June 30, 2009 at 11:03 pm
It’s 11:03 pm PDT, and I’ve spent the last 90 minutes listening to a U2 concert that ended about eight hours ago: fan-taped, uploaded, and posted online. U2 is cool with this. The audio is on Kevin’s site. He has lots of bandwidth.
I don’t normally listen to bootlegs but this is the opening concert of the tour. Right now, I’m wrapping up a 14-hour day that I spent updating two web sites, posting the setlist live as it happened on Twitter, digging through YouTube, Flickr, Twitpic, Yfrog, and any other source possible for photos and video, sending out emails to U2 fan mailing lists, and so forth. You can see the results on U2tours.com and @U2 (scroll down through “Bits & Bytes” updates). And I’m not tooting my own horn; I’m tooting my friends and co-workers horns — the @U2/U2tours.com crew was amazing today — posting the setlist in @U2’s forum, spreading the word on Twitter, sending me stuff they found first, and so much more.
All of this made possible by technology that, if I stop to think about it, is mind-blowing. This was my humble setup today:
Probably hard to see, but on the main monitor there I have Tweetie open and a web browser. On the web browser I’m watching live / almost-live concert video streamed by fans via Qik.com. Srsly. There were four fans (that I know of) sending video right from Barcelona to my office. That’s frakkin’ crazy. And then I take what I saw and heard and post it on Twitter and on U2tours.com, and Lisa Z. (from @U2) posts it in the @U2 forum … and tens of thousands of U2 fans know what’s going on immediately. Bono says something, it’s online a minute later (if that). At the same time, I’m watching Twitter and dozens, maybe hundreds of fans inside the stadium are also posting updates. Retweet that stuff, and the world knows.
In 1997, my first “online U2 tour,” we would rush to the hotel room or our house after the show and post the setlist on the web and send it to the U2 fan mailing lists. You’d get the news within a couple hours after the show, maybe the next morning in the worst case scenario. It was amazing.
In 2001, friends inside the arenas would call and you’d get to listen to a few minutes of the show (and the audio was terrible, frankly), then they’d call again on the way out of the arena and recite the setlist. Fans would know what happened within 15-30 minutes of the end of the show. It was amazing.
In 2005, friends inside the arena called and you could listen to the whole show, and the audio was actually listenable. On opening night, three friends at the show called me, Michael, and Scott separately so we could hear. Then the three of us not at the show hopped on AIM together and chatted together about what we heard over the three separate phone lines. It was amazing – one of the most fun nights of my U2 fan life. You could pretty much post the setlist as it happened — literally within seconds of a song starting, it was on U2tours.com. But you had to wait until the next day for audio and/or video.
And today, live video (and audio) from inside the stadium as the show is going on. Photos all over Twitter and Flickr during the show. Thousands of fans giving and getting the scoop on every detail. The setlist posted as it happened, and broadcast to tens of thousands of fans around the world.
During the concert today, Sean pulled up a chair and sat next to me so he could watch everything — the videos, the pix, the live updates. I know I was more amazed by what was going on because I remember what it was like years ago. I hope I explained it well enough that he could appreciate it, too. I imagine someday, 10 years from now perhaps, he’ll be updating some web site (will they still exist then?) with links to every fan’s personal video/audio/photo web channel (we’ll all have them for our daily lifestreaming) and maybe he’ll look back and remember what it was like “in the old days” when he sat next to his dad to experience a U2 concert that was happening 5,407 miles away, but seemed like it was right in our hometown.
Technology is amazing.
June 25, 2009 at 1:09 am
After dealing with this spinning head stuff for about a month now, I was finally able to get in to see an ENT specialist today. Saw the same guy who did ear surgeries on both my kids when they were wee little ones and had lots of ear infections.
So, if there’s one condition that would just be too perfect for a U2 fan to come down with … a condition that involves dizziness and spinning heads … what condition would that be? I’ll give you one hint:
Yep. Unos, dos, tres, get dizzy. I’ve got Vertigo. Technically, I have Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo:
What are the symptoms?
The main symptom is a feeling that you are spinning or tilting when you are not. This can happen when you move your head in a certain way, like rolling over in bed, turning your head quickly, bending over, or tipping your head back.
BPPV usually lasts a minute or two. It can be mild, or it can be bad enough to make you feel sick to your stomach and vomit. You may even find it hard to stand or walk without losing your balance.
That pretty much describes it to a “T”, but I’m lucky to have not had any vomiting or nausea. Everything else – been there, done that. The doctor gave me an information sheet that also talked about feeling lightheaded for several hours at a time, which is how things were at their worst a few weeks ago — couldn’t get anything done at all.
On the bright side, it’s really not terribly serious. The most common treatment is nothing. There are some procedures that can be done to minimize the dizziness, but most people learn to live with this. As long as I control my head movements, I should be okay. Driving isn’t a problem. Yardwork has been okay. Playing with the dogs, the kids, doing the shopping – all good.
I’m supposed to monitor my dizziness for the next week — which way am I turning my head when I get dizzy, what position am I in, etc. And I’ll see the doc again late next week and we’ll decide what, if anything, needs to be done.
Thanks to all who emailed after the last post about this. Really appreciate the thoughts and support. Now if you’ll just tell my daughter to stop walking around the house singing, “Hello, hello, you’ve got a disease called Vertigo,” everything will be much better!
June 20, 2009 at 10:28 pm
“Follower” counts on Twitter are highly overrated. There’s limited value in having tons of followers that you don’t know and don’t converse with. I consider myself blessed to have as many followers as I do (see right), but the truth is that I don’t know most of them, don’t speak with most of them … and, frankly, don’t have a clue why so many people follow me.
But numbers are numbers, and this post is all about numbers because, for now, I’m more popular on Twitter than a bunch of Seattle Seahawks! Like, for example, Walter Jones and Nate Burleson:
I have more followers than both of them combined! I’m also ahead of the two TJ’s — Houshmandzadeh and Duckett.
I’m even more popular than 1st-round draft pick Aaron Curry, whose Twitter account was listed in the latest ESPN The Magazine.
But my glory comes to an end there, sadly. For I am nowhere near as popular as Matt Hasselbeck.
Still, five out of six ain’t bad, right? (Not that I’m bragging or anything.) Let’s hope the Seahawks do better on the field than they’re doing on Twitter. Just sayin’….
June 19, 2009 at 11:49 pm
I tested myself last night (Thursday). I hopped in the car and drove three hours to a remote part of Idaho to see Collective Soul do a tiny, little warm-up gig before their main tour starts next week. They advertised the show as being in Coeur d’Alene, but it was actually closer to Worley, Idaho, about a half-hour south of CDA.
I’m still fighting the spinning head thing, but mostly in the mornings. (I see an ENT specialist next week.) Usually I’m doing pretty good by about 11 a.m. each day. At the show, I didn’t have any dizziness issues … but my McDonald’s dinner wasn’t agreeing with me, and since I decided to join the crowd and rush the stage during the third song, I was surrounded by people, getting very hot and sweaty, and extremely thirsty. I left the mob at the front after the band’s main set and found some ice water. Then went back and watched a bit of the encore before calling it a night and leaving early. (No, I’d never leave a U2 concert early.)
That’s a six-hour roundtrip drive to watch about 80 minutes of live music. And it was all worth it because I got to hear “The World I Know” live — surely one of the best 4-5 songs ever written. I could listen to that 20 times in a row and not get tired of it. In fact, if you check my Last.fm profile, I probably have listened to it 20 times in a row!
Other than being a little tired from the long drive, and having a small headache, the test went well. But hopefully they’ll play somewhere a little closer next time.
Here’s my full set of Collective Soul photos on Flickr from last night.
June 14, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Sean is done with elementary school and headed into middle school this September — 6th grade, here we come! They’re very organized in all schools these days. Both our kids came home before the school year ended and already had a list of the necessary school supplies for next year. That never happened when I was a kid.
Another thing that never happened when I was a kid was seeing this on the school supply list:
Yep, Sean needs a USB drive. For 6th grade.
Please see the title of this post.
June 11, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Who else would you expect to win in Zagat’s annual fast food survey? Of course, none other than In-N-Out Burger, the best fast food burger on the planet!
In-N-Out earned “Best Food” and “Best Service” among Large Chains (up to 5,000 locations), and also won Best Burger overall. Yes, indeed.
My last In-N-Out Burger meal happened on April 21, and my next one will probably be in October … unless I go to SES San Jose in August. But I doubt that’ll happen, so it’ll have to be October. And yes, it’s completely normal to track In-N-Out visitation like this. Shush now.
Here’s the full survey.
June 8, 2009 at 11:40 pm
I didn’t blog much about UP in the last couple months, and for good reason: I was avoiding any and all trailers, previews, previews, spoilers, you name it. But the lack of posts wasn’t a sign that I wasn’t excited about the movie — to the contrary. Around the house, we were counting down the weeks and days until May 29th!
Despite the recent health issues I’ve been dealing with, the whole McGee clan did manage to get out and see the movie right after it came out. Since both Cari and Sean don’t see 3D stuff too well, we all went to the 2D version.
And out of the four of us, I think I’m the one who liked it the least.
It was good, but not great. The “marriage/life” mini-film at the beginning, showing Carl and Ellie’s life together, was absolutely brilliant. One of the best pieces of Pixar movie-making I’ve ever seen. All kinds of emotion in it, and both Cari and I were crying when it ended. But the emotion didn’t carry over to the rest of the movie for me. I never connected with UP the way I did with, say … Wall-E or Monsters, Inc. or even Finding Nemo.
For now, UP is probably in the middle of the pack among Pixar movies for me. But there’s hope yet: I felt this same way about CARS after the first time I saw that, and have come to like it a lot more on repeated viewings. Maybe the same thing will happen with UP?
June 6, 2009 at 12:26 am
“Vertigo” was too easy to use as a title, so I chose a relatively obscure U2 b-side from almost 20 years ago as the headline on this post, and then edited it since I’m a guy.
This has been one of the strangest 10 days I’ve ever had. There’s something wrong with me, and I have no clue what it is. It’s very possibly nothing more than a virus, and deep down I think that’s the case. But it could be something entirely different and more serious, too. Hope not.
A couple Wednesdays ago, while I was reading with T before she went to bed, I suddenly got dizzy, felt faint, and my head banged against the wall in her room. It settled down after about 10 seconds and I just chalked it up to being tired and the hot weather we were having. Then it continued the next day, and the day after that — dizziness, lightheadedness, headaches, etc. Then it got better for a couple days, then it came back again, and that’s when I finally went to urgent care.
The doc there didn’t seem too confident, but he thinks it’s some kind of inner ear imbalance/infection, combined with allergies (even though I haven’t had allergies since I was a kid). So I got a couple prescriptions from him and have been taking them for three days now. I’m still waking up dizzy and groggy in the mornings, but the past two days I’ve felt pretty good in the afternoons and evenings. And here I am writing a blog post after midnight, so that’s a sign that maybe things are returning to normal.
I had to cancel plans last week for a quick trip to Seattle with the family (although this dizzy stuff wasn’t the only reason), and canceled plans again this week for a conference in Seattle I was supposed to attend. I’ve already canceled a webinar I was supposed to give in a week or so, and I’m wondering if I’ll feel up to driving to Coeur d’Alene on the 18th to see Collective Soul.
I’m not even sure why I’m posting about all this. There are several people I know, some very close to us, who are dealing with much more serious health problems (think cancer) and I’m not looking for sympathy. I think there’s a two-fold purpose to this post:
- To ask for patience from friends. If you’ve been waiting on an email from me over the past 10 days, or expecting me to finish/continue some project we were talking about or working, I’m now way behind on everything. Up until the last couple days, I’ve only been able to get in front of the computer for a couple hours at a time before things would start to spin.
- To publicly flog myself for not having a personal doctor. Yep. That’s why I had to go to urgent care. It was either that or the emergency room. Either way, I’d be seeing a doctor who’s never met me before. That’s not exactly helpful when it comes to diagnosing things. I’m 40 now. I should’ve found a personal doctor years ago. Maybe this post reminds me to go out and do it. Stupid, stupid, stupid….
Anyway, not trying to make a big deal out of anything or look for sympathy. Just felt like talking about this craziness that’s been going on. And felt guilty about not writing a blog post here in more than two weeks, too.
Now back to your regularly scheduled programming.
May 20, 2009 at 7:43 pm
Last month, I suggested that April is the best time to visit the McGees. May is awfully nice, too. And our cherry trees bloom in June, so that’s also good.
Well, if you’re thinking about visiting, you’ll need to know how to get here. For that, we turn to Tara.
She was on the phone with a friend several days ago, trying to make plans for the friend to come visit and play for a few hours. Now, Tara is not very experienced on the phone just yet so it was funny to listen to her side of the conversation and try to imagine what her friend was saying.
After all the plans were settled, the friend needed to know how to get to our house. The friend lives right near school, about a half-mile from here. She must’ve asked for directions, and that’s when Tara furrowed her brows and thought for a few seconds. And then she offered these helpful instructions:
“You carefully curve a little. Then you go forward.”
So, there ya have it. Come visit us soon, won’t you? The directions are simple. 
May 19, 2009 at 11:31 pm
Been a while since I’ve done one of these posts, but the last week has brought several requests for photo usage and that reminded me to share some places where my Flickr photos have been used. I’ll start with a pic of our dog, Sparky, which is currently appearing on the home page of the Woof Report:
That won’t stay on the home page for long, but it’s also being used on this newsletter page. Go Sparky!
Here are others I’ve found:
- Beyond Phototips used my shot of footprints in the snow. It’s way down near the end of the article. On a related note, this same photo of mine will apparently be used in an Australian documentary that’s now in production. That was one of the email requests that came in this week.
- My uber-popular baseball photo appeared on ivorytowerz late last month.
- It also appeared on Bargain Briana.
- A photo I took of the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile was used on Wide Open Wallet way back in March.
- And my “The End” photo appeared on Through the Illusion.
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