A Site About Writing Margaritas

Trying to build my writer's website and wanting to scream and pull my hair out.

Is it too early for a drink?

Does "Augmented Reality" Have a Place in the Future of Magazines?

Being the magazine editor that I am, I've been curious as to the state of the print publishing industry as of late, wondering how and if it's going to continue evolving, and what role the internet will play.

Well, here's certainly something new. Esquire is calling it "augmented reality."



It will be interesting to see how many publications will eventually jump on board with this ... And which ones declare is blasphemous ... and then promptly shrivel up and die.

Me? I say that any technology that puts me in the same room with Robert Downey Jr can only be good.

Moving Windmills

Someone needs to make this into a movie, because it's incredible:

"In late 2006, a Malawian newspaper first wrote about a remarkable young man from a remote rural village north of the capital city. This is his story."

I Was Practically Asking For It

I know that in my last post I was complaining about how work is taking over my life, buuuuuut ... This weekend is a three-day weekend for me, because yesterday our CEO gave us the day off. Praise baby Jesus.

So I will be less whiny in this post, promise.

I've been a little irresponsible lately as far as my computer and all my precious files are concerned. Because even though I've been saving photos, music files and my freelance articles to my hard drive right and left, and even though my laptop is now getting up there in years, I have still, not in the past four years, backed up any of my precious, precious files. I have been neglectful. Which is shameful, because someone like me, someone who works all day every day with computers and has witnessed firsthand more times than I care to remember the tragedy that strikes when computers crap out should know better.

And so, several days ago I ordered a monster of an external hard drive from Buy.com, and since its arrival, I have been copying, digitizing, cataloging and renaming files like a crazy person.

Time to get my save on this weekend.

Let's Be Friends

I think it says something about this day and age when you accidentally request to be someone's friend on Facebook, even though you realize later that you don't actually know the person (and you're sure), and yet a few hours afterward you receive an e-mail notification saying that he or she has confirmed you as a friend anyway.

I Said, "Sit, Fido."

The "BigDog," made by BostonDynamics.

The Evolution Ad

I first saw this video a few years ago. It's an ad called "Evolution" that was a part of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. It shows time-lapse footage of a woman going from "ordinary" to "billboard-ready" in under a minute, including all the makeup, styling and digital retouching involved.

Although I've seen the ad many times, it continues to fascinate me ... especially now that I have had the opportunity to see what goes on behind the scenes at a "fashion" publication and have witnessed firsthand what kind of manipulation images can undergo.

To my knowledge, the magazine I work for has never altered an image of the face or body of a person to this extent, but I've seen enough of the designers' work to know that it's unbelievable what a really excellent graphic designer or Photoshop wizard can do with the right software.

(Now that I think of it, I do recall one particular manipulation, but I think you'll agree that it was all for the best. One of the designers had to Photoshop another finger onto the hand of a girl at a party who had apparently been giving the camera a rude gesture at the time the photo was snapped. Why, I don't know. And why we had to run that photo, I don't know. But now she will be forever giving a peace sign instead.)

The short piece was filmed in one day and was then in post-production for a few weeks while a team of professionals condensed the two-hour makeup application process into 23 seconds, stabilized the woman's head in the center of the screen, added background noise and music and of course, digitally manipulated the image.

The advertisement has won a number of prestigious awards and is estimated to have generated over $150 million worth of exposure for the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty and the Dove Self-Esteem Fund.

You can read more about the hows and whys behind the making of the video here.

Here is the ad:

My Future Children Will One Day Ask Me if I Remember Computers That Sat on Top of Desks

I find this both incredibly cool and incredibly freaky.

I bet you never envisioned your coffee table giving you the blue/black screen of death.