A Whole Lotta Nothing

Happy Birthday Ev! Ev just

Happy Birthday Ev! Ev just told me he's 28, and I'll be 28 in October, and a thought popped into my head that made me shudder. When my parents were 27 and 28, my dad was the only parent that had to work (not that two parents shouldn't work, I'm just amazed they paid the bills on one person's salary), they owned a nice home in Southern California, and they were having their second child (me).

Man, times have changed...

My last day so far

My last day so far has been great. I pulled in at 11am, went off to a 2 hour lunch where I was showered with goofy gifts, and with a couple hours of project wrapup work left, I'll be cleanly separating from UCLA forever. I'm no longer sad about it. It feels a lot like college graduation.

Today I leave a place where training and growth was the focus over the last two years, Monday I start at a place where I can demonstrate and use everything I've been learning for the last five years. And going from working at a college to a "real" job makes the graduation analogy that much more real.

Everyone's pointing to pics of

Everyone's pointing to pics of Ev for his special day. This is one of my favorites that I snapped a while back. Happy birthday, monkeyboy.

Dammit! I can't find Code

Dammit! I can't find Code Rush playing on any of my local PBS stations tonight. Maybe I should break down and buy the dang video instead.

Globalization kicks ass. Tonight I

Globalization kicks ass. Tonight I was icqing a friend in Nicaragua about someone I know in Costa Rica that I haven't emailed in ages, but it turns out he hung out with Ev and Meg today in SF, and may be moving there. My friend in Nicaragua may be moving to LA, but I'm going to SF to be with Ev and Meg at Pyra, and I guess I'll finally get to meet Beto if he moves there.

You know what I love

You know what I love about farmers' markets? After you've been walking around in one for a few minutes, you're surrounded by beautiful fruits, vegetables, flowers, loaves of bread, and juices of all kinds, and the sounds and smells of the city disappear. You forget you're in the middle of a closed street, covered in concrete, normally clogged with traffic, angry drivers, and noise. Everyone seems nicer, everyone looks great, and everything smells terrific.

You buy your bundle of flowers and tray of strawberries, and as you reach the end of the market, you're suddenly thrust back into something that's unmistakably Los Angeles. I often forget how great those markets are.

Computers are just machines: they're

Computers are just machines: they're bundles of transitors, resistors, electricity and nothing more, right?

Try removing every personal setting and application from a computer you've been using for a long period of time. There's lots of backing up, ftping, uninstalling, deleting, and then all the settings on everything have to be reset. It's a lot harder than it sounds. I wish it were as easy as a "remove me" button somewhere in the control panel.

Today's the day I finally

Today's the day I finally went out and bought some banker's boxes. All that's left to do now is remove two years of belongings from my office and fit it into four boxes. Oh, and I have to try not to get sad or cry at the same time.

It's not going to be a good day.

I love the new Powazek.com

I love the new Powazek.com redesign. The new, open layout looks downright refreshing compared to the old frameset. It looks like Derek will be writing longer entries or posting more often, which is certainly a good thing.

And to top off my

And to top off my great day on the slopes, I had dinner with Crazy Uncle Joe. The man is an unrecognized genius.

Today I played with Jeff's

Today I played with Jeff's digital video camera and compared to working with analog video on computers, I am amazed by the ease and quality of digital video. I encoded a couple short segments of me riding into RealVideo, here's the 56k version (which really, really sucks) and here's the cable modem version.

In an effort to cram

In an effort to cram all the fun Southern California things into my last week here, I went snowboarding today.

It was a quintessential SoCal experience. We left 72 degree LA in shorts, t-shirts, and sandals, drove up to Mt. Baldy where it was maybe 60 degrees, and had a blast snowboarding on an empty mountain. Even though the snow was slushy and some of my favorite runs were closed, it was one of the funnest days I've had on the mountain.

Some shots from the

Some shots from the weekend up north, starting with a 120kb panoramic of my soon-to-be-vacated office at UCLA.

I'm home-sweet-home in LA, but

I'm home-sweet-home in LA, but not for long. It looks like I'll be in SF next week, and moving to the Silicon Valley a couple weeks after that. The Caltrain ride from San Carlos to Pyra looks to only be about 30-40 minutes long, so it shouldn't be too bad of a commute. At some point in the summer, I'll find an apartment in the city for my girlfriend Kay and our cats.

Pics and words from this weekend should be posted later tonight or tomorrow, and a special thanks to brig for showing me around Santa Cruz. I will forever be insanely jealous of her house and surrounding property.

I just realized something tonight.

I just realized something tonight. If a picture is worth a thousand words, it only takes a set of three pictures to satisfy Ben Brown. And here I've been killing myself on that long stuff, when 3 pictures could have said the same thing.

I spent most of today

I spent most of today in Santa Cruz, and I can't begin to tell you how different it is from the rest of the Bay Area, less than 80 miles away. It's green, green, green down here, there's so many trees you'd think you were in a National Park, there are huge sprawling fields and meadows covered in blooming wildflowers, and everyone is fairly mellow. It's like the polar opposite of San Francisco startup life (not that I'm an expert in that already, but I have a good idea of what it's like). I wish I spent my college years at UCSC, what was I thinking going to UC Riverside!?!

I saw Oscar Brown

I saw Oscar Brown Junior tonight, it was a small crowd, but he was still superb.

One sign that I love

One sign that I love my job is that I never watch the clock. My typical days at UCLA used to go like this: show up at 9-10am, read some mail and sites, do some work, blink, and it's 7pm. But these last two weeks of me being a lame duck in my office are going sooooo slooooooow. I've got pretty much the same schedule, but it goes more like this: get in at 10, read email and a bunch of weblogs, talk to coworkers, fill out various forms, read more email, look up at the clock - 11:30am. damn. read more mail, read more stuff, do a little work, clean office out a bit more, look at clock. damn. 1pm. Repeat until 6pm. Time is suddenly at a standstill within my office, I swear the laws of physics no longer apply there.

I posting this here to

I posting this here to remind me to remember this next week. CodeRush, the PBS special about launching and open sourcing Netscape is now just a week away.

Here's something to ponder: you're

Here's something to ponder: you're talking on a cell phone to someone, and the call's not going well - not an arguement - but they're clearly disappointed in something you've done, and while they're letting you have it, the call gets dropped. Do you call them back right away once you get back in range? Or do you let someone that's already unhappy remain that way? How do you resume a conversation like that, if you do decide to call back?

Sometimes cell phones create more problems than they solve.

The highlight of my day

The highlight of my day today was going to lunch with Greg and Adam.

Also available for birthday parties

Also available for birthday parties and bar mitzvahs. Will avoid the "Pull My Finger" gag at your request.

I wanted to show Greg

I wanted to show Greg Knauss how blogger works, so I just send him an invite to post here. I guess he's now the official guest host of the weblog community.

Don't ever let anyone tell

Don't ever let anyone tell you that text on a screen isn't emotional. Earlier this evening, a friend told me about his unusual medical condition, in fairly graphic detail. I imagined myself suffering from the identical symptoms and I found myself nearly fainting. I actually had to stop typing, and lie down on the floor for a few minutes until the feeling passed. The thoughts in my head kept me queasy for about a half hour afterwards.

And it was all from a single icq message, just 20 or 30 words of text.

Yay! New date formats for

Yay! New date formats for blogger! I asked Meg for this at SXSW, glad to see my ideas are already infiltrating the group. :)

My mirror shot got added

My mirror shot got added to Heather's Mirror Project. Although my entry pales in comparison to Nick Finck's touching entry.

I've had an idea brewing for quite a while (over a year), and it's similar to the mirror project. When I get some free time, I'm going to finally code it up. It's going to require that people scan stuff, photograph stuff, and tell stories, so be prepared.

Ben Brown recaps SXSW,

Ben Brown recaps SXSW, and in that is the question/speech he gave at the weblogs panel. Every time I read it, I get stoked and inspired again (even if he refers to me and the people I hung out with as "a bunch of WEBLOGGING DORKS." :).

I dropped the webcam link on the left, because I'm moving the server and the cam has to stay behind, and when you think about it, is it really all that exciting to watch me stare at a screen all day? No it isn't.

I threw some stuff about

I threw some stuff about SXSW onto my other site, and I bought a domain name for it, so you don't have to remember the long URL. I realized today that I do have time for writing longer pieces, and that I was wasting that time on a playstation or goofing around on the web. Now that I'm aware of that, whenever I find myself wasting time doing those things, I'll stop, and try to write something instead.

I'm going to try at do at least 2-3 pieces a week in that space, and I encourage anyone else with a site to do the same, it's a fun and healthy outlet for the thoughts in my head.

I just wrote the job

I just wrote the job description for the position I'm leaving. It felt like writing my own obituary: "Matt loved design, coding html, cold fusion, and using photoshop everyday. If you love those things too, please apply."

Seriously though, if you're in the LA area, and you're looking for a great job in a fun place feel free to let me know, I'll pass your name along to the selection committee.

Me + some clip art

Me + some clip art illustrations of animals + 20 minutes of boredom = goofy redesign of the essay site.

Reflections on SXSW

I've been home now a couple days, and I'm just now starting to feel 100% again, but I wanted to compile a bunch of random things I've been thinking about during and after the South by Southwest Conference. Not everything is specific to the event, so if you didn't go, it should make sense anyway. The Conference Itself The SXSW panels were some of the most interesting ones I've seen, when compared to stuff like Web99 and similar shows. I realized something funny on the last day of panels: I didn't see one line of code during the entire conference. Three days of talking about the web, from 10am-5pm, plus all the after hours shenanigans, and not one bit of code passed before my eyes. That, to me, is a testament to the beauty of the conference. Every other conference I've attended discussed the hows. Typically, that includes questions like: How are we going to do X, Y, and Z? What code would you write, in what language, and what technology would use to accomplish it? The panels at SXSW focused on the whats and whys, and instead of thinking on the level of code, talks were always a step above, or very far above specifics. Typical questions included: What kind of site should we build, what kind of information do we want to convey, and what do we want to do with our current sites? Why do we do the things we do? Why would we want to build a new site for X, Y, and Z? Asking questions like these proved to be both interesting and important. I found myself thinking about panels I'd seen earlier in the day, asking what and why questions to myself, wondering which of my ideas were worth doing. The philosophical nature of the panels was a refreshing change. Content-wise, SXSW was a lot different than your average web conference, but still quite good. Celebrity Cliques Now this is something worth discussing, because I've heard a few rumblings about it again. I've always felt myself on the outside looking in, and although I never really understood the claims of cliquishness, I was accused of it for the first time. I'll mention how I fell into the same general group of people, and maybe others can understand something from that. I showed up to Austin knowing virtually no one, having met 5 or 6 other webloggers previously and that's about it. I knew there'd be 30-50 other people I've read online and wanted to meet. I was even sharing a hotel with someone I'd never met before, and as a wallflower, I was way out of my comfort zone from the moment I stepped off the plane in Austin. So I had some time to kill on Friday afternoon, and I had a couple cell phone numbers of other webloggers, which I called and arranged a meeting place. After some initial gitters we hit it off. The same thing happened on Friday night and all day Saturday: strangers that knew each other through their respective websites saying hi and hanging out for the first time. The weird thing is, many of us did seem to be quiet types. I knew someone there from extensive email and icq interactions, and this person admitted to being quiet in groups of people or around strangers, but gregarious among friends. I'd describe myself the same way, I may not open up to strangers right away, but you can't shut me up around my friends. But since we'd all had personal sites up, getting to know each other in person wasn't a big deal. The fact was we already knew so much about each other, that after exchanging pleasantries, we instantly became like old friends. It was an amazing feeling to put a voice and face to text I'd read for so long, and I've never experienced anything like it before. Very quickly, 20-30 of us fell into these circles of mutual weblog-owning friends. I did get to meet several people that read my weblog and my personal site, but since I didn't really know that much about them, there wasn't a lot of things to say after initial introductions. I know that sounds lame, but until you've experienced it, it's really quite weird to have someone come up to you and say they admire your work and know so much about you, but you don't know much about them. I've never had to deal with that until this past week, and I don't think I did a very good job. If you came up to me and said hi, and I didn't seem too communicative, I'm really sorry, and I'll try to do better next time. Stuff like this is probably the root and source of "elitism" claims. I hung out with a certain set of people because I knew them and I was quite comfortable around them. I was in a strange city, surrounded by strangers, and the people I knew online and that knew me were comforting. To any "outsider" it's hard to be included into a group like this because there's not a lot of common ground or shared experiences. Why did people hang out with the people they did? They had a lot in common. Why didn't they hang out with anyone else? They didn't know other people. You might have a lot in common with someone that writes a site, but unless you ever told them in email or put it up on your site, they will probably have a hard time connecting with you. I've been on the readership side of things before, I once attended a concert with someone I'd been reading online for over two years. It was a strange experience, I knew every story this person started to tell me, I knew all sorts of stuff about where they'd been, who they dated, and what they were currently working on. They knew little about me, and it even weirded me out when we talked. I had to explain all sorts of stuff, trying desperately to let the person know who I was. The more you put of yourself online, the better people can know you, and the easier it will be to meet other web authors, but in general we're a shy bunch, so try not to interpret that as elitism. Freaks and Geeks You know what's really funny about SXSW and web conferences in general? When you see photos from it on the web, they all feature the same 20 or 30 people. It makes you think a conference is a web-celeb bash, where walking down any hall means you'll be certain to run into Carl, or Justin, and you'll shoot the breeze with Lance while you wait for coffee in the morning. But remember, the camera only captures what you point it at. It's a pinhole-sized view of the world, and rarely does it reflect actual reality. The fact is, the 20-30 web people you see in every photo were a group of freaks with too many digital cameras. There were hundreds-to-a-couple-thousand other people at the conference that you can't see in the photos. It wasn't so much a celeb fest as any group of photos would suggest. What brought this group of people together from the hundreds of others in the crowd seemed to be a common love of personal web publishing. These people shared a vision and belief of the magic of the web, that didn't involve IPOs, buyouts, or ad banner revenue. There was nary a rich person among us, but I'd bet more us looked forward to going to work each morning than the average web worker. There were literally hundreds of new-media-blue-shirt clad conference attendees that couldn't give a rat's ass about a ragtag group of idealists. I just wanted anyone that didn't attend to know that is the true reality, and it isn't what the cameras frequently capture. That Ben Brown Character Ben Brown brought up something at the weblogs panel that's worth mentioning. If I remember correctly, he didn't like seeing web publishers reducing themselves to "a link to wired news, along with a snarky comment." He pleaded with us to move away from the focus on the short format and to do things like write long articles, regardless of our time commitments (since Jason mentioned several times that he can only do his weblog because it only takes a few minutes out of his day to update it). Some people had a problem with that point of view, and I have a problem with the "if it's not thorough, don't put it on the web in the first place" attitude. Actually, I have a problem with any attitude that suggests that people not publish anything. It's an enormous web, there's no limit to the number of sites online, so if you don't care for someone's site, or an entire style of site, don't visit it. There's plenty of room for millions of voices. I don't expect public speakers to give speeches that are at least 15 minutes in length, there's just as much room for the soundbyte as there is for the sermon. On the other hand, I can see where Ben's coming from, the soundbyte has been taking over the world of personal web publishing. As things like editthispage and blogger come online, they encourage the short-entry, often-updated format. As our collective attention spans shorten from all this soundbyting, something is lost. Fortunately, I've been seeing a shift away from a "links and little, if any, commentary" format on most weblogs. People are exploring the amount of personal stuff that gets into their weblog, and when all their posts are taken as a whole, I think many weblog authors pour their soul into their sites. I've felt confined by the format too, building a place for longer pieces has always been on the back burner for me, but I'm finally doing it here. Ben Brown was the straw that broke the camel's back for me. It was the kick in the pants I needed to finally launch this site. I hope more weblog authors give the long format a try, and my sincere hope is that there's a place for both the short format and the long format on weblog sites. Jack's doing it well, and now Brig is too, and Judith sort of does both the journal thing and the weblog thing on the same page, which is a refreshing format. Oh, and in case you haven't already heard, Ben Brown is actually extremely nice and about the funniest web person on the planet. If you ever want to have a good time at a web function, invite Ben along. Feeling Inspired Overall, the best side effect of the conference was coming away with a feeling of inspiration about new and old projects, a rekindled love of the web, and a belief that personal publishing was here to stay and that the business world wasn't ever going to take over the web.

I spent all day doing

I spent all day doing load after load of laundry and cleaning my apartment, knowing that someday soon I'll have to depart LA for the Bay Area, and the fewer things you have, the easier that is. Why can't it be this easy:

c:\> format apartment
WARNING! FORMATTING APARTMENT WILL RESULT IN LOSS OF DATA! ARE YOU SURE? Y or N?
y
FORMATTING APARTMENT...

I'm also working on a whirlwind summary of SXSW for the other section of this site, hopefully I can get it done and up tomorrow.

Several times in the last

Several times in the last few months, jack has mentioned on his site girls from parties he wished he talked to, and it always ended with something like "email me if this is you." I used to tell him his chances were at least a million to one.

When he wrote about the mystery girl from SXSW, I thought he might have a chance, but the odds were still against him. Well, I couldn't be happier for him right now, because he actually made contact with her. jack's one hell of a lucky guy.

Oscar Brown Jr. is

Oscar Brown Jr. is going to be at The Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles next week. He's the most amazing storyteller and singer I've ever seen (and I've seen him perform 3 or 4 times before), it still surprises me he's not a household name. He's got important stories to tell and his presentation of them is engaging to say the least. If you can go, do so.

Jiminy Jilikers! I'm quoted in

Jiminy Jilikers! I'm quoted in a story of the weblogs panel, running at Yahoo, how cool is that? I suppose I should give some added context to the quote that was made. I can't remember if I said that during our attempts to define a weblog (it can't be defined, so just let it go), or when we talked about how much personal stuff you put into weblog writing. For the record, Metafilter is the classic weblog plus discussion (however, it doesn't help you build your own weblog, it lets you contribute to one giant weblog. If you want your own weblog, check out blogger and editthispage), and I prefer to keep this site as a place to post personal updates and things I'm working on, which is part of why I said I never considered it a weblog.

Never in a million years

Never in a million years did I think building MetaFilter would lead to conversations like this. Simply amazing.

I finished uploading my photos

I finished uploading my photos from Austin, and put them all in one central place.

I quit my job

Like any breakup, it was hard to make the decision, and I didn't take it lightly. My job at UCLA was the first one I ever loved, and much like a first serious relationship, it was hard to call it quits. But there's someone new, someone I'll be much happier with in the long run, someone that can take me to a different place. It was a long time coming, a long overdue change, but still it's sad to leave something I've contributed to for more than 2 years. It was my first real job after college, or at least the first one I actually enjoyed. Back in 1995, I started using the web daily and began building my own pages soon after. They weren't much, mostly glorified bookmark lists. Through 1996 and into 1997, I continued to plug away at personal pages, learning new programming techniques and exploring design possibilities and limitations of the medium. In mid-1997, I took my first freelance job, building a university department site for $3k. Looking back, it probably corresponded to about $8-10 per hour, since the job took about two months of full time work, and entailed building a 50 page site from scratch. I interviewed staff, compiled bios and took digital photographs of all the employees. I didn't even know how to do simple things like server-side includes, which would have made changing templates easier than modifying 50 pages by hand. In the fall of 1997, I took a job I hated, in a field I was trained in at school. I dreamed of the web at work, and used it every second I was home. I distinctly remember trying to convince my coworkers at the time that the internet wasn't a fad and would someday be ingrained into their lives. "Hogwash!" was the most popular reply to my line of argument. I hated that job and searched extensively for a new employer. One day, there was an ad for a webmaster/designer position at UCLA, doing much of the same work I'd just done on that university department site. I constructed a cover letter of epic proportions, poring over it for days before finally printing it and sending it off with a resume. To my surprise and bewilderment, I was asked to come visit the campus for an interview a week or two later. I recall the interview going extremely well, but the most impressive thing was being in a building filled with people working with computers, and knowing at that exact moment that I belonged somewhere like that, as opposed to where I was at my current position. So in that respect, the interview taught me something extraordinary, regardless of whether or not I got the job. I made a promise to myself to find a web-related job as soon as I could, if this one happened to fall through. A week later I was given an offer and I enthusiastically accepted. I was walking on air for the final two weeks of drudgery at my old job. It required moving to Los Angeles, but I was happy to do it, and it went smoothly. Looking back, I don't know if I was qualified for the job from that first day, but I did everything in my power to change that as quickly as possible. I was alone in a new city and channeled that loneliness into my new job. I worked 12-14 hours a day, reading hundreds of pages on design and coding techniques every day. I joined numerous mailing lists, contributed what knowledge I had, while soaking up the combined knowledge of the lists like a sponge. Thankfully, I got up to speed quickly, and kept my design muscles strong by redesigning everything in sight and building a few new sites from scratch. I recall going into design meetings with no less than 5 fully developed mockups for every new project. I can't imagine doing that today, but I was impassioned and filled with ideas I wanted desperately to share. But like all relationships, people grow and change, and eventually it was time to leave. I put my name out there for several months, returned calls to the recruiters that had always been calling me, and accepted phone and in-person interviews at numerous places. I learned something from the process, which was I didn't want to work for someone I wasn't passionate about. I used to love my UCLA job, and I wanted to feel that way all over again. During a trip to San Francisco for one of my failed interviews, something inside clicked. The same feeling I got from visiting UCLA for the first time came back to me. Although the people I saw working in SOMA didn't seem that enthused about what they were doing, I knew that the pace and the environment was more fitting for where I was developmentally, and the sense of belonging returned for the first time in over two years. As with UCLA, I made a decision that if I didn't join the company I was interviewing with that day, I'd look for something similar soon after. I wrote about my experiences on that trip, and how I wanted to do something fulfilling, instead of taking a job merely for profit-driven reasons. I was contacted soon after by a company I know and love, about coming on as a designer. It's hard to find people that "get" the web anymore. Everyone's scampering for the next big profit model, doing whatever it takes to create the next successful IPO. These are people that "use" the web or "do" the web, it's just another medium to them like television or radio (remember when people used to think television could educate us?). The people that really "get" the web are the people that can still remember how magical it was to hear stories from the other side of the world, they can remember the first time a complete stranger emailed them to share experiences similar to the one's they wrote about, and they know an interconnected world isn't just about selling stuff to everyone that can operate a mouse. I'm getting the chance to join a team I know and love, and to help build a product I've been evangelizing about for months. The product can only get better, which will help even more people communicate and build a richer web for all of us. It's the good fight, a fight worth fighting, and I'll be proud to say I've been contributing to it. I'm extremely lucky to have found and become friends with Ev, Meg, Paul, and Matt, and even luckier to be able to work with them. Simply put, I love these guys as friends, I love the products and ideas they have, I'm honored to be given the opportunity to contribute to that, and I'm once again going to love my job. I'm also going to get the chance to fall in love with the web, all over again. I'm proud to say I'll soon be working for Pyra.

Today, I quit my job.

Today, I quit my job.

So I just left the

So I just left the last party of SXSW (there was one more, but I'm completely running on empty and decided that the night before I have to get up and leave at 5am should be the first night I'm not out drinking free dotcom beers). The conference was incredible, I met over 30 people I knew really well by email and the web, and I got to meet all my old-school idols of the web as well. I'll be writing more about it, and posting the rest of the shots tomorrow.

Also, when I get back tomorrow, I'll have some very big news. Stay tuned.

I finally got my pics

I finally got my pics from Day 1 of sxsw online. Today (day 2) was fun. I got to see several fine panels and afterwards, we got our first taste of good food in Austin (for some reason, every meal so far has been a nightmare). Ben Brown pointed us to Guero's, which kicked ass. After that the gang hit the Frog Design party for plenty of rhythm, fun, and free shiner bocks. Pics of that to come tomorrow...

Today was a another fun

Today was a another fun day of panels at SXSW. PeterMe's first panel was terrific, it was especially great to hear Steve speak, he's the best. Peter's second session was (and will continue to be, I bet) the best session of the entire conference. It was a high-minded philosophical discussion of interfaces and people interacting with computers. Amazing, amazing stuff.

Superstar watch: last night, I saw Janeane Garofalo in my hotel's lobby, walked right past, but didn't say hi (damn! why didn't I!?! I worship her!), and then this morning Brig and I had breakfast right next to Matt Stone, the guy with the brown curly hair that does SouthPark with Trey Parker. Matt and Trey are a couple idols of mine, since they do their own thing and always fuck with rules in Hollywood. I wanted to tell Matt how stoked I was to hear the upcoming Academy Awards show will be featuring an uncensored version of "Blame Canada!", but I didn't want to do the weird superfan thing and interupt his business meal.

Tonight's dinner was fun, and the after parties were pretty good, but a little crowded and smoky. There's nothing better than free Shiner Bocks. I think I'll be attending SXSW until I die now. I'll post more pics tomorrow or the next day, when I get back to LA. Oh, tomorrow's the weblog panel, which I'm looking forward to, but after meeting everyone, I don't know what's left to talk about.

ugh. I feel like Keith

ugh. I feel like Keith Richards looks. ugh.

It's almost 3:30am in Austin,

It's almost 3:30am in Austin, and I can't sleep. So instead of dozing, I uploaded, optimized, and captioned all my photos from Sunday, Day 2 of SXSW. My loss is your gain.

I'm off to this morning's

I'm off to this morning's sessions (damn central time...), but I haven't yet said what it's like to meet dozens of people that you "know" on the web. It's kind of strange in a way; you know everything about someone and they can know everything about you, as if you're two friends that have known each other for decades and you're familiar with all of each others stories, so there's nothing to say...but thankfully, there always is something to say. Yesterday I got to meet a bunch of great people, and the deepleap party was fun. I forgot to thank Lane, Ben and Bryan (who I didn't actually get a chance to talk to) for thowing such a nice shindig for the web folks, so thanks.

Ok, so I just finished

Ok, so I just finished going through my day 0 shots (Friday's), and here's a few worth showing. I'll post Saturday's photos tomorrow.

Here's an cropped version

Here's an cropped version of that last image. So, I took roughly 50 shots today (yesterday) on my camera, and I'll probably continue shooting 20-40 more per day. I'm not looking forward to the 100s of resize-crop-optimize-saving I'll be doing, nor the caption writing, but I swear, I will put these pics up, even if it kills me.

I'm in Austin, having fun

I'm in Austin, having fun so far. Thanks to my hotel's T1 and ethernet, I should be able to post some pics later this evening. Yesterday was a long, long day, the pre-party wasn't that great, but it was nice meeting a lot of new folks.

Group shot from the Milkshake

Group shot from the Milkshake Media open house (sorry huge unedited raw shot from my camera, probably 300kb or so)

L to R (back row) - Owen, Maura, Jason, Ariana, Christine, (front row) - Robert, Jack, Brig, me, and Ev.

I'm off to Austin first

I'm off to Austin first thing in the morning, hope to see everyone there. If you're there and you want to hook up, give me a call at 310-770-4095. Weeeee!