Category: Special Event

The front page of the National Post yesterday had more on the Rebecca Eckler Pregnant™ saga. Apparently, she’s having a baby girl and is thinking of naming her Apple. Apple? Who’s she getting these ideas from? Michael Jackson? How about a middle name of iBabe?

I’m sitting here at home, insanely envious of all the lucky and smart people who are at this very moment congregating at the Emerging Technology Conference. Drat!

UPDATE: Significant things have happened already:

• Six Apart, the makers of Movable Type, have announced a new turnkey weblog service called TypePad, the acquisition of some venture financing, and the hiring of my Close Personal Friend™ Anil Dash as Vice President of Business Development.
• Mitch Kapor‘s Open Software Applications Foundation released the 0.1 Alpha of Chandler, their open source PIM.

Cory Doctorow over at BoingBoing is doing a great job of blogging from the conference. I’ll be reading his notes and so should you.

From punk rock to Broadway show tunes, we cover it all here at Consolation Champs…

Brooke took me to see the Canadian Stage production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I’m definitely not a musicals guy, and this is about as Broadway as a musical can be. The story tells the tale of a murderous barber, the pie-making woman who loves him, and the novel way in which they dispose of the bodies. While I enjoyed a few of the numbers, namely the ones played for laughs (The Contest, A Little Priest), overall I found the music grating. As with most musicals, I found the “love story” terribly contrived, and the second act was insanely rushed. I missed a huge portion of the lyrics since many of the songs had several people singing over each other. The singers’ attempts to affect Cockney accents surely didn’t help my comprehension much, either. I’m not sure if I’ll ever “get” musicals. Do you?

Since I’m still riding my SxSW high, I’m eager to attend the second annual O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference, which takes place from April 22-26 in Santa Clara. I heard great things about last year’s conference and I’m sure this is the conference to go to if you want to hear what the tech world’s thinkers are thinking about. I’m especially interested in hearing what Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs) and Clay Shirky have to say.

I’m wondering if anyone is considering going. The only way I’d be able to afford this is to go on a press pass, write some articles to pay for my flight, and sleep on somebody’s floor. Ideas?

Some of Min Jung‘s special bathtub gin (ok, it’s actually vodka)