Bloggystyle

Trailers Without Pity: Kick-Ass

2010-03-12T00:20:00.004-06:00

Trailers Without Pity: Kick-Ass

This movie, Kick-Ass debuts tomorrow night at the South by Southwest Film Fest, so I'll have a much better idea about it after that, but for now, you can hear our semi-informed opinions on the preview in our latest Trailers Without Pity.

Oh, by the way, our apologies for the creepy animated Nicolas Cage. We had no idea it was going to turn out that way. But then we kinda liked it.

Hope you enjoy!

Me on the news this week

2010-03-11T14:46:00.003-06:00

Me on the news this week

Busy, busy, busy week, so here's the short version.

The NPR All Tech Considered this week was about wireless broadband, the FCC and a few other things related to the future of high-speed Internet. Blog post with lots of links is here and the audio of the segment can be found in two parts: part one and part two. Based on how many comments we got, I'm sure it's a topic we'll return to.

My other big news this week was that I got a sorta-scoop on Google Maps bike routes. I say "sorta" because the news was embargoed and the moment the news went live, CNET, Wired and a few other news outlets had it, too. I was thrilled to have the info early since Austin is such a big biking town, but on the other hand it reaffirmed why I hate working under embargo, especially on national news. It's usually a lose-lose situation and I always end up getting roped in.

I worked very hard on this story -- it didn't go A1, but I'm not aware of any other regional or city papers of our size that had it that early. So... yay?

Lots of other stuff to post, so I'll be back in a bit. Gotta go get my credientials for SXSW Interactive first.

008

2010-03-07T18:05:00.003-06:00

008

Episode 008 of Age of Lasers is up. It was posted a few days ago, but there were some Web site problems that Glark valiantly tackled and it wasn't updating to iTunes for a while. This came after we had a previous audio issue that meant re-recording almost the entire episode, so that explains a bit of the delay between 007 and 008.

We discuss Google Buzz, Steam/Valve games on the Mac and Windows Series 7 Phone OS Mobile Microsoft Platform Handset, or whatever the Hell they're calling it.

Enjoy!

For me over the next week, I'll be focused on SXSW Interactive. You can follow my reports over on Digital Savant. I've also got an NPR segment airing Monday about mobile broadband on All Things Considered. I'll post a link to it as soon as it's up.

A blog post I did for NPR about the video game Heavy Rain seems to have gotten quite a bit of attention. There were more than 200 comments about it on Facebook last I checked (about 35 percent of them completely misinformed.). Still! Not a bad problem to ahve.

Roulette of Penises

2010-03-04T10:19:00.004-06:00

Roulette of Penises

My assignment for Monday's All Tech Considered was to try out Chatroulette, which I wrote about in this blog post and explained in an on-air segment.

Apart from the fact that I got to say "Male genitalia" on the public airwaves (sadly, "Dickensian" was vetoed), it was a normal segment that I thought went really well. My brother helped the day before use Chatroulette, which is much less scary when you're not doing it by yourself. As happens on this service, you see a lot of penis. A gaggle of them. A flock of cocks, if you will. It's always jarring (unless that's what you're specifically looking for), but after a while you get used to the flow of people coming into your computer from all over the world.

We had a good time, including having a talk with some guys in Tunisia who wanted us to send them some money so they could come to America. They were flashing Tunisian money (Tunips?), so I made it rain with some American money and told them that if they sent me $100, I would double their investment by sending them $200 right back. They did not fall for it.

We also talked to this cool dude in France. He didn't speak, but he was playing some house music and set up his laptop and mic to create these cool DJ feedback loops. He was wearing a bathrobe and tiny shorts and we said, "Oh no, he's gonna go Buffalo Bill on us!" We downloaded and played "Goodbye Horses" to try to put him in the mood, but it turns out he wasn't interested in dick dancing.

I've been writing entirely too much about penises this week.

Speaking of something long and hard, South by Southwest Interactive is always the most challenging part of the year for me. (Oh, also: speaking of stamina.) I did a story in the paper about South by Southwest parties in other cities and have been doing pretty much non-stop coverage with my work colleagues in advance of the fest. That's where I'll be March 12-16, and Tweeting about it, too.

Will be doing an NPR segment on Monday, too, and probably one the week after that on the festival.

Trailers Without Pity: Iron Man 2

2010-02-24T16:14:00.003-06:00

Trailers Without Pity: Iron Man 2

This one was kind of a no-brainer -- how could we not do Iron Man 2?

But within that easy free-throw range, I think we did some fun stuff and Pablo's channeling of Terrence Howard whispering, "Oh, no, he flew away..." cracks me up every single time I hear it.

So, here ya go. New episode of Trailers Without Pity. Next up, we're doing Kick-Ass and Sex and the City 2.

Airplane into building

2010-02-22T00:09:00.005-06:00

Airplane into building

It'll be 13 years this summer that I've worked professionally in the newsroom where I'm now employed, and I still don't know whether I love or dread the buzz that happens when news, real news, happens in our city.

On Thursday around 10 a.m., just as I was sitting down at my desk, we started seeing the first Tweets from people who said they saw a plane fly into a northwest Austin building and then we were hearing about smoke and fire.

Years ago, when I worked in Technopolis or the business section, I wouldn't have been directly involved, but now with Twitter and Facebook, a lot of the people I connect with were potential eyewitnesses. Now part of my job is to filter through these Tweets (along with our social media editor and others on the online and news staffs), knowing that there will probably be a story for me to write about the online reaction to a major event.

My story from Friday's paper was about the way that social media helped gather news, spread rumors and verify information (for us and for other local and national media). Then, the next day, we saw several Web sites related to the plane crash that seemed to be profiting from the tragedy by embedding ads in a copy of the Joe Stack manifesto. My story from Saturday's paper was about that and a video game that popped up the same day as the crash, a simple, but morally queasy Flash-based Web game.

Somewhere alone the line I got on the radar of the Alex Jones Web site Infowars and they wrote a blog entry about my story. The comments make for some incredibly entertaining reading.

Then, Alex Jones himself mentioned me (and mangled my last name; I thought he was a radio guy) on his Friday broadcast. My inbox has been hit with several incredibly enlightening messages that are TOTALLY NOT CONSPIRACY THEORIES! NOT AT ALL!

I mean, check this one out:

"How about this as a theory; The guy was murdered, his house set ablaze, his body placed in that plane, and the plane was remote controlled into the IRS building."

Dude, that makes complete sense. I wouldn't even feel right investigating it because it's so obvious.

But "Conspiracy theory?" I'm ashamed I ever even used those words. Clearly, you guys have thought this through.

The Googlez

2010-02-16T11:11:00.003-06:00

The Googlez

Google is not really a company I used to cover on my beat so much, but just by the nature of what they're doing, how they're expanding and how pervasive they are in our lives, I've turned into a reporter who has to follow the company's moves.

I did so yesterday on NPR in a segment about Google Buzz, what's going on with Google in China and their recent announcement of an ultra-high-speed broadband service. I posted an entry on the All Tech Considered blog with lots of links to updates.

It was the first segment I've done in a few weeks. I've been keeping busy working on a video project with my former LCP castmate Mical Trejo and Bobby Bones. We shot some video over the weekend and are finalizing a script to send out. It's been a busy few weeks, but I'm kind of amazed at how much we did in such a short time.

My wife is going back to work in a few weeks and Carolina is growing quickly. She'll have to go to daycare soon and we're a little worried about how that's going to play out. But worried in a very minor way because she and Lilly are both healthy and everything's going great. We're very lucky and we know it.

A woman who works at Lilly's daycare gave birth last week and the baby passed away. We've gotten updates via notes sent to all the parents and over the weekend we knew the situation was dire.

This wasn't a premature birth or anything like that. By all measures, everything should have gone perfectly, except that it didn't.

Before Carolina was born, we stressed that something might go wrong. The pregnancy went so smoothly that we thought surely our luck couldn't hold out to have a birth that was so complication-free.

I worry a lot that our luck will someday run out. I know that's not a healthy or even sane way of looking at things, but to know parents who've lost children and to see the horrible things that happen in the news (particularly in San Antonio) to infants and toddlers, I sometimes just get overwhelmed by all the trouble that's passed us by.

We don't talk about it much, but when we do, we come to the conclusion that if anything happened to Lilly, it could easily destroy us. It could destroy me. I don't know what I would do, honestly. I've always believed myself to be a strong person, but the kind of strength I see in other parents who have survived such things astonishes me. It's otherworldly.

I'm not sure how to deal with even the thought of something like that other than to do what most parents have to do: keep on moving, watching your kids grow, and protect them any way you know how.

Trailers Without Pity: Clash of the Titans

2010-02-09T15:13:00.002-06:00

Trailers Without Pity: Clash of the Titans

The original Clash of the Titans is surely branded deep in my brain as I saw it many times as a kid, but I can barely remember anything except for the togas, Medusa and the weird stop-motion creatures.

I didn't bother to go back and watch it because I'm sure I'd hate it, and besides, we have a whole new remake to mock instead.

This is our first Trailers Without Pity video since December and we're back on schedule to do these every two week. It was a lot more work than I remembered, but also tons of fun. I really like how this one turned out.

Uncertain Terribly Happy futures

2010-02-08T16:53:00.004-06:00

Uncertain Terribly Happy futures

In about a month and a half, I won't be able to update this Web site the way I have for the last five or six years.

Blogger is shutting down its FTP service, which means I won't be able to create blog entries using Blogger and have it automatically FTP to my Web host.

My options as it stands are to either move my entire site to a Google-hosted platform, which I don't want to do, or to move this blog to some other kind of blogging software, like Wordpress, which I quite like and have used for blogging on other sites.

Or I could just shut down this site. That's certainly an option, but not one I'm really considering. For one thing, I have advertisers who've already paid for the text ads you see on the rails and those agreements are ongoing.

But I like posting here, even as infrequently as it happens. It's my home on the Web. I don't post my most private thoughts (I like having a job and feeding my kids), but I do let it hang out a little more here than in other places where I write, except for maybe Twitter, where I'm most off-the-cuff (within limits).

It's hard to believe the site has been around almost 10 years and that I suddenly have to decide whether it's worth the effort to move it to Wordpress. That's probably what I'll do, but a petulant part of mine thinks, "Fuck this. I have more important shit to deal with."

Like, say, watching a bunch of DVR'd episodes of Saturday Night Live and Mighty Boosh. So not really important stuff, really, just things I'd rather be doing than learning how to export a site from Blogger and import it into Wordpress. 10 years ago, I had the patience to learn how to create image maps and to use Dreamweaver and Fireworks to create this Web site, but now I barely have the patience to get my car registration renewed and toilet train my two-year-old. (I know. Priorities!)

Part of me wishes I had the willpower to just nuke the whole site and start over on Wordpress, but I know that's not a possibility. I'm getting better about not holding onto the past so much, but I hate it when Web sites disappear and their archives go away forever. I know that's a site owner's prerogative, but as a reader it always feels like the author of a book I quite like snuck into my house and removed it from the bookshelf so I can never go back and browse through its pages ever again. I don't think I could do that.

So we'll see what happens. I have more than a month to figure it out in between dealing with South by Southwest Interactive, working and doing everything else I do.

I'm annoyed, but I'll get over it. Blogger is NOT a good blog platform; it's tolerable and I've put up with it for years longer than I should have because I didn't feel like migrating elsewhere, but it's sad how far Blogger has fallen behind other blogging platforms and how such a cool thing has just suffered from neglect and lack of innovation. It feels like an elephant graveyard and maybe that alone will be enough to motivate me to get my ass over to the greener grass of Wordpress, Terribly Happy in tow.

The comeback

2010-01-28T17:14:00.003-06:00

The comeback

This week was like a dress rehearsal for next week, when I'll be going back to work after a six-week absence. I've been at work once a week this month and have been doing NPR and other work-y things, but on Monday, things go back to semi-normal, except that there is a really small human being added to the mix for us to worry over.

On Monday, I did a very brief NPR All Tech Considered segment that was the fastest I've ever been recorded for them. We did it one take, three minutes, DONE. I'm a little afraid to listen to it because it went so quickly, but I'm going to go on thinking that it was awesome and that there's nothing I could have done better with multiple takes or more time. Please don't correct me on that if I'm wrong. The blog entry that goes with it took considerably more time.

Of course, the other big thing in my world was Apple's iPad announcement. I wrote what I thought was a pretty fun lead-up blog entry about it on rejected names for the device, then I went to work on Wednesday to lead a live chat on Digital Savant. The news was coming fast and furious and by late afternoon my brain felt melted.

I met with my friend Mical to do a Skype video chat with Bobby Bones, whom I've worked with in the past and who has brought us on to help with a new project.

Then I went home and recorded a lengthy Age of Lasers podcast about the iPad with Glark. It was a full, busy day and a bit of a preview of how things might be very soon. I'm also scripting new Trailers Without Pity episodes with Pablo G. and trying to keep up with TV, newspaper articles and RSS feeds. (And e-mail. Always the e-mail.)

Did I mention there's a baby? Diapers, feedings, all that.

So, yes, it's busy, but it's good. Happy, even. Yay for a busy, fulfilling 2010!

No sleep 'til workplace

2010-01-20T23:35:00.004-06:00

No sleep 'til workplace

Except for the part where four days a week I stay home instead of going to work, things seem pretty normal around here. Given the amount of time our new Carolina sleeps during the day, you could easily forget that there's a four-week-old hanging around.

Instead she bides her time and stays up all night, grunting and demanding, keeping her poor parents up until that horrible hour in the morning when one of the has to get up to take the two-year-old to her daycare. It's almost like these two siblings haven't figured out yet how to coordinate their schedules yet to maximize the ease with which their parents might provide nurturing care for them. What the Hell, kids?

Next week is the last week of sick leave I have left before I go to work, but that's sort of not really true because I plan to go to Austin on Monday for an NPR segment and again on Wednesday for a work day to cover Apple's very-likely tablet announcement.

This week was my first NPR All Tech Considered piece since early December. I don't know how you might react if suddenly asked to go on a national radio show to talk about Haiti relief. My reaction was something like, "Ah. Could we talk about funny cats on the Internet instead?"

I'm so glad we did the on-air segment, though, (and the blog entry, which has lots of great links) because I'm pretty blown away by how concerned people have been. This is despite one or two lunkheaded comments I've seen about Haiti on the various social networks I frequent.

I joke around a lot about everything, but my tolerance for jokes about this is somewhere close to zero. My tolerance is even less for people who have to ask why we should bother to help people in such dire circumstances when we have plenty of serious problems here in the U.S.

If I have to explain why you should help a country where 200,000+ people may have died and which many hundreds of thousands more are, literally, on the edge of death, then you are not a person that can be convinced anyway. You are not a person I can waste my time on because you don't get it. You probably won't get it, not for many years to come if at all, and I have no time for you. Haiti has no time for you. Stay the Hell out of the way.

Another new thing I forgot to post about last week is a Space Monkeys! comic we did about Avatar. I still haven't seen this movie, but I hope to sometime in the next few days. 3+ hours in a theater is tough to swing when you have a newborn.

Because of the time it takes to do our Trailers Without Pity videos, we pretty much put the comic on hold indefinitely. We had hoped to do a few more over the holidays, but, hey, infant. Pablo also has some things that are keeping him busy right now, so, sadly we're not able to do the comics we want to do right now.

We love that universe, we love the characters, and we both hate not being able to produce comics regularly. We've been discussing ways to do simpler, more quick-hit comics, which I'm totally down with, but we'll see if it comes to fruition. For the time being, the Avatar comic will have to be a one-off holiday bonus.

I'm really quite happy with the way the 3-D version of the comic (requires red/blue 3-D glasses) came out. It was pretty amazing that Pablo taught himself how to do that so quickly. He's sharp like that.

Back on the horse, little by little

2010-01-12T23:30:00.005-06:00

Back on the horse, little by little

There's a new episode of "Age of Lasers" up today, #006, in which Glark and I pretend (but not for very long) that we went to the big Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last week. We talk about 3-D TV, devices that stream Internet content to your television, e-books/tablets and other stuff. Also, porn. I'm not sure exactly that got in there.

We recorded it this afternoon and it was up in record time. It's the first one we've recorded since before Christmas and I was relieved to get back into it because the weeks since Carolina was born have been a weird mix of sleep deprivation, boredom, crazy excitement and activity, and little bits where it almost feels like a vacation. (Or, the dreaded word, "Babycation.")

I took six weeks off from work because I had mountains and mountains of sick time piled up from 12 years of not really ever getting sick at my job. In truth, even taking six weeks of sick time barely makes a dent in the almost 800 hours of sick leave I'd accrued.

Of course, you can't just take an extended amount of sick time just because; a doctor had to recommend it and because my wife isn't being allowed to drive and we have a 2-year-old in daycare, I need to be home to help for that time. We did a weird little addendum though: I'm going to work one day a week to clear out e-mails and go through packages that pile up and also meeting with my editor to begin South by Southwest Interactive planning for March. So, really, I'm only off for about five weeks.

I've done this one-day thing for two weeks now and in that time I've completely cleared out tons of boxes and junk under my desk, organized my files, answered e-mails (anytime my inbox has fewer than 50 messages I'm in good shape) and have sent back a lot of review loan products that had been piling up.

It's nice to be back at work but not under the pressure to work on stories or blog. Blogging and keeping up with e-mails and other communication, I've come to find, probably take up about 80 percent of my work day. The rest is spent trying to pull together stories for print and other odds and ends. That doesn't leave a lot of time for sending back packages to companies that loan us products or keeping my paper files up to date. The part of me that still adheres to Getting Things Done loves this opportunity I have to get my shit together.

I also haven't been doing NPR since December and that was mostly the birth but also just luck of the draw in that the last few segments have already been pulled together without me being needed. I think I'm on next Monday, but I'm not 100 percent sure on the topic yet.

And then there's "Trailers Without Pity" which I'm about to start working on new scripts for this weekend and another project, possibly for TV, that some good friends have asked me to help out on.

Things are ramping up again and in two and a half weeks I'll be back at work full time and things will be crazy and accelerated all over again. We'll have new stuff to deal with like the possibility of two separate daycares. I have to keep reminding myself we have a whole other human in our house who needs attention and that it's a very real possibility that I simply can't keep up my usual pace. After Lilly was born, several things I had spent years working on began to fall away (LCP, recapping for TWoP), not necessarily because I was ready to stop but because I had no choice but to stop.

Those decisions have worked out well, but I'm finding that my number one priority right now is finding the balance between keeping these creative endeavors going that I love so much and not neglecting my family or taking too much time away from home. I'm not sure how I'll do it all and, as I get older, simply skipping sleep like I used to is becoming less and less attractive.

I'm hoping 2010 has as many surprises and fortuitous turns as 2009 did for us.

Overexposed in '09

2010-01-05T22:54:00.002-06:00

Overexposed in '09

I'm not sure why it took me so long to get to this post. I could use the excuse that I've been reproducing and that the past year was just insanely busy, but my life is always insanely busy and that never stops me from saying what I want to say.

So instead, I'll suppose that I wanted to let enough time pass before I even brought up the subject because when it was all happening it seemed to weird and foreign that it embarrassed me to even bring it up.

Now, it just seems like, "Something weird and interesting that happened last year," so here goes.

After a series of events at work last summer, my face ended up plastered on a giant billboard on IH-35 in north Austin. And on a local TV commercial. And in some print ads.

It was an ad campaign our newspaper did to highlight people in the newsroom and, I suppose, ingratiate us to the community a little. I was one of about seven people (some in pairs) who were part of these ads. There was a months-long build-up to it and it all started with me committing to be a part of it in the first place, which itself was a leap of faith.

The idea, I was told, was that we'd be doing slam poetry against a white backdrop. A guy I really don't like at the Austin Chronicle had just written an article mocking our paper for a column that dealt with slam poetry and the last thing I wanted to do to open myself up to ridicule by some bitter, unloved hack at the weekly rag who already has an axe to grind with us.

But partly because I was asked and also because a friend of mine was responsible for writing the content of the ads, I went ahead with it. I had lots of second thoughts. I freaked out a little. When I had to parade a bunch of clothes (not my own) in front of several coworkers and film people like I was shopping with mom for back-to-school clothes I wondered if there was any way I could bail.

I felt goofy at the photo shoot.

I felt 10 times goofier at the video shoot, even though the company that was doing it for us had a very talented director, a really professional crew and even a nice little food spread laid out for an all-day Saturday session.

Then -- as sometimes happens in life and you have to just go with it -- it turned out better than I expected. People seemed to really like the ads. When I'd go to happy hour events, my friend Wesley would introduce me as, "This is Omar. He's on a billboard."

If I were single, that would have been a fantastic way to meet women. I don't know why I never thought to buy myself billboard space in my early 20s.

Seeing the billboard in person, parked by the side of the road, was so trippy I chose to just ignore it and take some photos. I felt incredibly self conscious standing there with a tripod and camera as people drove by, some schmoe taking a picture of giant picture of himself.

The NPR segments I've been doing are a much more high-profile thing, but it's radio. I never seen the listeners. I never know where they are and, although I get lots of feedback, I don't have to see myself over those airwaves or worry about what I look like out there to people who don't know me.

But, at the same time, I find that as I get older the opportunity to take risks and do something out of my comfort zone (that doesn't involve creating children) become fewer and fewer. I'm glad it all happened and that I took a leap of faith, but it made for a strange 2009. At least I've got lots of visuals to remember it.

The billboard:

One of the print ads:

A banner that was near our lunch room (and which scared lots of co-workers and lunch servers):

The commercial:

OK, now I don't want to look at any of this stuff again until at least 2011.

The Top 10 Things of the Aughts

2009-12-31T22:35:00.002-06:00

The Top 10 Things of the Aughts

I know that many writers have been out there filing their very last story before vacation, listing their top 10 movies, top 10 albums, songs, knitting patterns, whatever of the last decade.

Well, that's really subjective and just adorable.

While many of them have been doing not much more than cruising their iTunes Most Played list and typing away, I've been out on the mean streets -- pounding the pavement, kneading the dough, dotting the i's, crossing the doughnuts, pickling the peppers (it's just an expression) -- keeping a top 10 list that reflects not just art and culture, but EVERYTHING.

EVERYTHING!

Here, without further delay, then, is the only Top 10 of the 2000s list you'll need.

The Top 10 Things of 2000-late 2009:
Cheese.
The space bar.
Slides.
Raspberry lemonade.
Very old peckers.
Tiny socks.
Pauses.
The entire southern hemisphere.
That Nathan Fillion guy.
Boner pills. (See #5)

You're welcome, '00s!

New stillness

2009-12-28T00:36:00.005-06:00

New stillness

We got home from the hospital on Christmas Eve, and as has been pointed out by many, having a baby around this time turned out to be the perfect gift.

What's been strange and unexpected was the relatively pain-free, easy time we've had so far. It's true what they say about how if you remembered all the sleeplessness and fear of having a baby, you'd never sign on to do it again. We kept trying to remind ourselves how difficult the first few months would be, how tired and cranky we'd be and how that pain would be compounded by having an energetic two-year-old in the house.

What we absolutely weren't expecting was a perfect, on-schedule delivery, three drama-free days in the hospital, and despite the requisite rough first nights, more sleep than we remembered getting last time.

Rebecca's recovery has been nothing short of astounding. Last time, I remember her being in pain for weeks, unable to even laugh much from her post-op pain. This time, she wisely opted to take the recommended meds and was up on her feet -- to my amazement -- the day after Carolina was born. She's been walking and talking and doing her normal stuff ever since with barely a look back.

Of course, she's also taking meds that could make a horse fly, so we'll see how it goes when those wear off. But, again, the last thing we expected was to have an easy time of this and, knock on wood, things have been a lot easier than last time. We're feeling pretty lucky and much less disoriented than we did in August of 2007.

Because we were expecting an apocalyptic winter, I decided to take a sizable chunk of sick leave I'd had built up, to take a few weeks off from NPR and to stop doing "Trailers Without Pity" until February. Now that I'm one week into this so-called "Babycation," everything suddenly feels very still. I have no deadlines that don't have to do with diaper changes and picking up Lilly at daycare.

Part of it is the season. Christmas-to-New Year is always when everything online starts to grind to a halt and when I can finally catch up on the DVR, RSS feeds and books that have piled up.

Of course there's more to do now. Carolina is very mellow -- she hardly cries at all and sleeps quite a bit -- but I know that will change quickly and she'll find her lungs soon enough. But I'm most thankful of all for this brief bit of time where everything feels manageable. We're hardly in normal territory and as soon as work and deadlines return, it'll be a whole different ball of waxy matter.

I've also been thinking a lot about the last 10 years and all that's happened. Like a lot of other people I work with, I had to be reminded that we were approaching the end of a decade. KInd of snuck up on us. It just doesn't seem like the end of 10 years, does it?

I had a story in the paper yesterday about the last decade of technology, particularly in how things have shaken out in Austin. 10 years ago, we started "Technopolis," which I've always said was the most fun I've ever had in my newspaper work.

That was until my current gig. For the article, I went digging back through the stacks of newspapers and was reminded of so many people I met and so many stories we wrote. I remembered starting Terribly Happy almost 10 years ago. I remember living in a crappy apartment in a crime-ridden neighborhood with a mean little black cat.

I hadn't met some of my closest friends yet and I was terribly homesick for my college days in Oklahoma. I was broke most of the time and ate a ridiculous diet of bachelor-crap all the time.

I didn't know I'd end up where I ended up, and at the time I probably would have thought that having two kids and living the way I do now was pretty lame. Sometimes it is, but it's also made me happier than I ever thought was possible.

Carolina Noelle Gallaga

2009-12-21T17:54:00.004-06:00

Carolina Noelle Gallaga

Click here for the Flickr.com version.

Arrived at 12:48 p.m. today, winking. 7 lbs, 5 oz, perfectly healthy. Things wen't smoothly and we're thrilled beyond belief.

Arrivals

2009-12-20T23:31:00.003-06:00

Arrivals

I'm tying up loose ends because in about 12 hours, if all goes according to plan, I'll be putting on hospital scrubs to watch a baby (ours) get born. I hear if you do this six times you get a seventh one free, plus a car wash.

The timing is more common than I thought. Several friends are having babies this month and our own impending birth has reminded us of friends who have birthdays around this time. It's been the smoothest, most uneventful, most boring pregnancy we could have ever imagined, and we're so grateful that it's been this way. We've been really lucky, and the fortune cookie says our baby should be lucky, too.

On Thursday, I had a story in the newspaper about Eugene Hsu, a guy I've gotten to know a little over the last year as our social media paths have crossed. He's moving to Seattle to go work for the Cheezburger Network, the company that makes sure you have funny cat photos and FAILblog entries to look at every day.

And on Saturday, I had a piece in the paper about batteries, a kind of primer about the basics of AAs, cell phone and laptop batteries, a subject I'd always been curious about but had never done any real research about.

And on the NPR blog, I shared my top video games of the year. I finally finished the single-player campaign of Modern Warfare 2 last night and it didn't change the standings one bit.

I have a few more stories running in the next week or two that I'll link to as time and sleep permit. It was a crazy few weeks trying to get everything done, but I'm officially on leave from work for several weeks. At least this time, I know a lot more about what to expect.

The last you'll hear from me on holiday gifts

2009-12-15T10:53:00.002-06:00

The last you'll hear from me on holiday gifts

My winter tour of Holiday Gifts I'm Not Actually Buying Or Receiving Myself concludes with yesterday's NPR All Tech Considered segment about online holiday shopping (blog post here; audio of the segment here).

There was a funny/crazy moment after we finished as I was walking back to my car when I got the word that the segment had not been recorded. I went back to the studio, and before we did it all over again found out that the piece was saved by a CD backup. Relief!

Given the current birthing timeline, it's probably the last NPR segment I'll be doing this year. Not sure yet how soon I'll be back on that, but I'm guessing early-mid January.

I have several Statesman stories in the pipeline that'll run after I leave. A video games gift guide, which I hope covers quite a lot of ground in a short space, ran on Saturday. I think my favorite game of the entire year was probably Uncharted 2. It's one of the few games I actually finished and I was blown away by it. Beatles: Rock Band was probably a close second.

We like gifts and talking

2009-12-10T16:56:00.003-06:00

We like gifts and talking

Episode 005 of what is now the Epic Age of Lasers Quintet of Podcasts, is now up and ready for a strong, steady listen. It's on iTunes, too, if that is how you digitally roll.

In it, we tell you (The Internet) what we (Omar and Dave) should be given for Christmas by our adoring fans (we think they exist. Maybe.). Did we maybe overreach by including items that don't even exist yet or that would cost hundreds of dollars if they did? I will leave that to you to decide (but the answer is "No.")

If the dulcet sound of my baritoneful man-voice pleases you (it should), you can hear even more of it, and with less cursing, on yesterday's episode of At Issue With Ben Merens, where we talked about tech gifts. We took calls from listeners and it went very well. It's a topic I've given a lot of thought to lately what with all the holiday gift guides I've been working on. You can download or stream the audio on that site.

Trailers Without Pity: Alice in Wonderland (+ Tech Gift Guide)

2009-12-07T21:39:00.003-06:00

Trailers Without Pity: Alice in Wonderland (+ Tech Gift Guide)

Our last Trailers Without Pity of 2009 is about Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, which stars Johnny Depp and, from what I can tell, has no real reason to exist. But I'm probably in the minority in thinking that.

After this, we're taking a two-month break on the videos while I go bring another human being into the world (sorry, world). We should be back in February with new videos, but it feels nice to take a break. We've been doing videos for a year straight with no real vacation. We really needed to recharge our batteries.

Also, I had a big holiday tech gift guide in Sunday's Austin American-Statesman. There's a little bit of crossover with a tech guide I did for Television Without Pity last month, but this one's much more expansive. And we'll probably be doing something similar on NPR soon (I've been off the air the last two weeks). Ah, synergy!

The Statesman guide was accompanied by a great Don Tate II illustration. It looked like this:

Work-related

2009-12-02T11:24:00.002-06:00

Work-related

I'm panicking, just a tiny bit, as I look at the schedule of thing I have due before my wife's due date later this month.

It's all manageable; I always manage. But then I look at the clock around 5 p.m. and another whole day has passed without a lot of progress on the things that are looming.

I really hate being one of those reporters who throws stories together at the last minute, especially since my editor and I work so hard to plan things out months in advance, but after 12 years at this job I've learned that the majority of my stories get written in a burst of activity and energy at the home stretch. That's not a bad thing, necessarily, but when I do get stories done in advance and with a lot of control over their flow, I wonder why they can't all be like that.

Last week was a good example of a Wednesday when I wrote story stories simultaneously over one long workday as I tried to make sure all the loose ends were tied up before my Thanksgiving days off.

One of the stories was a Tech Monday column about Cyber Monday featuring two Austin sites, CheapTweets and Offers.com.

The other story I wrote Wendesday was a tech gift guide that runs on Sunday. I'll post a link to that when it's up.

Another story that ran Monday was a piece I filed a while back, a Masters of their Domains about Enzo Monfre, a 9-year-old who has his own popular Web show about nature at enzoology.com.

I was a little disturbed by some of the angry, unnecessary comments below the Web version of the story. I think people are wary of any pursuit where a child may earn fame, and I certainly had misgivings about it when I met the family and asked questions about it. But I still find it hard to stomach people who can go online and say mean, vile thing about a 9-year-old and his family under the veil of relative Internet anonymity. I find it disgusting and enough people in our newsroom have felt the same way; we're cracking down much harder on comments at statesman.com and austin360.com, a move I was very happy about.

Jenni Jones, who is a video wiz, shot the video below to go with the story:

Trailers Without Pity: The Wolfman

2009-11-29T21:56:00.004-06:00

Trailers Without Pity: The Wolfman

Maybe I've become a little too cynical because when I heard they were doing a movie of The Wolfman, I already saw flashes of fiery disaster, like I was Christopher Walken awakening from a long coma with new, soothsaying powers.

But then I remembered I think that about most movie ideas.

How strange, then, that I actually like the Wolfman trailer we did up in this week's Trailers Without Pity?

Maybe it's the A-list acting talent or just the steampunky elements in the trailer, but I'm kinda sold on it. Of course, I think that all the time and the number of actual movies I pay money to go see could be counted on the fingers of one hand.

A hand that has been involved in accidents where fingers have been cut off.

Anyhoo, here's the video. We've only got one more left before we go on vacation.

Chrome, holiday gifts, burps and phlegm

2009-11-25T11:20:00.004-06:00

Chrome, holiday gifts, burps and phlegm

Because of a series of Internet outages, travel, my having a child in the house and other pseudo-calamities, this week's Age of Lasers episode (#004) was a bit late, but I hope no worse-for-wear for its delay.

We talk about Google Chrome OS, Black Friday tech deals, the everlasting war of the videogame consoles, and other odds and ends. At the end is a special message from my friend Lani in response to the epic social media gaffes episode of last week.

I sound absolutely awful on the podcast. For two weeks now, my family has been struggling with coughing and deep-seated phlegm and by nighttime, when we recorded the podcast, I just sound hoarse and crappy. You should have heard the coughing I did right before we started. I almost blew out Glark's ears. He returned the favor by delivering an epic burp that he doesn't even think was that loud. It was LOUD, dude. Trust me.

The podcast is titled, "It's Your Browser! It's Your OS! It's Your Browser AND Your OS!" Glark tells me it's a Chinatown reference. I've never seen it. He assures me that it is a reference that is both relevant and potent.

I also have a holiday gift guide of tech items on Television Without Pity. It's becoming an annual tradition and dovetails with a more extensive gift guide I do for the Statesman (which I'm actually trying to finish up today). In the TWOP guide, there's one really funny joke I like about a kid-related product, but I won't ruin it here.

Happy Turkey Day, y'all! I hope you get to spend it eating great food with family and/or friends.

Talking 'bout the old style too

2009-11-24T10:50:00.003-06:00

Talking 'bout the old style too

I kind of bombed a bit this week on the NPR All Tech Considered segment. I didn't feel as prepared as I usually do and on top of that, I've had voice/congestion problems the last two weeks with allergies. Lilly's had the same issue, so she's been up every night coughing, keeping us up, and contributing to my lack of sleep and overall ooginess.

We recorded a chunk of my segment and then went back and did it again because my energy wasn't keeping up with the Wii bowling segment that preceded it. We made it through and I feel like I skipped quite a few key points and then we ended up recording the closing a second time for lack of energy.

Also, I was late getting to the studio.

It was just a bad Monday and even though the magic of editing made it sound not-as-bad-as-I-hoped, I'm a little bummed that i didn't do a better job on this one. Anyway, here's the blog post that goes with the piece with more items than I was able to mention on the air.

On a more positive note, I was really happy with the way this Raising Austin column, about retro video game tournaments and kids, turned out. I don't write about Lilly in the paper often at all, so it was a treat to tie her in with a topic my editor and I have been wanting to cover for a while.

Also had an interesting Monday with a Twitter contest I started called "Omar's Twitter Mystery List" that very quickly got completely out of control. But in a fun way.

We're running a bit late on Age of Lasers Episode 004, but it should be up sometime Wednesday. You should know, thought, that Nov. 24 is International Day Of No Hard Feelings Social Network Cull (Second-Annual). Hurry up and start culling!

I'll also have a new Trailers Without Pity up here soon and a few other odds and ends.

Happy early Thanksgiving!

Epic podcasting, quizzing and more

2009-11-17T11:37:00.003-06:00

Epic podcasting, quizzing and more

It's been a very busy week, but also lots of fun. Lilly's getting as excited as we are about the new baby (maybe I'm just projecting, but it seems that way). She's been more fun in general -- chatty and silly and just very entertaining. I know lots of parents say that about their kids, but she makes me laugh a lot and recently mocked me at the dinner table. I didn't know two-year-olds could make fun of their dads with a relatively high degree of sophistication. She was clearly enjoying it.

The family time has made it a little tougher to come home late from work or work on other projects, but I'm plugging away. I plan to take some real time off after the birth in December and, as I mentioned before, we're taking a short break from Trailers Without Pity as well. I haven't figured out how I'm going to juggle NPR segments yet or planning for next year's South by Southwest Interactive, which we usually start mapping out in January, but I'm working on these things.

This week's All Tech Considered is about TV on the Web (and back on the TV), a subject we've talked about before. The landscape seems to change daily, so an update was in order. Lots of cool stuff happening. You can hear the audio segment here.

I also worked on a small project for NPR Music about music-related start-up companies. It was going to be a match-the-company thing, but it ended up becoming a "Real/Not Real" quiz. You can find that here (and on the music blog itself here).

We did a massive, nearly 1.5-hour podcast about social media pet peeves for Age of Lasers this week on Episode 003. Our special guest was Tara Ariano, who knows a thing or two about annoying people on the Internet. It's really fun and hope you have time to listen to it.