Terribly Happy

Photo by Thao Nguyen for the Austin American-Statesman. Go read TV critic Dale Roe's review.

Last night, we went to see Conan O’Brien at Austin Music Hall. This involved a convoluted set of babysitting maneuvers — my in laws are out of town this weekend and my mom was due for minor surgery Friday morning (it was cancelled at the last minute), so we took the girls up to Austin with us to go stay with their aunts.

We love Conan. We saw him in New York years ago and he was no less funny, although it was strange to see him in Austin and I could have done with about three fewer indulgent musical numbers. But the videos, the monologue, the bits with my hero Andy Richter, were all fantastic.  It almost made up for the fact that Austin Music Hall is a hellhole. Even though it’s been remodeled, it has seats that feel like they cost about 25 cents and jab into your back, the acoustics are still shit and, as O’Brien pointed out, it looks like it could be cleared out for cockfighting.  The show also ran so long that we missed seeing visiting friends Tara and Glark afterward (yes, we have turned into those parents who can’t ever stay out past 11 p.m.).

But I’m glad we went — it feels like something we might never get to see again and depending on how things go for Conan on TBS, he might never have the cultural lightning in a bottle he’s got right now to pull off a tour like this again. The mood in the room was certainly electric and the show brought out two of Austin’s most vibrant communities — dorks of Austin (if you wear a porn moustache and straw election hat, you are an Austin dork. Sorry) and comedy nerds.  As far as the content of the show, I agree with pretty much everything our TV critic Dale Roe said about the performance. I would have liked more comedy bits and fewer songs, but most of the comedic stuff killed and I was gasping for breath during the sublime Walker, Texas Ranger handle bit (which still works. Brilliantly.).

I did a story in the Statesman earlier in the week about social media and ticket sales related to the show. Still pretty amazing how quickly it sold out given, as O’Brien himself pointed out, this is the first time audiences have paid to see him perform.

8:15 a.m., at a dining room table…

Me: Why are you happy?

Lilly: ‘Cause I’m eating pancakes!

THE END

'Hey, I look at porn at work, too!'

Today on NPR’s All Tech Considered, we did a segment about Facebook and privacy, an issue we keep coming back to every few months because every few months Facebook is like, “Hey, we changed everything again. Deal with it.”

The blog post on NPR contains a lot more links to news stories and information if it’s a topic that gets your undergarment of choice in a wadded state. (The audio is embedded on the blog post, too.)

I’m not exactly sure what audio you’ll be hearing, though. We recorded the segment early in the afternoon and later we found out that something we said in the piece was wrong and I had to run back to the studio and re-record. I thought we were only subbing in one line but instead we did an entire re-over, so the piece I ended up hearing on the radio was more accurate, but was not as info-packed as the version we did earlier in the day. Such is life. Nothing’s ever perfect, especially when you’re on deadline.

And yes, I realize the irony of talking about Facebook privacy when I just added Facebook “Like” buttons to my entire personal Web site.

I know.

OK.

Chaotic Moon Studios' Ben Lamm, left, and William 'Whurley' Hurley. Photo by Rodolfo Gonzalez, Austin American-Statesman.

In today’s Statesman, we launched a new feature where we talk to Central Texas software developers about the mobile apps they’re working on.

The first one is from Chaotic Moon Studios and it’s an iPhone/iPod app called The Quiet Game. We talk with William “Whurley” Hurley about it in the story.

This feature is replacing the long-running “Masters of Their Domains,” which after about two or three years of monthly stories had kind of run its course. So instead of talking to people who own Web sites every month, we’ll talk to app developers for a while and see how that goes. There’s plenty of people doing exciting mobile stuff, whether it’s for Android, iPhone, iPad or BlackBerry, in Austin.

I think what the feature is called (based on the print edition) is “There’s a Creator for That.” This certainly is better than the suggestions I had, like, “Apps All Around Us,” “App-etizers” and “What’s Appening!”

I think I was trying too hard with the word “App.”

The plan is to write more actual blog entries (and short, stray thoughts) on Terribly Happy now that the new site format is live, but I still want to keep the stuff I’m working on and things that are published/produced elsewhere appearing here.

I can’t stress enough how much of a pain in the ass it had gotten to be dealing with Blogger the last few years. Half the time it wouldn’t publish, other times it messed up my HTML on something simple like adding a link to a post. Uploading an image was a chore and it never formated things the way I wanted it to.

If there were reasons I moved more to posting on Twitter and less on Bloggystyle, it was those. It got to be like having to visit a bad neighborhood where you used to live for a necessary errand that you keep putting off.

Anyway, here’s some of what I would have posted last week if the site had been accessible:

On Monday, I was on NPR talking about Apple (seems like we’re always talking about Apple, huh?). Specifically, iPad sales, the Gizmodo situation and the perception that Apple might be getting a little bit of a bad reputation in some circles. Here’s the audio from the segment and the blog entry I wrote with links to stuff we talked about.

Also last week, I had a story in the Saturday paper about location-based social networks like Gowalla and Foursquare. The story didnt make it online, mostly because I broke down and expanded it into three parts on Digital Savant (at least I think thats why it wasn’t online). The Digital Savant versions also include tips from power users and a few other tidbits we weren’t able to fit in the paper.

Basically, it’s a primer on how to use Foursquare and Gowalla if you’re not already using them (or maybe you are and you’re a little lost.

You can find those entries here: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Floor time in our house often looks a lot like this.