That’s right, I turn 17 years old today. 17 is kind of an awkward number, as it falls right between that big 16th birthday (that doesn’t really matter much for me anyway since I’m not planning to drive for a few years more yet) and that bigger 18th birthday, which is big for a number of various reasons.

This birthday, however, is big for me because it’s the last one I’ll have before I go off to college next year, so who knows where I’ll be next year when I’m celebrating, so I’m looking forward to spending some time celebrating with family tonight.

In the meantime, I always like to post a thing or two on my blog to help celebrate, so here’s some funny Happy Birthday clips from Victor Borge, the legendary pianist/comedian (whom I would never have heard of if PBS didn’t do such insane amounts of pledging). Enjoy!

Tags: birthday, college, Personal, Victor Borge, Video

Well, today is August 18th, and that means that for me, today is the first day of my senior year. The first day of my last year in high school. The first day of my last year where I will get a free, quality education unless some sort of unlikely education reform system is adopted offering a free post-K-12 education system. As the quotation goes, today is the first day of the rest of my life. (Actually, I have no idea who said that quote, so bonus points for the first person who correctly identifies it in the comments.) And so, the same way I did last year and the year before that, it’s time for me to review my summer break here on my blog as I prepare to set foot into the year ahead.
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Tags: 2008, goals, Personal, review, School, senior, summer

This past week has been my last week of summer; I will be returning to school on Monday to start my senior year. It’s taken a full summer, but I’ve finally adjusted to the fact that I’m actually going to be a senior–nevertheless, my first days as a freshman from three years ago still feels like just a few months ago. Interestingly enough, though, I’ve spent more time this past week doing school stuff than anything else.

On Monday afternoon, I arranged for this year’s new Peace Club officers to get together at Starbucks in order to discuss stuff for the new year–goals, procedures, etc. I was actually there as an outgoing officer because I’m no longer the president of the club (though I still hold claim to the title of founding the club almost three years ago, not to mention that I’ll continue to be a member). The club has a new president who has a lot of new ideas, and it’s my hope that the club will keep going even after I graduate.

I am, however, a member of my school’s Leadership class this year. I probably should have joined the class a year or two ago, but my busy class schedule kind of prevented that from happening. This year I’m in the class, and even though my run for the slot of Student Body President last spring was unsuccessful, I’m still in and have jobs to do. They’ve actually given me a few responsibilities: I’m their representative to Aragon’s parent organization (which is no longer a PTSA, but since I still know the people and am familiar with the territory, I’m probably the best pick), one of their representatives to UASB (a group of representatives from the student bodies of all seven high schools in our district), and also going to be in charge of maintaining the new website that they want to put together this year. Leadership met twice this week–first for a few hours on Tuesday morning when we found out our responsibilities and did some getting to know each other activities, etc., and then on Wednesday morning, which was our school’s Freshman Orientation. In addition to helping to put on the orientation, we all got to lead tour groups throughout the school and answer other questions from the freshmen.

Yesterday, Thursday, ended up having me more involved in planning for the school year than I would have anticipated. You see, at this point, I’ve pretty much completed all of the math offered at my school. I did my first year of Algebra in 7th grade, Geometry in 8th grade, second year of Algebra in 9th grade, Pre-Calculus and AP Statistics simultaneously in 10th grade, and AP Calculus BC in 11th grade. I’ve got 40 math credits already on my transcript and no more math available at my school, so I was planning to take Calculus III, a semester continuation of Calculus, at the College of San Mateo in the morning for first semester only, and then transit down to Aragon for the rest of my classes the rest of the day. My classes would be Orchestra, AP Government/Economics, English, Biotech, Law & Society/Psychology, and Leadership.
However, my counselor called me up yesterday morning to give me some bad news: my schedule was impossible to put together. This was mostly due to the fact that so many of my classes were only available during single periods: my CSM math class had to be first period, Orchestra has to be second period, Leadership has to be fifth period, and Law & Society/Psychology has to be sixth period. That left third, fourth, and seventh periods for the other three classes, and none of them were offered during seventh. And so, after doing a lot of debate with myself and my parents, I ended up dropping that math class at CSM (after confirming that I could return the $125 textbook to the CSM Bookstore for a full refund), since in terms of its importance to my grade, my graduating credits, and my personal interests, it was probably the lowest priority. After all, I’ve already got 40 credits worth of math stashed up from the past three years, more than enough to graduate. It does completely change my plans for this school year, but unfortunately, that’s what you have to take when life throws it at you.

So hopefully the fact that I’ve been going through all this school stuff this past week means that my first week of school, next week, will be better and more painless than it has been in prior years.

Tags: CSM, freshmen, Leadership, math, meeting, orientation, Peace Club, Personal, schedule, School, summer

About a month ago, I attended a BarCamp-style conference in San Francisco all about social media, and at the beginning of the conference, everyone was asked to introduce themselves and share what their favorite social networking site was–by far, the most frequent response was Twitter. Indeed, Twitter may very likely become one of the great wonders of the world. Who would have thought that a service that dubs itself as nothing more than a way to answer the eternal question, “What are you doing?” would turn out to be as addictive as it has proven to be. As the proud owner of over 4500 tweets since the end of January 2007, I oughta know.

In my opinion, the real reason that Twitter has been successful (despite the fact that its reputation for reliability is the same as, if not worse than, that of MobileMe) is because it’s the first product that fills a real niche in our lives. All of us, particularly myself included, have an inner urge to share certain tidbits of our lives–just to get them out there, whether or not people are even going to care about them. Tweets don’t have to just be about things that we are doing, but often contain things that we are feeling at a particular time. They’re inspired by the moment. For example, a month ago, on July 14th, I pulled up to my local Apple Store to the point where I was surprised to find a long, snaking, around-the-block line for the iPhone 3G–a full three and a half days after the thing first became available! I thought that the situation was just visually hilarious, and I thought of just so many things that could be said to make fun of it, so just to get it out of my head, I sat myself on the park bench outside of the store, cracked open my laptop with the store’s free wifi, and churned away about a dozen tweets on how crazy the situation was.
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Tags: blog, Blogging, Personal, thoughts, tweets, Twitter

It’s interesting for me to recall my first significant appearance on the internet, but it was exactly five years ago this month, and it was in a very interesting situation. Webmacster87.info did not exist yet, my awareness of phpBB didn’t exist yet, I actually had not even touched IM services yet. However, the past way to share this would be to look at what was happening again.

The month was May 2003, and I was in sixth grade. The big story of the time was that some guy from the Bay Area named Stephen Joseph had sued Kraft/Nabisco because their Oreo cookies contained deadly trans fats, and that they were being marketed towards and sold to children, and furthermore, the public had no awareness of how bad trans fats were. Well, within a week, the suit was retracted, because it had garnered so much press that the claim of the public having no awareness of how bad trans fats are was no longer valid. Nevertheless, that suit did help to raise awareness of the dangers of partially hydrogenated oils, and helped Oreo, Crisco, McDonalds, and many others go trans-fat free, as well as convincing the FDA to add Trans Fat to the nutrition label in 2006.

But what did this have to do with me? Well, at the time that this made the news, in my English class (although at middle school, it was called “Language Arts & Reading”), we ended up being assigned a research paper based on it. We were instructed to do some research on the news and the issues and then write a short essay where we conveyed our opinion on the issue. Now, I personally went about this on the premise that what this Stephen Joseph guy was crazy by wanting to take Oreo cookies out of schools. But, as I went onto his website, Ban Trans Fats, and looked at other things about the case, my mind was changed for me and I found myself completely in favor of banning trans fats.

Not only did I complete my essay and turn it in, but for whatever reason that I do not recall, I had e-mailed Stephen Joseph and sent him a copy of what I wrote. He wrote back with high praise for it, to the point where he wanted to know if he (with my parents’ permission) could post it on his website. He gave it its own dedicated page, where it still is today. And so, when I had the opportunity to share what I wrote with the rest of my class that day five years ago, I had something to brag about.

Looking back, I obviously have somewhat higher standards of writing today than I did then, but that really represents my first free-style persuasive essay (as in the kind where I don’t have to follow “rules” and all that junk), and nowadays, I’m starting to receive awards for some of my written opinions. Plus, it represents my very first little slice of online fame–quite interesting to think about considering how much my life is dependent on the internet today.

Tags: 2003, English, essay, history, internet, memories, middle school, Oreos, Personal, Stephen Joseph, trans fats, Writing

It’s junior year in high school and graduation is *gulp* starting to appear just over the horizon. That means two things for the spring of junior year: tests and college research. I already took the SAT a few weeks ago, and I’m scheduled for the ACT in a few weeks and the SAT Subject Tests in a little over a month, plus I’ll likely retake the SAT in the fall.

As for college research, I’ve been doing that too recently, and am slowly but surely compiling together a list of places that I might be interested in spending four years of my life at. I won’t go into much more detail about this at this point, but you’ll likely be seeing me blog plenty more times about what’s happening with my continuing college search.

However, this week is Spring Break, and thus is the classic week for taking the opportunity to visit and tour college campuses. And since I live in the Bay Area (and cannot stop bragging about it), there’s a bunch of great colleges within driving distance of my house. So this week, I’ll be visiting a couple of colleges in the area, not necessarily because I’m interested in going there (some of them I am taking a good look at, while others are definitely not on my list), but to get the feel of going on a college campus and seeing what there is to see.

Today, I’m going to be visiting UC Berkeley, followed by Santa Clara University tomorrow, University of San Francisco on Wednesday, and Stanford University on Thursday (saving the best for last).

So that’s the majority of my Spring Break this week, which should be interesting…

Tags: Bay Area, colleges, Personal, Spring Break, tests, travelling, visits

EDITOR’S NOTE (What editor?): The purpose of this post is purely to vent. Nothing written in this post should (at this point) be considered as indicative of any future changes or announcements, but is purely for the purpose of me to vent about some stuff that has been on my mind.

I’m sure that if you’re one of the meager few whom have followed PreviewCast, you have noticed that its path has gotten considerably bumpy thus far. And I’ve got to say, I have spent many, many hours over the past weeks and months debating about PreviewCast, its purpose, and its place in life and on the internet.

Now granted, I do have to say this for PreviewCast: when we restarted it in July 2006, we really were moving into uncharted territory and had no idea how it would continue. In short: it was summer, and we were bored, and we wanted to start doing it again. We knew that in 2005, the show had fallen apart after 5 episodes when school started and life started, and so we sort of dealt with somewhat of a tension in terms of whether we would still make it when school started, and whether we would make it past the five episode barrier.

It was to our delightful surprise that this “second generation” of PreviewCast actually started to become successful and built a personality for itself. We consistently produced about thirteen episodes (twelve regular plus one special edition) from mid-July to the end of October, during which we also had one guest (Micheal Cottingham from phpBB who was on episode #006 during the AboutUs.org debacle). Then, we ended up missing about three weeks in November, partially due to the busy part of a school semester, but we re-emerged during Thanksgiving to record two great episodes (and then to completely reinvigorate a broken-apart website by rebuilding it)–including interviews with Leah Culver, and later in December, Adam Christianson. We had a lot of moments to look back on during our 2006 Best-Of episode, #018. Shortly after this, I got started on my second podcast, phpBB Weekly.

We went right on through the end of January, although some tensions did emerge as we started to tackle the question of “randomness” versus “decency.” Nevertheless, looking back, the early part of 2007 reflects some of my favorite PreviewCast memories. We had another hiatus in February due to the couple of weeks that I was sick in bed, but then we sprung back together in March when we had an interview with TalkShoe CEO Dave Nelsen, a special episode seminar at my school, and then a much-beloved April Fools Day parody of Diggnation (complete with the Stewarts Orange & Cream!!!).

We had a few episodes in April, but didn’t get anything done in May (again, busy with school, end of semester, etc.). However, we got going again around Memorial Day weekend, and had a nice set of episodes in June, including episode #035, which featured my favorite back-and-forth argument with Larry: a 30+ minute argument over Safari for Windows. Then, we had two episodes from the day of the iPhone launch–a day which I’ll never forget–in which Robert and I talked about the launch outside our Apple Store on a park bench and I then interviewed the folks in line. Looking back, I was really proud of my interviewing the folks in line, which gave me practice for some episodes some time later. July continued with our one-or-two year celebration, a Matt Mullenweg interview, plus an excellent experience covering WordCamp and interviewing people there. And then, we reached the peak of this running streak with our forty-second episode on August 7th when we covered the iMac/iLife/iWork special event one-hour after the keynote ended.

And that’s when it plateaued. School started. People got busy. I spent many weekends online trying to record an episode, but with no one becoming available. Sometimes, I didn’t really have time to record. We did manage to pump out three episodes in late September–one of which was an amazing interview with Lorelle VanFossen and my most favorite interview ever, but after that, we went back down into the ditches. Our feed was entirely silent for two and a half months. Although he was the co-host, Larry had only been on PreviewCast twice since April. Not that I blamed him–I understand more than anyone that as teenagers, we have a lot happening in our lives, and have significant time constraints to deal with. Nevertheless, it was somewhat irritating to me, and Larry and I exchanged numerous IMs and e-mails over the possibility of ending PreviewCast. But, we never really had the will to do so.

Now, it’s interesting how this plays out–the feelings that I had and still have over ending PreviewCast somewhat reflects the feelings that I had in mid-2006 regarding my commitments with the phpBB MOD Team. I haven’t talked very much about the details on why I left the MOD Team in August 2006, partly because they were somewhat embarrassing circumstances. But it’s important to remember that at that time, I was in a very interesting situation. I had only become familiar with phpBB in June 2004, written my first very basic MOD in October 2004, doing a slightly more substantial MOD in February 2005, and then in November I grabbed an opportunity to apply to the MOD team, and I was accepted. However, I was only 14 years old, a freshman in high school, and with only a small amount of self-taught PHP experience, I was probably the least experienced person on the team and I was certainly the youngest person ever on the team. Plus, I had a very committed life–I look back on my freshman year as such a difficult year for me partially because I really overcommitted myself that year. By the time 2006 came around, I wasn’t being very productive towards the teams, I was having conflicts with other team members, and I was starting not to enjoy it very much. But at the same time, i was very reluctant to quit because there were some ways in which I liked being on the teams, and I certainly enjoyed having the status of being a MOD Team member. Nevertheless, things continued to deteriorate, up until the point where, two days before my sophomore year started in August 2006, I was asked to step down.

Quite frankly, I was only heartbroken about that for about a day. School started, I had recently gotten going with PreviewCast, and quite frankly, sophomore year was so crazy that I probably managed to survive because I wasn’t committed to the teams anymore. I ended up starting phpBB Weekly five months later, and I feel that I make a much better contribution to the phpBB community through that venture.

But I have a very similar feeling with PreviewCast too, and I think Larry does as well. We know that PreviewCast is not doing well. We’re all getting very busy, and as such, general interest and commitment in keeping PreviewCast going has been declining. Larry has not been able to make it to our usual 4:30 PM Eastern recording time on Sunday afternoon since last June (he was on once in late-December for a Boxing Day episode, when we recorded really early in the morning to adjust to his schedule). Even I have had to skip out a number of weeks because of things going on in my life, plus a number of our regular PreviewCasters have had life move on. Plus, we’re all growing older, and a number of things are coming over the horizon. Larry and Skoker are graduating in June (and congrats to them, by the way), and they’ll likely be moving on in life. I have ever-growing commitments in my life, plus my time to start college-searching has begun.

But yet, we really don’t want to let go of PreviewCast for whatever reason, and I really think that it’s because we have never done it for the subscribers, we have never done it for ad revenue, we have never done it for any self-serving reason whatsoever other than the fact that we have enjoyed doing it. PreviewCast has more or less been fun for us. In fact, sometimes when I tell friends or teachers about the things that I do, they often ask me what I do for fun–well, blogging and podcasting is what I do for fun. That is my hobby. And that’s why we have both been so hesitant to end PreviewCast or to disassociate with PreviewCast: we love doing it.

We have tried to restart the show back during Winter Break in December, and we’ve recorded a few shows, including a special Macworld 2008 set of interviews (#049), and an excellent fiftieth episode that we did in January. And then, once again, we have gone dormant. Part of that can be blamed on my recent Sojourn trip which has usurped a significant amount of free time, but then again, I have tried for these past few weeks to assemble PreviewCast episodes, and again have been met by a silent, already-committed internet.

I’m really trying to decide where to go and what to do. I really don’t feel like I can continue to work like this: trying to ask a bunch of people to try to come together for an episode, set aside my own time to prepare and be here to record an episode, and then see no results. At the same time, PreviewCast is a part of two networks that will only let the show stay around if we are somewhat reliable at actually producing content, which has not been happening. I really feel tempted to want to throw in the towel and say that PreviewCast is over due to a lack of commitment. But at the same time, I still want to be able to have some sort of a podcast where I can be able to offer my comments and opinions on tech stuff in a way that I can’t do it on a blog–but I want to be able to do it with someone and be able to do it regularly.

So, at this point I’m frustrated because of where PreviewCast has been going and yet continuing my continuous desire to have some sort of a teen-based tech podcast, regardless of whether or not it’s modeled after PreviewCast. I hope to be able to figure something out soon.

Tags: comments, discussion, episodes, friends, frustrations, guests, history, MOD Team, MODs, opinions, Personal, phpBB, phpBB Weekly, Podcasts, PreviewCast, rant, tech, venting

Good morning everyone, and Happy Valentine’s Day (even if I haven’t been paying any attention to Valentine’s Day this year, for obvious reasons). It’s about 3 AM as I’m writing this, and I’m getting ready to head off for my Sojourn to the Past trip. I posted my itinerary a week ago, and so I’ll be back online again on Sunday, February 24th.

However, as I leave, I thought that I’d leave one final thought, which was from Bill Moyers a month ago.

See you all in a week and a half.

Tags: Bill Moyers, civil rights, history, Lyndon Johnson, Martin Luther King, Personal, Sojourn to the Past, trip, Valentines Day

The following article was written by blogging about blogging extraordinaire, Lorelle VanFossen. She has one of the oldest personal blogs in existence, Taking Your Camera on the Road, which began in 1994. She is also the author of the awesome book “Blogging Tips: What Bloggers Won’t Tell You About Blogging”. She and I talked quite a bit about personal blogging back in September on PreviewCast #044, and so I asked her to contribute some more thoughts on the importance of personal blogging. Enjoy! –Douglas

The Art of Personal Blogging

When I started my first website - an online journal back then - it was a combination of technical articles and stories about our life as we prepared to quit our jobs and take off six months to a year to travel full-time around North American. Fourteen years later, and still living on the road, such a site is called a blog - a personal blog.

A personal blog is the story of your journey. No matter where it takes you.

There are a lot of names and purposes a personal blog can have. It can be about your day-to-day life, a sort of online diary. It can be a place where you can rant and rage without censors. It can be a place to tell your stories. It can be an online classroom where you share your knowledge and expertise.

Which makes it hard to define a personal blog as it can be anything and everything.

However, there is an art to personal blogging that makes it work for you and be the success that you want it to be. It begins by defining what personal success is for you and your personal blog.
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Tags: Blogging, content, goals, guest blog, Lorelle VanFossen, Personal, personal blogging, style, tips

Well, just when you think that you’ve just closed out with the year 2007, the first month of 2008 ends, and suddenly 8% of the year has flown right by. Scary thought. However, January has come and gone for me, and so it’s time for another Webmacster87.info Best Of, for lack of my usual idiotic clever titles. By normal standards, January would be written down as a busy month for me, but by 2008 standards, knowing what’s on the other end of the tunnel this year, January has been mostly a drop in the bucket. Anyway, here we go with my monthly self-reflection.
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Tags: Articles, Best Of, January, Personal, Podcasts, Webmacster87.info