Browsing February 2008

Before Web 2.0...

Thursday 02.21.2008 09:45AM

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Blog text on paper

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Once

Wednesday 02.20.2008 01:10AM

I should have mentioned this sooner – in fact last week would have been a good time considering VD – but I highly recommend watching the movie Once. It is a lovely little movie about music, life, and love.

It stars Glen Hansard (of the band The Frames) and Markéta Irglová, whose characters cross paths and make a musical connection. I was struck by the music right away; it was very moving, make-your-skin-tingle type of music. Interestingly, neither of them are experienced actors, but it is not noticeable because they are clearly comfortable in their film roles as musicians, and there is a very natural feel to the relationship between the characters. They composed and performed most of the songs in the movie, so in many ways it feels like you are watching a documentary of these musicians.

Check out the song “Falling Slowly” put to some video clips from the movie. Movie trailer below that.

Once Currently Listening
Once
by Original Soundtrack

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Two arms available ...ladies.

Thursday 02.14.2008 01:25AM

Well, that day is around the corner*, afraid I don't have any embarrassing crushes to reveal like last year.

I was just now seeking topical suggestions for this post from some friends; they have not been a lot of help so far. This will probably be a stream-of-unconsciousness post, then.

Life has been a bit depressing lately. I think it's mostly the weather. Work has been pretty busy lately and I need to get a bit more order/distinction between work and non-work. It can be a drain to be at home so much (I work from home) and it starts to feel like I just work and sleep, because “there's always some work to do.” I'm not being a workaholic; in fact, it probably makes me less productive, so I need to do something about that.

On a similar note, Sheryl shared this Lifehacker post about being “more present in the present.” The blogger is starting a project called 52 Nights Unplugged, where one night each week she does nothing involving a screen. No internet, TV, or phone. I really liked this idea and plan to try it out myself. It will be nice to have a scheduled time that I know I'll need to fill with the things I talk about wanting to do, but never quite “disconnect” long enough to actually do.

I have been going back through old, old posts on here, working on tagging and cleaning up some formatting issues. Goes back to 2002, dang. A lot of good memories, though.

If you're interested in possibly winning an iPod Touch, check out Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim post. It's pretty simple: subscribe to his blog via RSS or email; between now and March 1st the instructions to enter will be posted there. In addition, you can up the size of the iPod Touch you win by blogging and twittering about it, ergo... what you're reading. Clever marketing. :]

I think I'm in my natural state pretty often...

“Silly is you in a natural state, and serious is something you have to do until you can get silly again.”

– Mike Meyers

...Thankfully.

I highly recommend the album below. Great, chill electronic music; good to work or write to. [obligatory virb and myspace links]

* I started writing this before midnight, so this was accurate at the time. Yes, it took a while to write, I was distracted and chatting.

Pocket Symphony Currently Listening
Pocket Symphony
by Air

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Post-BarCamp Indy 2008

Saturday 02.09.2008 04:40PM

I probably should have written more about BarCamp Indy between the first time and now, but, oh well. I certainly did plenty of word-of-mouth promotion to my geeky friends that might have been interested, so that's what matters.

So yes, BarCamp Indy 2008 was today. A BarCamp is an “un-conference”-style tech conference. All content is presented by the participants and is usually scheduled on the day of the event. It's a very open and collaborative event.

This was the inaugural BarCamp in Indianapolis and while I have never been to one before, I thought it was quite a success. We had 16 in attendance, one of whom drove a couple hours from South Bend to attend (I believe he said he left at 5:30am). Topics included: “Going Green with Technology”, “Linux Desktop: Making the Switch”, “The Future of Mobile Web”, “Graphic Web Design and CSS”, “Simplifying Your Life in Spite of Technology”, and “Information Strategy / Processing”. There was good discussion for all of these topics, and various links related to these can all be found on del.icio.us, tagged with 'barcampindy2008'. The presenters will be uploading their presentations and linking them from the BarCamp Indy wiki. I encourage them to tag these on del.icio.us as well, so they should show up on that same page above.

Brad Williams used Ustream to stream live video of BarCamp. Ustream provides chat along with the video, so we had several people tune in and interact. Pretty cool. Most of us there are on-board The Twitter, of course. Between Scott Wilder, Brad Williams, and myself posting updates, I'm sure most of central Indiana Twitter people knew what was going on. Twitter is awesome, simple, has great uses and potential; I recommend it, even if it seems silly at first.

Photos from the event can be found on Flickr, also tagged with 'barcampindy2008'.

I think it was unanimous that this was a successful BarCamp, and I am sure there will be more coming. How soon, when, and where – that's all up in the air. I'm sure we will all start working that out on the wiki soon enough. Feel free to join in!

P.S. Check out our cool lanyards and name badges, provided by SnapFoo. Scott was cool enough to use my special capitalization.

gRegor badge

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