Terribly Happy | Bloggystyle

Illustration by Don Tate II / Austin American-Statesman

Even though I was out of the office most of last week, the Digital Savant column rolls along, this time with something we thought would be a fun idea; defining some of those jargony tech words that pop up so much in coverage of events like the Consumer Electronics Show.

So if you’re wondered exactly what “Droid” means or why there’s no such thing as an “iTouch” music player, you should check out the article.

Next week’s column will be about protecting your identity when breaches like the Zappos hack attack occur.

This has been a strange and terrible week, but then on the other hand I spent a lot of time with family and we took our first road trip with the kids (it was torture going one way, not so bad coming back).

Being out of the mix in the middle of the week — and not during a holiday — was weird and made me feel dislocated. It was the week of the Consumer Electronics Show and I found myself completely out of that news bubble for a few days and then struggling to catch up days later.

On Monday, I had a column published which was basically a review of Ultimate Ears custom earbuds. I spent a few weeks thinking about it (the fitting I describe in the column happened, I believe, back in November) and was really happy with the way the piece turned out right after I wrote it. Then a few days later, it was completely forgotten as I had other things to deal with and I barely noticed when it ran in the paper. (I got a few really nice emails about it, but nothing like the reaction we got with the Dyson vacuum piece.)

As it happened, the Klipsch earbuds I describe in the article broke right as I was wrapping the column up and sending it to my editor. They were still under warranty so the company sent me a brand new pair,after I called tech support, then emailed them a copy of the gift receipt and described what went wrong. The package arrived today — brand new earbuds, new packaging, everything. I was super impressed; it’s a two year warranty and I’m still only six months into owning them. I didn’t even have to send in the broken pair of buds.

The other thing that ran in the paper this week of mine was a reverse-publish of the blog post I previously mentioned, my tech resolutions for 2012.

I haven’t really written anything yet about my grandmother, but I’ve been thinking about her a lot and trying to wrap my memories together somehow into some thoughts that make sense. But it’s hard; I don’t really know where to begin.

Happy New Year!

This was a 2012 of firsts. It was the first time I didn’t make it to midnight. In between watching and mocking the Rockin’ Eve With a Corpse, a Plastic Man, Jenny McCarthy and Fergie, I was playing Star Wars: The Old Republic as I lay on the floor with the laptop and I literally fell asleep on the computer, my online Twi’lek avatar running fruitlessly into a wall. It was kind of pathetic. This was at 11:30 p.m. I gave up and went to sleep without observing the ball drop (I have two and I can see that whenever I like). (My wife and the kids had gone to bed hours earlier.)

It was also the first time I didn’t feel like I was missing out on going out and getting drunk. Staying home and lying under tons of blankets sounded way, way better.

(I’m boring. It’s OK. I’ve grown into it nicely.)

My vacation unfolded nicely and slowly over about 10 days. I wrote furiously in the two weeks leading up to vacation so that I wouldn’t have to think about work while I was gone and for once, that all worked out OK. I set up my work mail on my phone for the first time recently and rather than being an annoying distraction, it was actually nice to be able to peep in, delete messages and come back to work today without 1,000 unattended emails.

The column that ran in the paper on Monday was written more than two weeks ago, but it was a look ahead to some new stuff emerging in Austin (a neat little locator device for the iPhone, the City of Austin’s revamped website, the great website and app Make Pixel Art), and it was nice to cover three topics in one piece.

My first day back at work was productive and not nearly as stressful as I was expecting. I got myself organized, deleted even more emails and responded to the ones that needed attention, and got back to the business of being at work again. It was nice to put on actual pants that don’t have a drawstring and to hop into my car and drive purposefully toward a lucrative destination.

I even had time to write a list of tech resolutions for the blog.

I was pretty low key over the break, allowing myself to be really low-energy and in Ultra Chill mode. But now I’m ready to burst with energy again and do a bunch of stuff.

READY? LET’S GO.

No, not the Twitter account, just my now-annual attempt to gaze into the future of personal tech. It was Monday’s Digital Savant column, written ahead of vacation, predicting what I think might happen in 2012 in technological areas important to our lives such as:

• What’s the deal with Netflix?
• And Facebook? What’s up with THAT?
• OH MY GOD, WHAT ABOUT APPLE!? We should have asked about Apple first! Tell us, O Oracle!
• Will I die? Please be honest.

Incidentally, here were my 2011 predictions. I’m so glad I didn’t predict we’d be in flying cars by December like I had originally planned.

I have another column coming next Monday that I wrote before the lengthy vacation into which I am currently nuzzling my warm puppy nose.

In the paper this week, I also had some blog pieces reverse-published including this write-up of Grande Communications’ new TiVo Premere box and a review of Sony’s 24″ 3D Display.

Mostly this week it’s been quiet and I’ve been trying to rest up after a really, really busy weekend with family and with the girls. One break in the vacation that was a surprise, though, was that I got a call on Friday to appear on NPR’s Tell Me More. The live segment was produced on Tuesday morning and you can hear/read the whole thing on this page. It’s about Amazon’s Price Check app and small retailers. I had a whole page of notes about how the app works, where the tech comes from and who else is doing stuff in this area, but we didn’t really get to any of that. Instead, I got to say, in a nutshell, “Yeah, I can see why business owners would be upset.” Very different pace than All Things Considered or At Issue with Ben Merens, but the behind-the-scenes of it was that they run a very tight to-the-minute ship even though it sounds pretty free-flow. Even when things like this are unpaid (and the only time I’ve ever been paid for radio stuff was with All Tech), it’s still a good lesson to see how these shows work and to get a sense of what their producers do or don’t know about tech culture and trends.

The girls I mentioned before have been running us ragged, fighting over new toys and getting up at all hours of the night, completely wired and destabilized for the holiday season. They went back to daycare yesterday and I’ve been enjoying the relative daytime quiet before they come home and it turns into something out of Mad Max to get them bathed, fed and to bed.

On the other hand, it was nice not to have deadlines and a bunch of stuff to write and to be able to just hang out with them or with family without stuff hanging over my head like most years. Why was I thinking I’d be doing a bunch of work this week? That was dumb. I’m going to go run through like 20 hours of sitcoms, read some books and do some baking instead. Who wants cookies?

Sometimes things just work out.  All year, my editor and I had a story scheduled for the release of the new game Star Wars: The Old Republic, the biggest game ever developed in Austin, and about two months ago I started working on it.  The pieces (including a visit to the sizable studio) came together and this was one of the least stressy lead stories I’ve done in a while. The story ran on Saturday and I also posted a “Special Edition” follow-up collecting the deleted scenes and tidbits that didn’t make it into the article.

It was just fun writing about Star Wars, I guess, which I never get to do.  In the image above is my character in the game, a Twi’lek named Maumauchowchow. Come say hi if you see me in there.

I also had a Digital Savant column run on Monday. This one was about posting your whereabouts online (or your holiday travel plans) and whether that can lead to getting robbed. It turns out it can!

Christmas week got here so fast that we haven’t even done a holiday card yet (though I’m determined to somehow still make it happen, even if a time machine has to be involved), put up a lot of decorations (“Next year,” my wife says) or finished with the shopping.  I’m on vacation next week, so whatever happens, I’ll be resting and trying not to ruminate too much on the year.  I’ve never been one of those people to say, “Please let this year be over and bring on the new one” but this year I may be in that camp.  Lots of changes, not all of them great, have me eager to move ahead and see what’s next.

If we don’t communicate like this again before the weekend, have a lovely holiday.  Be safe, be merry, enjoy just being.

Just a quick note about this week’s Digital Savant column, which was about an Austin startup called vivogig, which pools photos that people take at concerts. Pretty neat idea; I hope it catches on.

I’ve also been working on some video game reviews. I did a write-up of Super Mario 3D Land and one today for Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Both good games, but neither one is close to perfect.  I have a big story about the new Star Wars MMO running in Saturday’s paper that I’ll link to when it’s available.

Also have some recently posted reviews on Kirkus for more kids apps including Hiding Hannah and The Blue Jackal.

Since we’re close to midway through December, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to how this year went and what changes have happened.  Some new things have started up, writing-wise, and a few other things have kind of gone away and other things, like the videos we do for TWOP and my Kirkus app reviews are ongoing and steady and good because they’re each still challenging in their own ways and they pay well for not a whole lot of time commitment.

Mostly, I think the problem I’m having right now is that I found something to work on that I really enjoy and that’s making all the other writing I do seem to pale in comparison in terms of my interest and excitement.  That’s hard and I’m trying to work through it by just keeping my energy high, but it’s tough to do that with all the weather changes and allergies and the kids getting up at randomly at night and a drag of a commute that’s been made worse lately by worsening traffic and the incredibly shrinking morale issues we have at work these days.

But then I think those are all just excuses to stay frustrated and scared instead of embracing change and fully committing to what I want to be doing right now (I think I know what that is, but I’m afraid to even type it).   Mostly it’s that I’ve let the gigs I’ve lucked into or worked my way up toward define who I am professionally and, though I try to be very loyal when that happens, I’ve not pushed very hard to define or push out my own work, the stuff I really own, not for a long while.  Because it’s a lot easier to have bosses and editors and people in charge than to try to do it for yourself.  That’s really, really tough for me.  But I know I need to try.

So that’s what’s been on my mind.  I’m not sure I even knew it consciously until I just wrote it, so good thing for this blog, eh?

Is that enough pre-holiday whining? I think it is. Merry two weeks before Christmas, folks!

"It's an MP3. I wrapped it myself. Sex?"

My editor and I got to talking in one of our meetings about the shift we’re all going through from physical media (CDs, books, DVDs) to digital and what that means. I don’t remember how the conversation got started but we were also talking about the holidays and the idea came up that there’s really no solid etiquette for gifting these digital items that are becoming so common in our lives.

That was the origin of this week’s Digital Savant column, where we ask the question, “How exactly do you wrap up an MP3 album or an ebook?” Luckily, I know some people to ask.

Also this week, I helped report on Gowalla’s deal with Facebook that’ll end Gowalla and start a few staffers from that company on the road to helping Facebook with its Timeline feature. This one caught us off guard Friday night and we chased it until it was official.

I also had a story run in the paper about Snoball, an Austin-based company helping people automate donations to nonprofits.

Late last week, I also appeared on the radio, talking about tech gifts on the WPR show “At Issues with Ben Merens.” You can listen to it here.

“Why are you playing so many videogames all of a sudden?”

– my wife, two weeks ago

Every year around this time, I end up playing a lot more videogames than usual as the usual holiday pileup of titles begins to pile up. In truth, I’ll only get through maybe 3-5 percent of what comes across my desk, so it becomes a matter of being really picky and choosy about what I want to spend my time with and what’s worth reviewing (if, indeed, there’s even time to write full reviews for work).

I always try to give priority to games developed locally, and it was this kind of thinking that led to a Digital Savant column that ran Monday about the year of Austin gaming. Everybody’s sort of holding their breath for the release of Star Wars: the Old Republic, a huge Austin-developed MMO that is the biggest game ever created here. I’m working on a larger piece about that game to run in mid-December.

I got to talk to a few Austin game studios for a separate Tech Monday column about how companies that run online games deal with trolls and bullies. It was an offshoot of a previous story I did on trolling; we had to cut a big chunk out of it about online gaming and I ended up spinning that information off into its own article.

And completely separate of all that, I played with and reviewed a fitness gadget called Striiv that also has its own gaming components (racking up points and using them in a Farmville-like virtual game.) A version of that review ran in the paper, too, as did a short interview I did with Trey Ratcliff about his new iPad app, “Stuck on Earth.”

(I just realized I didn’t mention what I’m actually playing right now. It’s Uncharted 3, Super Mario 3D Land, Mario Kart 7 and the Star Wars: Old Republic beta. At some point I’ll go back and play Call of Duty: MW3 and Batman: Arkham City, which I’ve beed sad to miss.)

We had a pretty great Thanksgiving, really restful, little bit of shopping, lots of eating, some exercise to make up for the eating, more eating because the exercise made us hungry and wanting to do more shopping.

Work is still work. I haven’t been doing much freelance at all lately, but a separate writing project I’ve been working on for a while is coming along really, really well. I’ve been devoting a little bit of time on it nearly every night and as much as I dread and fear screwing it up, when I sit down and slip into that little portal, it’s always a good feeling, one that gets more comfortable and enjoyable the longer I stick with it. If all goes well, I hope to have a lot more to say about it as the year comes to a close.

Every year around this time I usually put together a holiday tech gift guide for the Statesman and a separate one for Television Without Pity, working off a big master list and then deciding which items should go where (with a little bit of overlap).

This year the gift guides diverged a little more than usual because we decided to make the Statesman one more locally focused with products produced by Austin companies or powered by Austin technology (or, in a few cases, just stuff that would appeal to Central Texans). So the TWOP gift guide ends up being a lot more general and TV-focused while the Statesman one has a more local feel.

This is probably way more information than you care to have.

Which is all to say that while these packages often look really easy: just a bunch of product images with really short descriptions, they’re a huge challenge to put together. I save email pitches all year in a folder called “Gift Guide Tech” and I literally go through those emails one by one when it’s time to put these stories together. This year there were about 170+ emails and more kept coming in as I was working on it. Some of those emails included information for 10 to 20 products each. I used to put all my picks in one big Excel spreadsheet and work from that, but this year I ditched the spreadsheet and just made a simple list and that saved me a little bit of time.

I’ve been trying in general to save time on the things I do and not waste it, especially at work where it feels like deadlines are closing in and the year is already drawing to a close.

Like most of you, I’m just hanging on for Turkey Day, looking forward to just relaxing for a day or two and not thinking too hard about what’s left to do in 2011, which has proven to be a challenging, very weird year for me that I’m still trying to figure out.

Sometime in my early-early 30s, I went from flying by the seat of my pants on assignments and tasks to being a full-on productivity nerd. I’ve written about GTD a few times and at least once or twice a year I end up reassessing whether the software/apps I’m using are really working for me or if I should try something new.

(It helps a lot that my editor is also into GTD and is very organized; you should see her desk. There aren’t huge piles of papers and junk on it like everybody else in the newsroom. It’s kind of amazing.)

That’s enough preamble to say that I wrote a story for the Statesman about to-do list apps, websites and tips. I finished working on it last week and didn’t read it again until today and I was pleased with how it turned out. The print version ran with really huge artwork and the whole package works well, I think. Some of the artwork was of my actual real-life to-do list and it ran so large you could actually see what I was doing last week (and what deadlines I had missed). I’d be embarrassed, but I think I lost the capacity for that when they started running my photo with the column every week.

The other thing I wrote this week that ended up in print was about the night that Rick Perry made a mistake in a debate, Joe Paterno was fired and Ashton Kutcher mis-Tweeted something and the Internet got really mad.

We went to Wurstfest a few times, which the kids are getting old enough to appreciate on a whole other level. They are now aware that this is a place that has not only sausage and music they dig but also rides and booths that give you prizes if you give a grownup enough tokens that you get from your dad.

The holidays are getting here too quickly, but I’m enjoying the ride. So is Carolina: