Manlio Rules

1. summer vacation means that we’re getting a ton of site traffic. servers are very full today! woo hoo!

2. i will eventually improve my softball hitting by constant trips to the batting cages. or at least, i keep telling myself this.

3. i am probably the only person not going to bay to breakers this weekend, but honestly, naked people and traffic is not my cup of smooth scotch.

4. on the other hand, oyster fest is my cup of smooth scotch

5. also, i need to buy some scotch.

6. i’m not going to sell my car, but right now i can’t see myself spending a lot of money to get it fixed. and it might need it soon.

7. anyone have an opinion on parallels vs. vmware fusion? anyone?

via briehan.

Posted by mobile phone:
testing mobile post ability

(conclusion: fine as long as you don’t try to use images)

friday. long week. random thoughts:

1. i don’t know much about the economy, but it doesn’t look like things are going to be THAT bad. just sayin. i have no basis for this opinion, however.

2. $4 gas? wow. but i guess they spend more in london. and everywhere else. still, the days of the sunday drive are quickly coming to a close. either that or we all need to get electric vehicles. i really like these.

3. having no desk in my apt is challenging. i may need to go buy a little folding mini desk so i can at least have a place to work occasionally. though i do that at the kitchen table sometimes, and it’s not so bad.

4. other than that, the apartment is working out pretty good, though it could use more heat.

5. delta airlines, i really think you should have given me a break on that flight rebooking given that i was going somewhere for a funeral and i told your Customer Service people that. i’m sure the $130 is lining your pockets, but i’ll never fly your airline again.

6. Jetblue, i feel the same way about you. except i probably will fly your airline again because at least it looks like your planes were built after 1975. And the DirectTV

7. maker faire this weekend. i’ll try to come back without a bunch of gadgets. actually, i’m not promising anything.

Last weekend i finally got out of my “temporary” apartment situation in soma, after 11.5 months. so much for only staying a little bit of time. The new place is in Cow Hollow, making it slightly harder for me to get to work, but very easy on my new roommate who just moved here from Brooklyn and has no car.

some random thoughts on the whole affair:

The new place is objectively decent, but clearly it’s been awhile since i lived in a decent apt, because i think the place the ritz goddamned carlton.

of course, neither of us had enough furniture, so we went and let IKEA kill us with their affordable selections of decent quality. My credit card bill is not going to be happy with this. actually, i’m sure the bill will be ecstatic. i’m not going to be so happy about it. but who can resist a $59.99 bookshelf? not me.

our downstairs neighbors are 6 early 20-somethings. one of them told me in no uncertain terms that we were to be quiet when going up the stairs, because that was her room underneath. I believe she was also the one who banged on my ceiling to be quiet when i was building furniture last night. in her defense, it was midnight on a Wednesday. sorry!

the internet in the place is spotty. i was considering just doing leech-net, but it’s not going to be good enough. though i did finally get some use of my high speed modem in! yeah!

having a garage? priceless. actually it’s $250 a month. but soooo worth it, considering there is almost no street parking anywhere in the neighborhood.

this will be the first time in… maybe forever that i don’t have a specific “desk” (for working) in my apt. i’m not sure if that will be an issue or not. i usually don’t work from home too much now that i have a job in the city. i may have to go back to ikea for a small desk sometime in the future (curse you ikea!)

after all the horror stories i heard about the 30x to downtown, i was very pleasantly surprised. sure, there’s no seats to be had, but at least there’s some personal space standing room. when i used to take the 71L to van ness from the haight it was often so crowded that someone else’s shower selection that morning played a strong part in my morning.

I reinstalled Max/MSP on my new computer the other day, and opened it up to make a patch. i haven’t touched max since 2005, and as soon as i opened it up, i realized why that was. I have no idea what to do with it. Not that i don’t know how to use it, i still remember how to create a delay effect or spit midi notes all over the place. More like i don’t have any ideas for projects in which Max would be useful. I had the same problem with Processing a few months ago. i went through all the tutorials in the Reas/Fry book, but even after i was done, i couldn’t figure out what i would do with it that i wouldn’t just do in Flash.

the one thing i could do with Max is create VST plugins for my audio work in ableton. But right now i’m having enough fun messing with the attached plugins, so i’m not sure that’s necessary. I”m more interested in making a custom controller for my Ableton projects, which would be more of an Arduino project. And at the end of the day, i’ll probably just go to guitar center and buy something there, instead of burning myself with the soldering iron several times.

the point is, there are so many tools at my disposal, most of which i am fairly proficient with. but projects need to be about ideas more than tools. and most of the ideas I have (songwriting, design), don’t require anything more than an instrument or a piece of paper and some charcoal.

so how does one motivate to work with tools which would be helpful but for which they have no immediate need?

So, I just spent the last 5 days in Austin, at the SXSW Interactive conference. Here is the review, in superlative style

Panels:
Best Panel Moment: A lot to choose from here, but i have to go with the PMOG panel, which was both enthusiastic and interesting. PMOG is a passively multi player online game. the basic idea is that you install a Firefox tool bar and get certain points with your normal web play. totally interesting concept that i can see people taking advantage of. fits with a lot of the asynchronous stuff we want to do at work.
Worst Panel Moment: The Zuckerberg keynote got a ton of press, but i actually never saw it. Instead I have to go with the “Data as Art” panel, which i left halfway through after realizing it was basically going to be a portfolio show.
Bonus: Jared Spool doing magic tricks and tying it into user experience and illusion. really fascinating idea. would have been better if i didn’t already know most of the tricks.
Negative Bonus: Some of the questions were ridiculous. My favorite was the person who asked for a very detailed technical setup recommendation from a panel of creatives. It was somewhat akin to attending an Art History lecture and asking for advice on brushes for painting your house.

Food:
Best meal: Easily the Salt lick, where we got all you can eat barbecue, family style. when the 3rd plate of meat showed up, it was time to dig deep. When Dan P. finished off the huge pork shoulder, it was the time of legends.
Worst meal: Moonshine grill has good food, but it’s NOT a breakfast place on the weekdays. how then, did michael and I show up there at 11:30 for hangover food? i have no idea, but a waldorf salad was not my idea of a filling next day meal. at least i only ate half of it.
Bonus: It can’t be called good, but the microwave Red Baron French bread pizza that we bought out of the hotel’s commissary at 4AM might have been the most brilliant thing ever.

Parties:
Best Party: The gametap party was a ton of fun, as was the socialthing night at the PureVolume ranch. Most of the nights at the PureVolume ranch were fun, though i learned that 5 red bulls is too much for me on any given night. i turn into loud manlio, saying my normal stuff, but at 5x the volume and intensity. “SO!!! HOW IS YOUR JOB GOING??? GOOD?? GREAT!!!”
Worst Party: The sound system at the 16-bit party was atrocious, but the award has to go to the Facebook party which had a band that was screaming the words: “we love facebook!” into a mic like it was a brand new song. Sadly, this turned out to be the best song they played. i think we stayed for 7 minutes and i spent $9 on a jack and coke, which was about $9 more than any drink that weekend.
Bonus: Attending the FVRVRR party: great. Sneaking 8 people in VIP to the FVRVRR party: outstanding.

Random Moments:
Best: “Weave still slice”. KBR knows what i’m talking about.
Worst: Not changing into real shoes for the Salt Lick experience. flip flops in the rain and dirt = nasty
Bonus: seeing the full ITP + friends crowd and hanging out with them every night till my legs felt like goo. also, KBR grinding on the chain link fence.

Conclusion:
If i had to do it again, i would have gotten in Friday (not thursday), tried hard to be on a Panel (free ticket), and taken Sunday night off (needed a break, was brain dead the last 2 days). i guess i know what to plan for next year!

1. new job is great.
2. new job is hard.
3. teaching is going pretty well.
4. teaching is hard.
5. screenflow makes teaching easier
6. I’m barely keeping up with taking a photo a day and it’s not even the end of feb.
7. i hate having to make time to play guitar. that’s not fun, that’s work.
8. tahoe count = 7 days on the mountain, probably get 2-3 more before the season is out
9. leaving my old job was great timing, don’t you think?
10. liana’s in town. yay!
11. 12:30 = time to practice guitar.

between teaching, a new job, practicing guitar, snowboarding, and a few art projects, i haven’t had a ton of time to write. rest assured things are going well, and i will find more time to write in the next few weeks. looking forward i’ve got family in town for a few weeks and then i’m heading to austin for sxsw interactive. it promises to be a good time. hope everyone is well

just a heads up, there is a good chance i will be password protecting the blog for the indefinite future sometime this weekend. no big deal, but i’m going to start teaching a class next week and while i dont’ feel that htere is anything on my blog that is innappropriate, i think that maybe it’s best I not have quite as much public persona stuff out there, at least for starters.

Rest assured if i do this, i will send out an email with a login/password so everyone who wants to read can still do so.

the other benefit is that with a private blog, i may get a little more “R” rated. cause i know you’ve all been dying for that

Also, thing-a-day 2 starts tomorrow. for those not familiar, it’s a project where people are tasked with making one new thing every day for the month of February. I missed it last year but am excited to participate this year. the link to my page of creations will be here.

Also, super bowl. go pats! boo giants!