First Crack 54. On the Set of A Prairie Home Companion Filming

This summer, student filmmaker and long-time friend, Jon Steinhorst worked on the set of Robert Altman’s A Prairie Home Companion movie in St. Paul. I sat down with him the day filming ended to talk about how he got the job, what he did, and what he learned about filmmaking, directing, and fans. You may …

The Power of Podcasting 2: Feeling Bad for the Dead Guy

Dan Klass shares some fantastic stories on his podcast the Bitterest Pill. My all time favorite is #41 So, You Don’t Even Live Around Here. If you’ve listened to #39 CSI:Naked Man Body or #38 CSI:Private School or checked out the little cartoon image of him. You know he’s not as svelt as he once …

The New Phonebooks are Here, Please Recycle

Growing up, I always looked forward to the new phonebooks. Visiting my grandparents, I spent hours exploring the big city via their encyclopedic yellow pages. Steve Martin’s classic Jerk only amplified my enthusiasm and provided a chorus. “The new phonebooks are here! The new phonebooks are here!” Today, unexpected as always, a new phone book …

A Case for Attention.xml

A couple months back, I was shopping for a new car, Jen and I spent hours combing automakers websites looking at their models, the model’s specs, comparing it against the car we wanted to buy. Ford knows I went to their site. Honda knows I went to their site. Both know which models I looked …

How Social Networks Can Actually Help

Sometime in the past couple days, something really bad happened and I lost all but 2 entries in my Powerbook’s Address Book. Just me and Apple Computer. Thankfully, I could pull them off my Treo. As I corrected a number of importing errors and generally cleaned up the address book, I thought about how many …

How Wikis Work Best

Hugh Macleod released the HughPage, a wiki for bloggers, yesterday. As always he concisely captures the power of a wiki. “The Hughpage wiki is up and at your disposal….Just blogged about something that doesn’t have a section? Then create a new section by yourself. No need to ask first. Exactly.” Like describing the idea of …

First Crack 53. Laptop Bag Comparison – Targus vs. Timbuk2

A compare and contrast of my 8 year old Timbuk2 messenger bag with my new Targus CityGear LA laptop bag. This is also my first crack with enhanced podcasts, using ChapterToolMe to include additional photos of the laptop bags within the podcast. Listen to the Laptop Bag Comparison – Targus vs. Timbuk2 [9 min]

Back from Boulder, Thanks All Around

Jen and I just returned from Boulder, Co via Rapid City, SD and Kansas City, MO and I wanted to send out thanks to everyone helping to make it a fantastic journey through the midwestern states. In roughly chronological order, I’d like to extend a big thank you to: Jen for booking the hotels and …