Terribly Happy

Rick Orr, co-founder of the company behind the 'TabbedOut' app. Photo by Ralph Barrera, Austin American-Statesman.

A feature we started in the Statesman to feature mobile app creators in Austin appeared again in Monday’s paper. This one was about ATX Innovation, Inc., which makes an app called “TabbedOut” that allows you to open and pay off a bar or restaurant tab from your phone. Neat!

Also on Monday, I did my first NPR All Tech Considered segment in a while. It was about companies like Google and Microsoft racing to offer cloud-based e-mail and other services to government agencies and city governments like Los Angeles.

Here’s the blog post with the audio embedded and the page for the segment itself from All Things Considered.

More stories coming in the next few days! It’s been a strange few weeks and things are starting to feel like they’re going back to normal.

This happened a few weeks ago, but still makes me laugh.

(At the breakfast table)

Lilly: I want medicine.

Rebecca: You’re not sick. We only give you medicine when you’re sick.

Lilly: (very fake, hoarse voice) I have a cough. (cough) (cough)

The End

There honestly hasn’t been a lot to alert you to lately and I’ve been so busy with some work and outside-of-work things lately that there’s not even be time to post anything fun and goofy.

What’s new:

• I haven’t done NPR in a few weeks and honestly have no idea when I’ll be on again. It’s been very quiet. People have been on vacation, my producer was assigned to a major blog project and I just haven’t heard much. I’ve been enjoying the summer time off and am still posting an occasional blog entry on All Tech, but there’s been no parting of ways or anything like that (that I know of).
• Ditto with CNN. They originally asked me to write just two pieces and that was that. I’m still waiting on my first check to clear through their large corporate structure and arrive before I ask if they’ve got any more assignments.
• The famous tech podcast Glark and I did that was never famous, Age of Lasers, has transformed into a Tumblr blog at AgeOfLasers.com. It’s much more random and requires a lot less coordinating to post on. So far, so fun.
• The contract Pablo and I have for Trailers Without Pity hits the two-year mark in October and we’re in the process of deciding whether we want to continue. We’ve been told there’s no money for raises, so it’s kind of up to us whether we want to keep doing what we’re doing at the current rate, propose a different project that would be simpler to produce, or just stop.  They’re still fun videos to do and it’s very nice to get paid to do fun work, but it’s very time-consuming and we’ve been doing it with very few breaks for two straight years. I’m inclined to say we had fun, said what we wanted to say, and are ready to move on, but that decision is not set in stone yet.
• Where I’ve been spending a ton of energy lately is at work where I’ve been wrapping up a story scheduled to run on the front page (fingers crossed) Sunday. It was a very tough story to put together — it’s a profile and when it comes to telling one person’s life, especially a person you’ve been wanting to tell people abou for a long time — it’s a lot of pressure. I’ll be very glad when it’s completely finished.
• Lastly, my mom was in the hospital recently for surgery and just got out today. It wasn’t nearly as bad as when she was in the hospital a few years ago and everything seemed to be going wrong, but it was still scary and draining (much more for her than for us).  We’re very glad this whole experience is over.

And that’s what’s going on.  Lilly and Carolina are doing great. I think Lilly has just discovered that if she plays with Carolina, Carolina will respond and play back and it’s a wonderful thing to watch. Lilly has a birthday coming up. The summer already feels like it’s almost over.  I’m trying to enjoy it before it’s gone with trips to Schlitterbahn, walks in the evenings and trying not to take on too many projects, at least for now.

This one had been on our list of movies to do for a while. The mix of over-the-hill action stars, ridiculous title and even more ridiculous trailer beckoned like a lit, beckoning thing over on the horizon of a hill or something.

The Expendables looks like it might be just enough fun to watch on video, but not quite enough fun to make much money in theaters. I mean, look at The A-Team. That faded quickly and looked way more interesting.

Anyhoo, here’s our Trailers Without Pity for The Expendables. Ka-blooey!

We’re not sure what movie we’re doing next yet, but that new Machete trailer is looking ripe for the pickin’.

The embed code seems to be working again, but it’s a little flaky. If the video doesn’t load, try reloading or following the direct link to TWOP.

'The Iron Man'

Last week, I asked my folks at NPR if I could do a blog post about how methods of holding your new iPhone 4 might sound really dirty. They asked, “How dirty?” It was a fair point. My list included things like, “FaceTime Fingering.”

Glark helped brainstorm some ideas with me and by the time we were done, the piece shifted into a photo gallery with photos by Glark and text by me. I think the result, “12 New Ways To Hold Your iPhone 4” turned out pretty great. It’s far less dirty than what I originally imagined, but given that this story was mostly told in photos, that’s probably a good thing.

Even more fun is imagining Glark in his home studio setting up lights and gathering props to do these. Or imagining his face, with an iPhone in his mouth, on the front page of NPR.org. He’s got full-sized images on his site. Wow! Check them all out.

Jared and Juanita Esquivel. Photo by Jerrad Henderson, American-Statesman

That’s never possible, but this one, from my point of view, comes close. All the graphic and photo elements came together, almost all the pieces made it onto the online version and there were no last-minute crazy changes that needed to be made. It was as smooth an experience as I’ve ever had with a story like this. I’m pretty thrilled to have it finished.

I wrote a blog entry setting up the story and another one with lots of background and notes I couldn’t fit in the actual story (“deleted scenes”) if it’s a subject that interests you. I had no idea I was so passionate on the subject until I was pretty much done writing it all.

Bonus: the comments on the story are actually unintentionally hilarious, or racialtastic. Here’s one:

Yeah but you know how the economically disadvantaged, among other “classes” score on the TAKS. Maybe homie just don’t got the brain power to see that $70 for access for the whole family is cheaper than a net-capable phone in every hand. Plus I got idea that texting my posse is quite a bit more important than looking up some BS about getting a job or school. That’s uncool. The men in pookie’s gang just wouldn’t approve of it. Here the bottom line isn’t necessarily the bottom line.

Dude. Classic! The same guy made a “pork-n-beans” reference in another post. To be honest, I was expecting far, far worse in terms of comments.

Lilly and Carolina hanging out at home.

(Click photo to view on black)