My daughter turns 18 today. She starts college in a few weeks and deserves my time (my wife, too). To celebrate, I take a week off from work, and really stepping back from everything. With a little […]
Category: Aspiration
Z3 is for Zoom
My father-in-law generously offered to buy my daughter a car for graduation/birthday (I couldn’t afford to particularly with her coming college expenses). We decided on Hertz rental sales, to get something newer, with lower miles, […]
The Roles We Play
I am catching some down time in the Press Room at the San Diego Convention Center. Outside in the hall, Comic-Con rumbles on with a crowd I would estimate to be at least three times the size of Day One. The noise and bustle makes taking good photos or conducting video interviews difficult. So I’m shacked up with my laptop in this quiet place, contemplating what Comic-Con is all about: Role playing.
Many attendees have come here as someone else. For a day, or even a few, they take on another persona. They become someone else—perhaps whom they would rather be, but most certainly not who they are. They can be heroes and even stars, for most anyone well-costumed will be repeatedly stopped for photos. Comic-Con lets them be not just someone else but someone special.
Apple of My Eye
[vimeo https://vimeo.com/12819723] Short film “Apple of My Eye” demonstrates how good storytelling isn’t about the tools but the storyteller. Michael Koerbel shot and edited this delightful video on an iPhone 4. No PC or other […]
Busking for London Tube Contest
OK, now this cool. Yesterday, as part of the Rhythm of London festival, a busking competition concluded. Winners will get a free one-year license to busk in the London Tube. Competitors uploaded videos to YouTube (haha […]
Joannie Rouchette is an Inspiration
On Sunday, Thérèse Rochette died from a heart attack at 55. Tonight, her daughter Joannie won bronze at the Winter Games…For Rochette now, the Olympics are over. This full, fleeting moment of chaos, pressure and […]
Stuck in Newark Airport
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HQeG1kaddsw] I agree 100 percent. “Maybe there is hope for our ever-increasingly isolated and anti-social (no, Facebook is making us less social) society after all”, nmook.
My Comic-Con 2009 Gear
I spent the last two days at Comic-Con 2009 here in San Diego. I sacrificed Day 1, and not happily, to cover Microsoft’s fiscal fourth-quarter and year-end earnings. Several big Microsoft stories broke on Friday, but I refused to give up another day at Comic-Con; it’s the 40th show. Comic-Con is fun and chaotic. More importantly, for a journalist, people are willing to talk—and why not? They’re playing a role and ready to perform.
The Firefighter’s Gift
Last night my daughter asked if I could buy a Santa hat for her to wear ice skating with friends. But I couldn’t find one anywhere. You would expect them to be sold out on Christmas Eve. Later, as I exited the UTC mall’s food court, I saw four security guards sitting around a table, the woman among them wearing a Santa hat. Surely they would know where to find one! I approached and cheerfully asked if they could suggest a store selling santa hats.
Best New Years Ever!
My family spent part of the day at Torrey Pines State Reserve. We walked the beach on a day where the temperature reached 21 degrees Celsius. Oh joy!
Thanks Isn’t Enough
Thirty years ago, on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I knuckled down for a lonely holiday with the mainly foreign students on the University of Maine campus. I had no way home but was ready to tough out the long weekend with the other students.
With a difference: Many of my companions came from countries with no Thanksgiving. They didn’t have the memory of family and feast for this particular holiday. I was a freshman, too. Some of the guys planned to hang out in the computer center and play keyboard games and read the print-out action on teletypes. I would join them.
What Will Be the Returns?
Today’s New York Times column “An iPhone Changed My Life (Briefly)” hits at the device’s fundamental problem: Hype. There was too much of it—and not really from Apple—that may have over-raised many people’s expectations. The issue Michelle Slatalla raises is one of returns. Will she return her iPhone? She writes, “I have started thinking seriously about returning the $599 phone, despite a 10 percent restocking fee. It hasn’t really changed my life in the ways I’d hoped”.
But she may have started with overly unrealistic expectations, which the runaway hype helped foster. The name includes “phone” for a reason. Apple didn’t promise a device that would cure cancer or feed the starving.