• Tick tock

    Photo via Computer Chess, LLC

    We had layoffs this week. They didn’t affect the newsroom directly (but, boy, indirectly… you could say we’re rattled, to say the least). I found out about it late; I was out of the office when word got around and I missed it in the paper the next morning.

    So that’s been rolling around my head yesterday and today and frankly, I look around my desk and think, “Should I start taking a few personal things home so they don’t all have to be taken out at once in a big box some day down the road?” We’re not at that point, I hope, but it doesn’t mean I can’t worry a little.

    It’s very hard to work in an environment where things are changing so quickly around you, when people you’ve gotten used to for literally more than a decade are out the door every few months. You start kind of laying low and just plowing through your work and wondering if there’ll be a day when the luck runs out. One day you go to work, a little grudgingly but pleased with what you do, and then next, that whole idea (you:work) just stops existing. You are shown the door. It’s not good thoughts. You hear the clock and you’re thinking Hemingway titles and the fun just seeps out of your day.

    But time rolls on. On Monday, I had a story run in the paper about retro computing. There’s an Austin movie that’s been shot called Computer Chess that I’m really looking forward to seeing. The film folks were a pleasure to deal with.

    I don’t think I’ve written much about it here, but my life from about 8 till high school had a lot of computers in it. My dad got me into it and I fondly remember those glasses-wearing geek days. The best part of the story was getting to visit Goodwill Computer Works and seeing my story up there. It made me feel really, really warm.

    I also had a Tech Monday column the same day about this week’s Game Developers Conference Online. I wish I had more time to see more panels over there, but they’re a lot more inside-baseball than we’d typically write about for our readers. Still, if you love video games, it’s fascinating stuff to see what developers talk about when they get together.

    I got to see author Neal Stephenson speak and hear Atari founder (and Steve Jobs’ former boss) Nolan Bushnell entertain a room with his typical bombastic silliness. (He IS smart and knowledgeable, though. To a scary degree.).

    Then on Wednesday, we broke a little news about Austin game studio Twisted Pixel being acquired by Microsoft Studios. Right after I wrote that story, I got to go to GDC one more time to hear some writers from Valve talk about their work on games like Portal 2 and Team Fortress 2. It was awesome. They were funny and inspiring and clearly work very hard at what they do to get it right. I didn’t write about that panel so I’m so pleased I got to attend.

    I don’t really know what else to talk about, but you can probably tell I’ve got a lot on my mind right now. We’re starting up new Trailers Without Pity videos soon (first new one should be up around Halloween) and I’ve got vacation in early November. I’ve been keeping myself distracted upgrading to iOS 5 on our various Apple devices and waiting for my iPhone 4S to come in the mail. (My 3GS, seriously.. it’s so close to death. Cracked, missing volume buttons, wheezing, practically.) The death of Steve Jobs hit me a little harder than I was expecting last week. I wasn’t an early Apple user, but boy did I learn to love the hardware in college when we used those machines exclusively to put out a daily newspaper.

    Now, my wife and I both use iPhones, my daughter uses an iPad almost every day and I do most of my writing on a MacBook Pro now when I’m not at work. (Sometimes even at work.) I was bummed when Jobs’ death got turned into a globalization debate, but I’m sure Steve himself would not have been surprised. He was used to being polarizing. I think he liked that on some level.

    We gave up Macs at work a while back and switched to PCs, right around the time all these huge changes started happening. Most of our workplace got a new version Microsoft Office installed the same day the layoffs happened. It’s probably not a great mental association to create, but I’m sure it was a coincidence.

    But, seriously, that vacation can’t get here soon enough, y’all.

  • Pointedly

    'Snuggle Mountain,' an app mentioned in this week's Digital Savant column

    My energy level is up in a major, scary way, one of those “LOOK OUT, WORLD!” feelings that the world, it turns out, has largely seen before.

    For a few weeks I wasn’t going to the gym as often and I was eating… not great, and my energy level was just total shit. I was getting sleepy at 10 p.m. even when I’d had a decent night’s sleep and just was getting no writing done in at night, never mind actual house stuff or getting organized.

    Maybe it’s that it got hot again for a weird week, but now that the cool weather is coming back I feel like I’ve got my second (cool) wind. It’s nice. Stuff’s getting done. Waste paper is landing in basketball-hoop-style trash can novelty toys. The blood feels like it’s moving again.

    It’s a good thing because this morning was the first time I’ve done an NPR thing since March. I was invited to go on the show On Point with Tom Ashbrook to talk about the Amazon Kindle Fire and the tablet wars in general. (TABLET WARS! THEY’LL SLATE YOU… THIS CHRISTMAS.) You can listen to the one-hour segment (there were other guests as well) on their web site or just download the MP3 here. I think it went well. I did a ton of cramming and reading over the weekend in preparation, but went in with minimal notes and, in a big departure from when I used to do All Tech Considered, I was able to keep my laptop open and have an Internet connection. Something about having Twitter running in the background and access to information if I need it just calms me. Feeling hermetically sealed often makes me talk faster and feel less confident. Either way, it was nice to be back on the air.

    A few other new things: today we ran a Digital Savant column about an upcoming digital storytelling symposium for children’s book authors and illustrators. There’ll be a lot of talk about ebooks and children’s apps and I’m all over that.

    Last week, I wrote a blog post that ended up running in the paper about the future of vending machines. It was pretty snacky.

    That’s about it right now. I’m looking at a few more weeks of knocking out some stories and columns before I take another vacation in early November, right after Halloween. We’re trying to potty train Lilly at night (no more Pull-Ups!), but that’s challenging. Carolina has learned how to fight back when her sister takes items away from her and that’s… loud. Our fall looks like zoo visits and Wurstfest and putting away the plastic swimming pool and, for once, I’m OK with that. I had a great summer and I don’t feel bitter that it’s gone like I usually do, especially with the awfulness of the temperatures and the drought this year.

    Work is work; a few more staff members are leaving or shifting into other roles and I have a hard time remembering when things were “normal” or if that was ever really a state of being there.

    One thing I saw today really affected me. I went to Goodwill Computer Works to interview someone for a story. As I was wandering around, I saw this hanging up near the front:

    The air went out of my lungs and I just stared, mouth agape. I wrote the story in 1997. I’d just been hired a few months before and it was one of the first big, ambitious stories I wrote. It’s still one of my favorites, a piece about the Apple Lisa back when it looked as if Apple might not even exist in a few more years. A rush of emotions filled me, but I just turned away, smiling. The man I was interviewing walked into the room and it was time to get to work.

  • The 600 dollar suck (and other tales)

    A few weeks ago, I was making jokes on Twitter about a ridiculous $600 vacuum cleaner from Dyson that they sent me a press release about. Then they saw the Tweets. Then they sent me the vacuum. Then I used. Then I wrote this Digital Savant column about my experiences which were… suckily illuminating.

    A few interesting things that came out of it: our house and my car are much cleaner now, thanks. Also, I got a lot of emails and several voice mails and Tweets today after the column appeared, plus lots of Tweets and Facebook and Google+ comments when I mentioned I was working on the piece. Not one negative word about Dyson from the two or three dozen or so responses I got, not even a, “$600 is crazy for a vacuum!” No one told me a horror story about their faulty Dyson vacuum not working or anything like that. If the products are overhyped or overpriced, you wouldn’t know it from the people who told me they own one and would never go back to another brand.

    We ended up buying one of our own (the Animal was just a loaner and will soon be shipped back). Woot had an earlier, cheaper model on sale for $179 and we went ahead and snagged it. We’ll see how that goes and if it’s much different with our experiences using what amounts to cleanliness overkill for us. If we had large pets we kept indoors, we’d probably spring for one of the newer Dysons.

    Here’s some dirt I took a photo of after we cleaned our house. You’re welcome!

    I mentioned in the last post that we went to Austin City Limits Fest. I didn’t really talk about how it went. The first day, I was doing some work at the fest, but I got to stick around in the evening to see some music.

    I love going to ACL with a group of friends or family, but I also really love, it turns out, just wandering out among the masses on my own and sitting in the grass checking out music by myself. I saw Bright Eyes, which sounded really great. They played a surprising amount of older stuff from one of my favorite albums and from where I was sitting, everything sounded great. I missed Christian Bale, though. I must have been jotting some notes down or not paying attention when that happened.

    Internet was spotty at the fest, but I had just enough connectivity to see some Tweets about Santigold’s set, so I rushed over to that side of the park and caught the last half of her set. Holy crap, she was fantastic. I’d never really heard much of her music before, but the booming bass, the dancing, the great sound, everybody in the crowd dancing as the sun set. It was magical and I became a fan right there. I was really impressed.

    Then it was time for Kanye. I stopped listening to him for a while when I got fed up with his antics and was less and less impressed with his music. But I thought last year’s My Beautiful Twisted Dark Fantasy was a complete revelation and the new album with Jay-Z isn’t too shabby, either. Well, he was pretty amazing. Everybody was expecting guests, but nobody showed up. It was all Kanye, his dancers and DJs. It was still harrowing, dramatic, energetic, veering on cringeworthy drama at a few moments, but pretty spellbinding. I think Kanye has all kinds of personal issues and I’m worried he’s going to flame out. That’s one reason I was so determined to see him live; I wonder how long he’ll keep touring and putting together music as well as he’s doing right now. I’m so glad I went even if the middle of the set, with a bunch of songs from his Autotuned heartbreak period, weren’t my cup of tea. The opening salvo of songs more than made up for that.

    We saw Cee-Lo the next night, but were so far away it felt like we were watching him on a tiny TV. Then we scooted up for Stevie Wonder, which was pretty fantastic. It’s hard to describe, but it was just great song after great song on a perfect, not-too-hot night. We got separated when my wife went to the bathroom and never came back, but we had a meeting spot and found each other there. There were just so many people it was tough to get through the crowd. But it was worth all the trouble. Stevie sounded and looked better than I could have expected and he was clearly into it.

    The weather cooperated and I got to spend more time at ACL than I expected to this year. It sucked to miss Arcade Fire, but getting to be outside when it’s not 105 degrees and getting to eat ACL fest food took the sting off that. Great time this year.

    The ACL view from lying down

    Last thing: we took the girls to the Comal Count Fair on Saturday. It was a great time; I don’t have a lot to say about it, but I do have some photos.

    This cake is just a little sweet

    Wurstfest cake: the greatest thing ever created

    Chicks

    I like his pluck

    And one more pic we took at home this weekend:

    Yardly working

    It was a good week.

  • Conquering fears

    There’s a lot to talk about so let me get the housekeeping out of the way first. The video above is part of a story that’s running in Saturday’s newspaper, part of the ongoing online identity series.

    I shot and edited the video and I think it’s the best video I’ve done, content-wise. It says exactly what I wanted to get across and is very close to what the story says. I dread editing video and it always feels like I’m having to learn how to do it all over again, but I feel like the time I put into this one was worth it.

    Going back a week, I did a story in advance of the big Austin City Limits Festival about some of the technology from AMD, Dell and others behind the scenes and how they were planning to live-stream big chunks of the fest. There was also a video I shot for that you can find below.

    On the day of the Emmy Awards, I had a piece run in which I tried to make the case that Friday Night Lights should win the Best Drama Emmy. Of course, it didn’t, but I was still thrilled that the show won a writing award and that Kyle Chandler walked away with an Emmy for acting. I’d call it even.

    And in Friday’s paper, I wrote about a large grant awarded to the University of Texas Advanced Computing Center to build a giant, devastating supercomputer called “Stampede” that will one day rule us all (benevolently, I hope).

    I recorded and posted a new Digital Savant podcast, the first one in about two months, with Michelle Greer, who is leaving the Austin tech community, a loss for all of us in the area.

    And lastly, this week’s Digital Savant column was about Fantastic Arcade.

    That’s a lot of stuff, right? Allow me to explain.

    The week before Labor Day, right before I went on vacation, our editor abruptly resigned. I tried really hard not to think about it and to dwell on that during my time off, but when I came back to the office, the mood around the office had changed and ever since I’ve been feeling the void.

    Fred is someone that I had always tried really hard to impress in all my time working on his staff. In that way, he was very much like a parental figure for me. He’s not an easy person to blow away and when I knew I’d done good work that earned praise from him, it always meant a lot to me. He’s also a very funny person (in a bone-dry Texas summer kind of way) and I respected his opinion and his hard-assedness about things even when I didn’t agree with him.

    The one time I ever cried in frustration about something work-related, it was in his office. He kindly, quietly, passed me a box of Kleenex.

    His leaving has left me feeling a bit adrift, as have other changes as the paper. I’m not job hunting or worried for my livelihood or anything, it’s just big changes in a short amount of time. We’re all adjusting, some staffers more than others. For me, I think I’ve been working harder, trying to take on more things, unwilling to allow myself to pace myself like I should. I’m panicking, maybe, and probably unnecessarily.

    So I’m trying to be better about that. I do miss Fred, though. He was a looming authority figure in my life — in the best possible way.

    Outside of work, I’m working on a few writing projects and the summer laziness has given way to trying to remember what it’s like to be busy again and be juggling a bunch of things.

    The big writing project I’m working on with my friend Tracy is actually making some progress and it’s scaring me a little. I write a lot, all the time. but I’ve never actually written a single volume of anything longer than about 100 or 200 pages (and that was unfinished). You could add up all the recaps I did for Smallville and it would be a few thousand pages, probably, but it’s not the same as trying to build something cohesive and I’m trying really hard not to scare and intimidate myself into being paralyzed into not doing it. Apart from Tracy being one of the friends I’ve kept the longest and being a funny and knowledgeable writer, I think I want to write with her because I’m been fearful of doing it completely alone.

    That’s one reason I’ve never written a book. I’ve been too afraid of failing at it or doing it and realizing it’s not good enough to get published.

    Lilly is getting old enough that she’s aware of the concepts of tomorrow and of wishes and, strangely, unicorns, which she wants to see at a county fair we’re going to this weekend.

    She’s reached the age where she can see what tomorrow might be like and hope for things to be there. She’s not afraid of that future; she wants it to get here as soon as possible.

    I’m trying to shed some fear, too, and to build a life where my kids embrace possibilities and don’t shut down their own abilities before they even have a chance to get used.

    I’m going to try to lead by example.

    I need to write. Because, clearly, I can’t draw.

  • ACL Fest charity

    Something I realized about myself at Austin City Limits Fest today.

  • Cranky