Brett Hangs 'Em Up...

This is one of those sublime moments when you see the real heart of a competitor surrendering finally to age, fatigue.. finding himself in a place where he's forced to say "It's over."

Twitter in Plain English

Once again, the good people at CommonCraft-- Lee and Sachi LeFever-- bring order to the chaos and give us the words and images we need to explain something so simple and yet so incomprehensible to our friends and relatives..
On second thought.. I'm not sure I want my relatives a) reading my Tweets; or b) Tweeting themselves.

All the same-- this is awesome.

Best. Ad. Ever.

More Geoff Smith

Okay, one more..

Speaking of Geoff Smith...

It's amazing to discover the talent hidden in the people right around you.
Well, in Geoff's case, it's not hidden-- it's bursting out of him just constantly.

It's hard to be three...

We've been reminded repeatedly in the last many weeks, my wife and I, that we have a three year-old in the house. Or rather, we must remind ourselves of that-- otherwise, we might be inclined to think we're doing a really, really poor job as parents.
Behaviors from Bryce, the three year old, range from:
1) explosive tantrums
2) foot stomping
3) dramatic crossing of arms and cinching of brow
4) shouting that sounds more like barking "no no NOO!"
5) swinging of arms, pounding of fists-- on others, on self, on inanimate objects-- often accompanied by #2, foot-stomping.

I could go on.
And all this for simple offenses (by us, the parents) such as
1) requiring a jacket be worn when going outside
2) asking that Bryce take turns with his older brother
3) mandating that jelly beans and chocolate chip cookies are not good breakfast foods

Explosive. This is the word that most easily comes to mind lately when I describe my younger son's moods these days.

You'd think we'd have learned. I mean, we did live a whole year with a three year-old in the house once before. But that was a few years ago.. and our collective memory is not what it should be in matters like these.

So, sad as it is, I took some solace today when I read Blabbermouse's recent post, "In the Key of Three," about her own son, also three, and some of the behavior they've been seeing.

Parents in community with one another-- so much of the bonding we do comes from this basic feeling: "Oh thank God, we're not the only ones!"

You know what they say about opinions... John Rocker is an asshole.

Oh John Rocker, you are so 10 years ago.
You may have been on the juice.
And Bud Selig may have known it.
Hell, who couldn't have guessed it?

But I'm sorry to inform you: you're still not relevant.

PodCamp Nashville 2008

Good times!
So how'd you spend your Saturday?
I think my wife thought I was crazy for getting up at 6:30 on a Saturday morning.
But it all came together quite nicely, I think. As with BarCampNashville back in the summer, Dave Delaney and Kelly Stewart (along with Ted Chapin, Marcus Whitney, Alison Groves, and a host of others) put on a great event-- we counted 181 attendees-- with a pretty good mix of presenters.
Ranging from people who are figuring out how to make a real living on podcasting, to a few different talks about some of the gear and software involved in making the whole process go. And then, of course, Dave had to talk about Twitter! So key.
Keynotes were by CC Chapman-- whose sisters confided that they call him Charlie-- and Joseph Jaffe. I didn't get to hear every word, but if memory serves-- Chapman reflected on the Barcamp/Podcamp Social media phenomenon and urged everyone to get involved, get up and talk, reach out to people and get something started. Jaffe's talk focused on the revolutionary things that are happening as user-generated content-- podcasts, primarily-- are changing the equation for radio and other old media. Television will still own the living room-- to paraphrase Jaffe-- but Podcasts will own the gym, the walk to work, the commute.. virtually everything outside the living room.
Talk of the day didn't really have a lot to do with podcasting, per se. Scott Schwertly, of Ethos3-- a self-described "epic storyteller"-- gave a presentation about giving world-class presentations.. and it's safe to say, the guy knows how to put a slide deck together. Not sure if the literary world would agree with his own assessment of his storytelling-- but it certainly is nice to see someone remind us that giving a talk-- whether it's to give a pitch, teach a class, convey a concept or otherwise connect with an audience-- telling a good, intellectually or, more often, emotionally engaging story is perhaps the most effective mechanism for getting one's point across. Nicely done.
Then, when it was all said and done-- we took down the screen, put up the chairs (apologies to anyone who's chair I may have stolen prematurely-- we got pretty tight on time there at the end)... and a bunch of us made our way over to the Big Bang on Broadway. Geoff Smith, a member of the BarCamp/Podcamp crew-- it turns out he plays a little piano there. Who knew?
Actually, he's flat-out amazing. If you're in Nashville, go to the Big Bang. Do not delay. My advice, get there before 7:30.

Click here for pictures from PodCampNashville

And here's a short video Dave shot at the Big Bang..

"Like a day out of the old New York"

Lupica's got a nice story in today's Daily News about the parade in Manhattan for the Giants.

The last time there were crowds like this on the streets of lower Manhattan, they had been heading north on the worst day the city has ever had. Tuesday they were on their way downtown again, trying to get the best places on Broadway to cheer a team that for a few weeks lifted us all.

Think Tom's learned another lesson since Sunday?

Don't get me wrong, I have a great deal of respect for the New England Patriots, and even Tom Brady. But does this not go down as one of the great crow-eating moments in sports?
It's one thing for a young, upstart, underdog team like the Giants to spout their mouths off during Media day and say all kinds of things they're "not supposed to say." But for a guy like Tom Brady to dismissively ridicule Plaxico for making the prediction, while indirectly making a prediction, himself: I mean, *smirk*, don't all reasonable people agree that the Pats are going to score more than 17? Haha.. hoho..

Get over yourself, Tom.
Glad you learned a thing or two about New York other than where to pick up Supermodels.

Oh but it is good to be Giants...

Can you blame Strahan for giving voice to the feelings that must have been reverberating through the Giants lockerroom for weeks before the Superbowl.. if not during the stretch of the playoffs?
This team was consistently overlooked by the national media, never given credence.. disrespected...

I grew up in a house of Giants and Patriots fans.. dual loyalties in me that have never been so divided as they are now. Time was, the Pats were safely irrelevant while the Giants won championships in 86 and 90. In years since, of course, the Pats have become content with their own greatness. Smug, even. And with the way they were beating teams in the regular season this year, who could blame them.

But for whatever reason, even as great as the Pats appeared to be, no one was paying attention to the Giants-- their 10 wins, undefeated on the road... underdogs throughout the playoffs... yes, even going into Tampa in week 1. Tampa? Seriously.

I mean these are the guys who were chided by the press (and the Pats, themselves, of course-- more on that in a bit) for their 'false confidence', their chest-out talk, their predictions following Media Day. They broke all the superstitious rules-- and afterall, these Patriots know how to behave on Media Day and look at them, all well-behaved and tight-lipped...

After all that, who wouldn't be tempted to say "Howya like us now?"

So forgive the Giants if they're flat-out obnoxious in victory. With the way that they pushed the Patriots around on the field (where it counts, right?), just physically overpowering the offensive line, knocking the great, un-muddied Tom Brady to the ground a dozen times or so-- has Brady ever been so harrassed in a game?-- with the way the Giants' smash-mouth broke the Pats' finesse, they deserve to get a little bit back. Turnabout is fairplay.

Dudes...

Good stuff.

It doesn't take long..

Perhaps it doesn't help that I've been watching bits and pieces of The Lives of Others the last two nights.. so I've got old East Germany on the brain and I come across this article by Andrew Curry in Wired magazine tonight ("Piecing Together the Dark Legacy of East Germany's Secret Police") about the guys in East Germany tasked with piecing together, until recently entirely by hand, the millions of shreds of paper left behind by the old Stasi secret police.
It's an awe-inspiring read for a couple of reasons:

1. it's a stark reminder of the lengths to which the East German government went to keep hold on the quite literally captive populace there. I mean we're talking about agents deflating people's bicycle tires repeatedly to give them a sense that they're going crazy...
2. the numbers of documents this team is having to contend with are just ridiculous. A 60,000 square-foot warehouse, three stories tall, stacked to the rafters with bags-- just bags stacked on bags-- full of documents, transcripts, carbon paper, file folders, all torn to shreds.. many of them by machine.. but millions of pages were torn apart by hand in the last days of the East German dictatorship, as the Wall was coming down. These people tore these documents up by hand. For weeks.

At their current rate, reconstructing the documents by hand would take another 700 years.
700.

So now some smart guys have figured out how to have software piece the documents-- once scanned into a server farm-- together once and for all and give some of these people who were targeted by the Stasi some piece of mind about what was recorded.

I know, I'm paraphrasing much of what's in the story.. but my mind is just blown away by this whole endeavor-- the back-story, the problem, the solution, and everything that's at stake.

And then, buried deep in the article, near the end, there's this small stat that I found really unsettling:

In November, the first children born after the fall of the wall turned 18.... In a survey of Berlin high school students, only half agreed that the GDR was a dictatorship. Two-thirds didn't know who built the Berlin Wall.

I was in highschool when the Berlin Wall came down and I guess, even as young as I was, it had stood as such an icon of that era-- the Cold War, Eastern Bloc totalitarianism.. it's shocking to me to consider that there are kids coming of age now who live in a world that never had a Berlin Wall-- this is good-- but who also don't know enough recent history to know how it came to be erected or who was responsible for it. That's shocking to me. I can only imagine how it must be for some of those people who's names appear on those shreds of Stasi paperwork.

"Who's been messing with the computer?"

"Not me, Dad!" comes the reply, in unison, from my two sons.
The forensic evidence says someone's not being truthful..

Lost Awesomeness..

"Mr. Friendly throws like a girl..."

Nashville Geek Breakfast

Ben Folds & Kelly Stewart
Originally uploaded by kelstew

Took another headlong dive into the local tech/new media/blogger/social networking scene this morning and sat down at the 2nd Nashville Geek Breakfast over at Noshville over by Vandy.
Had a great time-- old friend Tom from back in the PBI days showed up as well-- and got to meet a number of the good people I've been corresponding with since this past summer's BarCamp Nashville.

As you can see, the company was pretty luminary this morning. Ben Folds jumped right up and took this opportunity to have his picture taken with Kelly Stewart.
No word yet from Kelly on who'll be appearing at next month's Geek Breakfast, but I'm sure he'll line up a hum-dinger.

Thanks again to Dave, Kelly, Marcus, Jackson, Kate, Ginger and everyone else for making such warm, welcoming bunch of good people to have coffee (lots of coffee!), talk a little business, and have a few laughs with.. looking forward to seeing everyone again soon.

Next up: PodCamp Nashville is February 9.

Want to go to the next Geek Breakfast here?
Keep tabs on the plans in the Facebook Group (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=7035651703&ref=mf)

Coach R.G.

Good story here from the NYT about former Irish (and former NY Giant) Running Back, Ryan Grant.

Extraordinary, Revolutionary, and Better...

Nicely done by Mahalo Daily

The SleepyDad Anthem

A sublime elicitation of the state of being a SleepyDad...

"If I were you, I'd just buy some bigger shirts.."

I'm not great Peyton fan, but the man has comic timing... and he is the face of the NFL, no doubt about it.