due at work on Monday, so my last week has been a crunch to try to make sure all the pieces are aligned for that (and that pieces I might have had missing could be rounded up through some reporting I did last week and over the weekend).

Not that the Digital Savant print column is a month into its life, it’s starting to feel more routine and I’m figuring out how to balance other larger-sized stories along with that deadline and the daily blog posts and other stuff that comes along from day to day.

On Sunday, I had a big back-to-school tech gift guide in the paper, this year focused on e-book readers and tablets for college students.

On Monday, the Digital Savant column is about the South by Southwest Interactive PanelPicker, which allows the public to vote on panels for the fest. As far as I’ve been able to tell, it’s the largest tech conference to do anything like that except for maybe BarCamp-style events where the programming is organized after the event starts.

The story I have due tomorrow should run next Sunday. I’ll write about it when it’s published, but it’s another part of the online identity series I’ve been working on.


Lilly is 4

Lilly turned four years old this weekend. It was not entirely unexpected. I mean, we had about four years to prepare for it (and some months more than that, even). Three-to-four is a bigger transition than two-to-three was; at least it feels that way in my life. She’s no longer a toddler and next year she’ll be in kindergarten. She left being a baby long behind her, I just hadn’t quite accepted it. Having an almost-two-year-old in the house does make it seem a little less like the end of an era, at least.

We had a pizza party for Lilly. She remembered last year’s and raved about it long enough that we figured we should do it again. She can sometimes be cranky and she’s very demanding, as I imagine most 3-4-year-olds are, but this weekend she really turned on the charm and was on her best behavior for almost the whole weekend.

She asked for specific things this year without prompting, based on trips she’s made to the store recently and, more disturbingly, things she’s started to notice her friends have at her school. That’s how she ended up with a purple unicorn Pillow Pet that, I’m not gonna lie, I’m pretty jealous about.

I didn’t have any real work or writing projects or plans and we were able to spend more time than usual just hanging out with the kids all weekend. It was wonderful and brief, but it’s nice that we get to do it all over again next weekend and the weekend after that.

Printing it up

25 Jul

rackspace.jpg
Photo by Alberto Martinez, AMERICAN-STATESMAN

I rode the shuttle! On Saturday, a story I wrote about San Antonio-based Rackspace Hosting, Inc. and its employee shuttle to from Austin. I’d been meaning to visit Rackspace for a long time, but since we typically focus on Austin-based companies, it got to be one of those back-burner things for a while. But their Austin presence is growing dramatically and this ended up being more about commuter culture and how Austin and San Antonio are getting ever closer.

Reporting the story, though, involved getting up one morning, driving to Austin from New Braunfels, taking the shuttle down to San Antonio, taking it back to Austin, then driving back home to New Braunfels at the end of the day. Then I visited the Austin Rackspace office the following week. And I did a lot of my interviews on the shuttle itself as it was moving, so my handwritten notes were all jangly and messy, even more so than normal.

In Tech Monday, a column I wrote about Austin-based non-profit CLOUD, Inc., continues a series we started this month about online identity. This was material that was originally slated to be part of the Online Reputation story, but it just didn’t fit and it ended up being smart to cut it and spin it off into its own article. It takes a little bit of a running start to explain what CLOUD is trying to do and I’m not exaggerating when I say it took me months to figure out how to write about some of these concepts.

And finally, today is the debut of Digital Savant as a print column in the Austin American-Statesman. The debut column, about Craigslist, is similar to what we ran on the blog last week.

I’m a little scared having a weekly column deadline, but it helps that a lot of the stuff I already do for Digital Savant makes for good column material. The column run Mondays in Life & Arts.


On Saturday, we went to a going-away work party for our former business editor Kathy Warbelow, who accepted a voluntary retirement offer. She was one of the people who hired me when I started at the paper 14 years ago and she always felt to me like a guardian angel, always watching out for me, always happy to have something I wrote in her section and always excited about a juicy bit of industry news she heard about.

We had lots and lots of great conversations over the years and she was the reason I bought my first house. She’d lived in Detroit during the height of housing interest rates and assured me, in late 2001, that I was never going to have a better opportunity to stop being a renter. She was right.

On Sunday, we took the girls to a birthday party for one of Lilly’s classmates at a place of much jumping and bouncy-castle’ing.

It’s impossible to get a phone photo of Carolina that’s not blurry; she’s moving constantly, all over the place, impervious to fatigue or falling on her face against bounce castle encased air.

It was exhausting, great fun.

On the way there and back, I put on Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black album and I wondered if my kids would know her music someday and regard her the way we look back on Hendrix and Joplin or, I guess, Cobain. It’s tough to listen to the album this soon, even beyond the obvious jarring bits like “I died a hundred times” in the lyrics. You can’t really listen to it anymore and just enjoy the music. It’s got bagged-on tragic context now and won’t ever sound the same.

It reminds me of how listening to The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill feels to me now. It used to be one of my favorite albums. Now when I hear it, I just think about the follow-up album that never happened and all the years of music we missed while Ms. Hill has been raising kids and figuring her stuff out.

I wonder if I should just be happy with the music and the moments and the memories that do exist and not dwell on what never was.

It’s easy not to dwell at a giant warehouse with five big indoor bounce castles.

Hydrating

5 Jun

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Lilly at Schlitterbahn.

Spring pics

17 May

I was very skeptical about the hipster photo toolbox app Instagram until I actually started using it. It’s very easy to use, doesn’t have too many options to overwhelm you and the filters, if you like the old-school look like my wife does, are very good. There are lots of filters for computer software like iPhoto/Aperture, etc. that do the same thing, but it’s amazing to be able to do it on your phone and be able to upload it instantly.

Anyway, here’s some pics of the girls I’ve been posting recently.

Lilly, Carolina and the kitties

Early Easter

Flower

Pool party

Rain colors

Strange days. Also: Vegas (no) baby!

9 May

Winner! Winner! Chicken! Dinner! #Vegas!

Apart from the usual busyness that bloggers who aren’t blogging (or, as we used to call them, online diarists who aren’t writing diary entries) experience — and there’s been plenty of that lately — the reason there hasn’t been a real update around here in a while is that I had a little nervous breakdown.

A really small one. Itty-bitty. I didn’t even notice it myself when it was happening. It didn’t involve depression or erratic actions or walking outside in my underwear and peeing in the yard or anything strange like that.

What did happen was that right after South by Southwest Interactive, which is about the busiest time of the year for me, I took some time off from work. Then I took some more time off. For about a month and a half (just concluding, really), I’ve been in and out of the office and haven’t really settled back into a real rhythm of work. But that’s not where the problem was.

The problem was that right after the festival, I was so mentally exhausted and bored with the area that I cover (technology) that I was seriously considering whether I wanted to continue. Then that led to, “Well, what would I do instead?” and all the panic and reflection you have when you think you might need a big life change.

It turns out I didn’t. It turns out I was kind of panicking for nothing and losing focus and doing all the things you do when you’re worn out and decide to throw yourself into more activity instead of just letting yourself rest. Once I figured that part out, I did rest. I played a ton of video games. Watched a lot of TV. Saw some movies, which is a luxury I rarely get to enjoy these days. Spent lots of time with my girls and started taking more photos and videos of them.

What I didn’t do was spend a lot of time writing blog entries here or seeking out new freelance work or other extracurricular activities. I kind of just let myself settle down for a little while and see what that’s like. Of course, that leads to a whole path where you begin to think maybe you’ve forgotten how to write or how to do your job if your job is to write. The only cure for that, really, is to just start doing it again and see how it goes.

So that was the extent of that. It was a really tiny, super-self-contained little crisis of faith.


Of jellybeans

One thing that actually really helped get over this weird life-hovering I was doing was going to Las Vegas. My wife and I went with Jessica, a friend I’ve had since I was 13.

Our excuse for going to Vegas was that Jessica was going to an all-classes reunion for the school we both attended in Germany as teenagers. The real reason we went was that we don’t get to hang out with Jessica (who is also Lilly’s godmother) nearly enough and that we just needed to get the Hell out of town and take a vacation. It was the first trip we’ve taken anywhere since before Carolina was born when we went to New York for a vacation we knew would be our last for a long while.

Airport

The calamities started early. I broke the zipper on my laptop bag before we even got on the plane causing my wife to wonder if all my stuff was going to sail down the aisles of the plane if we hit any turbulence. (That didn’t happen.)

Right after we arrived at New York, New York, the official reunion hotel where we were staying, we were standing in line for registration. My wife and I were sharing a bag of Gummi watermelon sours (we are classy like that) and I felt something crunchy in mouth suddenly. The damned sticky confection had pulled off a goddamned cap (or crown; I don’t know from molar dentistry) off my rear right lower tooth. I fished it out of my mouth, a gross, smelly little intact bit of porcelain.

I was like Ben Stiller in that “There’s Something About Mary” scene with the zipper and Cameron Diaz outside the bathroom door. I was saying things like, “It’s OK! I can still gamble! Look, I’ll pop it right back in!”

Instead, we went upstairs and started calling dentists in town at about 4 p.m. on a Friday afternoon, with predictable results. It does turn out that lots of Vegas hotels have in-house dental offices (because they are the size of small cities). But none of the ones I called had anyone who could see me on such short notice… except… one of the in-house dental businesses referred me to a place that kept early Saturday hours. It was way across town. The cab would be incredibly expensive. But they could get it done early and permanently. My home dentist in Austin called me back shortly after and agreed that it would be better to have it taken care of sooner rather than later. He did advise I put some toothpaste in it and stick it back in. I did that and it worked! Totally! But I went to the dentist anyway.

I call him

It was weird.

First of all, there were tons of framed posters on the waiting room and exam room walls featuring Las Vegas talent. And when I say “Talent” I mean dudes with no shirts on and ladies with their boobs pushed up about an inch from their noses. I couldn’t tell if they were strippers or dancers or cheerleaders or what, but there were lots of them and they all had great death. (Go, dentist!)

No ordinary dental visit

Now, I’m not trying to stereotype here, but I’m used to dentists who are a lot older than me and who still seem like authoritarians when it comes to subjects like plaque and flossing. Both the dentist and the dental hygienist were straight-up dudes, guys with gelled hair who looked like bartenders. One of them asked me, after mishearing an answer of mine about how long I was staying in town (in my defense, I had someone else’s fingers in my mouth) and asked, “So, you a truck driver?”

But they get the job done, bless those dudes. The cap was glued back on and they wished me good luck on my gambling. At least they didn’t make a “Hangover” joke.

The rest of the trip we spent walking through casinos, gambling a bit (I ended up ahead about $50-$100, though I make it a point not to keep exact track so I don’t feel bad if I lose a bit), eating everything in sight (two buffets and the excellent Firefly tapas grill on Paradise at the suggestion of Kerissa) and seeing “The Beatles: Love” at The Mirage. That part was fantastic. We had some of the worst seats in the house and it didn’t matter because every seat is good and the design is insanely good. I don’t know that I’ll ever hear the Beatles catalog sound so good on any other sound system in my life.

Donald Glover / Childish Gambino at the Hard Rock

By complete luck, we caught the second half of Donald Glover’s concert at the Hard Rock. We missed the stand-up comedy set, but we caught a lot of the music and he was fantastic. I posted a video I shot on the blog last week.

Really, the only problem was that I had this weird feeling, especially at night when I slept, that my old pal David Copperfield was watching me.

I’m sure it was probably just my imagination.

Copperfield Watch

We really needed Vegas and the timing was good. We had a much better time than we were expecting.

In fact, you could say it was kind of magical. There were Pegasuses and everything.

Me and a pegasus

And what of the reunion itself? That part, unfortunately, was kind of a bust. We didn’t know a lot of people at the two reunion dinners (and the people I did recognize was mostly because we’ve subsequently become friends on Facebook, the new nexus of maintaining thin bonds online).

It was a little awkward and the attendance was a lot lower than what we were expecting (we were told later it was less than what the organizers themselves had expected, too) and even though there was some fun memories we got to relive, it reminded me how much I’ve come to appreciate the present and the future instead of dwelling on what’s been left in the past. It was kind of an expensive lesson to learn, but luckily Vegas had lots of other things on offer to lift our spirits.

I miss a few things about those high school years now and then, but I’ve lost any desire I might have once had to move backward in time, even for just a peek.


Photo by Ralph Barrera, Austin American-Statesman

Even though I had such a strange time getting back on the writing horse, I have had stuff run in the paper. I had an app feature about one called “Coaching Assistant” run a few weeks ago, had a review of the video game “Bulletstorm” in the paper, a review of the new MacBook Pros and a Tech Monday column about AT&T’s recent home broadband caps.

And of course, the Digital Savant blog keeps me busy. I started a Digital Savant podcast before SXSW that I mentioned before and have posted three episodes so far. It’s short format (less than 20 minutes per episode) with one guest per episode. I like that format and will probably keep it that way for a while and try to increase the frequency to a new podcast every week or two.

It should be up on iTunes soon with an updated link/feed. I’ll post once it’s there.


And, lastly, after we got back from Vegas, I got a vasectomy. (I’m not sure if that counts as unlucky; what say you, Vegas experts?)

But that’s not a story I’m ready to tell you today. I’ll post about it soon, promise.

Fest Rest

23 Mar

Kangaroo kuddle

For about a month and a half, starting at the beginning of February and ending less than a week ago, my whole life was pretty much South by Southwest Interactive.

The festival takes place in Austin every year and for the last two has been growing at a rate of more than 35 percent, year-over-year. Like smartphones and apps, it’s become one of those things that only becomes a bigger and bigger part of my job. It’s not just a national tech story that publications like Wired, CNet, The New York Times and others pay attention to, it’s a local story for us. And as the lead reporter on it for my paper, I get really, really competitive and territorial about our coverage. It’s probably the only time of the year that this journalistic bug hits me, where I turn into one of those guys with the hat with “PRESS” on it and bark things out like, “You’re not gonna scoop me, ya out-of-towner, see?”

The “See?” is probably unnecessary.

But it really does take over my life for a good while. I turn down freelance assignments and other offers to do stuff with, “I can’t. South by Southwest.” We coordinate a schedule of babysitting help for my wife with the explainer, “South by Southwest.” When I go to get a bite to eat at a restaurant and they ask what I want, I say, “South by Southwest.” Then they bring me back a soggy sandwich and I wonder if perhaps I’ve gone too far.

What is the festival? I don’t really know anymore. It was once a funky, centralized festival for CD-ROM producers, digital artists and people dabbling in online porn (“dabbling” is a good word for that, don’t you think? It’s dirty-but-not-quite-dirty-sounding).

Today, it’s a massive social media event, a place where start-ups try to get a foothold with early adopters and a place where huge companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to get their brands in front of bloggers, top Twitterers and the press.

For me, personally, it’s the hardest I work all year on any one project. It’s also the only time of the year I have a free pass to stay out as late as I want for a whole week and to really throw myself into coverage.

Social Media / Middle East Core Conversation

I won’t bore you with the play-by-play because I pretty much did that with Twitter for a whole week (and then some) to the point where I wondered if one more post with the hashtag “#SXSW” was finally going to drive my friends away for good.

I took last Thursday and Friday off after the fest and am scheduling some vacation time soon.  You’ll see why below.

Here’s a lot of what I wrote in that blaze of pre-festival, mid-festival and post-festival activity.

Me and Joy!

 

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