What a busy month. I was planning to do individual posts on the individual trips, but then I'd never write anything. Here's some quick notes...

Sundance was pretty good this year. I had a new job in Press Materials, which was much more involved than the Press Mailboxes job I had last year. I had much better iteration with filmmakers and journalists, but it kept me busiser and so I didn't get to do as much as I did last year. I went to the premiere of 'Butterfly Effect', which was actually pretty good. I couldn't believe how much people were shit-talking it, though. No wonder Ashton a little bit in the introduction before the movie. I did my best to keep an open mind about it and ended up liking it. I also went to the premiere of 'Saved!', which was highly amusing. It's coming out in March, so see it if you get a chance. 'Azumi' was pretty great too -- it's already on DVD in Japan, I hear. My favorite movie was Tarnation. I highly recommend seeing it if you can get ahold of it. It got picked up for Cannes after the first screening. I was told if I had saw 'Napoleon Dynamite' that it would've been my favorite, but I wasn't able to get into it, so I don't know. 'What Sebastien Dreamt' was beautifully shot in the Guatemalan rain forest. It's a real visual treat.

So after 2 weeks in Utah, I came home on a Sunday night and then flew to Seattle on Tuesday afternoon to attend 'Blackhat Windows'. Ping and I had fun as usual, and I gave a talk on development process. There was about 10 people in the audience, which put a damper on my confidence, but I think it went alright. 2 people in the audience appeared to agree with me, and 1 guy thought my approaches weren't pracitcal on a small team. I told him that we're doing it just fine with 1.5 developers, and it gives a real business advantage. I don't think he believed me, though.

I got back from Seattle on Saturday, and we drove down to LA on Sunday. I had tickets to see David Bowie that I had boughht a few months ago, and it coincided closely with Geoff's dad's birthday and his brother+fiancee visiting. So we're here all week. We leave on Saturday. I'm looking forward to being in one place for awhile, hopefully if I do travel outside of the bay area it won't be for extended periods of time.

One advantage to being outside my usual context is that ideas I had a year ago bubble up to the surface again fully fleshed out. It was similar to the Sundance experience last year. I'm writing some formal design documents for these iedas, maybe some customer will be interesting in helping fund the implementation.