Blather.org, recent blatherings from Miguelito Buzzard

Summer wrap-up

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 00:08:00 -0700

I'll try to keep this short for the 15-20 of you that read these now quarterly updates.

Our son Ben was born on July 23 here in SF. He's been a lot of fun to date and seems to be a pretty easy baby compared to some stories I have heard from others. I have a lot of photos and video that I haven't found the time to process, but I will get them up over at flickr as soon as I do.

We haven't traveled at all this summer except for regular visits to the country house for a little suburban relaxation. That all changes next week when Juan and I are off to Brazil to speak in Sao Paulo and Rio. The engagement is a conference for marketing and advertising design, as far as I can tell. Our talk is called "The Juanderful World of Cuban Council" and is basically an overview of the company and our work to date.

Timely Acronyms

Sun, 20 Apr 2008 00:04:00 -0700

I don't know when it started and I don't know why I am so compulsively obsessed, but it drives me completely insane that so many people are unaware of the difference between Standard Time and Daylight Time in their communications.

For example, when organizing a phone call or a meeting with someone's personal assistant in say, June, and that person writes "how does 1pm PST work for you?", I sometimes respond "That will be fine, should I put it down as noon or did you mean PDT?", which is totally obnoxious of me, I know... but I can't help it. I get especially Bent out of shape when the acronym mis-usage comes from a lawyer, aren't these folks paid ridiculous rates to accurately communicate while crossing all of their t's and dotting every i?

I'm not sure whether it has to do with a lineage of time-sensitive engineering types on my father's side, but somewhere between the railroad engineer, the television engineer and the industrial engineer I have become a relentless time acronym enforcer and it is driving me nuts.

All I can ask is that everyone please do your part to make sure that more people understand how to properly communicate the accurate acronym when referencing the time... and if that's too complicated, then just skip the daylight savings bit altogether and reduce your acronym length by 33.3% by using PT, ET, etc.

Flow or Flop?

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:04:00 -0700

Excited about the recent release of Flow this week, I dove right in as soon as I received the release announcement. My first task was to download an entire site to update my working copy. After about five tries and multiple freezes/crashes, I finally gave up and went back to old, reliable Transmit.

Later in the day when I was having an odd problem with the development site on my local machine, but not on the hosted version, I found that Flow had overwritten one file with the contents of another. Obviously this was baffling and quite frustrating as it meant that the application had to completely mix up not only the location of the files, but the naming and contents as well.

Anyway, I think Flow is a great concept, but further development and testing is certainly going to be needed if the product is going to survive/thrive.

NC, Berlin and LA

Sun, 06 Apr 2008 00:04:00 -0700

It's been a busy month of travel between North Carolina, Berlin and Los Angeles. Two parts work and one part play, Now that it's over I'll be glad to not spend 40 hours in a coach airplane seat inside of 30 days for a long time, if ever again.

Charlotte was easing into Spring with bright, exploding pear trees that resemble cherry blossoms, just with less of a red tint. While in Charlotte I rented a Prius and I have to say, they're more fun to drive than they look. So much fun in fact, I have been considering trading my car now in for a newer model Prius.

Berlin was almost indescribable. I will say that I absolutely loved the city as a whole. That's pretty good considering that I was only there for three days, the weather was either snow, sleet, rain, wind or overcast and the fact that I don't speak German. While I was there my friend and childhood neighbor also happened to also be in town vacationing and though I had just seen he and his wife in Charlotte, we managed to meet up for a brief visit in a coffee shop one afternoon to escape the snow. All in all I think I walked about six miles and slept about 14 hours total.

Long enough to get home, unpack and begin to settle, Dara and I were off again. We spent a quick weekend in LA visiting some friends and eating our way through Silver Lake. We even managed to catch up with Brett and Gina who gave me private sampling of the new Rancid album due out this September. First impression, it's a damn good record.

This weekend I am off to Chicago and followed by a day trip to Cleveland on my way home next Monday. After that I aim to be grounded in SF until the end of June when my sister graduates from Kellogg @ Northwestern.

Heading to Brazil with personality

Wed, 05 Mar 2008 00:03:00 -0800

Juan and I have been invited to speak this summer at the Arteccom FIND conference in Rio De Janeiro and Sao Paulo Brazil. While we can't talk too much about what we are going to present quite yet, I can share some of the general press materials that we have been putting together. Those materials include some fun headshots that we took earlier today. I hope you get as big a laugh out of them as I did.

Music, Hospitals, Babies, Tattoos and Travel

Sat, 01 Mar 2008 00:03:00 -0800

The past month has been pretty eventful in a lot of atypical ways for me. When trying to break it out into categories all I end up with is "Music, Hospitals, Babies, Tattoos and Travel". So let's run through them one at a time to not completely confuse you, the reader (assuming you will even get through the first paragraph).

Music
While Tom and I haven't had a follow-up meal, there has been some more music industry related excitement, for me anyway. Back in early February I got to meet up with Brett and Gina who were in the studio with Rancid while they were recording their new album. Being a fan of both Brett and Gina as well as Rancid, this was an exciting afternoon to say the least.

February was a big month for Glen Hansard and The Frames with Glen and Marketa's oscar win. Being a longtime fan of The Frames I thought I would put up a mix here that has some of my favorite tracks from all of their albums and several of their live shows. I have mentioned the album in the track name in case you are interested in where to find a particular song version. Most of their stuff is available on iTunes, so it shouldn't be a problem to purchase (hint-hint).

Hospitals
On my way home from the recording studio with Rancid I was on the phone with Dara when I experienced two sharp pains in my chest followed by my body entering into shock. Basically I felt as though I couldn't breath, I was very dizzy, my left arm went numb and I began to black out, all while driving down the freeway at 70MPH in the dark. Luckily I managed to focus enough to pull off at the next exit while Dara called 9-1-1. The ambulance arrived and shuttled me to the local hospital where they did the normal rundown of tests and scans. Everything came back clean and I was released about an hour later with no definitive diagnosis.

I have since followed up with a cardiologist who keeps forgetting to return my calls. At this point the most likely diagnosis is a panic attack, which is different than an anxiety attack and can have similar physiological symptoms as a heart attack. Either way, I'm doing fine now and haven't had a relapse or similar experience since.

Babies
As I hinted before, Dara and I are pregnant with our first child, and this week we found out that we are having a boy. We're both very excited (nervous) and looking forward to welcoming our little one into the world on or around July 24th. We're now getting into the naming puzzle and would really love any outside advice on sites that may offer some help. If you know of any, please send an email to nonsense AT blather DOT org.

Tattoos
Ever since my father passed away almost four years ago I have been considering a memorial tattoo of sorts, but I have never really settled on anything. As an attempt to motivate myself, Ferris and I made an appointment a couple of months ago with Henry Lewis over at Everlasting Tattoo. With days left until the appointment, and realizing that Henry is particularly outstanding at birds and lettering, I decided to get a buzzard with the words "March Forth". The day my dad died was March 4, 2004 and I have always thought it interesting that the word can also be interpreted as "forth" or forward. So far I have the outline (which is outstanding on its own) and an appointment for the shading in mid April, so I will post some photos when it's all done. This makes number three, and they keep getting larger, so Dara is slightly concerned about what's next.

Travel
With NY out of the way for now, I have a trip coming up that goes SF, Charlotte, Berlin, Charlotte, SF. In an effort to try to minimize time zone acclimation, I planned it this way. But thinking about the paradigm shifts between North Carolina and Germany, I think that even if my sleep is normal my mind may be a bit twisted up culturally. We also may head to LA near the end of the month to visit some friends instead of the usual business trip.

That's it for now folks and make sure to send me some baby name websites!

Hello 2008, what happened to January?

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 00:02:00 -0800

It's kind of shocking that the year is already more than 10% over. It's been a busy year so far between work and home and everything in between. The holidays were nice and we definitely managed to get a little quit time with family back in Charlotte. While I was there I even managed to meet up with Chandler one afternoon at the gun range with my brother.

In January Dara and I went to New York for a long weekend so I could see the new office and catch up with everyone there. The weather was fair, kinda cold, but bearable. Though I didn't have a chance to make all the usual rounds, I did get to see Johnny and a couple of other old friends. For our trip we flew Virgin America for the first time and I have to say that these guys definitely do a few things right. The whole "Red" system of self-service is just brilliant and truly should have been implemented years ago. If you have ever been that anxious person that waits and watches as the flight attendants slowly make their way to your row with the drink cart, then you will really appreciate VA. Aside from that the relaxing lighting and music along with the entertaining safety video really made the experience enjoyable. In conclusion, I highly recommend seat 3F.

Tomorrow I am off to LA for some meetings early in the week. Again, I'm flying VA and coincidentally I am again in seat 3F both ways, just like NY, which makes me think I should only ever fly VA seat 3F to not ruin "a good thing". The trips to LA have slowly gone from relaxing and friend-filled to in-and-out business frenzies with scattered intersections of friends and food. In the "good old days" it would be a five to ten day run in Venice with a lot of focused development time and relaxation instead of constant freeway cattle drive between meetings and appointments.

Unrelated, we are looking for a seasoned Python/Django adviser/consultant, ideally in the bay area, for a large and quite exciting project that is on the horizon. This project is likely to run for 8-14 months and will be a lot of fun on several different levels. So, if you know anyone that you think might be a good fit, let me know.

One last thing... BOING!

Where have YOU been?

Sat, 22 Dec 2007 00:12:00 -0800

So it's been a while... and I'm not really sure where to start. Should I dump-off what I have been doing, what I have been working on, what's happening with Cuban Council or maybe what we're looking towards in 2008? Maybe I'll just try and cover it all.

September
As far as I can remember we had a busy September, though I don't recall if there was any travel involved. I think it was mostly the daily grind in SF going and back and forth between the house, the office and the occasional client meeting. According to the old calendar it was a busy month of project work with 4-5 of them getting underway at once in late August. Fortunately we had hired some outstanding folks earlier in the summer otherwise the load would have been completely unbearable. One project in particular that we are eager to see go public is some design work that we did for NASA through Lockheed Martin. Hopefully that will be released in the next month or two and will have maintained at least 95% or better of the design.

October
October started out much like September, though I did manage to get some personal time at the end of the month where Dara and I flew to North Carolina for a family reunion up in Asheville. With a good bit of travel and and great deal of drinking, we had a nice time visiting with everyone. On one of the days up in the mountains Dara and I visited the Biltmore Estate just outside of town. If you ever are in the area and have the chance to go, I highly recommend it. Aside from the sheer grandeur of the property and the house itself, there's a creepy atmosphere that comes with notion that this was an everyday living space.

November
November was a bit more of the same on the work front. I managed to get some maintenance done for both ANTI as well as Astro Gaming. Toke took a vacation to Denmark and the rest of us held down the forts in SF and NY. Once Toke returned, we locked in a new office space in NY, moving from the 42 RIvington spot just down the street to 88 Rinvington. The new space has a lot more room, much more to see from the windows and as of last week a whole new interior.

Later in the month Dara and I attended an art opening with Brett and Gina that was profiling Kellisimone Waits, daughter of Tom Waits, that was hosted down in SOMA at a place called the Luscious Garage. The show was great and afterwards we went with Brett and Gina to Farmer Brown for dinner. Shortly after we got to the restaurant, the Waits family joined us for fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and lots of iced tea. The dinner conversation was light and I learned a lot about the behavior patterns of buzzards from Tom, who seems to be well-informed on all types of interesting topics.

Thanksgiving was the usual event, though this year my brother and his family came out to visit us in SF. We took them to our usual favorite neighborhood restaurants including Tsunami and Nopa. We played a lot of guitar hero with his step-son and we all managed to catch a nasty head cold by the middle of the weekend, which more or less knocked us all out of commission.

December
The month of turning "33" and lots of travel. From Los Angeles to Portland to Seattle and next Charlotte, it's going to be a frequent flyer miles stack-up. Having covered the west coast this month for meetings and meetings following by meetings and more meetings, Dara and I are getting ready to head back to NC tomorrow for a week with my family. I assume we will be laying low for most of the trip, but I've learned that visiting with my family can be a busy time typically not offering much in the way of rest. I assume we will see some friends, shoot some guns and eat/drink a lion's share of beer, wine and cocktails, turkey, stuffing and snacks.
It seemed for me that all of the holiday parties this year were stacked at the end of last week.

First I went to the Kadium party where Rogue Wave played, and though I only faintly heard it, Zach and the band were gracious enough to dedicate a song to me. The next night we went to the KNI party out on the Mission/Potrero border where they had a best holiday punch "punch out" contest complete with gifts for all of the contestants and a special prize for victor. After the KNI party I stopped by the Gravity Mobile party where I ended up staying until 4am. At the end of it all Noah and I grabbed a late/early greasy breakfast before throwing in the towel and putting an end to my holiday party triple-header.

I recently helped a friend who is in involved with Iron & Wine put together a site to sell remastered music from live shows. The site is called Played Last Night.com and so far the only artist in there is Iron & Wine. The key difference for this site over other similar attempts is the quality of the recording and the subsequent audio engineering. The guy behind the whole thing is a master sound engineer for a local animated film company and he has put his love and expertise into the product, that's the pudding.

Tomorrow we are off to NC for a week and then to NY later in January...
While I promise to make a better effort to update more frequently in '08, I think what I really need to do is find a more general topic of interest, because my everyday life reads more like aspirin instructions than anything of interest or continuity. I don't have a poll on here anymore, but I would certainly like to know what you would find more interesting to read about...

Everyday Life/Travel
Projects and Clients
Gadgets and Software
Something else entirely?

Thanks for listening and happy holidays.

Indian summer updates

Thu, 30 Aug 2007 00:08:00 -0700

As the fog finally runs off and we get our late summer, summer... I'm looking forward to the next six to eight weeks of warm air and sunshine. Hopefully we can get a kickball game in there somewhere since we've only had one so far this year, and that was the season opener.

In travels, I will be headed to Los Angeles next week to attend some meetings as well as the QBN Sessions event at The Getty. Then in October Dara and I are traveling to Asheville, North Carolina for a family get together in the mountains.

Work is busy and the three new employees hired over the summer seem to be settling in fairly well. It's been kind of strange yet exciting all the same to watch the company grow and see what new dynamics each person brings to the overall culture.

This week John is in town visiting from New York. It's always nice to have more people occupying desks in the office, whether they are drifters or not, but especially when it's Mr. Weir.

Thomas did a number on his arm so I want to try to make a new mix in his honor, though I am not quite sure how to top the 80's glam rock collection at the moment... suggestions are welcome.

Pete? When the hell are you coming back from Central America?

80's glam rock and summer fog

Sun, 05 Aug 2007 00:08:00 -0700

While sitting here in the house missing Juan, buried in work and sick of looking outside at the endless flow of fog, I was inspired to update the blather playlist by a guy named Bill who lives in Alaska. As usual this playlist is dedicated to Ferris and Rory, this time it has an 80's glam rock theme.

Chris started with Cuban Council this past week Juan was in town for a working vacation. My weekend was spent building the new Rogue Wave website that we hope to launch later this month.

Tomorrow I am going wakesurfing with Sol.

Tuesday and Wednesday my cousin Kit is going to be visiting and I get to show her around town. I suppose it works out well that she is currently in to classic rock and we happen to live in the Haight Ashbury disctrict of SF. One easy attraction for her visit should be the Janis Joplin house right across the street. Other than that I will walk her by the Grateful Dead house and the usual Haight drifts like Amoeba and the Red Vic. If anyone has any suggestions of fun and interesting music related spots, please send an email to nonsense[at]blather.org as I would love to hear them.

On Thursday Phil and I going to see NASA at Moffett Federal Airfield for a project kick-off meeting and to get Juan his nerd shirt. Do you think he will prefer the plain NASA logo or something more exicting with rockets or a space man?