Tag: digital savant

Back to it

Vacation ended much too quickly, but I knew it would, so at least that wasn’t a surprise.

In between pediatrician visits and Halloween and the start of Wurstfest (oh, my favorite time of year), I cleared out all the clutter and junk on the floor of our home office, making it a sane, walkable place again. That alone was worth the price of burning up a week of vacation.

I bought a printer (and oh man does it work so much better than our last one; I think I’m swearing off HP printers forever), hired someone to fix a few behind-the-scenes WordPress issues I was having (the fonts are a little different, but now I can actually use apostrophes in the titles of blog posts; it was a weird issue that was driving me nuts. I can also now post here using the iPad/iPhone app, which was a problem before), did some Trailers Without Pity work, wrote the first significant chunk of a major writing project I’m really trying to devote more time to and just spent lots of time with the kids. I also did a solo day where I drove to Austin, worked out with a trainer, had a nice big salad for lunch then went and got a massage. That was my day of luxury and pampering. The rest of the vacation felt like errand, work and running things to Goodwill time.

It was a really, really good week. Now I’m back at work and all the things I’d put on pause in my head, all the emails I tried to ignore and Tweets I promised to follow up on are back on the front burner, but at least I have a little bit better attitude about it than when I left.

The Digital Savant column this week was a roundup of three tech product reviews I wrote, for the great Kinect game “Sesame Street: Once Upon a Monster,” the MiCommand Control it All Remote for iOS and the ThinkGeek iCade Arcade Cabinet for the iPad.

While I was on vacation, I had a “Coffee With…” feature I did for our Thursday Life & Style section run about an online service for couples who are dealing with infidelity. It was not a lot of fun having a press folder with the words “AFFAIR RECOVERY” lying on my desk, but damned if I was going to bring it home viagra mg.

Now I’m working on some holiday gift guide stuff and a few other stories leading up to another vacation around Christmas. There are a few things on the horizon for next year that I’m excited about, but right now I’m just trying to keep up, not get sick and maintain my energy.

November 8, 2011
Adventures in Temporary Single Dadhood

As I write this, the kids are asleep, one of them in the bed I share with my wife, the other in her crib commande viagra en ligne.

Normally, we’d try to keep Lilly in her own bed, and in a little while I’ll carry her back over, but for now I’m just thrilled and a little surprised that they’re asleep and that there’s a little window of free time for me. It’s weird. It’s unusual.

My wife’s on a work trip, the first one she’s ever taken for any job. We knew about it weeks and weeks ago and have been planning for it ever since, but in the end it turns out not a lot had to be done. My parents came over last night to help and my in-laws will be here tomorrow night. (It’s a blessing, always, that they all live so close. We’re beyond lucky in that sense.) Tonight was the only night I’d be spending alone with the kids and even that turned out not to be true; my parents swung by to pick up something before a trip they’re taking out of town and got to visit with the girls again for a little while.

It’s been a lot easier than I was expecting. The girls haven’t been wailing for their Momma. Tonight, as we were reading books, Lilly said matter-of-factly, “I miss Momma.” But she didn’t whine or cry or get bent out of shape. She whines more when she wants apple juice or a snack after she’s brushed her teeth. I told her Momma would be back in two days and she asked if we could bake her some cupcakes.

And that was it.

We’ve got them on such a set routine, even if some nights (with my wife here) it can feel chaotic and unstructured, that the girls are kind of on autopilot with dinner, bath, medicine, stories, bed. Tonight, there was even time to take a walk around the neighborhood, wagon and tricycle ridden. They’re in daycare during the day and I don’t know if they’ve been wearing them out with laps or mini Hula Hoop marathons or what, but whatever they’re doing is working.

This was going to be this incredible strain; we talked about me taking days off from work or at least a sleep day since they’d surely be keeping me up all night. But, as happened when we went to Vegas, the girls have been on what passes for their best behavior. It’s almost spooky.

One friend on Facebook suggested I shut up and suck it up as I’m the dad, not a babysitter. First of all, shut up. Second, my wife would be just as freaked out if I was going on a three-day business trip. I’ve taken a two-night business trip, but that was when Lilly was still an infant and before Carolina was born. It’s a little different when they outnumber you. They’re little unpredictable monsters sometimes; even with both of us here, we sometimes get overwhelmed.

I’m going to chalk the way this week has gone so far to some major luck.

The other thing we did this week was take the girls to the San Antonio Zoo. We got rained out the week before when a freak thunderstorm (in a year when we’ve had hardly any rain at all) kept us away. This last Sunday, it was warm and sunny and the girls got to see some elephants, monkeys, sea turtles and butterflies. They only lasted about two hours before they were overheated and worn out, but that was still a good time.

I took photos with my new phone and with the trusty SLR. I got a shot of Carolina that I love because it reminds me of another lucky photo we got at a wedding. She’s tough to photograph because she never stops moving and when we pose her for photos, her tornado personality goes away. I always think of her as dancing or chattering or throwing something. She’s that kind of kid. The photos below capture her best. She’s always yelling or dancing or laughing or having a little party of her own.

The only other real new stuff this week is that I had a Digital Savant column that ran about Aunt Bertha, a website that tries to simplify finding and applying for need-based assistance. Every once in a while I get to write about people who are out there doing legitimate Good Things for other people. Maybe they’re making money at it, but their goals and their mission are pretty altruistic and it’s often clear from what they’re putting out into the world that they’re doing something that’s, for lack of a better word, right.

I also did some crude drawings on the Digital Savant blog about the iPhone 4S (yes, I bought one; I’ll be writing more about that soon).
I always feel honored when I get to be the person who tells others about it. And I drew a zombie this week, so that was noteworthy, I guess.

Things have calmed down a bit at work since my last post, but like I said last time, I can’t wait for my upcoming vacation. I have a to-do list of stories that need to be done before I go and I’m knocking them down one by one, as they’re what stands between me and that time off.

October 18, 2011
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.

October 13, 2011
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.

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.

And one more pic we took at home this weekend:

It was a good week.

September 26, 2011
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.

September 24, 2011
Fires

Evernote's Rich Warwick. Photo by Laura Skelding / Austin American-Statesman

I keep meaning to update here, but over the last week I wrote so much at work in anticipation of vacation this week that I just never had the energy. Late at night, when I usually do updates or catch up on tying up loose ends, I would just go to bed early, exhausted. You know I’m tired when I don’t even have the stamina to stay up till 1 a.m. watching bad TV.

Last week, I had a lot of stories run in the paper and even more on the Digital Savant blog. I haven’t been doing lots of freelance writing lately and that’s partly because the summer head just drained me from wanting to add more stuff to my plate. Also, I actually got to enjoy the summer more this year: more trips to Schlitterbahn, more tubing, more time with the girls. It’s been a good trade-off and I’ve really been enjoying myself.

Monday last week, I broke a little bit of news. Evernote, the company that makes some really good note taking software across lots of different platforms, let us know early that they’re opening an Austin office and doing lots of hiring. Given that most of my stories and columns are planned out pretty far in advance, it’s not often I get a real news scoop, so I was pretty thrilled to have this out there before anyone else.

The same day that story ran, I had a Digital Savant column about McCartney Taylor, a local beekeeper
Photo by me
who has gotten pretty popular on YouTube with his beekeeping videos. He was nice enough to invite me and a photographer out to do a honey tasting and to check out the bees. We weren’t wearing any beekeeper gear (and McCartney wasn’t even wearing gloves), so there were a few moments where I stood perfectly still while a bee sat on my neck. But the honey was totally worth it. In the column, he gives some really good tips for improving your YouTube videos. One of his suggestions, on getting the point more quickly, has already inspired me to want to change the format a little on our Trailers Without Pity videos when we come back from our hiatus in a few months.

This week’s Digital Savant column was a collection of mini-reviews of the MacBook Air (wow, thin, fast), T-Mobile’s Rocket 3.0 Laptop Stick and their 4G Slide Android phone and, lastly, Time Warner Cable’s Wideband Internet service. These were bite-sized versions of much longer reviews of each that I did for the Digital Savant blog. (It’s much easier for me to write long and then cut than to write short and leave tons of questions unanswered.)

And lastly, I had a story reverse-published into the paper about a local meme/website called Stocking is the New Planking. The designers who created it were a lot of fun to talk to and I’m glad they’re getting lots of attention for this very fun thing they’re doing.

As I mentioned, I’m on vacation this week. I don’t have any huge plans. We thought about going to South Padre Island but ended up tabling that until early next year when Carolina is (hopefully) potty trained and we’re a little more prepared for a lengthy road trip. So instead, I’m enjoying New Braunfels stuff this week (like tubing, below; APOLOGIES for the shirtless pic. I will pay your therapy bill if necessary).

It always seems to happen when I go on vacation that a major news story happens and this week, it’s wildfires across Texas. I was offline for a lot of Sunday and Monday, but I caught up in little bits and pieces and by the evening we started getting nervous that these fires were getting close enough to our area that we should start thinking about what we’d do if we needed to evacuate. We pulled together birth certificates, passports, IDs and talked about how we’d pack up the girls, our computer backups and other valuables if we needed to go.

The air has been hazy and we can smell smoke outside. The photos from the fires have been horrifying.

The wildfires aren’t THAT close to our town, but given how dry it’s been, what the winds have been like and how many other people in our area have already either had to take off or watch the news nervously, it never hurts to have some kind of plan.

September 6, 2011