January 11, 2007

MWSF: Day Three

Day three started with a fun MacWorld Live event hosted by David Pogue of the New York Times. This is a tradition that started since my last MacWorld ('97 in Boston), so it was a first time thing for me. It's done in a sort of David Letterman-style talk show format with a few guests and ended with Pogue and one of the guests performing two comedic songs he had written. The funnier of the two was mocking the RIAA and was set to the music of the classic "YMCA" song.

I attended my second round of seminars afterward and also spent some more detailed time on the show floor visiting vendors and seeing interesting products.

Unfortunately, though, the thing I wanted to avoid finally happened. Since Monday afternoon, I'd started to feel a scratchy tickle in my throat behind my sinuses.

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January 10, 2007

MWSF: The Big Day

I'm quite tired at the moment, so this one is going to be brief. Obviously, I'll start with the big one:

The iPhone is positively stunning.

Go see for yourself. Download the keynote. There is nothing I can say here that others have not said (and probably said better).

Oh, and did I mention that it's positively stunning?

Speaking of the keynote... total blast. Yes, we got there at 5:30 AM and the line was already wrapped around the building into the next block. Sometime after 7 AM we were herded into Moscone West. I got split, based on my pass, into the priority seating group and ended up being in about the first 120 attendees into the hall (behind, of course, the VIPs, press and various Apple employees).

I made some great friends in the line this morning. That's one fantastic thing about MacWorld conferences... you just meet the neatest people and almost instantly start talking like you've known one another for years.

Speaking of great people, I got to meet at least three tonight that I have admired for a long time: Alex Lindsay, Merlin Mann and Leo Laporte.

Lots, LOTS more to tell... but I need some sleep. :)

Oh, remind me to tell you later about the Google Sketch-Up socks.

January 9, 2007

MWSF: Day One

Today was probably the one and only "relaxed" day at MWSF. Any Power Tools seminars you were signed up for started this morning and ran all day without any distractions. Tomorrow, however, the craziness begins and there will usually be about four things you'd want to do all going on in the same time slot. It sure sucks having a million interests... :)

As predicted, I woke up at 5:15 AM (feeling surprisingly rested, actually). Three cheers for the east coast body clock. San Francisco is remarkably dead at that time of the morning, so I had to forage a bit around the nearest block or two to find something to eat. Unfortunately, the best I could do under the circumstances was Carl's Jr. (also known as Hardees where we live). Oh well... I got some protein along with the grease.

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January 7, 2007

In, settled and freakin' exhausted...

I'm a night person. Any attempts to go to sleep earlier than when I am feeling genuinely sleepy usually don't pan out.

That's why I'm cursed when it comes to things like flying out at 6 AM. Despite my best efforts last night, I rolled around in bed, unable to sleep until probably 2:45 AM. That lousy hour of pseudo-sleep I had when my alarm went off at 4 AM was probably worse than not sleeping at all.

I also wasn't thinking too straight at the airport when I got sucked, mid-sentence, into the whirlwind that is the final security point prior to boarding. The TSA people hate me because my carry-on luggage is like a portable version of a Best Buy store. I got caught up in the unpacking of the laptop and the removing of the shoes and the answering of questions and pulling out this and that and going through the metal detector and...

... and there's my wife behind me, a metal detector and the TSA lady between us, and me in my socks suddenly remembering that she can't follow me since she's not a ticketed passenger...

... and I hadn't given her a hug and a kiss. Because I'm a distracted dumb ass.

I asked, but they said I couldn't go back through unless I took everything back through with me... and I was already about six seconds away from a cavity search by this point.

So that's how I started off my trip... saying the week's goodbyes to my wife via my cell phone from the men's room five minutes later (I had to wait for her to get back to her car where she left her cell phone). :(

Fortunately, the flights were uneventful and the layover brief. Colorado and the Rockies were a sea of pure snow from the air. The wind coming off the mountains threw the plane around a bit, but it wasn't white-knuckle sort of stuff.

As usual, I was unable to sleep substantially on the plane. So by the time I had arrived in San Francisco, waited for the glacially slow luggage carousel to barf up my one checked back (the boring bag with insignificant crap like clothes in it), dragged my possessions through ten BART stops (actually, eleven since I went the wrong way at first and had to backtrack), checked into my hotel and gotten my bearings... yeah, I was zombified.

I scoped out the area a bit and I'm happy to say that I'm stationed pretty much at ground zero for MacWorld 2007. :)

I did finally give in to a much needed short nap, but I set the alarm to be sure I got up again at the local version of dinnertime despite my body saying it's 10 PM. I staggered out, grabbed something light and brought it back to eat in my room in case my dulled motor skills caused me to jam the sandwich in my eye or start snoring mid-chew.

So it's not really the East Coast/West Coast jet lag so much as just not having any proper sleep for about 24 hours. I'm pushing myself a bit longer, though, in hopes I can sleep until a sane time and not sit up in bed at 4 AM local time. We'll see.

I grabbed a few token photos (small versions are here... I'll link to a real gallery starting tomorrow) on my brief jaunt around the neighborhood. I stopped in at the Apple store (1.5 blocks away) and CompUSA before sticking my nose in the door at Moscone South for a second.

So I'm going to zonk off here in a bit, but I'll post more tomorrow as the action starts and I have my wits about me. :)

January 6, 2007

Off to MacWorld San Francisco!

This is just a quick note that I am off to MacWorld 2007 in San Francisco in about... nine hours. Yikes! Gotta go finish packing.

I'll try to post regularly here during the week, so keep your fingers crossed that Apple is geared up to meet or exceed the Internet hype-machine! ;)

- Aaron

A startling place to see my work...

In 2004, I did a lot of photography for the Democratic Party of Virginia related to the election. One of the highlights for me was being the state party's photographer at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. Among the 12,000 photos I took that week were a few of Vice Presidential candidate and Senator John Edwards, in particular this one, this one, and this one.

A few weeks after returning from Boston, I again photographed Sen. Edwards for the party at one of his stops in Roanoke, Va.

The configuration wasn't as conducive for getting good shots that day, but I had an opportunity to meet Senator Edwards backstage after the rally. I came prepared with a set of 13"x19" prints of the three photos I mentioned above in hopes that I might give him copies and get a personal set autographed as a keepsake.

His staff gathered around me in the hallway looking at those and other shots I had from Boston and I had a nice chance to talk with his personal campaign photographer. One of Senator Edwards' aids held onto his copies of the prints for him and I took home the copies he had personalized for me ("To Aaron - Sen. John Edwards") in silver ink.

I always wondered whether the prints I had given him ever made it to his home or office through all of the chaos of a national campaign. The other night, though, I got a call from my parents that answered the question in a most unexpected way.

Mom and Dad are fans of CBS Sunday Morning stemming back to the Charles Kuralt days and they record it on their Tivo since they are usually too busy during the live broadcast to watch it. They called me on the phone to say that they had just seen my photos on national TV. They were matted, framed and hanging on Sen. Edwards' walls in his home and were clearly visible in the CBS interview. In fact, the cameraman used one of them as the focal point for a dissolving transition.

Needless to say, I am both pleased and flattered to have confirmation that the twins of the autographed photos I matted and framed for my walls are also hanging on his. :)

The full interview can be viewed online here at the CBS website. I also have the specific excerpt here (Mac users need the free Flip4Mac Quicktime plug-in).

Seriously Cool OS X Apps & Tools

While Linux remains my OS for everything "behind the scenes", OS X has pretty much become my primary working environment in the last couple of years. When I was more X11-centric with Linux on my desktop, tailoring my working environment with various tools and hot keys was always especially crucial. I want tools to be at my fingertips, accessible by muscle-memory and well integrated.

During my vacation over the Christmas holiday I had some time to really zero in on a few apps that have piqued my interest over the last few months. I wanted to start off 2007 by sharing some pretty fabulous shareware and freeware apps that I highly recommend for your OS X desktop.

I want to give credit for a lot of these discoveries to Leo, Alex, Merlin and the TWiT gang through their various fantastic podcasts, namely: This Week in Media, MacBreak Weekly and TWiT.

More after the jump...

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