what's busier than a bee? ME

I know what you're thinking. "Late with the April design too?" And my response is, "Ummm. No. Definitely not. It's not... I mean, it wasn't... late at all... Look! Over there! Something shiny!" This month just whizzed by for me, full of furious activity. For example: we bought an AppleTV, and this whole weekend we've been madly transferring movies to it and watching them. Maybe that's not a good example. But... I have been very busy (Oh yes - and I was quite sick for a while there - migraines from hell, you know.) and it's only getting worse in coming weeks.

Upcoming:

• Uploading the April design and acting like it's been there the whole time
• Creating and then doing a presentation for my product at work on the 22nd
  
• Finishing photos so I can upload them to flickr and be all caught up
• Creating a May design for the site
  
• My cousin Katie in town the 25th - 28th
• DeVotchka at the Fillmore on the 28th
• Former colleague Neff in town the 28th - 30th
• The Breeders on the 30th
• This American Life, Live, in SF, on May 1st
• MakerFaire May 3rd and 4th
• Antiquing at Alameda on May 4th
• RUSH in Concord on May 4th
• At some point in there, having LASIK (again!) on my left eye. Fun!
  

So, as you can see, it's pretty much non-stop starting the 25th, coming to a full-blown explosion on May 4th. Wish me luck! Actually, looking at the list, it's not really getting worse. As a matter of fact, apart from the LASIK thing, it's gonna rock! Or, as I would usually say, "It doesn't suck."

Noir City - No Happy Endings!

Poster and logo design: Bill Selby; Poster and Noir City 6 photos: David M. Allen

This is so cool, and if I could, I would go every night. It had me at "No Happy Endings..."

It's Noir City 6, and they have an SF Noir night, and a Dames Tough as Nails night. Yeeeeeeeee!!!!

what are you doing tonight?

Oh, I don't know... We're going to THIS!

castro street fair 2007

fantastic faces, originally uploaded by ashleyv.

Last weekend JR and I walked to the Castro Street Fair ("Where everyone can have a gay old time!") to drank beer, get mediocre street vendor food, and do some people-watching. We showed up just in time to catch DJ Earworm, who was as far away from the food as possible, but was very close to beer. Not a good combination for an empty stomach. So before his two-hour long set was over, I was a little tipsy. Let's just say there was some slight dancing involved. But I got some decent photos.

DUR: it's just good manners to include a link to my Castro Street Fair 2007 photoset.

SEED conference

A One-Day Conference on Design, Entrepreneurship & Inspiration, by 37signals, Segura Inc. & Coudal Partners.

"On Monday, October 29, 2007 in Chicago, Jason Fried, Carlos Segura and Jim Coudal will lead a presentation and discussion on design, entrepreneurship, and inspiration."

The price is $399/person and is limited to just 135 attendees. I'm not exactly sure why it's called "SEED".

google dance (a recap)

I was looking forward to this event because it was a lot of fun last year, but lots of the UXers didn't go or were out of town this year. It just wasn't the same.

On the up side though, it didn't look like all the set-up was going to come together in time, so I e-mailed Anne, one of the coordinators, to see if they needed any help. It turns out they did. I got to distribute t-shirts to Googlers, which is a total madhouse. We even ran completely out of shirts. But I had a lot of fun - I always have fun when I get involved in setting events up. It kind of brings me out of my shell. I think I'll volunteer for more things like that. (I also got a "STAFF" shirt, which rocks.)

But back to the event itself - there were arcade games everywhere, pool tables, product demo stations, shaved ice vendors, beer and wine, and some good food. I didn't stay for the DJ and the dancing - my feet were tired from standing up for so long handing out t-shirts (that ankle still isn't at 100%), and I still had out-of-town guests to get home to.

The amount of fun I had behind the scenes reminds me how much I enjoyed being the self-appointed social coordinator at my old job, setting up get-togethers and retro shirt days. And it just occurred to me that my mom loved that too - she actually had a business for a while setting up conferences and events. So it must be in my blood. That makes me happy.

IxDA in SF

IxDA (Interaction Design Association) San Francisco held it's first speaker session last night, "Communicating Concepts with Comics" by Kevin Cheng, of the hilarious OK/Cancel comic strip/blog and Yahoo!. It was a good presentation, and I'll have to think about how/if I can incorporate it into my process. As someone who considers themselves an "artist", it is unendingly frustrating for me to suck at drawing people and faces. It would take some practice and probably a WACOM tablet, and much patience (and we all know how patient I am...)

After the presentation, we met up with the G-UX/SF crowd at Velvet Cantina for yummy nachos and rather crappy margaritas. It was fun to see all those folks outside of work. We don't do it very often, and it's one of the big things I miss from life in San Antonio. (Then again, I don't know how much of that was socializing and how much was work driving us to drink.) I am really looking forward to Aaron & Shannon getting here to regain some of that after work camaraderie. Anyways, two measly cheap tequila margaritas, and I've got a nasty headache this morning. I missed the kinda-late shuttle so now I'm on the late shuttle. (At least I'm not taking the late-LATE shuttle.) Which is OK; I'll take the later shuttle home, because as I discovered after the Google Dance the other night, the later evening shuttles are faster and way less crowded.

just a regular ol' tuesday

Today is just like any other Tuesday, except Aaron & Shannon are looking at a rental just a few blocks away this morning that we really hope will be THE ONE, and tonight is the Google Dance.

It's been really nice having Aaron & Shannon in again; we can get a glimpse of what we've really been missing this whole time - close friends to go to dinner with, or have movie nights with, or get smashingly drunk with at a moments notice. Last night we took the bus and then walked to a great little restaurant at Market and Church called Chow. It's one of those places that we've always wanted to go, just never taken the opportunity. It was yummy: really good food was eaten, and Stella Artois was consumed. Ahhhh... A week or so ago we got a taste of how nice it is to have friends so close after going over to Rick's place to learn how to play craps - you can have a great time, consume too many alcoholic bevs, and WALK HOME. We really, REALLY hope they get this apartment a few blocks away.

Also, going rental-hunting with them this weekend was very eye-opening. Read Aaron's description of it: it's dead-on. Each one had something perfect AND something absolutely intolerable. The land-lady at one was like something out of a movie. You can't write characters that are that freaky.

Although this wouldn't happen any other time, they also saved me from a street-cleaning day parking ticket yesterday. Our neighbor Pam came banging on the door to let them know my car was still on the street, and they moved it and then moved it back. Yay!!!

The other part of the normalcy of the day is Google Dance tonight, where a gazillion SES Conference attendees come to the G-plex to drink and rabble-rouse and see all kinds of cool stuff and listen to good music. Depending on the amount of alcohol consumed, there may be actual dancing. We'll see. And then I get to ride the shuttle home, so I don't have to worry about driving. I love that! Plus, I get a cool t-shirt. And come on, that's really what it's all about.

Hopefully I'll get good photos tonight and then be the responsible blogging/flickring adult that I'm supposed to be and immediately upload them and blog about the event. Why they have to do this on a Tuesday night is beyond me.

Between 10am and 6pm though, it really is just a normal day. Maybe I need to find some way to become involved in organizing of these things, because just talking about tonight makes me feel like today is a blow-off day. I'd rather be helping set it up than doing my regular work.

So, be sending your good vibes our way at around 10am Pacific time, because that's when A&S see the last place.

And, after re-reading this post, I see that the repeating thread is alcohol consumption... Here's to a less alcohol-related post in the future. *clink*

full weekend

Today is the G summer picnic, over at Shoreline Amphitheatre - I'm getting ready to head over there as I blog. Tonight we're going to the Dark Matters Opening Night Party at Yerba Buena. Tomorrow night we're going to the Laughing Squid: Paradise Lost party. (Even though SFPD has canceled the Flaming Lotus Girls performance (bastards). Oh, gosh. There is just too much going on to even list here. Good times. Good times.

fire arts festival was wicked cool

It took me forever to finally get around to uploading the photos, and now I'm finally getting around to blogging about it...

We went across the bay to Oakland to see the festival, put on by The Crucible. I love public transportation here - we just hopped the bus up to the BART, and then took the BART under the bay to Oakland. The stop was literally a block from the event.



The Fire Arts Festival was an entire city block transformed into a fire theatre. There were enormous interactive fire installations, and fire sculptures, and fire machines. There was "Dance, Dance Immolation" - where you get into an enormous fire suit and do DDR but if you get the moves wrong you get engulfed in flames. I did not try this. The team from SRL was there with some color-changing fire robots and mechanical fire stuff I can't even describe. The whole festival was essentially my two favorite things; metal sculpture and big fire. (Oh yeah, and there was this big production in the middle that was a play called the Fire Odyssey, which is better left not even talking about. There is not enough beer in the world...)

The whole thing is better said in pictures, anyways.

luckyoliver party

Last week we went to LuckyOliver's First Birthday Party at ACE Auto. It was pretty darn cool. We met Hunter and Brian of LuckyOliver at SXSWi earlier this year; it's a unique stock photo site - check 'em out.



ACE Auto isn't even very far from where we live, and it's the perfect place to have a party for photography enthusiasts. Photo opportunities galore. Metal sculptures, hundreds of irons, random collections of things in barrels, an abandoned bus, and a life-size mouse trap. You heard me. Unfortunately, it's either not operational, or they just didn't run it that night. I think you run bowling balls through this massive Rube Goldberg machine. It involves bathtubs and metal staircases and big boots and massive springs. Too much stuff to mention.



Anyways, we had a great time, and I took a few photos. Go see more in my LuckyOliver's birthday photoset.

dammit! scooped again!

Again, JR scooped me on my own event - I found it, I bought tix for it, and this is what I get for my effort. Go read JR's blog post about it to see the cool and exciting thing I discovered. Sigh.