Electric Ladyland

nten 2006 - seattle

it's been a little up and a little down lately.

this morning i was feeling wistful while writing in my journal but things kicked back into a positive mode later in the day during sessions at the NTEN conference when i picked up some very useful tips on training and VoIP.  thanks NTEN!  every year the conference keeps getting better IMHO and i got more out of this one than i did the last one.  i cruised out of that last session and came back into my hotel room energized to write up notes and organize the many projects i have going on.  i feel like i'll be coming back home with a head full of ideas and plenty of motivation to realize them.  can't ask for more from a conference.  of course there's always networking -- did plenty of that too and met some really great people.  nonprofit techies are a lot of fun.

for one thing, guy kawasaki's keynote yesterday was great.  i'm not just saying that because i'm a mac partisan and he's famous for being the mac evangelist.  i hope they put his presentation online because it was one of the most motivating speeches i've seen.  succinct, hilarious at times, and universally applicable.  you wouldn't have had to be a techie to appreciate the points he made.  i'm still churning over some of them in my head.

now bring on the sushi.  we're going to a place reputed to be the haunt of many japanese members of the seattle mariners team.  one review i read even claimed it was one of the top four sushi restaurants in the united states.  after having only had a muffin all day long i am so ready!  lemmeatit!  (and side note:  ever notice how some sushi restaurant reviews -- well, who knows, maybe other restaurant reviews get this way but i've seen a lot of this going on with sushi restaurant reviews since i was just researching were to get good sushi in seattle -- seem to degenerate into near-porn scenarios?  just an observation...)

forget me not

my grandmother's favorite flower.  i won't forget. 

big-screen bust

of course i'm watching jon stewart host the oscars tonight.  just read an article on the state of hollywood by manohla dargis at the times and there was this particularly arresting quote:

In the last few decades, the American movie industry has become increasingly split between high-concept spectacles engineered to attract as many viewers as possible (think flypaper) and niche products pitched to specific audiences. In this climate, films released through a studio specialty unit, like "Capote" and "Good Night, and Good Luck," are just one niche among many, like horror or teen flicks. Their principal value doesn't come from ticket sales, but from the prestige and awards they confer on a parent company. In Hollywood, as a friend recently quipped, "Quality is now a genre."

ouch.

i'd rather be so metal and not even know it

i like to be stylish but a hipster?  apparently there's more of it in me than i knew.  but i draw the line at trucker hats, ok?  not gonna happen.

google evolves into... ?

someone showed me this hypothetical take on the evolution of google a while back.  very cool, kinda scary.  funny they call it epic -- as an acronym, that could also stand for the electronic privacy information center.  probably a tounge-in-cheek reference, i'm guessing.  thanks guys, you're creeping me out.