Terribly Happy

The last two Digital Savant columns that ran in the paper have been how-to columns where I’ve been trying to help myself as much as I’m trying to guide readers.

Over the last couple of years, I’ve managed to get a few of my little organizational projects off the grounds. I scanned in every business card I ever got and turned those into digital address book contacts. I started (and am still working on) digitizing some stray VHS tapes that have stuff on them I’d actually want to keep.

But with photos, I’m still a bit a of a mess. I back up everything to a very reliable Drobo drive enclosure (it holds multiple hard drives and if one dies, which has never happened, you can just swap the bad one out and your data’s still safe). I’ve put the most important photos of ours online in a few strategic places. But I still haven’t done a full backup to somewhere off-site or online of the photos, videos and documents we can’t afford to lose. And we still have photos scattered across two computers, two phones, optical discs and other places. So it’s a work in progress.

That doesn’t mean I can’t advise others to do better! In part one of the how-to, we talk about how to sort and organize photos and, with the help of a professional archivist, we talk in part two about ways to store and protect your photos and videos so they stand the test of time.

Would I pass that test? Not yet, but I’m working on it!

The other new Digital Savant things of note are Micro features defining what’s an SSD (“Hey, what’s SSD with YOU?”) and the definition of “IRL,” a good suggestion from my co-worker Addie Broyles.

The SSD in particular has been on my mind because I’ve been thinking about upgrading my laptop with one of those for the BLAZING SPEEDS. But they’re pricey. I almost pulled the trigger in a 480 GB drive for $360 (which sounds expensive until you see what these things normally cost at that size), but hesitated too long and lost the deal. Plus, I was thinking that I didn’t really feel like opening up my computer and fiddlin’ around with that right now, although truth be told, I want desperately to be upgrading. I recently bought a Neat scanner (which arrived DOA and is being replaced), upgraded our home router on a whim and am in general doing little upgrades here and there, perhaps as much out of restlessness than out of a genuine need to incrementally improve our little home office.

Summer is flying by, but this year I’m weirdly OK with it. No, I haven’t gone toobin’ yet and I’ve only been to Schlitterbahn a few times, but I’ve spent a lot more time with the girls recently than I had earlier in the year and we’ve gotten to see more movies and done more relaxing stuff than our schedule usually allows, so it’s all cool in my book.

We’re taking a trip to New York soon and then another trip to the beach, so I feel like there’s plenty to look forward to even if it’s not involving getting soaked here in town.

Oh, and Carolina ate a lot of sushi the other day and that made me really happy. My 2-year-old is the opposite of a picky eater. She’s absolutely indiscriminate about what she eats, something I hope lasts for at least another year or two. At this point, if she orders lobster off the menu with a side of caviar, I’m inclined to just give it to her and grin.

And the medal for beating three deadlines does NOT go to you. Suck it up.

You know what this blog post won’t have in it? Dead cats. You’re welcome.

So, how are you? I am good. I am fine. Things are finegood.

It’s been raining this week in our part of the world, breaking up what is usually an unbearable, dry, stultifying, soul-reapening summer season into something pretty manageable. The (relatively) cooler weather and season slowdown of life in general has made for a really mellow week.

But work does not stop, of course. It only seems a little slower for me right now because I’m caught up on most stuff, trying to work ahead when I can. I beat a set of three small freelance deadlines by several days, which never happens. I looked around my home office expecting to be presented with a polished medal or a crown of flowers of some sort, but none of that materialized. When I looked around the room, it was still empty, the deadline beaten its own virtuous reward.

What a fucking shitty reward.

Anyhoo! Time to catch up on the stuff I’ve been writing the last two weeks. The two big ones, the Digital Savant columns where thusly:

• I wrote about “FOMO” or “Fear Of Missing Out,” an Internet-borne affliction I suffered (I’m proud to say mostly in silence until now) when Radiohead played two shows in Austin, including a long-awaited Austin City Limits taping that I had to missed on account of I wasn’t invited. Yes, it still stings.
• This week’s column was about protecting your digital gadgets (phones, e-readers, tablets and the like) from the scorching sun, the gritty sand and the remarkably wet water.

We also introduced a new weekly feature in the paper that I neglected to mention before called Digital Savant Micro. It’s a bite (or “byte!” Ha! Sorry!)-sized little article where we define one term, answer a question from a reader or offer a quick tip or event information on the front of the Life & Arts section. The ones that have run so far include the definition of “Retina Display,” an alert about the SXSW Interactive Panel Picker, a definition for “bandwidth throttling,” and tips on what to do with a failing laptop battery.

Seperately, I reviewed Apple’s new Retina Display MacBook Pro. Do I recommend everyone go out and buy one right now? The answer… may surprise you. (It’s “No.”)

I have some pieces coming up about organizing and storing your digital photos, and something else that’s much darker and harder to discuss that I’ll hold off on sharing until a little later.

Let’s see, what else is going on… I finished Messy, which I really enjoyed; am currently reading Suffering Succotash, which is making me laugh and learn a lot.

Been watching, in no particular order, America’s Got Talent, The Eric Andre Show, Metapocalypse, Bunheads, Louie, among others, and gearing up for Breaking Bad, which is my favorite show currently on TV.

We caught up on some movies, including Brave (really, really good), Horrible Bosses (funnier than I was expecting), X-Men: First Class (great for an hour and then baffling and shitty toward the end).

See? Mellow. Spending lots of time with the girls, lining up all my writing stuff for the fall, trying to keep up with work until I go on vacation in August.

It’s a good summer so far. Face-melting heat index so far surprisingly low.

Monday night, I spoke at an Online News Association meetup with Tolly Moseley about secrets of online writing. The above Slideshare presentation amounts to the slides that we emailed back and forth until we were satisfied we had enough visual ammunition in case words should somehow stop falling out of our mouths (it turns out this will never be a danger).

The session was good. It was a large crowd, it was downstairs from my work desk which made getting there supremely easy for me, and I brought two big bags of cheap candy (for eating) and a box of Kleenex (in case anyone should get emotionally overcome by our tall tales from the wilds of writing careers).

Great questions were asked, an abundance of visual Powers were Pointed at and at the hour and a half mark, we had to stop when we could have easily gone on another few hours. As we were packing up, Tolly mentioned that she was going to put up a blog entry on Wednesday summing up the panel. She confirmed this later over email, remarking that the Twitter response was great; some of those attending had taken great online notes, posting tidbits that I didn’t even remember us talking about just seconds after it was over.

What I expected would be a few short clips of warmed-over reminiscence was instead synthesized, powerfully, into a perfectly delicious 7-course goddamn feast (I’m not even counting the appetizer or dessert) baked with care by Tolly. Let me tell you something about Tolly: she does not say she’s going to do something and then not do it. Rather, she tells you she’s going to do something, to which you may reply, “Oh, that’s nice,” and then she doesn’t just do this something, she freakin’ WHALLOPS IT WITH A SHOVEL UNTIL THE THING IS DONE TO THE GREAT BEYOND WITH A QUICKNESS.

I had never worked with Tolly before on anything more than social chit-chat, but it turns out that when you work with Tolly, you’d best come correct, because if you come incorrectly, shirking as one does when there’s no money or long-term business commitment involved, you will be shown How It Is Done. It’s a good lesson to learn.

Holograms from Zebra Imaging. Photo by Laura Skelding / Austin American-Statesman.

My cat Cosa, who was sort of a star of this blog back when it was an online journal, died. I want to tell you about that and I’ve been writing that inevitable post, but there were some more developments and drama this weekend and I’m going to need a little more time. But a proper eulogy to a great, angry cat is coming very soon.

Instead, I’ll share what I’ve been working on the last few weeks. The first thing is really neat, something I was thrilled to share with people because my mind got blown as I was researching it and I felt like I really learned a thing or three. I did a column about “real” holograms (not the Tupac/Coachella type of holograms that are actually just a mirror and projection trick) produced by and Austin company called Zebra Imaging.

Zebra’s been around so long that one of my long-time coworkers was like, “Oh, THEM? What are they up to? They’ve been around forever!” It seems that the Tupac buzz has been good for them and that they’re coming out a long period of doing military stuff primarily and expanding into a lot of other areas for their truly amazing visual technology. Good for them.

Emerson Henriquez, a fan of Spill.com I met at their annual Spill Dot Con event. Photo by me.

The other new column runs in Monday’s newspaper and it’s about two very unique and fervently followed Austin websites, Spill.com and RoosterTeeth.com, both of which post very popular videos online and lots of other content that have earned this lots of fans. The success has led to real-world conferences that are bringing hundreds, sometimes thousands, of people together to celebrate their mutual love of the enjoyable things they put out into the world.

I’ve known Korey and some of the other Spill.com folks since I moved to Austin in 1997 and although I’ve been so busy parenting and working that I never get to see them anymore, they were my first close friends in Austin. Korey also introduced me to Adrian Villegas and that led to the Latino Comedy Project, so there’s lots of memories and good times I associate with that bunch of very talented people.

When I saw Korey and Martin, they looked at me like they were seeing a ghost (or at least a guy who hadn’t been around much at all for several years). I grew up thinking friends were the most important thing in life and it always makes me feel really guilty when I realize I haven’t tended to friendships like I should.

But apart from that, I was glad I got to write an article about a site that we have really under-covered over the years as it’s gotten really popular. By the same token. the folks at Rooster Teeth are amazing people who have also been doing this online comedy/video thing for ages and have worked incredibly hard to earn the fans they have. It’s always a pleasure to let people know about it.

I also got to see some neat tech at a Freescale event in San Antonio last week. There wasn’t much for me to write about, but I did take some snapshots. I also chatted with the Consumer ELectronics Association’s Jim Barry (really nice, knowledgable guy; I really enjoy speaking with him) for a piece that ended up running in the newspaper last week.

And just yesterday, I attended an all-day conference called MomComAustin. It’s research for a writing project I’ve mentioned here before, as is a trip I’m taking to New York in August for BlogHer. I’m devoting a lot more of my limited free time to these things and what before felt like a very nebulous project is beginning to feel like real work, but in a good way. In a way that feels less like waiting and more like acting. I had great conversations, listened to some really good speakers and even though I was literally the only man registered to attend (a few women asked me what I thought of that or gave me a pat on the back for being there), everyone there was great and super helpful when I asked questions prix viagra ligne. I have lots of transcribing and organizing to do, but it feels great to have that information in hand instead of just making plans to get that information, you know? Any kind of incremental forward movement I can get I’m thrilled to get.

Last thing I’ll mention for now is that tomorrow night I’m speaking at an ONA (Online News Association) Austin event about online writing with the incredibly talented and gracious Austin Eavesdropper Tolly Moseley. Tolly is someone I always enjoy chatting with when I run into her (I think we both have a bewildered, wide-eyes approach to writing and meeting other people, though I’m probably much crankier) and it was great of Rob Quigley, who is organizing this talk, to pair us up. We have some very entertaining, potentially embarrassing slides and stories to share.

Here are the new things first, then I’ll get into the rest.

Last week’s Digital Savant column was a guide for retweeting. My editor mentioned at one point that she liked how careful I was about not retweeting things that weren’t confirmed and suggested I do a full-on rant about people who are more careless. The piece on reckless retweeters maybe wasn’t so much a rant as some helpful suggestions from someone who’s been annoyed for a long time, but it did earn me a new nickname in the newsroom: “Cranky Omar.” I’ll take it!

On Thursday, I had a “Coffee with…” feature in the paper about Amanda Lepre, a musician who writes videogame-inspired songs and who is the frontwoman for the videogame cover band Descendants of Erdrick. She was a fun interview and it was great to get a story about her into the paper. I took the photo that ran with the story with my tiny Canon camera.

Leetleweelie, my Diablo III Witch Doctor.

And since I’m not sure when I’ll update next, here’s the next column, which runs on Monday. It’s about how my videogaming habits are changing as I get older. It was a chance to drop mentions of Diablo III and the word “escrow” in the same column.

I’ve been brain-dumping a lot here on the blog because really, where else can I do that without it being weird and uncomfortable? It still sometimes feels a little strange to me that I get paid at work now to frequently write in the first-person for the column and that, based on emails from new readers in other cities where it now appears, things seem to be working out OK on that front.

But here, at least, I can say things like “I feel tired and old!” Or, “shitbag!” Or tell you a whole graphic and embarrassing story involving a vasectomy (which I won’t, don’t worry).

This used to be a blog (or, rather, an online journal back when I was updating three times a week rain or shine or blocked) where I wrote long diary essays or made funny lists or created complex conceits about hunger-striking pets or sold plastic goods. Now it’s sort of where the website started — a place to let people know about stuff I’m working on elsewhere. Because all my time and energy is going to work, to an ongoing writing project that I’m working on with my friend Tracy and whatever freelance stuff pops up for Kirkus Reviews, CNN and elsewhere.

That’s not a bad thing, it just means that when I come back here and sit down to write a catch-up entry, it means I usually have a lot of pent-up thoughts and emotions that didn’t end up anywhere else and that I still need to share (or overshare).

Like the thought that this week I was really having a hard time with some writing, so much so that I wrote Tracy a long, desperate writer’s-blocky email saying, basically, “I don’t know what I’m doing.” And then that night, I went home and cleared my head and wrote and then everything magically seemed better. I went to bed and slept well, woke up and went to work, had time to hit the gym and everything seemed 150 percent better than it did just 24 hours before. And the rest of the week and into the weekend has been beautiful, wonderful, filled with just cool family stuff, pleasant surprises on Twitter and in emails, and just a flurry of sudden activity, doing things I’d been putting off a while like donating a bunch of stuff to Goodwill and ordering some stuff online that I’d been on the fence about buying.

I’m just finding that I feel like a big set of dials and controls, all these variables that turn into a great machine when the variables are correct. They include exercise, sleeping enough, not being lazy when the opportunity presents itself and having enough time to not feel overwhelmed with it all. When the settings are off for too long, I start to crash and get wiggy and it all starts to affect my outlook and attitude in general.

It’s weird because I thought that by 37, I’d already gotten well past that and figured out my emotional equilibrium. And for the most part, I think I’m pretty even-keel, but lately I’ve been measuring my worth more in word counts and time spent with the kids and the ability to not let unexpected disappointments throw me off and put me into bad moods.

The stuff that puts me in a good mood lately tends to put me in a really good mood, so much so that I have trouble putting it into words. So I’ll just show it in a photo from Lilly’s dance recital. Apart from the star herself, my favorite bit is how her sister looks like her publicist, asking people to hold off on questions until after all the pictures have been taken.

I think I’m actively seeking more things to be inspired by. Whether it’s movies or books or just being outside and enjoying some fresh air or having great conversations.

It’s really easy to get jaded because there’s so much good stuff around us right now that we don’t even have time to get to most of it. It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking things are mediocre because the base level of the stuff you’re exposed to constantly is so high that you start to expect and demand that everything you plug into resonates at that level.

So I’m trying to promise myself that I’ll enjoy the things that are great. Because I’m finding there’s no shortage of that around me. Noticing and appreciating it all in the moment is the bigger challenge.

True story: I wrote an article, the column that has my face on it and runs in the paper on Mondays, that was part two of an occasional series we’ll do defining tech terms that are either confusing or that aren’t easily explained in the barrage of tech-related marketing that’s thrown at us every day.

This second Digital Savant glossary includes words like “Airprint” and “animated GIF,” things that are common parlance to geeks and Internet bottom-dwellers like us, but that I get asked about by readers in emails and blog comments all the time. (I had to go and research, “3-D printer” to make sure I knew exactly what those are and, holy mac-n-cheese, that’s amazing! And a future source of legal problems, surely.)

Soon after the column ran, someone who reads my stuff regularly told me, “I read your piece. Didn’t understand a word of it.”

I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or what, but before I had time to let out, “But… that was… kind of… the point… of…” the moment had passed and I was left to go deflate.

It was one of those, “Now why am I doing this again?” moments, which I’ve seemed to have a lot of lately. Weird bursts of deflated, defeated lack of purpose and paralysis mixed with (often Twitter-driven) bouts of self-congratulatory confidence and frenzied catch-up activity. Is this what it’s like to start going bi-polar? Is there a take-home urine test for that or something? A Facebook quiz?

Anyhoo! The other thing I wrote this week that was in the paper was a preview of the new season of Red vs. Blue, which afforded me the opportunity to virtually chat with the folks over at Rooster Teeth, who are inspiring like a lot of people in Austin who just keep putting out high levels of creative stuff over a very long period of time until the Internet has no choice but to notice and to follow raptly. Anyone who has a modicum of interest in the Austin film scene or Internet video in general should be standing on their chairs and applauding that crew for what they’ve done.

Interrupted…

Everything up to this point I wrote last night. And in the middle of writing and previewing the post, the site went down. The entire host of the site went down. I waited a few minutes and the site, WordPress, everything… still down.  The editing page was still in the browser, so I copy/pasted the text into Google Docs and went to bed.

Which led me to… maybe I wasn’t supposed to write this?  Or I needed to take another look? Or I just need a new webhost?

Or perhaps just some perspective.  This has been a spectacularly up and down week.  My wife and I had a great three-day weekend that included a pool party, lots of eating out, lots of time having fun with the kids and then, boom, a weird stomach ailment that felled us both right as Memorial Day was ending.

At the AT&T Spursachampionatorium

Then I recovered enough to go to an NBA game in San Antonio and that was a blast even as I was struggling to climb up stairs to our seats and trying hard not to bring back on the headache that had been plaguing me all day.  The game and its screaming, dancing, San Antonio-puro-pienche-people crowd was, weirdly, restorative.  Even as I tried not to move too much, I was totally digging the scene and the great game and feeling very much at home.  It was wonderful.

A friend mentioned a piece that ran on this site a while back in an article she wrote for Bitch Magazine about people asking you to do work for free.

And then, today, I did a Skype session with some students visiting my alma mater in Oklahoma, journalists from Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka and Nepal. It was very similar to a session I did last year for the same event and just like last time, they asked incredibly insightful questions about everything from blogging to curating content to the future of social media to how to handle news in a country where broadband Internet just isn’t spreading to people fast enough.  I actually had answers and insight and stories and even a few funny bits of experience to share.  The comments they posted immediately after the session to Facebook, the friend requests I got and the personal thanks some of them sent (again, immediately after; they’re young and super-quick) made me feel like I’d actually helped them figure some things out.

Weird, wonderful week.

And then I just got interrupted again. Diaper failure causes 2-year-old’s crib to be soaked in urine, requires immediate sheet and clothing changes. She was a trouper, smiling the whole time and cheering me on as I lifted up her crib mattress and “Daddy fix it.”

The thing that’s hovering over what’s been a fitful couple of weeks is that a friend and I finally figured out what we need to be doing with a writing thing we’ve been working on for a long while and now we’re at the actual doing point and it’s scaring me.  There’s so much information we’ve collected and conversations we’ve had and things that we want to say and my brain can’t seem to hold and process and filter-distill and dispense it to my satisfaction. And that’s freaking me out. It’s making me think I need to print out pages and put things in an accordion folder and search-cloud-tag-up material and put stickers on papers and that I’m going to sit right back down with everything organized and still feel like I have no idea what I’m doing.

So that’s what’s really troubling me. Because, except for stomach bugs that come and go, most everything else has been pretty awesome lately.