Kevin Purdy

Wrote notes to organize thoughts on blogging. Proceeded to talk about cats, iPhone cameras, magnets.

I was lucky enough to be interviewed at Rochester’s local NPR affiliate, WXXI, for its weekly Mixed Media segment. You can hear my 13:48 of audio fame in a full, streaming podcast; the version that plays on actual air waves (July 1 at about 3:44pm, methinks?) will be much shorter. It’s mostly a soft, slightly rambling introduction to Lifehacker, as well as some honest answers about what it’s like to blog for a living.

I tend to do two things when I’m talking on the spot: use many more “um” verbal placeholders than I would in casual conversation, and, to put it nicely, venture off the path with my answers to straightforward questions. The latter is somewhat inherent to how I think, but the former is something I could use some help and training on. If I find great resources online, I’ll share ‘em; if you’ve got any tips for a neophyte interviewee, let me know with a comment.

Tags:   blogging · interviews · Lifehacker · rochester · speaking · wxxiNo Comments.

Maybe the vegetarian meal on Ajira Airlways is some kind of curry dish? That’d be sweet.

Personal blogging is hard when you’re updating another blog at least five times per day, and often more. As I put it to my editor recently, it feels like my Who Cares Filter is completely closed up by the time I find myself with time to write in this space. I don’t have to write about software, productivity, gadgets, or time management here, of course; it’s just a vague feeling that I’ve linked and updated everything I need to on the net each day.

But! Now it’s way too early on a Sunday, and I’ve got a few things that need sharin’.

• The headline: Yep. Less than six months after moving to Rochester, the wife and I are moving back to our home of more nine years. I defer my feelings on this to an upcoming Roc/Buff open comparison chart I’ll be posting (seriously) later this month.
• Food Week at Lifehacker: That was seriously fun. I earned some experience doing solo video shoots, interviewing Art Rogers of Lento restaurant about slicing and dicing onions and fileting a fish.
  
  What did I learn? Per @jordanconway, I might find a bolt that fits in the tripod mount of my Zi6 and attach it to a lanyard for steadier shots. When shots go wrong (”Macro Mode” my butt), I’ll politely ask my subject to back up and re-explain, and I’ll keep the camera on the subject (food!) more often.
• Rockin’ the G1: Finally joined the realm of folks who can complain about two different kinds of cellular reception. I dig the open nature, the browser is pretty snappy when the bandwidth’s there, and certain apps are total killers (Locale, for one). Many reviewers and iPhone purists have knocked on the hardware, but I see a clear trade-off for the “bulk” and “design choices.” Namely, having 3.2 megapixels in your pocket at all times, to shoot ridiculously clear photos and video:
  
  
• Firefox add-ons for journalists: Titled Journalist Picks for now, and it’s a work in progress. Got an extension that would help with research, note-taking, or tracking beat subjects online? Drop them in the comments or hit me up on email.

Tags:   Android · Buffalo · food · Lifehacker · photography · rochester · video · Zi64 Comments

Want to help me round this out? I’m not a Buffalo/Rochester native, but a (nearly) 10-year veteran; this is just a quick thumbnail I dashed off. Leave your track suggestions in the comments, and I’ll update the playlist embedded above. Click the upper-right corner button for a bigger view.

What am I looking for? Songs that ring true with the WNY experience; hence “Livin’ on a Prayer,” which I’ve never seen fail at a Buffalo bar or concert, and which has lyrics that, sadly, resonate pretty well. Local artists and directly-related songs are great. Nearby Canadian stuff is cool, too. But I’m just looking for a wide net to cast around the music that defines the region.

Edit: Commenter Knile points out that this came up on MetaFilter last month, unbeknownst to me (but awesomely helpful).

(Disclosure: This awesome app was made by my boss at Lifehacker)

Tags:   Buffalo · crowdsourcing · music · playlist · rochester6 Comments

Thanks to Kevin Lim for shooting and posting, and to BarCamp Buffalo for letting me try out an alpha-level presentation on the late-night crowd.

I’d intended to run through three areas early-morning bloggers can use to sprint through material and write faster, but ended up focusing on one app I could easily keep in the 10-minute time frame. Intrigued? Check out the full list of tools and tricks referenced at the end of the vid.

Tags:   blogging · Buffalo · clips · geekery · Lifehacker · video1 Comment

What is happening?

Since the last time I dropped some HTML here (2008!), quite a bit has changed for the Purdman. Here’s the traffic-friendly listicle version:

• Moved to Rochester: I started at the University at Buffalo in 1999, and have lived in Buffalo—minus a 1.3-year hiatus in Sandusky, OH—ever since. Rochester’s only an hour and a half by car from my old town, and, to the vast majority of those who even acknowledge its existence, upstate New York is all one big exurb of NYC anyways. But it’s no small thing to leave a place where you’ve got a really good handle on the local media happenings and gossip, the menus of approximately 70% of the regional eateries, the non-abridged lexicon of local legend and lore, and all the other stuff of small-city life behind.
  
  How to adapt to Rochester, then? Reverse every future-of-news-business article at once and get the actual print newspaper delivered every day. Sign up for things you’d normally shrug off (BarCamp Rochester, anyone?). Be randomly friendly to people. Working from home makes it tough to find a clear path to local enlightenment, but, then again, it’s the dead of winter. Sunshine, I hope, is not only the best disinfectant, but a powerful energy source for social generators (Sorry, I’m still recovering from a wind energy piece).
• Senior Editor at Lifehacker: Mostly because the site’s originator, motivator, and, uh, editor gracefully said goodbye to pursue a truly freelance life. There’s an old Gawker Media trope about how one year of full service does, actually, constitute being “Senior,” but I’ll leave that to the MediaBistro/TechCrunch types to parse. It’s a bigger step up than it might seem to those on the other side of the PHP, but I’m really enjoying having an active role in asking questions, planning features, and making changes that shape the day-to-day success of my favorite site.
• I turned 28:
  
  ‘Nuff said.
• Canceled cable, switched to streaming: Nor have I looked back once. I’m using Boxee and Apple TV to cut the cable, so I can stream The Office, 30 Rock, and (very soon) Lost whenever I want in HD. For everything else, there’s free, over the air digital television. Seriously, it took a lot of mental re-programming to get used to the idea that there’s actually free television out there.
• Reminded what real reporting is like: Nothing I did approached the completeness of the intense, strongly-felt coverage by the Buffalo News. But I covered the crash of flight 3407 in Clarence, NY for the NY Post, and it struck me, for the first time in a long time, just how intense deadline journalism involving real humans can be. It was overwhelming, terribly sad, and an experience I’ll keep with me for a long time.

Tags:   3407 · announcements · boxee · Buffalo · Lifehacker · navel gazing · rochester4 Comments

Sarah and Samuel Beam, on-stage at Asbury Hall/Babeville, Nov. 12, 2008. Photo by LibraRonin.

Iron & Wine is one of the very few music acts the wife and I have Absolute Agreement on, so we snapped up tickets to their Nov. 12 gig at Ani DiFranco’s Babeville, a.k.a. Asbury Hall, as soon as we knew about the gig.

Samuel Beam walked onto the stage of the renovated church hall, looked out from heavy eyes and said, “Wow. I didn’t know there were this many people in Buffalo.” At that moment, it seemed a bit like … everything anyone’s ever said about Buffalo after spending some real time here (or so I tell myself). Listening to it now, though, it seems more in line with his general shyness and modesty, to see that many people lining the halls of the arching space.

I teased PlayedLastNight.com a bit about the literalness of their releases, but, one week later, you can preview, buy and download the whole 18-song, 1-hour-35-minute Iron & Wine set from that show. The basic $9.95 package gets you MP3 files with a 160 kb/s bitrate–decent enough for headphones and non-audiophile enjoyment. $3 more gets you (via email, two days later) FLAC files that haven’t lost any audio quality in compression.

Quick tip on the sly: One YouTube user has posted three full song videos from the Asbury Hall gig. Consumer-cam quality, but pretty neat angle.

Tags:   Buffalo · music · video4 Comments

Nine things to like about the Nickel City

So the New York Times gave Buffalo’s architectural treasures the feature treatment on Sunday, detailing our city’s beautiful contradictions and breathtaking buildings. We’ve got projects designed by architectural progressives who had brilliant designs on the future, while the modern city itself … well, that’s another 40 posts or so.

They also put together a pretty great slideshow with original shots of Buffalo’s prettier parts. With a smidge of work in Picasa 3, I patched those shots into a few wallpapers for those who might dig such a thing.

They’re in 1680 x 1050 resolution. If requested, I can post more/different aspects and sizes. To download, right-click on the links below and choose “Save Links As” or “Save Target As,” depending on your browser.

• NYT Buffalo Architecture 1 (Guaranty doorway at center, spaced, with drop shadows)
• NYT Buffalo Architecture 2 (Guaranty doorway at center, less spacing, no drop shadows)
• NYT Buffalo Architecture 3 (Skyline shot of Ellicott Square Building at center, spaced, with drop shadows)
• NYT Buffalo Architecture 4 (Skyline shot of Ellicott Square Building at center, almost no spacing )

Comments and improved version links are welcome.

Tags:   architecture · Buffalo · photos · Things I Really Like1 Comment

Zilly Rosen of ZILLYCAKES in Buffalo, NY, builds a likeness of presidential candidate Barack Obama using 1240 cupcakes., originally uploaded by shastio.

Politics aside, that is some serious devotion to a cause. A five-frosting, delciously decadent cause.

Tags: No Comments.

I was a contributor at Buffalo Buffet, the Western-New-York-centric food blog run by my good friend Andrew Galarneau, from its earliest inception.

Buffalo Buffet, however, is no more. Now the focus is wider, the posts meatier, and the site a bit more agile and active. I’m helping him launch One Big Kitchen, and so far, it’s been a great learning experience, and a good deal of fun.

Right now, I’m managing the “News Bites”–little links and tips, updated nearly-daily, in the left-hand sidebar–and helping out with a lot of the back-end design and WordPress tweaking. In the not-too-distant future, I’m hoping to get some seriously juicy posts up over there, and inviting anyone with similar passions to do the same.

Got a tip, an awesome food link, or an inkling to write your own gastro-post? Email me at kevin [at] onebigkitchen.com.

Tags:   announcements · blogging · food · One Big KitchenNo Comments.

It was, for lack of a better word, art.

The tagline of The Soup, possibly the only show on the E! cable network that won’t ruin your day, is that they watch it all so you don’t have to. In these times, that is no small service.

I watch this show every week, without fail. If I’m away, I set my DVR to record it Saturday and Sunday, as a fail-safe, because for all the easy targets–the Kardashian/Lohan/Abdul bloc, the reality non-shows, Cee Dub’s Dutch Oven Cooking–those brave scanners of cable culture ofen find something truly amazing. If Dadaist morning shows don’t do it for you, try Willard Scott’s Today-Show-sponsored madness.

It’s one of those wonderful accidents of television, like Space Ghost Coast to Coast in its prime, when nobody at the network has yet noticed how weirdly brilliant their tiny little show has become.

Tags:   cat eating spaghetti · Things I Really Like · video1 Comment