Streaming .TV shows by Ustream

I attended the National Association of Science Writers conference in Austin this week. It was inspirational, but activated some latent fears and frustrations.

The first two talks were about the instability of the journalism market and the potential for multimedia to enrich communications. These were followed by several talks about social media networks and their use in promoting journalism.

The first worries me, because it seems like writers are becoming expendable, or at least much less tied to traditional news organizations. 'Get used to it,' was the bottom line, following by, 'what a time of great opportunities!' I see that, but it's still unsettling.

The second talk troubled me because I miss making movies, devoting time to the visual. I haven't been able to spend much time working on documentaries, for work or outside of work, and I miss the process.

The third talk caused me to realize that I'm not only anti-social in the real world, I'm not anti-social in various virtual worlds as well. Speakers kept imploring us to join and be an active part of virtual communities, and all I can say to that is...I'll try.

By and large, the conference stimulated a lot of ideas and ambitions. Top people, in science and science writing, talking about their passions, their predictions, their processes. It made me want to grow into the next phase of my professional career.

What should this blog be about

It's a toss-up, really. It could be a blabby, life/relationship, gossipy kind of blog. (Probably not.) Or it could be a blog about art and culture and stuff. I'm really into that. (Likely.) Or, it could be about the technology of the future, about the kingdom of the nanobots and 12th dimensional space, based on this strange hightech world that I am currently immersed in. (Also, quite likely.) Or some conflation of the three.

But first, an experiment (image placement). This is me at my best. Expect future pictures to be uglier.

I have such a hard time with titles

Picking names is easy for some people. These people have snappy, appropriate names for their blogs. They have tattoos with apt words written permanently on their bodies. They wouldn't have a hard time coming up with the name of an art exhibition, say, or naming a pet or a company. And yet, for me, these things present problems.

Borges has a great statement about the false simplicity of language: "I have done my best -- I don't know with what success -- to write straightforward stories. I do not dare state that they are simple; there isn't anywhere on earth a single page or single word that is, since each thing implies the universe, who most obvious trait is complexity."

Hence I take: "We Buy Broken Gold" (the existential slogan for endless pawn shops in Texas) as my blog title, hoping to project optimism in the face of disappointment.