A few minutes after putting Liam to bed the other night, a plaintive wail escaped his room:

“Daddy? DADDY! My Elvis doesn’t feel good.”

“Your what, Liam?”

“My Elvis! It hurts!”

“What’s your Elvis?”

“You know, my Elvis bone.”

“You mean this down here?”

“Yes, my Elvis!”

“Liam, I think you misunderstood the word. That’s your pelvis. Well, let’s wait a few minutes and see if it feels better.”

Five minutes later

“Liam, how’s your Elvis feeling?”

“DADDY! It’s my pelvis. And it’s feeling better”

I’m not sure how to wax enthusiastic about this without it getting really geeky, but here it goes.

The ZigBee Alliance is a group collaborating on extremely low-power, low-bandwidth, dynamic networking standards. Where you’ll see this appearing first is likely in Home Automation applications, where you’ll be able to control your theormostat from your cell phone or have your TV mute itself with the phone rings. I had a pretty extensive home automation system set up before we moved to San Marcos, but had become frustrated enough with the slow speed and unreliability of the X-10 technology that my system was based on that I was never able to muster enthusiasm to get back into it in the new house.

Beyond home automation, this appears to be an excellent platform for building mesh-networked sensor arrays, and for building management and industrial automation. Potentially very cool stuff.

Oh, drat. I went and got geeky after all.

This past Saturday, Daniel and I went to see Doug Burr play at Flipnotics in Austin. Daniel discovered Doug’s music a few months back through Paste Music, and lent me the album shortly thereafter. It has haunted my CD player regularly since then, its “concept gospel” sound making it one of my favorite discs of recent memory.

I jumped at the chance to see Doug in person when Daniel mentioned he was coming to town. Flipnotics is a pretty small place, with seating for probably 30 people or so, which meant we got a great view of the goings-on. The show was great, and included most of the album’s songs and several new ones that hadn’t been recorded yet. Doug manned the guitar and harmonica, while Todd Pertll (whose surname really needs more vowels) played banjo and pedal steel guitar. Todd’s steel playing bears special mention, as he accomplished much more with the already versatile instrument than I’ve seen done before, using an effects processor to vary the sound, loops to create persistent harmonic underlays, and an E-Bow to create a sustained continuous sound. Great fun to watch and listen to.

To top it off, we got to visit with both Todd & Doug for a few minutes after the show, both of whom turn out to be genuinely nice guys. We talked music a bit, complimented them on the album, discussed Denton and Dallas, talked a bit about the challenges of balancing music with the demands of family life, and promised to drag along a few more friends the next time we came out to see them.

So check out the photos, buy the album or go see a show!

This weekend we took down our Autumn decor to replace it with wreaths, stockings, mangers, ornaments, and the ilk. Among the retired ornamentation were a few ears of indian corn, which I pressed into service this evening for an amusing experiment.

“Who’s ready for Fun With Science?™” I bellowed at the unsuspecting children. They made vague apprehensive noises, which I took as enthusiastic endorsement. “Today, we see if we can pop indian corn in the microwave!” They perked up a little at this, but not enough to leave the table. I threw one of the ears in the microwave, thought about it for a moment, and hit the “Popcorn” button.

10 seconds. Nothing.

20 seconds. Still nothing.

30 seconds. This is getting dull.

45 seconds. POP!

“Woohoo!” The kids were suddenly quite interested indeed, and all ran to the microwave to watch the ear of corn noisily transform itself into a fluffy white mass. Kernels went all over the inside of the microwave, and we laughed uproariously as the mess grew. After about two minutes, things were slowing down, so I pulled open the door and said “Who wants to try some?”

The kids were once again dubious (and have, by this point in their tender lives, realized when Daddy is trying to use them as guinea pigs), so I grabbed a piece and gobbled it up. The kernels were smaller than regular popcorn, but were otherwise quite good. Everybody else soon got into the spirit of it and stripped the cob. “It’s even more delicious with salt!”

I count this experiment a success.

As a follow up to my note on the furor over Electronic Arts’ labor management practices, here’s a posting with a recent internal email from Rusty Rueff, one of EA’s flock of Vice Presidents. Pertinent bits:

As much as I don’t like what’s been said about our company and our industry, I recognize that at the heart of the matter is a core truth: the work is getting harder, the tasks are more complex and the hours needed to accomplish them have become a burden. We haven’t yet cracked the code on how to fully minimize the crunches in the development and production process. Net, there are things we just need to fix…We’ve started a Development Process Improvement Project to get smarter and improve efficiency. Just as we have revamped the Pre-Production process, we are now creating a Product Development Map that will provide earlier decision-making (on SKUS and game features), improve our consistency of creative direction, and lessen the number of late in the process changes, firedrills, and crunches…Most important: we recognize that this doesn’t get fixed with one email or in one month. It’s an on-going process of communication and change.

It sounds as though the pressure the unhappy employees have brought to bear has been helpful in getting the senior management to take a look at some of these issues. I hope they’re able to bring off the changes they’re talking about, as there are a lot of good people in the company who are taking a beating because of the way the company manages projects and personnel. Thanks for taking the first step, Rusty.

My friend Daniel has posted a new poem called Rainboy this evening that I think is among his best work. Go read it! (Link to Blogspot’s annoyingly ephemeral “permalink” now fixed.)

The good news farm is currently having a bumper crop. The latest harvest included this handsome gourd: Chris proposed to his English honeypie, Becky, over Thanksgiving, and she has accepted! The current plan is to have the wedding in England during the summer of 2005. We’re delighted for the happy couple, and Kathy and I are excited at the prospect of having a good excuse to go to England for the first time in either of our lives. (Liam, on the other hand, is already worried about riding the plane.)

Here’s a photo of the beaming duo from back in August, which I think really captures something fundamental about their relationship:

We recently had the sadly-infrequent pleasure of visiting with Kathy’s parents and sister, who drove down from Wilson, New York to spend the week with us. The kids skipped most of their school week, and I took off a couple of days from work to enjoy skipping around the Texas hill country with them.

We loaded up the locations of a few geocaches near Canyon lake before driving out there one afternoon to have a picnic and play some miniature golf. Kathy’s mom especially enjoyed hunting for the caches, finding a cleverly hidden that the rest of us were having no luck whatsoever with. They’re thinking about a GPS for Christmas now.

We also introduced them to The Grist Mill, one of our favorite nearby eateries, and went wine tasting in Gruene. While Kathy’s dad has historically tackled huge building projects during his visits, we managed to limit his list to installing some lights and fixing our water heater this time. (What a treat to actually have a hot shower!) He also enjoyed breaking in his new camera, and got this shot of an army helicopter lifting off from the practice field at Texas State University as we drove past. Some Lazer Tag, shopping, a visit to the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum and the Capitol, and a good deal of romping with the kids rounded out the visit nicely.

Thanks for making the drive, folks!

Tonight I took Abigail to see The Princess Diaries 2. It was pretty much as good as anything of recent vintage that starts with “Disney” and ends with “2” — which is to say not at all. There was one shining moment, however: when Anne Hathaway’s character is crowned queen at the end, she holds a scepter in one hand, and The Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch in the other. Seriously, I think they stole the prop.

There’s been some interesting press on my Electronic Arts, my former employer, lately. A New York Times article summarizes things nicely. More interesting reading includes EA Spouse, Joe Straitiff’s Journal, and an open letter from the International Game Developers Association.

My time at EA was remarkably free of the sorts of excessive demands documented here until the end of my tenure, when I got transferred onto a team that was actually making games rather than just supporting them. I count myself blessed that I had the option to leave as that vortex was starting to show the first signs of sucking me in. Several of my friends stayed with the company, and have been feeling pretty ground down with little hope for respite, as their current projects are on an overly aggressive schedule.

I would guess that the companies’ labor practices are unlikely to change significantly until their hands are forced. There are always fresh-faced college graduates who are willing to sacrifice their personal lives for the glamor of the industry. And unfortunately, the game industry is showing no sign of anything that will shake up the distribution model in the same way that iTunes and its brethren are starting to do for the music industry. It should be interesting to see how this all plays out over the next few years. For the sake of my friends, I hope we see a happy ending.