• Untied knots

    Image courtesy Grog LLC’s ‘Animated Knots’ app

    I don’t know if it was the vacation I took from work in late December, the fact that I just purged out my desk at work and moved to a new one (more on that in a sec) or just a general sense of delayed New Year’s reflection, but I haven’t felt this content, centered and focused in a while. It just makes me realize what a nervous wreck I was last summer and fall as I was galloping to try to catch up on major writing assignments at work (and at home) and balance it with a toddler on the brink of being potty trained and an infant in the house.

    Whatever the reason, the last few weeks have felt really good in some weird, undefined way. The air seems scented with possibility and at one lull in my December vacation, my wife joked about how relaxed and laid back I was, something she rarely gets to see.

    “Oh, don’t get used to this. Relaxed Omar will be gone soon. Say goodbye. He’s great, but he’ll disappear by mid-January,” I told her.

    I think she may have cried.

    The 2011 good mood is partly because a lot has been resolved of late. The Kirkus Reviews project, which started back in October, is finally wrapping up, at least in its current phase. I committed to write 50 children’s app reviews, which at the time seemed like a ridiculous, theoretical number, the kind of challenge a competitor at the Coney Island 4th of July hot dog eating contest might accept. I just didn’t think I could do it, no matter what the offer was on teh table. So I did it anyway.

    Breaking it down to five reviews a week (and then, when even that seemed daunting, breaking it up to three reviews written by Sundays and two by each Monday) really worked. I turned in my last two reviews with a week to spare (we agreed to have 50 reviews done by the end of January) and I was lucky enough to work with a great editor, Vicky Smith, who guided me through the unfamiliar territory of children’s literature and gave my short write-ups careful, witty, knowledgeable edits. It was a good experience and I may stay on doing app reviews (but in much smaller numbers) for Kirkus as they continue covering the emerging digital book market.

    The other major loose end was that, on my wife’s solid suggestion, I called up my contact at NPR to find out what was up. It was a great conversation and, as it turns out, my fears that I had been unknowingly put out to pasture and was unworthy of being on the radio anymore were unfounded. The stuff I do for them in the future will likely be different than what I was doing before, but in a really good way. I wrote up and recorded a segment for them that is scheduled to air on Monday, Jan. 31 on All Things Considered. We’ll see how that turns out, but it was nice to find out that the door hadn’t been shut on me. It relieved a lot of anxiety I was having (but was trying not to acknowledge).

    In general, I feel an easing of tension, a lack of nervousness and anticipation. In the past, I’d have interpreted it as feeling that my life was boring and I was being unambitious, but lately, I’ve come to embrace having a little free time and room to breathe.

    Meanwhile, my day job continues as usual (or, hey, better than usual). We’re already preparing for South by Southwest Interactive in March, but in the meantime, I’ve had a few stories in the paper. On Monday, I had a piece on the front page of the Statesman about an Austin-related lawsuit filed against Courtney Love. I got to talk to some lawyers about libel law and how it relates to social media. Read it if you want to know if your Tweets and Facebook posts could get you sued.

    I also did a “There’s a Creator for That” app feature about “Animated Knots,” an iPhone app that is about knots and how to untie them.

    I got quoted in a Huffington Post piece about the 30 most underrated tech innovations of 2010 and the book I wrote the foreword for was featured in a New York Times Magazine article and on an NPR Fresh Air segment. So those things were pretty cool.

    Also did a short piece about a new order-from-your-seat technology at Austin’s Frank Erwin Center called Bypass Lane and on Digital Savant, I covered a little breaking news about layoffs at Junction Point Studios.

    Next week, we start up a new season of Trailers Without Pity with our first new video since early November.

    At work, I switched desks, which was an occasion to completely clear out my old desk (as well as the new one) and to wipe both of them down and get all the grime and dust and disorganization cleared away. We’re doing the same thing in our home office; January for me has been a time to throw old stuff away, donate whatever I can and think about how I want to live and work and exist in my space.

    It’s been very liberating to come to work and not face stacks of paper and books and just schmoot all over the place. I know it might not last long, but right now everything fees like its in the right place, that things are focused and correct, relaxed, but poised to act.

  • De-clutterer

    Photo by Laura Skelding, Austin American-Statesman

    The series of blog posts I mentioned before under the label “Project 2011 Tech-Awesome YOU!” (eh, maybe that name needed a little work) resurfaced as an article in the Life & Arts section of the Statesman on Sunday. It had a reworked lead and was tightened up quite a bit, but was probably more digestible than the three-part blog opus of last week.

    The advice on de-cluttering comes just as my wife and I are in the process or reorganizing our house, starting with our upstairs home office. Over my vacation, I spent two days (OK, maybe just a few hours spread over two days) getting rid of cardboard boxes that were littering the office, organizing review products to send back and putting together a stack of stuff to take to Goodwill and to donate to a local family organization. After it was all over, the office was much improved (we could actually walk around in it, not like before) even if I didn’t get to the CDs, books, software and other items that need sorting.

    We’re buying new desks and, possibly, a new computer since we find ourselves both working at home at the same time some weeks and I can’t spend a whole work day on a little laptop. Buying desks, it turns out, is way more complicated than buying a new computer. I’m learning a lot about what kind of workspace I’d like. Feel free to offer suggestions because I’m absolutely lost.

    The other piece that ran in the paper this week of mine was a reverse-published interview with the head of Austin’s Sony Online Entertainment studio about the launch of DC Universe Online.

    I’ve also been writing up a storm of iPad chlidren’s iPad reviews for Kirkus. In two weeks I will have written 50 of them, which I honestly didn’t think was possible when I started on them in November.

    And after months of uncertainty, I might have some good news to share on the NPR front soon. Here’s hoping.

  • We could not save him, we could not help him

    It almost sunk past before I saw it, the short Facebook status update in the Tweetdeck column. A friend had linked to a headline from Gizmodo that read, “The agonizing last words of programmer Bill Zeller.”

    I didn’t know at the time that it was reposted from MetaFilter, where Zeller was an active, cherished member of a large online community.

    I read it and Tweeted it, then I read it again last night, away from work desk, where I could give it my full attention. Needless to say, I went to bed devastated and heartbroken. There’s loss and hurt and then there’s the darkness Zeller describes that I can’t begin to imagine or process or to begin to place in the context of my own life.

    My good friend Tracy E. posted on Facebook that Zeller’s note rocked her, that it means something larger than any of us can understand. Its horror is so complete that it nearly defies analysis. We know trauma like this happen, but rarely are we told, specifically by the victim, how it has manifested over time, until the very end of a life.

    You don’t have to be a parent of young children to be horrified by Zeller’s story and to be haunted by the all-encompassing ruin that abuse had on his life. Can we learn from it? Contextualize it somehow? Stop it from happening again? I’m an optimist, but I’m note even sure I believe that we can. Some commenters on the sites I linked to took Zeller to task for making the wrong choice or for not simply taking the step of talking to someone, anyone. He needed help, but no one knew it. He needed a life vest, but nobody could see that he was drowning in the dark.

    Tonight, by coincidence, someone I’ve had some correspondence with in the past sent me a Twitter message telling me they are planning to commit suicide.

    Even if Zeller’s story wasn’t fresh in my mind, I would have still stopped what I was doing and tried to take some sort of action. I responded immediately by replying, telling this person that they are loved and that those who love them would be devastated. I reached out to someone much closer to this person I thought could help or at least find someone in the area who could check in.

    I didn’t know what else to do, so I waited. I waited for a reply, an acknowledgment, something to tell me that the worst had passed and that life continues.

    Right now, nearly an hour later, I’m still waiting. There’s only silence.

  • Soothsayer

    This week, I took a page from Twitter personality @Omarstradamus‘ playbook and made my predictions for the year in tech for an American-Statesman story. (That year, by the way: 2011.)

    I’ve been covering tech off and on since about 1995, so after a while it gets easier to spot cyclical patterns in the tech industry, to see through some of the marketing hype around a product that a company clearly has no real faith in seeing succeed and to sense when something is really a game changer instead of a flavor of the month. It’s been gratifying to see that a lot of the stuff I spitballed for the article appears to be arriving right on schedule at this week’s Consumer Electronics Show (which exhausts me to even think about).

    I also did a column for Tech Monday this week on an author who wrote a book about wikis. Did you know they’re not just for gigantic government document leaks and online encyclopedias?

    And lastly, I did a three-part Digital Savant project on things you can do with your tech to make 2011 a lot easier. I think I screwed the pooch by naming it badly, but it’ll run in print on Sunday with a much better, less convoluted headline, so maybe people will read it then. Part 1 is about getting your photos and videos organized. Part 2 is about backing up your data and part 3 is on de-cluttering your files and your home office. Enjoy!

  • Trailers Without Pity Episode Guide

    Trailers Without Pity was a web video show written, voiced and edited by brothers Omar and Pablo Gallaga. It ran on NBC Universal/Bravo-owned TelevisionWithoutPity.com from October 2008 through 2012 for four runs of shows. Episodes typically ran 4-5 minutes long and featured the “Super Gallaga Bros.” in animated form talking about movie trailers, intercut with stills from the film (often with word balloons or captions) and stock photos.

    After several versions of a test episode called Trailers Trashed (“Season Zero”) for the movie Hancock were made in the Summer of 2008, the eventual format, which is more of a visual recap of a trailer rather than a re-enactment/puppet show, was settled upon and continued to be the template for the series. It was heavily influenced by the format of Daniel “djb” Blau’s The Week Without Pity videos.

    For the purposes of this episode guide, all links from the movie titles go to the original entries where they appeared on Terribly Happy/Bloggystyle. There, the context and back story of each videos is often explained. Due to issues with outdated video embed codes, TWOP links are also provided as direct links to where each video can still be viewed. If you’re trying to view the videos on an iOS device, you’re better off downloading the official iOS TWOP app, where the videos can be viewed on an iPhone/iPad, etc.

     

    Season Zero

    [table id=2 /]

     

     

    Season One

    [table id=1 /]

     

     

    Season Two

    [table id=3 /]

     

     

    Season Three

    [table id=4 /]

     

     

    Season Four

    [table id=5 /]

  • Holiday tech support

    ‘I am seriously going to reach through this phone line and kill the next person that calls it an iTouch.’

    On Monday, I had a story run in the American-Statesman about getting good tech support/customer service, which is an issue that seems to hit critical mass a day or two after Christmas after the dust and eggnog have settled. There’s some good resources in the piece and, knock on wood, I haven’t had to use any of them yet this year. Enjoy!

    I’m on vacation right now and trying to do as little as possible that doesn’t involve pajamas, television or ice cream. So far, I’ve been wildly successful.