Tag: glark

  • Something silly, something serious

    '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
    The other important thing from this week was a story that ran on the front page of today’s Austin American-Statesman. It took me a few months to write and, as with any long project, I went through all the states of hating the story, wishing I’d never even started it, and then, as it started coming together in the end, passionately defending it and wanting to make everything about it perfect.

    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.

  • Busy in tech

    iphone 4
    iPhone 4, ruiner of current iPhone you own

    Even though I haven’t done NPR segments in a couple of weeks (I should be back on next Monday, but I never know from week to week exactly what’s happening), things have been super-busy at work with so much tech news, mostly in the area of new phones and wireless announcements.

    Last week I did a story about a partnership my newspaper has started with local social media/location company Gowalla.  Stories where you’re writing about your own company are always tricky to navigate and this one was no exception.  As that was going on, I was testing out the new Sprint EVO 4G phone that hit stores on Friday.

    I wrote a review for this week’s Tech Monday, but we ran it early on my Digital Savant blog Friday and the response from fans of the Android OS was… spirited. Make no mistake, iPhone vs. Everybody Else is the new Macs vs. PCs. People are getting really passionate and territorial about their smart phones.

    I called it “Impressions” instead of a review because I don’t think you can really hit all the details with just a week or two of time with a phone with so many features and apps, but I did my best to give it a fair shake.  As I was working on that, news broke that AT&T is changing its wireless pricing for smart phones and that created a big flap on the blog, too. ( got an NPR blog entry out of that, too.

    That rolled right into my write-up and live chat on the new iPhone 4 Monday, which turned out to be an exhausting time. I love this stuff and I enjoy writing about it, but after a while my brain just gets tired of all the details and just wants to shut down. (Which it did. Last night.)

    So that’s been my last week. Lots of writing, lots of trying to keep up with tech announcements.  When I’m not working, I’m trying to take it as easy as possible. We got season passes for our local water park Schlitterbahn (“Shitter Bomb,” Glark calls it) and have been taking Lilly. It’s great, relaxing fun and except for when I take my phone in the water to snap photos or video of Lilly on a tube, I’m trying not to be so inundated with tech in my off time. It’s hard, but I’m trying.

    Toobin' Lilly

    The only other major thing of note that I haven’t mentioned anywhere else yet (not even on Twitter) because I didn’t want to jinx it: my first tech column for CNN.com should be up on their site tomorrow. I’ll post it here as soon as it’s available.

  • Gruene and Seguin

    Glark came into town and if that man knows anything it’s how to find large artificial pecans.

    At one point, he asked me what I thought the large pecan in the second photo below might be made out of. “Mostly pecan, I imagine,” I answered.

    Maybe he thought I was joking, but I seriously thought this was a real pecan, encased in some sort of preserving shellac. Don’t they grow giant watermelons and pumpkins and boars? Why not a giant pecan? Glark wonder-killed my dream of giant pecans, that’s for sure.

    We went to Gruene where I saw some interesting Whataburger-based art and a very interesting photo of Lyle Lovett at Gruene Music Hall.

    Click here to see the set over on Flickr or click on the images below to see larger versions (I’m experimenting with Lightbox on this site).

    Mobile pecan

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