Thank you Presentation Zen for finding this cool little video about typesetting the old fashioned way…I mean the really old fashioned way.

There is nearly no one in my circle of friends that likes NASCAR. That leaves me open for ridicule on every side, and yet I am ok with that. Ridicule me, that is fine because for reasons that are beyond me, I have become a fan of NASCAR.

It all started last Summer. It was before the NFL had started, and I needed something to watch. That, along with the advent of HD, led me to watch a little NASCAR. I really did it kind of on a lark and as a joke with myself. I can’t remember which race it was, maybe it was the second Talladega race… I seem to remember it was one of the super-speedways. Anyway, the race along with some of the driver’s stories got me interested.

Next week, I watched the next race, then the next race, and the next race. Before I knew it, we were down to the final 12 races and we were in the thick of the cup race. Each week, like a drug addict, I found myself unable to resist the siren call of the NASCAR.

Now, I am a fan, and I mean a real fan. I know all the racers. I know all the cars. I have favorites. I feel palpable pain every time Kyle Busch acts like a 22 year old (he is 22 years old) and crashes his car early in a race when he should be patient. I am a fan.

I will not be ashamed. I don’t have to have the approval of any man. I like NASCAR, and I will not hang my head. In fact, how can any man say he doesn’t like watching cars crash while going over 200 miles per hour. If you turn that down, I say you need to turn your man-card for the next week. That is sweet dude…SWEET.

Last Sunday was Easter, and as customary, I took a lot of pictures.  A number of them turned out pretty good, but this one was the best.  This is Griffin Burdess, he is one of my nephews, and I thought this pic was pretty cute!

I took it with my Canon 20D with my 1.4 50mm lens.  Natural light makes for some nice pics…you hear me…nice pics.

A little bit about the 50mm.  This particular lens is called a prime. That means that I can’t zoom in or out with it… I mean I can, but it involves using my legs.

What you gain from no zoom is larger pieces of glass inside the lens.  Larger pieces of glass mean that more light is captured which means less grain.  Also, this is one of the upper mid-range lenses from Canon so the pictures that come out are sharp and beautiful.

Yeah, I know I cut off his ear.  Quit yer hollerin’.  I promise to do better next time

Co-workers

Originally uploaded by foundphotoslj

“So, you remember that I thought Terri was a SKANK for trying to steal T-Joe from me, well it turns out I was wrong… I just wish I could find that last piece of the picture that I lost…Sorry Terri, BFF”

Welcome to hell…

I can’t believe that I never hear anyone talking about sharing interesting news links via Google Reader. It is such an easy thing to do and it doesn’t add that much overhead to your news reading regimen. Google Reader is an online RSS aggregation site. That means that through Google Reader, you can subscribe to sites that you go to and get notification when new content is produced. Cool stuff.

I have subscribed to a number of sites, some news, some sports, but mostly tech related. As I scroll through the stories, I look for interesting content. When I find something that piques my interest enough to read it, I share it. That creates an RSS stream of news that I find interesting. That has value. I go through the news and cull out the boring stories.

I will admit that my choices are highly biased by my tastes and what I think is important, but I would find it interesting to subscribe to friends news feeds just to get a glimpse into what they think is important.

Google Reader makes this so easy that I am stupefied that this isn’t something that more people do. We share our thoughts on blogs. We share our thoughts and location on twitter. Heck, we share everything. Why hasn’t news sharing taken off more.

I know Del.icio.us, the bookmarking website has been around for a long time, but I could never get into how it works. It has always seemed like an extra step. Besides, it was created before the explosion of RSS-ified content.

I went to Del.icio.us earlier today to see if there was a way to combine my RSS feed of news in Del.icio.us and couldn’t find it. It would be great if I could wire my Google reader feed to create Del.icio.us links, but I can’t make that happen.

Right now I am only following one news feed, and that’s Steve Gillmor. He shares news in fits and starts, but it is incredibly interesting to see what he finds interesting.

I am looking for more news feeds to read.
Robert Scoble?
Jason Calacanis?
Veronica Belmont?

There are a ton of feeds I and others would read. Why hasn’t this blown up?

ArkansasBusiness.com - Dynamic Duo Combine Skills for Web Training

Here is a great article that was just released by the Northwest Arkansas Business Journal about our company and www.genonow.com, the online training website that we have put together. If you want to know more about SVI, Rockfish Interactive, and Genonow check it out.

Rockfish is an online development company that works with some pretty impressive clients while we, SVI, are an organizational development company that helps companies keep its rockstars through training and development tools.

Internet personality Zefrank has started a new phenomenon for the Internets.  He has officially started The Color Wars.  Ze recounts his memories of summer camp where the entire camp was split by color lines…not the racial kind goofy, arbitrary rainbow type colors…gosh! (Always trying to pick a fight aren’t ya? Anyway, he has started the web version of the Color Wars, and I have officially aligned myself with the Blueteam.

These wars will be waged using Twitter and other sites like Flickr.  I don’t know what the different battles will be, and frankly, I don’t care…my blood runs blue… YOU HEAR BLUE!!!!…blue

I chose blue because firstly, it is my favorite color and secondly, it is the color of this here blog.  It would seem a little hinky to be in the redteam or yellowteam or verygreenteam and have a blue site.  It would be unseemly…and embarrassing, and I wouldn’t have it.

Go to The Color Wars site and Twitter and draw your own line in the sand.  You can join me on the blue team or you can spit in my eye and join up with another team.  Whatever man…whatever…

Long Live Big Blue

South by Southwest is three conferences all rolled into one. First there is South by Southwest Interactive. It is focused on web and web development. It is the biggest geek party on earth. Mouth-breathers, neck beard-ers, and the socially inept let their hair down for a week of partying and passing out business cards. If you are a web startup…you have to be there. I wish I could have gone. Judging by all the twitters and blog entries, it was a lot of fun.

SXSWi lasts for a week. After that the South by Southwest turns into a music and film festival. The people there are a lot more mainstream, and the contrast in the atmosphere is quite funny. Justine Ezarik has been there during both phases of the festival and did a man on the street that is entertaining.

To listen to the Web 2.0 crowd, you would think that everyone is into this, but apparently that couldn’t be further from the truth.

Ten Years After : LOL: The Life of Leo

Leo LaPorte is finally completely off the TV airwaves. Sad day. But, it is also a happy day because I couldn’t get the show here in these United States, and it has freed him up to think outside of the box and start putting together an online network of video-taped podcasts. I am calling it that because as it stands right now it doesn’t sound like what he will be producing will look anything like what we see on tv.

Right now, he runs the TWiT Netcast Network which produces around 12 different shows per week that are available for download from his site. Now he is looking at how to bring an element of live tv to it. At this point it appears that he will still keep producing the same shows with maybe the addition of a few more, who knows, but he will have multiple cameras aimed at him and his guests so that there will now be a live, interactive element to it.

LaPorte has always said that he likes the idea of interactive which was one of the driving forces behind many of the decisions made at the now defunct network TechTV. His desire was to always find ways for the audience to participate. TechTV lead the charge in using webcams so that the audience could actually be on the shows and asks questions and leave comments. It was an openness that we haven’t seen since.

I believe this openness is what engendered such a tight following in his audience. We have always felt that we are a part of the action, and to be honest, it doesn’t matter where Leo goes, if he is producing content, his audience will find a way to consume it.

I am looking forward to the changes in the upcoming months to TWiT and I am excited that I don’t have to bittorrent his content in order to see it.

If you are looking for interesting, well-produced podcasts that have a bit of a tech angle, check out TWiT.tv.