Sixfoot6.com

Testing

Movable Type upgrade challenges. Bear with us.

Something new.

The Eeny Meeny Miney Show!

In April, my comedy troupe launched Mighty McPilgrim's Eeny Meeny Miney Show, a monthly online sketch show. Last week we released our second episode, and I really think it's some of the best work we've ever done. Bukowski! Baked goods! Angst! Love between a bro and his bro! Watch it all on our website, or directly on Funny or Die.com Don't forget to vote FUNNY or DIE at the end!

If you're short on time, watch our Bromance is Gone music video. Everyone put in a lot of work, and I think it came out well. Enjoy, bitches!

In Rainbows + Cover Art

I'm very much enjoying the new Radiohead album, In Rainbows. In case you missed last week's music industry buzz, follow that link to download a digital copy of the album at whatever price you'd like to play. A good deal.

Though it opens with a burst of Hail to the Theif energy, the lyrics and melody of Rainbows feel more like 1995's The Bends than their moe recent records. It's still 21st century experimental artrock, but after 3 listens I'm reminded of lovesongs like Fade Out and the most beautiful shimmering moments of Kid A. Such lovely, layered production. [Note: insert clever meaningless phrase here like, "An overcast Pet Sounds for the earbud generation".] A solid next step for the band.

In case you grabbed the digital download and want a pretty picture for your iPod, check out these cover art ideas for In Rainbows on hicksdesign.

Vote for My SXSW08 Panel!

I'm proposing a panel for SXSW Interactive 2008 entitled "Better Collaboration Through Comedy LULZ OMG. I'm planning a hilarious and informative look at comedy as a way to improve your workday and your relationships with coworkers, customers and clients. Expect silly slides, great speakers, and my incredibly sexy voice amplified over loudspeakers. I may wear a prop mustache to appear smarter.

Please, log into the PanelPicker and vote for my panel! It's going to be crap awesome, and you'll walk with a smile and a better understanding of what that smile means to your brain and to the people around you.

Vote for me, or may all your work be insufferable.

Post Post Post

Ah, website. I feel like we barely know each other anymore. You're like an old co-worker I pass in the hall every couple of days... but thanks to my recent promotion we just don't have much occasion to interact anymore. Lunch sometime? Sure, I'd like that. Actually, I brought my lunch today, and I've got meetings the rest of the week, but we should definitely get together soon. Sure, sure, definitely.

No, that model doesn't quite hold. Let's be bold and honest with each other, dear website. We haven't had a truly intimate relationship in about 4 years. You were the good friend I used to go drinking with every night, but once you helped me get a full time job in your office, I got sick of seeing your face. Now after quittin' time I'm ready to step away from the internet. I've got a wife and a house, website. Our friendship can only go so deep.

Here's my simplest confession: I believe my priorities are the right ones. But every time I put a creative idea on the back burner (an occurrence now more and more frequent) a small pair of eyes inside me cries, just a little.

Interface in your face.

Regardless of whether or not it takes the cell phone world by storm, we'll look back at the iPhone hype as the moment when interface design hit the mainstream. The iPhone TV ads show a hand using the device, and nothing more. The iPhone retail kiosk displays only a large screen version of the OS.

Apple isn't showing us stylized people dancing with iPod headphones. They're not showing us the physical product flying through swirly animations with fast motion and "Hello Moto" catch phrases. There's no MSN butterfly to distract us or XP landscapes to convince us that What You Do Will Be More Fun.

After 30 years of personal computers, 25 years of video game consoles, 20 years of digital watches and microwaves, 15 years of ATM proliferation, 12 years of the internet, 8 years of cell phones in our pockets, and 5 years of touch screens in airports and subway stations, good interface design has become something that everyone can appreciate. It's become a primary selling point for the general public, and soon it'll be a requirement.

You can't put that shit back into the bag.

New Domestics

Well, I never posted my SXSW panel notes in real time as I'd planned to do, but I do have the notes around here somewhere. Oh well. You can't fit everything in. I was talking to my old boss/buddy Will from the golf course a couple weeks ago, asking him about trying to run a business full time now that he has a toddler. "There are always 3 work things that never get done, every day," he explained. "At some point you just have to embrace it as the way things will always be."

[Note: just pushed some changes to Southers Marsh.com for Will. Slideshow script, Flash video, couple of design tweaks. Hotness.]

So rather than fighting to fit more in (work, projects, ideas, media, people), I'm trying to let go a bit. Realistic priorities. Remember when I was a Let Go sort of person? I do. Funny enough, spring hit (here in the SB, at least) and brought changes. This calls for another ordered list:

]]>

Returned from 3 weeks of work/travel, including SXSW, a week working from Mass and a 4 night bachelor party in Amsterdam. Basically saw 80% of my friends within a 3 week period. Learned that mixing vacation travel and working isn't always easy.

Jenny and I got a new puppy. His full name is Gordon Shumway, but we call him Alfie. I've never had a dog before. He's pretty awesome. I don't mind the workday distraction so much.

With a few small exceptions, I'm no longer taking on new freelance work. I'm trying to flush out old projects to try living a normal domestic life. Day job 7-3, regular people stuff + hobby projects after that. Actual weekends. We'll see how it goes. The IRS took a bite this month, so who knows.

Jenny and I are switching to a mostly raw food diet. Fresh fruits and vegetables all over the place. I can feel my body getting healthier. It's not always easy, but after a while your body starts to crave the healthy stuff. And with Alfie, at least I'm walking more.

New Mighty McPilgrim show planned in North Hollywood on May 10th. Sketches new and old. So we're gearing up for that. - more info to follow.

Life is good here. Surprisingly rewarding, having my own home, yard, wife, job, dog. Time for a gin and tonic.

The Weight is a Gift

Lately every song seems to hang on my heart with twice the usual amount of nostalgia. Favorite tunes hearken back to favorite places with too much emotional clarity, too much distraction for the regular workday. Pop songs I never liked in the first place now make me long for proms I never attended in high schools that don't exist, during eras that don't even map to my own adolescence. Albums I first gestated in the late 90s now seem impossible to divorce from their original timescapes; Odelay, Bossanova, Hello Nasty, and TNT in particular have more interest in memory than music.

Maybe all of this modern grownuppedness (marriage, proper job, multi-responsibilities, travel, settling down far from home) has up-kodakchromed those lazy days of college summers: chicken on the grill, croquet on the lawn, smoke on the patio, the guys in the pond. No plans, just one day at a time. Those were always the glory days, but now the music cheats, presenting them as some kind of high water mark, no longer accessible.

So the counter-attack is clear: do whatever it takes to fill every new night, weekend and vacation with the joy of those days, and then some. The music itself doesn't know any better.

Goals for this year's SXSW

As usual the first day of the conference was a whirlwind of hugs and drinks. Already, Twitter is turning out to be a huge novel organizing / humor force. Funny how tech innovations so quickly grab hold and affect the behavior of geeks. And last night I bumped into a few friends I didn't expect to see, so things are off to a good start.

Personal goals and guidelines for this year:

Take notes during panels, only as necessary. At the end of each day, distill each panel down to a 3 sentence lesson that I can post here and refer to later for inspiration and action.
When notes aren't necessary, close the damn laptop and look the speakers in the eye.
Note the podcast URLs of great panels I couldn't get to.
When it comes to lunch and bar outings, stop trying to please everybody all of the time. If the administration overhead gets rough, bail.
Find a small goup of people during nighttime activities, just like the old days. As Break Bread With Brad taught us on Friday night, there's not much rewarding about giant parties. And they're only going to get bigger.
Get to know 3 new people every day. Have an in-depth conversation with one of them
Introduce myself to anyone who's standing around alone. Everyone likes to talk, but none of these indoor geeks know where to start.
Drink less, get up early, take advantage of the free Residence Inn buffet breakfast daily.

We'll see how many of these are possible. I can't believe how many people are hear this yeaar. It's like a festival rock show.

A Much Needed Break

Here I sit in the Phoenix airport, enroute to Austin for my 7th SXSW. Then next week it's onward to Boston... then to Amsterdam for Fatty's bachelor party (dear lord), then back to Boston for a few days... then home to Santa Barbara at the end of the month. Another trip in a year of much travel.

Jenny and I have had a fantastic & busy couple of months in SB, with her new job as a producer/editor for the local ABC station; lots of cool design projects for me, a visit to NYC to meet the whole PlusThree team, not to mention the birth of my new niece Danika last weekend. Plenty of babysitting in store.

I managed to sleep a bit last night, and I'm excited to see my geek friends, to play with legos and to relax, learn and socialize. Keep tabs on me via Flickr and Twitter (see the updated "Stuff I'm doing block on the front page of this site), and I'll try to post here regularly during the trip. Time to start writing more, eh?

30 Things the iPhone Could Do That You Haven't Thought of Yet

So, like the rest of the geek and semi-geek worlds, I'm completely enamored with Apple's new iPhone. As a would-be interface designer, I'm blown away. If you haven't seen Apple's demos or photos of the unit, I recommend you take a look. With video iPod functionality, OSX as its platform, multi-touch sensing screen, an accelerometer, proximity sensor, full web browser, 2 megapixel camera, rich-text email, widgets, Google Maps, WiFi, Bluetooth, new voicemail tech and a remarkable UI all included, the sky's the limit.

Here's a list of 30 theoretical iPhone uses you may not have considered. Have other suggestions? Add a comment.

]]>

Connect to your home network.

Shoot, upload, tag, and organize Flickr photos, all from the unit itself.

Play Nintendo DS homebrew games.

Run a ported version of any existing OSX dashboard widget.

Download songs directly from the iTunes Store.

Shoot, edit (iMovie Pocket, anyone?) and upload video directly to YouTube.

Multi-touch puzzle games. Just imagine.

Update its software without user assistance

Share songs with a friend, Zune squirt-style (shudder)

Run a sexy partly line (circa-1987) to earn you literally dozens of dollars, thanks to its "merge calls" function.

Act as a portable 8gb Bluetooth / USB hard drive

Help you plot your day about town with a version of Gmap Pedometer.

Ping home to see what's waiting to be watched on your Apple TV.

Act as a steering wheel for a racing game shown on its own screen.

Make Skype calls that auto-transfer to WiFi when a network is detected.

Let you SSH or FTP into a server from anywhere.

Bring you to tears when it falls and skids face-down across a parking lot.

Broadcast what you're listening to, in real time.

Run advanced image editing software (rotate, zoom, and crop with your fingers!)

Connect to a Bluetooth keyboard for easier input

Allow instant messaging with any existing chat client on any platform.

Stream internet radio direct to your headphones.

Record meetings, memos, or rock concerts.

Let you copy a passage from an eBook and post it to your blog.

Wake you in the morning by reading your email or news headlines out loud.

Automatically enter standby mode when set on a flat, level surface.

Let you monitor a babysitter spy cam during your dinner date.

Run Microsoft Office.

Accept voice commands: "iPhone, play Gnarls Barkley".

Pause the home video you're watching only when your mom calls.

Sure, it's pricey at $499, but life's better just knowing that I'll eventually own one. Plus, my AAPL stock is up 10 percent, for now ;)

Update: Of course, much of this list will be impossible if the iPhone doesn't run an open OS that people can develop for.

Hey Arnold!

I try to work 7 - 3 here at my home office, keeping the same basic company schedule as my east coast peeps. It's great. I've always said that 9 to Noon are the best hours of the day, and now I feel like my whole work day builds up to free time (instead of whittling away at my evening). Important, sunshine after work.

I hit up the Santa Barbara DMV yesterday to renew my Cali license. It felt like a luxury cruise compared to some experiences I've had (talk to me after you've spent 3 hours at the Van Nuys DMV) but I still had to wait for the usual red tape - numbers to be called, people exasperated at rules that can't be bent, English mixing with Spanish.

I stood in the "Start Here" line, form in hand, and looked over at the wall. There, staring sternly down at all of the dozens of people waiting to get out of there, was this portrait of Arnold Shwarzenegger. I actually laughed out loud. In a split second my mind ran threw every possible reason why a portrait of Arnold might be hung in a DMV (a symbol of strength and efficiency; whining will not be tolerated; an inside joke; one of the counter ladies is a huge fan; someone found it in the parking lot; pure irony). Then I remembered the real reason: he watches over this bureaucracy.

Picture it. Two dozen people sitting in blue chairs, standing at brown counters. After everything he's accomplished, Arnold hangs on the wall of the DMV.

Timeline of Major Life Events

As I drove up the coast on the 101 late last Thursday night (In 'N Out milkshake in hand) it occurred to me that there's a lot of great stuff going on in my life these days. I've also been thinking a lot about something Alison wrote - how in the old days she would ask herself, "When I sit down tonight to write about today, what will I say?"

I was the same way, 5 years ago. Until I'm better embracing the part of me that remembers creation is mandatory, here's a list of what I've been up to. Sometimes you've gotta dump the brain cache of potential posts to make room for fresh material, for life.

8/9: Bachelor party in Vegas. Cracks me up to think about it.
8/12: Married Jenny on a truly beautiful day. All wedding receptions should have a bouncy castle. Check out 94 formal photos from the wedding. Or thumb through 600 candids from our wedding day. Or hold your breath until we pick a manageable set of 50.
8/17 - 9/1: Honeymoon in Thailand. Fun and relaxing.
October: One of the best New England autumns I can remember. I made it a point to go jogging for a few minutes each day. The sun, the air.
10/6: Started a new full time job with PlusThree after considering multiple offers. They've got me doing interface design (Photoshop, XHTML, CSS), big rollouts for political campaigns & non-profits. It's great working from home with structure and project management. (designed book site for Edwards, working on this). Thanks to Rusty for helping me get the job. (again).
10/7: Spent the day in Salem to celebrate my friend Hollis's 30th birthday. What a nice, witchy town.
10/21: My PC died its final death when I sat down (under the influence) to show my friend Jake the video for Peanut Butter Jelly Time. Shut down and never turned on again. Good riddance.
10/22: Bought a 24" iMac from the Apple Store in Braintree, MA, along with a copy of Parallels to browser-check XP in realtime. With me second monitor, it's the ideal system. Wish I could have done this years ago.
10/26: Rigged the "Stuff I have Created" section atop the Sixfoot6 front page to load random items on refresh. More coming.
11/7: Flew to NYC with Rusty to visit the company office and see friends. Fantastic to be there for the elections - all our candidates won. Such optimism, the mood at the Drinking Liberally party on election night. Sipping coffee while staring out of a 27th floor window, in NYC on business, it occurred to me that I'm an adult. It's nice, and I'm not bad at it.
11/10 - 11/17: After 13 wonderful months, left Massachusetts behind (again) and drove west. A crying mother is never an easy thing to bear. I miss my parents, my backyard, downtown Plymouth, Molly, Josh and Dave. A good drive, my 7th cross country leg - Boulder and salt flats in Utah were highlights.
11/23: Thanksgiving in Santa Barbara. I played with my nephew and our friends' daughter, Etta. Back in Mass, my parents had no children around for the holiday : (
11/30: The first of three McPilgrim shows at the Lounge Theatre in Hollywood. Catch us at 9pm on Dec 7th or 14th, performing with another comedy troupe. Felt good to be on stage again.
12/1: My Nintendo Wii arrived, a housewarming gift to ourselves. Best thing ever. Tennis! Zelda! I agree with Jason's Wii thoughts. And once i figured out how to catch fish, Zelda has been a blast.
12/2: Jenny and I moved into our new house here in Santa Barbara, a beautiful 3 bedroom home near the Santa Barbara Mission. It's good to have warm weather and our own space again. Now we just need to unpack.

Now I need to massage my somewhat creative brain. And buy some groceries.

I Voted

I filled out an early absentee ballot in Plymouth town hall on Friday, since I'll be in NYC on Election Day. I chatted with my friend's dad, our town clerk. What a good thing, that community hometown feeling. Buying coffee, running to the bank.

At the bottom of the ballot, an impressive unexpected question #4: Shall the state representative from this district be instructed to vote in favor of legislation that would make possession of less than one ounce of marijuana a civil violation, subject to a maximum fine of $100 and not be subject to any criminal penalties?