We all have Friday off at work (as does my wife), so it's definitely a strange, compressed week with lots to do and a much shorter amount of time to do it.

Oddly, though it's been a bit of a slow time for me. I have one big story due soon, but all the reporting is done and for once I feel like I have a really good handle on a major project. It's a nice, relaxed feeling.

I did get caught up in lots of small things, though, and completely forgot to post this week's NPR segment, which was about the future of screens and displays. One reason I may have forgotten about it is because I feel like I've blogged on the subject to death since I attended a conference in San Antonio last month, but it was definitely new to the airwaves and it was nice to be able to share that information with All Things Considered. I am a master recycler.

I also had a story in the paper about green remodeling, a Masters of their Domains feature on a Web site called My Green Casa.

Oh man, I am writing a lot about recycling! And I've been catching up on episodes of The Goode Family (which, after some initial resistance, I kind of like).

Oh no! I'm turning one of those Austin greenies! Nooooo!

Another busy week, with unexpected twists and turns (some of which you've heard about, I'm sure).

On Saturday, I had a Life & Arts lead in the paper about a company called Portelligent that does teardowns of gadgets like the iPhone 3G S. They take the thing apart, document every single little minute detail, and provide that information to clients. It's an amazing little business and I had a lot of fun visiting them and doing a quick-turnaround (a teardown of sorts) the next day. They were really great to work with.

The big surprise of the week was, of course, Michael Jackson. I spent a big chunk of Thursday following the news, like everyone else, and my grouchy posts on Twitter about how people weren't willing to accept that what TMZ.com was reporting was almost certainly true let to a blog entry that led to an A1 story (which ran the same day as the teardowns piece).

The story, strangely, didn't end up back online, but the original Digital Savant blog post (which is almost word-for-word what ended up in the paper, but a little longer) is still available for reading. It's called, "The day online news took over."

I'll be on NPR for the "All Tech Considered" segment tomorrow and will tell you all about that in the afternoon.

It's so hot in Texas right now (many consecutive days of 100+ degree heat) that it's hard to get motivated about anything right now that involves leaving the air conditioning. We can't even take Lilly swimming because it's so hot, which is a complete bummer.

We're trying to stay cool and wish for rain. In the meantime, we're watching The Wire: Season Two, doing lots of cooking and gearing up for the rest of the summer.

I don't think we've ever done a teen comedy that seems to be riding the hormone train (it departs about 35 times an hour) before and it was a lot of fun. I think horror movies and teen comedies were pretty much all I watched until I discovered David Lynch (boy did that guy screw me up) and it was nice to reminisce about the days of John Hughes and Molly Ringwald as we did a Trailers Without Pity episode for the upcoming I Love You, Beth Cooper.

Hope you enjoy!

We took Lilly to the zoo on Saturday and I was again impressed by how my parents managed to get me out of the house to do stuff when, for me, it feels like one giant nightmare to go anywhere outside of half a mile where a child is involved.

In this case, we were driving all the way to San Antonio (about 45 minutes).

Actually, Lilly is not badly behaved, but damn, she's almost two. I'm sure I was a pain in the ass in a car seat when you tried to take me anywhere for distances more than 30 miles. Did they even have car seats back in 1977? Maybe I just thrashed around in the back seat, loosely strapped into a seat belt and the concussions were what kept me quiet.

The trip wasn't so bad, actually, but when we got to the zoo, it was so damn hot, people. I'm from Texas. I've lived here most of my life. I know hot. I don't usually complain. But the combination of the heat, the stench of flamingo doo-doo and other exotic waste products, plus dealing with a rambunctious toddler who under no circumstances listened to anything we said made it like Hell, but without the entertaining nudity and hot pokers.

This is what I sounded like for most of the day: "Lilly. No. Lilly. Come here. HERE. Give me your hand. No. Your HAND. HAND. Manita. Give me your hand. Come back! Wait. Over here. HAND! No, don't throw that water bottle at the ducks. Stop! Want me to carry you? OK, well, stop running, NO! HAND! LILLY!"

She wanted to run all over the place by herself and didn't even seem to mind that it was 100 degrees and the world was melting around her.

The zoo itself was pretty cool, but we lasted less than two hours before we were nervous, exhausted parental wrecks. Seriously, Mom and Dad, I don't know how you did it. I feel like I owe you some money or something.

We shot a little video at the zoo (I've been testing out a Verizon MiFi device for work and was seeing how well it played with iPhone video streaming). It's an incredibly boring video unless you are her parents, but it was a live broadcast, so we had no control over how interesting she'd be at that moment. There's a picture below, too.

The other stuff: this week's NPR segment was about keeping kids safe online. Online, yes! That's easy. Try keeping them safe when it's 100 degrees and there's freakin' monkeys nearby!

Also a blog post that went with that segment where we offer many more Web sites and tips.

I wrote a story that ran in Saturday's paper about the digital TV transition and how it went in Austin.

And I got mentioned in the most recent Austin Chronicle. It was weird because it was another in Kevin Brass' seemingly neverending series of hit pieces about the paper where I work, yet I got complimented in the article in a backhanded way. Despite having written some not-nice things about me in the past, Brass seems to think there should be more columns by me in the paper more times a week (even though I'm not a columnist) and that the paper is ignoring me by not allowing me this opportunity.

I immediately told one of my editors, "But I don't WANT to write multiple columns a week!" Our publisher, who follows me on Twitter, saw a comment I made about it where I said I asked if this was what it feels like to experience an unwelcome crush and wrote me a very nice e-mail asking if I was feeling neglected.

Hell no. In fact, every day, I feel like I'm racing myself to catch up with all the things I want to say and write and do. I haven't yet had the experience of working on things I care about that the paper doesn't want to run (whether it's online or in print).

But thanks, I think. Maybe I just don't know how to accept compliments from people who constantly belittle my friends and co-workers.

If that's weird, then I guess it's my bad.

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One more thing: although we're off to a slower start than we anticipated, our comic Space Monkeys! is still in motion. We had a comic that went up late last week that I neglected to mention. I still love those monkeys.

This week, we gave our take on Sacha Baron Cohen's upcoming Brüno, which, hilariously, was featured prominently in ads during the NBA Finals this week. No matter how much you try to sell it as a sequel to Borat, there are still some key differences that make the marketing for this one especially subversive.

In any case, here's the video. I kinda like that wig on me.

Another busy week. I found myself so exhausted by the weekend that I couldn't even imagine what it would have been like to have a recap due. As it is, work, NPR and the videos my brother and I are doing for TWOP are keeping me pretty busy. I've been trying to find my usual summer groove to do some reading, play some video games, catch up on TV and DVDs and, hey, maybe even go outside once in a while.

It's much more challenging as Lilly gets older because when she's awake she demands pretty constant attention now. And damned if she doesn't have her dad's crazy all-day/all-night energy levels. I don't my wife's ever going to forgive me for that.

Anyway, it's a happy busy and I'm still working to try to clear extraneous things from my life that no longer need my attention or work. So far, so good.

Here's what's been going on lately:

Over the weekend, I had two stories on the Life & Arts front. The first was a pretty sizable story about an Austin man who found out, completely by coincidence, that he's working in the same building where his great grandfather ran a grocery about 111 years ago.

It was a little tiny story that turned into a much bigger one; I found myself at the Austin History Center researching everything I could find about that building. I also shot a short video to go with the story:

That same day, a print version of this blog post I wrote on the very cool Society for Information Display conference I went to last week in San Antonio ran. It was much better than I expected and I felt like I got a brief glimpse into the future of TVs, e-books and other displays. Here's another video:

For yesterday's NPR All Tech Considered segment, we talked about kids and cell phones. As expected, I got a few comments calling me (or others like me) a lazy parent for daring to let my kid play with my iPhone. What the fuck ever, dudes. You can come entertain my kid with some Lincoln Logs at 3 a.m. if you like, you ass. My lazy ass will be sleeping.

There were several blog entries related to the story both before and after. Lilly's photo from about a year ago is on there, chewing on my phone. I didn't mind putting it up because she really doesn't look like that anymore. For one thing, her hair's getting really long.

Last thing: spent practically my whole day yesterday writing about the new iPhone and pricing ambiguity for existing AT&T customers. Now I'm gonna go nap.

We went to see Drag Me To Hell last weekend (Up was sold out, but I'm not complaining; Drag me To Hell was DRAG ME TO AWESOME!), and as we were walking to the theater entrance, I saw four different vehicles, all sporting different messages in the same aisle.

So I took some pictures. Larger sizes are over on Flickr if you click on the images:

As you can imagine, I have absolutely no conclusions about the town I live in that I can draw from these.