Tag: holidays

  • Easter pics

    Carolina discovers that cracking cascarones on herself eliminates the middle-man.

     

    Just a little gallery of images from last weekend’s Easter festivities. Click on any of the images to enter the gallery.

  • Holiderring-do

    It’s Thanksgiving in two days and, like I said last time, things seem to be accelerating grimly, spinning outward as if by centrifuge, instead of settling into tedium and sugarness, like my famous (OK, Luby’s famous) sweet potato casserole.

    I spent the end of last week finishing up what I thought would be a front-page story (in the end: not so much) about a University of Texas study about how students and recent grads are using Facebook. S. Craig Watkins, who led the study, is one of the smartest, most interesting people I get to interview regularly and it’s always fun to catch up on what his thoughts are on the state of social media and tech.

    For several weeks before that, I’d been working on a holiday tech gift guide for the Statesman, an annual tradition that always ends up being more work than I remember from the year before. We focused on Internet-video-on-your-TV products like Apple TV, Roku and the Logitech Revue with Google TV. I’ve tried two of those three products and am curious about the third (Apple TV), especially since iPads and iPhones can now do a neat trick with it.

    There’s also a helicopter that flies around and shoots video. You’re welcome!

    Another annual tradition is a similar gift guide I do for Television Without Pity. It’s more a photo gallery than a story, much shorter and with some different items. If you like things like Karaoke Revolution Glee, you may like this guide.

    This week, I’ve been finishing up a profile of game designer Warren Spector, who is releasing Disney Epic Mickey next week. The reporting for that story has been pretty epic itself; I’ll tell you more about it after the story runs on Sunday.

    What was I talking about again? Oh, right! Sweet potato casserole! I gotta get on that for Thursday.

  • On iPad uses and library tech woes

    My second column for CNN ran this morning, surprising me a bit. It’s the second one I’ve written and I haven’t gotten any word yet on whether there’ll be any more. This one’s about alternative uses for an iPad, including audio recording, photo editing and bedtime storytelling.

    Also yesterday, I did a segment for NPR’s All Things Considered about a new national study on public libraries and the challenges their digital services (free Wi-Fi, computer access, etc.) face. Here’s the blog post (with audio embedded) and a transcript of the segment.

    I’m working on a digital divide/mobile story for the Statesman, so the reporting I’ve been doing matched up nicely with the piece. My story is due soon and it’s been a very, very tough one to get my head around, but things are starting to fall into place.

    Other new stuff: had a great Father’s Day with my girls and also got to spend time with my mom, dad and brother. I blinked and Carolina is already starting to scoot around on her belly and roll over. I swear she was just a immobile infant a week or two ago. Lilly loves it, of course, and can’t wait for her sister to crawl and walk. We’ve been through this before, but I still find this stage absolutely amazing.

    We have a new Trailers Without Pity that I haven’t even had a chance to post and just finished scripting and recording the next. I’ll get that up sometime later today. We’re weighing our options right now on the future of the videos beyond the end of our current contract, but Pablo and I have both been so slammed we haven’t had much time to make any decisions.

    That’s it! Back to the grindstone (with my nose).