Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Playing catch-up

Once again, I'm pleading busy, despite having several hundred things I've been meaning to note here. Please accept these travel-related brevities compliments of the management:

• South by Southwest Interactive was delightful and embiggened; rumors had that attendance topped 5,000 this year. The growth was certainly evident in the attendees and crashers at Break Bread with Brad. An expected 150 guests became 300 before the night was out. All in all, the crowds notwithstanding, it was as ever a great experience and marvelous opportunity to catch up with friends old and new.


• Best discovery of the Austin week: Opal Divine's—the Sixth Street incarnation—where they stock 65 single malts and a decent cigar selection. Fortunately, I wasn't introduced to this nirvana until the night before I left or no one would have seen me all week.


• I'm in New York again this week, concluding a long consultancy, and I'll probably stick around through the weekend to take in a friend's show and perhaps a few others. I'm not sure when/if I'll have space for socializing, but if you've a proposal for drinks or whatnot, be in touch.


• I'll also be in Chicago the first week(and -end) of next month. Same caveats apply.

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Break Bread with Brad SXSW Eve 2007

If you're headed to Austin for SXSW Interactive, I do hope you're planning to arrive Friday evening in time to join me for the Eighth Annual Break Bread With Brad. A new location this year, but the same marvelous party: good food and drink (a tasty menu and cash bar), good friends and a great opportunity to mingle, plot and reminisce before the madness of the conference begins.

There is also the possibility of a special Break Bread With Brad limited-edition commemorative gift. Ah, the mystery!

Sound like something you'd be interested in? Yeah, I thought so. Check out the details and RSVP at upcoming.org.

(Photo thanks to Austin Tolin and Creative Commons.)

Thursday, February 8, 2007

links for 2007-02-08

• Fake Your Space | Be Popular
  "...a new and exciting service which offers help to all the men and women out there who don't feel like they are popular enough on social networking sites." (See also Break Your Space, to dump your friends.)
  (tags: myspace humor)
• Smaller on Flickr - Photo Sharing!
  New Orleans by the book: Jonno lines up the pre-Katrina NOLA phone directory next to the newest one. This may be the saddest (and clearest) example of "data visualization" I've ever seen.
  (tags: katrina)
• SXSW Music Festival FAQ, How To, and General Guide
  Kathryn has updated her fantastic SXSW Music survival guide for 2007. It's a must-read if you're headed to Austin for the shows.
  (tags: sxsw sxswbaby)

Tuesday, February 6, 2007

Baby, baby, baby…

One intense weekend struggling with assorted import and export nonsense and, voila, the new SXSW Baby! awakens from a long winter's nap. Yes, friends, it's only a few short weeks until the annual pilgrimage south of the boredom for South by Southwest Interactive (and Film and Music), and your favorite site for news, tips and trivia is live. Be good to the Baby!, and the Baby! will be good to you.

The main blog is up and running and some other features, old (such as the Ride/Room Share board) and new (stay tuned!) will be coming online shortly. If you're planning the trip to Austin this year—or even considering it—pop on over and check it out.

This is the second major site I've built with the new love of my content-managing life, Expression Engine. The robust blogging features of the software (including unlimited custom field, status and category groups), built-in membership and community management, and extremely flexible templating system are really, really nice.

There's a slightly steep learning curve (steeper still when you're..., well, me), but once I ascended it, the site-building process seems the most natural thing in the world. The EE documentation is extensive, although I would love to see a "...For Dummies" book or its like; that would definitely have given me a jump-start last year when I was beginning to learn it. But there's an active community growing up around the software, a new "fan magazine" online and more and more sites every day to serve as good examples. (Plus the pMachine crew are planning a SXSW meetup.)

And I'm planning, eventually, to convert The BradLands to run on EE as well. My heart is still full for Blogger, Movable Type and, yes, even Frontier and my own miserable hand-coding. But one of the main goals of this site has always been to learn, and EE's basis of PHP and MySQL offer a great opportunity to push my meager skills along the path. In my copious free time...

Anyway, check out SXSW Baby! and perhaps I'll see you in Austin.

Wednesday, March 22, 2006

The serenity of margaritas

"Hold still," Andrew said. "I'm going to take your new headshot."

"What?" I said, partly because I believed I didn't entirely hear him correctly, partly because I was distracted by the stunningly attractive Brit seated at my left arm and partly because, if I had heard correctly, he was due a correction, because I didn't have an old headshot.

Well, that's not entirely true. I do, in fact, have an old headshot. It is, in keeping with the unwritten regulations of the Actors Equity Association (of which I am not a member) regarding headshots, at least ten years out of date and actually closer to 15. It looks nothing like me.

"I said," he said, "I'm going to take your new headshot." And then he did.



I like it very much. It looks like me, although not enough like me that I actively hate it. It captures me in my natural and preferred habitat: at a bar, in the company of friends, with an attractive man open to guileless flirting at my side. I like it because it was taken by a smart, witty person in Austin, Texas, my third favorite place in the world, just like my last—and still—favorite picture of me.

My only regret is that rather unbecoming white lanyard. Nooses or neckties, lanyards or layers of worry...there's always something around my neck, I suppose. I only wish it'd been the arms of the Brit.