Kevin Purdy

A single ShackBurger, crinkle-cut fries, and a glass of their own ale. This was a great moment to have a G1 camera handy.

I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya. Long time, like, since before the national health care debate started. Long time like, I still lived in Rochester. Long time like, everybody still thought the Bills had a great passing game ready to roll out.

So! Here’s the notable stuff. I’ll skip the minutiae of professional/Lifehacker-related material, since I should really be a good “personal brand” and round that stuff up on the professional page.

• I got to eat at Shake Shack. Oh, don’t get me wrong, it was part of a very nice two-day jaunt to New York City, wherein I got to work at the Gawker office, see three old friends, and enjoy Manhattan in the not-too-cold-to-walk fall. But I’ve been fiending for this particular combination of meat, sauce, bread, and greenery since I posted about making your own at home. It did not disappoint. Honest food and good ingredients, cooked well and served up straight, and I’m totally in love.
• Among other media appearances, I was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, following a very fun interview with Alexandra Levit. This is important mostly because the WSJ is something my parents and relatives can say they’ve actually heard of, so family get-togethers now have one gimme conversation point.
• My wife and I moved back to Buffalo, so now I’ve got new home office digs and an endless tab at Home Depot. I miss many things about Rochester, but overall, it’s been great to get back to the business of shivering, connecting, and eating with the great people here.
• Having settled in a bit, I’ve been writing material for Buffalo Spree (ooh, new web site!), a twice-monthly tip column for ITworld, and the occasional piece somewhere else, like Popular Science.
• I have started watching The Wire, sequentially from the first episode, for the third time. This is notable mainly because it represents an approximate, cumulative total of 150 hours dedicated to the study of this five-season masterpiece, being early into Season 3, and not counting Season 5 episodes I totally watched twice, because I downloaded them early and then pretended I hadn’t when they aired on HBO, which I subscribed to solely for the purpose of getting on-demand Season 5 episodes, and yes I’m aware this is a comically overlong sentence.
  
  Since you asked, yes, I find Season 2 to be vastly underrated, and Season 3 to be very loose and faulty at points, despite having two of the strongest plot arcs (Hamsterdam and Stringer Bell’s quest to “go straight”). I could certainly go on–and I have in the past–but let’s just say that I’m very eager to discuss this with you at any point when we meet. Midway through your surgery? Tie off that morphine drip, fellow watcher, and let’s get down to brass tacks.

Of course, this serious-looking piece of hardware is made in Germany.

I’ve been on two different WNYC morning radio shows in the last month or so, talking up Lifehacker-type topics and describing how I watch TV (without cable) and get things done (when I can).

First up, an appearance on The Takeaway with John Hockenberry to talk about living “Life After Television,” i.e. switching away from cable to streaming net content (and over-the-air DTV). Click the play icon below to listen:

[audio:http://thepurdman.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/takeaway_interview_kevin_purdy.mp3]

Next up, I was asked to take part in a month-long series of segments dealing with productivity on The Brian Lehrer Show. The first segment was this morning, and I should be on again every Thursday in August, around 10:40 a.m. Here’s the embedded clip–hit “More” in the upper-right corner for a download link, if needed:

I’m glad I was able to score another invite with my elite plugging skills near the end. But, seriously, I do listen to On The Media nearly every week. Because I was popular in high school.

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.