August 30, 2009 in Personal, Web/Tech Well… how do you like it? I’ve got a few tweaks/additions to make yet, but all in all I’m thrilled with how it turned out. A huge, massive monument-size (think Burj Dubai) thank you to my friends at Squarespace for helping me make my new design a reality. Krystyn, Kris, Dane, Erica, and the entire Squarespace crew have been the BEST PEOPLE EVER, and I can’t thank them enough for helping me build the next generation of sarahlane.com. Does anyone know how to say “thank you x infinity” in CSS so that it ends up crashing Firefox? If so, please send via my contact link and I’ll start spamming them.
A word on the new design: my old site was perfectly functional and I liked it a lot, but it was pretty static if I didn’t actually update the blog itself regularly, which I didn’t. These days I spend so much time on a multitude of social networks that I wanted sarahlane.com to reflect my overall activity, rather than appearing neglected all the time. Please note that I don’t intend to stop posting longer form content here, quite the opposite. I love to write and a spiffy new site is just what I need to kick myself back into TMI overdrive. I’m simply reinventing myself as a realist, which I think is very mature of me. Matronly, even. Geriatric.
So… how do you like it?
BTW, Martin Sargent says I look like a muppet on the landing page, which is one of the greatest compliments a friend has ever given me.
yellowBird: I think we're in the future now
August 26, 2009 in Web/Tech
Easily the coolest camera I’ve seen… ever? Yeah, I think ever. Created by a company called yellowBird (here’s their back story), the six-lens camera acts a lot like Google Streetview in the way the user can drag the image up/down/left/right, but in the form of motion video, rather than a still camera. The result? A true 360 degree, spherical video that can be viewed from any angle during playback! The yellowBird technology section explains that their cameras capture 1200 megabit per second video, which is then saved in an uncompressed format and viewable via a flash-like player most people are comfortable using. An adjacent surround sound mic records 96 khz audio.
WANTxINFINITY! Oh, and bonus points for the MAY-JAH beats in the video. What are the Euro kids calling it these days? House? Progressive house? Breakbeat house? Emo piano house? Ah, well.
Go on, inspire me.
Lately I've been in search of design inspiration for a future web show of sorts that I'm putting together at Current Tech, which is very exciting for a few reasons:
- I'll get to do more of what I love most... talk about the stuff I'm passionate about!
- Current gets to experiment with new avenues of video, like LIVE and STREAMING!
- We all have more reasons to participate in the Current Tech community and hang out together!
Sounds cool, right? Since I have no real design skills to speak of, I asked my Twitter community for some advice. And because they're so awesome, I got a ton of crazysexycool ideas! Like this one (via @tobiaslind):
Admittedly, I don't really understand this website, but I love it! Japan is fun.
Tengo mucho identities. Pass it on.
May 29, 2009 in This Week in Fun, current, net@night I've been meaning to update you (yes, you!) on all of my current projects, as there are many and I haven't been the best at keeping everyone in the loop here. The reason I know this is because on an almost daily basis I get emails and tweets from people of seemingly normal intelligence who don't know where I'm working, what I'm up to, or even how to find me online. I'm not going to go into why I think that's a little weird, since I'm the first result in a Google search for "Sarah Lane", "Sara Lane", "Sar Lane", "Shara Lane", and my personal favorite "Sarah Lame", to name a few. Instead, I'll just list my projects here (in order of inception because I love them all equally).
This Week in FUN
In December 2008, my friend Martin Sargent and I, both unemployed, had a lot of free time on our hands and decided to create a weekly show called "This Week in FUN" (AKA "TWiF") on the TWiT netcast network. It started out as a little experiment when our friend Leo went to France for a couple weeks and left us his facility and resources. Leo had recently given me an intensive Tricaster/mixer/etc. lesson, so I felt comfortable running the technical side of things. Since the TWiT network is so heavy on technical content, we thought a talk radio-style show about silly internet stories might be a fun diversion for TWiT's legions of fans. It was also nothing more than a fancy live stream... miss the stream, miss the show. No downloadable/subscribable anything.
Turns out, people really seemed to enjoy TWiF and we quickly realized that the live stream was great, but too limiting for many folks' schedules. Around episode 12, Leo and his team made TWiF an official TWiT netcast, meaning that along with our weekly live stream, we also started offering on-demand audio versions of the show.
We just taped our 20th episode of TWiF, and I'm really proud of the progress we've made. What started out as a bit of a joke has turned into a really fun project with a ton of really cool, dedicated fans who interact with us all over the internet. Coming soon: video downloads.
- Watch live: Fridays at 3 pm Pacific time at http://twitlive.tv
- Chat live: http://irc.twit.tv
- Listen/subscribe: http://twit.tv/twif
- iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=311693613
net@night
In late January, net@night co-host Amber McArthur asked me to fill in for her on the show during her impending maternity leave, which I was thrilled to do since I 1) wasn't working full-time yet and 2) already loved the show, which centered around everything internet-related (my THANG). I co-hosted four episodes with Leo and had a ton of fun. Once Amber was ready to come back, she and Leo asked me to remain on net@night as a regular contributor and I was elated to be a permanent part of the team. Now, you can watch me live every week talking about my favorite new internet toy, or listen at your leisure!
- Watch live: Tuesdays at 4 pm Pacific time at http://twitlive.tv
- Chat live: http://irc.twit.tv
- Listen/subscribe: http://twit.tv/natn
- iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=101248932
Current
In mid-February, I joined the team at Current full-time as an online producer in the news department. The Current management was awesomely accommodating of my outside projects and even allowed me to start/leave early on Fridays to give me time to keep hosting TWiF (an hour's drive away from San Francisco in Petaluma, CA). Meanwhile, in my new position at Current I was enjoying learning a whole 'nother level of web metrics I had never really focused on in all of my past TV/production work. I also was making new friends! Really cool ones!
In early May, I was offered (and accepted!) the opportunity to move into an ideal role as the sole manager of Current.com's tech channel, which had amazing potential but had been sorely neglected in the past without anyone at the helm full-time. The tech channel is an utterly perfect fit for a tech news/app/service/gadget junkie like me and I'm pumped to make it an amazing destination for tech stories, videos, tutorials, conversation, and community. If you haven't poked around on current.com/tech and gotten familiar with it yet, please do. Don't hesitate to give me your honest feedback on what you like about it and what you want to see changed or added, because I'm not interested in making Current Tech a super place for me, I'm interested in making it a super place for as many people as possible. I also have some rather lofty, ambitious goals for the channel that both frighten and excite me, but also seem like the right next steps. As soon as I can tell you about them, I will. Video is involved. :)
- Main channel: http://current.com/tech
- Current Tech blog: http://blogs.current.com/tech
- Twitter account: @CurrentTech
If you're still reading this, you must really be interested in my professional life and for that I thank you a thousand times! I'm not going to actually write out "thank you" 1000 times here, but rest assured I'm saying it in my head. Perhaps even in Spanish. Now you're really truly up to speed.
Hello! Helvetireader!
Sorry for my radio silence. I have no excuse. Actually, I was in the middle of writing a "top 10 reasons why I suck" post, but something felt too familiar about it. So I did a little search and found this post from August, 2007. AT LEAST I AM CONSISTENT, PEOPLE.
Consider this my 900th entry back into regular blogging! To be honest, I'm in the middle of yet another obsessive compulsive blog redesign, so there's a lot going on behind the scenes even if I seem like I'm an absentee blogger. I want to better integrate all the other posts/photos/videos/tweets/etc I clog the internet with every day, so that sarahlane.com is more of a big mashup, rather than a ghost town for weeks on end. So, you're up to speed. Oh, and please send me any fabulous design ideas if you have 'em!
In the meantime, I came across something wonderful in my Tumblr dashboard this morning (via joelaz). You know how nobody's ever been as obsessed with anything as the world seems to be with the Helvetica font? And who can blame us, right? Helvetica is smart and clean and reminds us all that text is beautiful! Well, now you can use Helvetica to make Google Reader prettier.
Helvetireader is a userscript for a variety of browsers that simplifies Google Reader while also Helvetifying it. I'm going to give it a week to see if my Google Reader usage can be salvaged (I've all but abandoned it lately and could use a fresh coat of paint, as it were).
If you're using a browser that doesn't support userscripts, or just want to tweak the look of Helvetireader, you can download and tweak the CSS file. If you go this route and are happy with the results, post your stellar work in the comments!