Good Morning Internet

As I left Bal­ti­more and merged onto south­bound 95, a post-snow sun­set lit the clouds on fire. Even the plume from the Bal­ti­more smoke­stack par­tic­i­pated and turned pur­ple against the win­ter twi­light. I approached the air­port loop and watched planes ascend in sil­hou­ette. The light didn’t dim right away after the sun set, but instead shifted from vibrant gold and pink to deep orange. Traf­fic slowed as awestruck dri­vers gazed into the sky. It looked invit­ing, and I got excited about being in the air, a big deal for a guy whose whole body goes rigid dur­ing take-offs and landings.

We were for­tu­nate to miss the brunt of the storm over Christ­mas. Just east of us, other parts of Mary­land got nearly ten inches of snow. Had the winds blown dif­fer­ently or the storm tracked just a few miles west of where it went, we would have got­ten ham­mered, and my flight to Atlanta would have been can­celed. But I got lucky, and my flight only ran 33 min­utes late.

By the time I got my car sit­u­ated in long-term park­ing and shielded myself in a bus shel­ter from the razor-sharp gusts of icy wind, the hori­zon was blood red. Air­planes tax­ied, and the warm-colored light shim­mered on their alu­minum bod­ies. I was joined by a fam­ily head­ing home from the hol­i­days. The kids com­pared notes about new video games they got, and the exhausted-looking par­ents braced them­selves against the cold that still found its way into the shel­ter. When the bus arrived to take us to the ter­mi­nal, the show in the sky was over, hav­ing faded through pur­ples to navy blue to black.

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• Beau­ti­ful post-snow sun­rise over Baltimore

Ear­lier this year, I sub­mit­ted a pro­posal for a SXSW Inter­ac­tive panel called “Why New Authors Should Think Like Indie Bands”. The ini­tial feed­back from the SXSW staff was very pos­i­tive, and peo­ple voted for it in the panel picker.

Over the past cou­ple months, my panel didn’t made the cut for the first two rounds of ses­sion announce­ments, so I had begun to lose heart. Maybe my lit­tle panel idea wasn’t quite up the stan­dards of SXSW programming.

And then, last week, I got this email:

We are very excited to inform you that your pro­posal has been accepted to be part of the 2011 SXSW Inter­ac­tive Fes­ti­val in March in Austin. We received more than than 2400 out­stand­ing pro­pos­als via the SXSW Pan­elPicker — so being selected for the event means that your pro­posal was one of the best of the best of the best. Con­grats!! And, thanks for putting together such an out­stand­ing proposal!

You should have seen my face. “The best of the best of the best”! My panel idea is just like Will Smith in Men in Black!

I couldn’t be more excited, and I can’t wait to into the panel plan­ning process with the SXSW staff. In the mean­time, I’m going to do a freak-out/happy dance in my apartment.

Related Posts:

• The year of adven­ture continues
• My Ses­sion at SXSW Inter­ac­tive 2011

(Photo credit: NASA/Paul E. Alers)

I started writ­ing about the NASA Tweetup nearly a dozen times now. I’m hav­ing trou­ble encap­su­lat­ing exactly how pro­found of an expe­ri­ence it was, maybe because I’m still wrap­ping my head around it.

In the weeks lead­ing up, a group of very orga­nized peo­ple coor­di­nated the rental of a vaca­tion house, which we dubbed the Big House. The enthu­si­asm peo­ple had in the Google group and on Twit­ter was infec­tious. I didn’t know any­one, but I was excited to dive in and meet them. Within a mat­ter of hours of arriv­ing, we were fam­ily. These are new friends I will keep for the rest of my life.

At Kennedy Space Cen­ter, we saw things that aren’t nor­mally avail­able to the pub­lic. The launch was delayed mul­ti­ple times, and then even­tu­ally scrubbed, but Stephanie Schier­holz, the tweetup orga­nizer and our per­sonal superhero/rockstar, coor­di­nated extra activ­i­ties and more unfor­get­table moments than we could have dreamed. What was orig­i­nally a three-day trip was extended into a week-long expe­ri­ence that, for lack of a bet­ter term, changed my life. We saw the inside of the Vehi­cle Assem­bly Build­ing. We vis­ited the launch­pad at sun­set. We explored the Kennedy Space Cen­ter vis­i­tor cen­ter at leisure and rode the Shut­tle Launch Expe­ri­ence mul­ti­ple times. At the Big House, we stayed up late, forged new rela­tion­ships, played music, laughed harder than any of us had laughed in a long time, ate, drank, and basked in the pres­ence of some of the most cre­ative, smart, fas­ci­nat­ing peo­ple I had ever met.

I am work­ing on a much longer post about the whole week, but in the mean­time, my friends Raam and Tal­lu­lah both wrote incred­i­bly stir­ring pieces that express the spirit of the expe­ri­ence much bet­ter than I can right now. It’s absolutely required read­ing. We also had no short­age of pho­tog­ra­phers on hand, so be sure to check out my Flickr set as well as the tweetup group.

As of right now, NASA plans to launch Dis­cov­ery no ear­lier than 2:52 a.m. on Decem­ber 3. Stephanie informed us that our badges will allow us into the press area dur­ing this new launch win­dow. (See? She’s still our super­hero.) So, pre­sented with this aston­ish­ing oppor­tu­nity, I will head back down to the Space Coast next week. There’s no way I could miss this.

Related Posts:

• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup
• The year of adven­ture continues
• Video of this morning’s win­ter sol­stice lunar eclipse
• Per­seid Fail

This after­noon, NASA issued a press release about the tweetup. This just got real! Here’s an excerpt:

Par­tic­i­pants at the NASA Tweetup on Oct. 31 and Nov. 1 will tour Kennedy and meet with shut­tle tech­ni­cians, man­agers, engi­neers and astro­nauts. They also will get a demon­stra­tion of Robo­naut, a human-like robot sim­i­lar to the one that will be deliv­ered to the space sta­tion with this mis­sion. The Tweetup cul­mi­nates with the view­ing of the shut­tle launch.

Robo­naut is seri­ously cool. It looks like the miss­ing mem­ber of Daft Punk.

As you can imag­ine, my Twit­ter and Flickr streams will be filled with all the NASA and shut­tle launch good­ness your poor eyes can stand. With a lit­tle luck, I’ll pick up that shiny new cam­era I’ve had my eye on (or maybe a rich bene­fac­tor will anony­mously gift it to me!) and cap­ture some slick video of the event.

Of course, no mat­ter how I cap­ture or doc­u­ment this expe­ri­ence, all the best stuff will end up right here on this blog, too.

13 days! I’m so excited!

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• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• The year of adven­ture continues

2009 was kind of a rough year for every­one. The econ­omy did a swan-dive into an empty pool and a lot of us lost our jobs.

This year, I declared, would be dif­fer­ent. While watch­ing Olympic hockey and a space shut­tle land­ing (I’m a mul­ti­tasker), I could tell this year would be filled with adven­tures. And wow, yes, it sure has. It’s been bet­ter than I had imag­ined, and I feel so lucky to have had so many expe­ri­ences this year. A quick ver­bal montage:

• Sur­vived the snowpocalypse
• Played a reunion show with Three Track Mind
• Turned 30
• Went to South by Southwest
• Saw the final (sched­uled) launch of Space Shut­tle Atlantis
• Went to MaxFunCon
• Quit an unful­fill­ing job
• Watched the World Cup
• Watched fire­works from my roof
• Met Tom Green
• Found an amaz­ing new job
• Started my sec­ond year of grad school

And now it’s Octo­ber. It’s autumn, my favorite sea­son, and I still have a few adven­tures before the year wraps up. Next week­end, I’m bik­ing 100 kilo­me­ters in the Seag­ull Cen­tury. In Novem­ber, I’m one of the lucky ones going to the NASA Tweetup for Space Shut­tle Discovery’s last trip to space. (That’s right: Two shut­tle launches in one year!) A week later I get to see my all-time favorite band, The Posies, play in DC. And then it’s the holidays.

I feel so incred­i­bly lucky. As I write this, I’m sit­ting at the same table where I was back in Feb­ru­ary, day­dream­ing about all these adven­tures. I couldn’t be hap­pier with how every­thing turned out. 2010 has been filled with expe­ri­ences, friends, and fam­ily I wouldn’t trade for anything.

What was your favorite adven­ture of 2010? How do you plan on top­ping it in 2011?

Related Posts:

• STS-133 NASA Tweetup
• I’m lead­ing a panel at SXSW Interactive!
• The Posies at the 9:30 Club
• Thanks, Mom and Dad, for intro­duc­ing me to space
• 13 days until the NASA tweetup

It’s true: We’re finally liv­ing in the future. With the press of a but­ton, you can instantly trans­port your­self to a ran­dom loca­tion any­where in North Amer­ica, Europe, Africa, Asia, or Australia!

Okay, sure, maybe it’s only vir­tual tele­por­ta­tion pow­ered by Google’s Street View, but it’s one of those very sim­ple mashups that, once you real­ize you’ve sunk two hours into play­ing with it, it becomes your new favorite thing.

Ladies and gen­tle­men, enjoy Globe Genie, your new web toy for the week.

National Novel Writ­ing Month is right around the cor­ner. I’m not sure what I’m going to write this year, but if I ever feel stuck, I could hit the “Shuf­fle” but­ton on Globe Genie and send my char­ac­ters off on an adventure.

Maybe they will need to hide out in a sub­urb in Min­eral Wells, Texas. Maybe they will have to drive along the coast­line north of Valen­cia, Spain hop­ing to find and res­cue a friend who left a dis­tressed voice­mail. Maybe the dreary weather in Wales will increase ten­sion among the group. Maybe they’ll encounter some­one run­ning from the woods in a des­o­late part of South­ern Fin­land, some­one beg­ging for their help. Maybe they end up at Mother Lode Appli­ance in Jack­son, Cal­i­for­nia, where they find a spec­tac­u­lar deal on a blender.

I need to make sure my whole novel doesn’t take place within sight of the road.

I love the idea of using this site as a writ­ing tool. I might even design a full-fledged writ­ing exer­cise around it. Keep an eye out for some Street View-inspired flash fiction.

(Screen cap and link via Boing­Bo­ing.)

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I took this photo dur­ing the STS-132 launch yes­ter­day. I just lis­tened to audio I recorded at the launch, and it’s fan­tas­tic. Look for that in an upcom­ing podcast.

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See you at the launch tomorrow.

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We made it to our motel in Titusville, Florida, and we’re stay­ing in the “Atlantis” sec­tion. On the door, our room num­ber is flanked by two Space Shut­tles. In fact, there are lit­tle details like this all over the motel, and it’s turned me into a super-excited ver­sion of my ten-year-old self.

A few min­utes ago, I re-watched the episode of When We Left Earth about the Space Shut­tle pro­gram, and it’s finally hit­ting me: I’m going to see my first launch tomorrow!

Par­don me while I go bounce off the walls for a while.

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My dad, sis­ter, and I are about halfway to Florida for Friday’s Space Shut­tle launch. Tonight, we’re stay­ing at a motel out­side of Savan­nah, Geor­gia. Check out the sweet com­forter and match­ing painted brick.

That blan­ket is so get­ting stripped off the bed in about five min­utes and stored safely in a closet.

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