It's that time again! As if SXSW wasn't enough excitement for one week, the NCAA men's basketball tournament kicks off, too. Last year, we had the first Tournament Tweetup. Just a few minutes ago, @sara21210 and @trainofbutter reminded me that it was time for round two.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I proudly present Tournament Tweetup 2. If you are reading this, you are officially invited to join and bring friends! Use the password "tweethearts" and fill out your bracket.

Good luck!

Photo by Daniel Morrison

Over the past few years, I've gotten into collecting screen prints and gig posters. There are some really talented artists creating art prints, usually available in limited numbers, and they're generally really cheap. Framed and hung on the walls, they definitely make my apartment feel classier.

One of the things I'm really looking forward to seeing at SXSW is Flatstock 24 at SXSW Music next week, sponsored by the American Poster Institute. Not only will a bunch of my favorite artists be showcasing their work, but I'm sure I'll discover some new ones, too. Thank goodness I still have plenty of empty space on my apartment walls.

There are some fantastic blogs that keep me up-to-date with the latest prints. My current go-to is OMG Posters!, a great place to learn about what's out there these days.

I can't believe I'm leaving for Austin in four days!

I am so lucky to have such a fantastic family and group of friends. My 30th birthday couldn't have been more fun.

The party started with dinner at Rocket to Venus. Food, drinks, and company were all top-notch.

We moved on to Frazier's where we met up with some Twitter friends. Together, everybody made sure I always had a drink in my hand. We moved to the Hon Bar next. The details get a little blurry from that point on, which means my friends excelled at their mission to make sure I celebrated properly.

My birthday weekend continued Sunday, which was equally amazing. Down at my parents' house, the weather was warm enough to spend some time sitting outside in the sun. My dad slow-cooked ribs on the grill all day and my mom made salmon that could win awards.

I can't imagine a better way to ring in a new decade. I'm so thankful to have friends and family that made my 30th birthday so special.

Here's the description for the YouTube video below:

"The leaders of five major magazine companies—Charles H. Townsend, Condé Nast; Cathie Black, Hearst Magazines; Jack Griffin, Meredith Corporation; Ann Moore, Time Inc.; and Jann Wenner, Wenner Media—talk about the vitality of magazines as a medium.

The 'Magazines, The Power of Print' campaign will launch in nearly 100 magazines, reaching 112 million readers per month, to promote the strength of—and consumer commitment to—magazines."

You have got to be kidding me. Even Saturday Night Live wouldn't make a parody commercial about out-of-touch magazine executives this over-the-top.

My first thought was, "That's weird. I don't recall a mob of bloggers or pundits ever predicting the impending death of magazines." I don't work for a magazine, but I've been a passionate observer and student of media for over a decade. Right away the basis of this entire campaign seemed fishy. I did a little digging. You know, using the power of the Internet.

Here are links to the articles and posts cited in the video:

• "Magazines are dying and so are their readers." This is from a very brief AdFreak article published last summer about a Vermont Department of Health campaign against teen smoking. It sounds like they weren't fans of this particular anti-smoking campaign. The article had nothing to do with the future of magazines. [Link]
• "End of the written word?" This appears to be a speculative piece written in The Futurist back in 2007. I can't tell you more because it would seem the article is only available, ahem, in the print edition.
• "The end of magazines as we know them?" This comes from a Huffington Post article written by Cable Neuhaus in 2005. In this speculative piece, Neuhaus spends time explaining he's a "magazine nut", then ponders a possible grim scenario for the future of magazines. Please note that it was written five years ago. In Internet years, that's epic. That was before Twitter, iPhones, Kindles, and iPads. Facebook was a little over a year old. YouTube was three months old. While an interesting thought-piece in its time, this article has little contextual relevance in 2010. [Huffington Post]
• "Days growing darker for media." This is an Advertising Age article that appears to be available only in the print edition. A Facebook conversation seems to indicate that this article was published in 2008.
• "Magazines are over." Does anybody know what the blog 4 Inch Heels Only is? This is the first I've heard of it. The full title of this post is, "Who cares? Magazines are over" and appears to be a poorly-written, catty, vitriolic, uninteresting gossip post about the inside workings of the magazine industry, posted in March 2009. It's completely irrelevant to the above campaign. [Link]

That's it? Three irrelevant or outdated articles and two that are only available within the pages of print publications? That's what has these magazine executives so frightened and is the basis for this $90 million dollar campaign? (Actually it's estimated at over $90 million worth of ad space, according to the Wall Street Journal.)

"We felt it was time to replace the myths with what lies at the core of all great journalism: the facts." For journalists, they sure didn't check their sources on this one.

Not only is the purpose of this campaign mystifying, but its entire basis lacks credibility. These publishers should be embarrassed. The only thing they've done is reveal themselves as staggeringly out-of-touch. It's a baffling misstep.

The problem at the heart of their "Internet vs. magazines" argument is that they've incorrectly labeled the Internet as a medium. The Internet is a delivery tool for media, like the printing press. Twitter and Facebook have been dubbed "social media" which live under the larger umbrella of blogs and Internet news networks known as "new media". But the Internet itself is simply a tool to transmit the information.

To think of the Internet simply as a new medium is to completely misunderstand what the Internet is. It is a vehicle that re-defines all the parameters of publishing. Magazine industry leaders appear to not understand the gravity of that idea. You can hear it in the first few seconds of the video.

"Heard about the Internet? Google? Facebook? YouTube? Twitter?" Yes, but those are example of things you can find and interact with online, not a description of the Internet. The things you could find on the Internet were very different ten years ago, and I'm sure they'll be very different ten years from now. But they are not the Internet. The Internet is the method by which those services are delivered. The examples they give happen to be delivered through a web browser. The scope of the Internet is much larger than what the execs in the video seem to grasp.

The real discussion is this: In order to stay competitive in a digital world, magazines are going to have to find a way to deliver the immersive experience of their analog versions on digital platforms. That means using the Internet as a delivery tool. But the technology hasn't completely arrived yet. Apple's iPad is the first step into a new generation of digital publishing platforms, but it's still mostly untested terrain. The Kindle works well for black-and-white text-only books, but full-color magazines don't translate well.

As long as digital publishing is in its experimental phase, print magazines are safe. I don't think anyone has seriously argued against that idea. Suggesting that there is an army of smug "magazines are dead" bloggers is more than a gross over-simplification, it's simply untrue. Just look at the sources this campaign chooses to quote.

Here's the print ad, featuring Michael Phelps.

Making sense of the copy in this ad is frustrating. Let's explore a few items.

First of all, this "surfing" vs. "swimming" metaphor is absurd. It would seem that nobody involved with this campaign has ever been surfing or seen someone surf. There's a great deal of swimming involved.

"A new medium doesn't necessarily displace an existing one."

Okay, I could agree with that. We still have theatre, radio, books, movies, and television coexisting side by side, just like the above video says. Books are just beginning to enter the digital realm. But what do the other examples have to do with print media? Are magazines competing with movies, TV, and radio? I don't understand the point this ad is trying to make.

Furthermore, magazines are a subset of print media, alongside books and newspapers. Videos, news, photos, music stores, social networks, and blogs are subsets of digital media on the Internet. This ad compares magazines, a particular kind of print media, to all digital media. No, the Internet hasn't disrupted magazine sales, nor was it designed to. So, what exactly is the point here? Why is the magazine industry trying so hard to defend itself when it's not even under attack? Bloggers and pundits with even a little credibility (not to mention common sense) predict the evolution of magazines, not death.

The assertion that bloggers "continue to predict the death of the magazine and any other media to anyone who will listen" would be outrageously silly if I could figure out what it means. Bloggers are predicting the death of all media? Is that what you're trying to say? How does that make sense? It's ominous sounding, but frustratingly vague.

"Even in the age of the Internet... the appeal of magazines is growing." Well, yes. Why wouldn't it? The success of one is not necessarily tied to the other.

I don't understand the goal of this campaign. Why is there a need for magazines to assert their strength? And why now?

It's clear that these magazine industry leaders are frustrated and scared over something they don't completely understand. But how could they have missed the mark so badly? Why didn't they hire someone to explain the situation to them better? Were they purposefully mislead?

How can they not understand that their future includes a place within digital media? Television has a place. Movies have a place. Music has a place. Books have a place. Newspapers have a place. Guess who else has a place? Can you guess? If you can't, you're probably running a major magazine publishing company.

I love magazines. Most everybody I know loves magazines. I get a fresh stack each month. I read them over lunch, in waiting rooms, and take them with me when I travel. I've learned about new places to visit, new authors to read, new movies to see, new albums to buy. I've stumbled into many of my passions because of magazine articles. It's crazy to think magazines are dying. You can take one look at a newsstand in any major city and know that. But would I subscribe to twice as many if they came to me electronically, just like the rest of my information? You bet I would. In a heartbeat.

In the next few decades, more and more of our "traditional" media will move to the Internet, and they'll all coexist in the same digital ecosphere. We will still have physical books printed on paper and movies in theaters. We will still have printed magazines. But I also think we'll have digital options and alternatives we can't even imagine right now.

So, what does a $90 million ad campaign asserting your already well-established relevance get you? A silly, poorly-written, baseless, out-of-touch two-minute video. Apparently, fact-checking costs extra.

To Charles H. Townsend, Cathie Black, Jack Griffin, Ann Moore, and Jann Wenner, I say this: Relax. You've got this all wrong. You're jumping at shadows. Bloggers are your friends. We buy and subscribe to your magazines. We write about articles we read. We promote you through social channels. And when you adopt new technology, we celebrate you. In short, we're your biggest fans. I don't know where you got your information, but it's incorrect.

We're on the cusp of a whole new generation of publishing. It's clear that magazines are here to stay, but you need to get a better grasp on the digital tools at your disposal. Now is the time for innovation and experimentation. If you're too busy asserting yourself for unclear reasons, you'll miss out on all the fun.

Photo by Flickr user ragnar1984

I turned six on March 6, 1986. I was fascinated with how often the number six was involved with my birthday that year, probably because I had recently figured out numbers and patterns.

Here in Maryland, we often have our first spring-like days around my birthday, and in 1986 it was warm enough to have my birthday party outside.

It was a Smurfs-themed birthday party. There were Smurfs plates, Smurfs cups, and a plastic Smurfs tablecloth with a waxy texture that, for some reason, I can still remember clearly.

There was a gang of six-year-olds running around the backyard. We played Pin the Tail on the Donkey outside under the warm March sunlight, the game hung on an outside wall. My parents had decorated the backyard patio with streamers and balloons, some even in the nearby trees, which to my six-year-old eyes seemed outrageous and exciting. That might have also been the year we set up plastic bowling pins and converted a hallway into a bowling lane, but that game might be from another childhood birthday that I'm blending into this one.

Though it was Smurfs-themed party, with almost all decorations and accessories following a Smurfy blue color scheme, I was adamant that I have a green birthday cake. I think my mom tried to talk me out of it, but I was resolute. (Again, I might be plucking that detail from another birthday, but I'm pretty sure it's right.)

24 (!) years later, we're experiencing a mix of rain and snow mix today. But right on schedule, the temperatures are expected rise into the 50s with sunny skies on my birthday this Saturday. I'm not sure why the first signs of spring seem to usually coincide with my birthday (or, let's be honest, everybody's early-March birthday in Maryland), but I'll take it. It seems like a good way to kick off a new year and decade.

I'm not sure what made me think about my sixth birthday, but it was definitely one of my favorites. I think it set the tone for what I expected out of all subsequent birthdays. While I won't be playing Pin the Tail on the Donkey this weekend (mostly because I couldn't figure out how to fit that into my plans without seeming like a big weirdo), I'm excited about warmer weather and a weekend spent with friends and family.

It was almost exactly one year ago when I wrote a long post about the absurd blackout restrictions that cripple the otherwise excellent MLB.TV service from Major League Baseball. Here's a quick summary:

MLB.TV streams all Major League Baseball games online for a flat fee for the season. It's $100 for the standard service and $120 for MLB.TV Premium, which includes DVR-like controls and other extra features. It ties into the MLB At Bat iPhone app and its upcoming iPad counterpart. As a big baseball fan, I'd happily pay the $120 and give up my cable box. Unfortunately, because of agreements and contracts with cable and satellite providers, Internet access to local games is blacked out. That means, as a resident of Baltimore, I can't have live access to Orioles or Nationals games. They are only available on MASN, a cable-only channel. Fans like me, are forced to subscribe to Comcast in order to watch the games.

Each year, MLB.TV takes huge strides forward. The games are in HD, fantasy baseball alerts help keep track of players in real time, and multiple games can be tiled on the screen at once.

At Apple's event in January, MLB demoed a new version of MLB At Bat for the iPad, formatted for the tablet screen. If you're an MLB.TV Premium subscriber, you can get access to all the game video streams right on your iPad, along with stat overlays, league news, and a boatload of other cool features. Except for your home team. You still need to subscribe to old-fashioned cable to do that.

Oh, and MLB.TV still only lets you watch regular season games. The playoffs and World Series are subject to blackout restrictions.

Sadly, I don't see these antiquated agreements between MLB and television providers expiring or being broken any time soon. A year after my long rant, none of the policies have changed. This is a huge moneymaker waiting to happen for everyone involved, but the networks and cable providers have strong-armed the MLB into restricting the way games are seen online. Do they not understand that services like MLB.TV are the future? Or are they still afraid of the not-so-new-anymore streaming video technology? Why are they so reluctant to embrace it?

In this decade, more and more people will turn to the Internet for movies and television. Sports, with the exception of the wonderful and free NCAA March Madness online stream from CBS, have some serious catching-up to do.

Yes, MLB.TV is an excellent option for fans who don't live in their favorite teams' markets, but all us hometown fans are out of luck. For another season, the $120 I was ready to spend will remain in my wallet. And I know I'm not alone.

Here I go! In five days, I turn 30. Sure, it's just an arbitrary number, but we only get a few birthdays that turn over both numbers on the odometer, and that seems like reason enough to celebrate. Allow me to get schmaltzy for a post.

I'm really looking forward to my thirties. Part of me has the optimistic idea that we spend our twenties figuring things out, making mistakes, and learning what we want out of our lives. Then, in our thirties, we take everything that we've learned and apply it and build the lives we want. Maybe we can afford to put it together a little better. Maybe we're more focused. Or maybe this is a completely romantic view that has little chance of matching up with real life.

Of course it's a romantic view. Life rarely works out the way we expect, and of course there will still be a billion things to figure out. But, much in the same way I have a really good feeling about 2010 so far, I think the next ten years are going to be a decade of adventure. I want to travel more. I want to write more. I'm not sure my 20-year-old self would believe that I'd be in grad school for writing. I can't even remember what my expectations were ten years ago, or if I had any. Right now, I have no idea where I'll be in ten more years. Will I spend my thirties working a series of jobs I don't necessarily care for just to support my writing and digital media interests? How much will I have achieved? Will my goals have completely shifted?

It's I guess there's only one way to find out. From where I sit now, it seems like a world of possibilities.

This semester, I'm taking a class on electronic publishing. As part of the class, we set up blogs. No big sweat for me, but I was surprised how many people in my class didn't really know what a blog was, and a lot had never tried to set one up.

Sometimes I forget that my Tweeting, blogging, podcasting friends and I are a small fraction of Internet users. It's nice to get a reality check every now and then.

I decided to write my blog about the future of electronic publishing. We are allowed to write about anything we want, but I thought I'd try my hand at something more focused than I'm used to, just to see what happens.

So, if you'd like to follow along with my thoughts about the past, present, and future of publishing, I invite you to check out Dinosaurs and Fireworks.

• Discovery - Monday, April 5, 6:27 a.m.
• Atlantis - Friday, May 14, 2:28 p.m.
• Endeavour - Thursday, July 29, 7:51 a.m.
• Discovery - Thursday, September 16, 11:57 a.m.

Ever since I was a little space geek, I've dreamed of seeing a shuttle launch in person. In the spirit of the Year of Adventure, coupled with the fact that 2010 will see the last shuttle missions, I'm adding a launch to my list of things to do this year. I'm not sure which one yet, I'm not sure how I'll get to Florida, I'm not sure where I'll stay, and I'm not sure how I'll make it jive with my work schedule, but I'm not letting the shuttle program end without having seen at least one launch.

Have you ever been to a shuttle launch? Do you have any tips?

In order to track his progress and keep himself motivated, he takes a shirtless photos of himself each Friday and posts it to Facebook for everyone to see, along with the latest scale reading. Bold stuff.

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We're still in the middle of the Winter Games in Vancouver. I admit, I was pretty cynical about the games when they first started. I thought I didn't see the appeal anymore. I skipped the opening ceremony. Then, while working on other things around the apartment, I the TV on in the background and caught some of the Nordic combined events. About an hour later I realized I was still watching. Not only that, but I was into it.

By the time the puck dropped for the U.S./Canada hockey game last Sunday, I was an Olympic fan. I might not be obsessing over medal counts (yet), but I know there are still great events to watch before the closing ceremonies on Sunday.

Apple's iPad

Part of why I love my grad school program so much is its exploration of literary publishing, including electronic publishing. The iPad, aside from being Apple's next cool thing, has a tremendous amount of potential for unknown or independent writers (like me) to get their writing into the hands of readers, potential fans, and possible publishers. The rules in literary publishing world are being re-written, and I think Apple's new product is going to help jump-start the industry, or at least give it a healthy push into the digital age. Ten years from now this will all seem so primitive and rudimentary, but for those of us here on the frontier, it's a really, really exciting time.

Plus, it's really cool-looking.

The World Cup

Two major sports events in one year? Oh yeah.

It's pretty hard to not get excited about the World Cup. I have friends who usually couldn't care less about sports, but when it's time for the World Cup, they're glued to the TV right there with me. It's much more than just a series of soccer matches, it's a major global event.

All over the world, businesses close down. People put aside differences and drop arguments, even if only temporarily. People across the socioeconomic spectrum are all connected to this one event. It transcends race, borders, and class. It settles grudges and awakens new ones. It's something tangible that brings people together in ways that war, religion, or ideology never could. Even if only for a short time, something amazing happens during the World Cup.

If you've never followed a World Cup before, (and in the U.S., that might be likely), you owe it to yourself to watch this summer.

March 12-21: South by Southwest

This is going to be my first out-of-town adventure of the year, and my first SXSW. I've signed up for sensory overload via platinum badge, and I can't wait. Between the film, music, and interactive sessions, I'll have no shortage of things to write about, photos to take, and general inspiration for the rest of the year. I'm really, really pumped.

May 7-9: MaxFunCon

About a month and a half of rest after SXSW, I'm heading to Lake Arrowhead for MaxFunCon! Hosted by Jesse Thorn, it's going to be a solid weekend of "cooking, crafts, education, and s'mores" featuring the likes of John Hodgman, Andrew WK, Maria Bamford, Jonathan Coulton, Marc Maron, and more.

Unfortunately, their website is down right now because the data center had a fire drill which set off the sprinklers in the server room. Oops.

We just finally started to thaw out from the Snowpocalypses! (Snowpocalypsi? Snowpocalypso?) And now they're predicting something in the Baltimore area called a "snow hurricane", which sounds as terrifying as it does silly.

Tonight, I did what I did during the last snowfall and checked in with Foot's Forecast (a site that really needs its own iPhone app, if only for my own personal convenience). Forecaster Foot and his weather posse (if they don't call themselves that, they should) are really good at delivering the facts with just the right about of humor, and forego the sensationalism in which our local TV affiliates seem to indulge. (Example: "IT IS STILL SNOWING DEATH FLAKES FROM CLOUDS OF DOOM, WITH A BLIZZARD FROM SATAN'S FREEZER ON THE WAY, AND THIS TIME IT'S COMING AFTER YOUR CHILDREN. More after these messages." I'm paraphrasing.)

The bottom line of the forecast is this: Baltimore might catch the southernmost tip of this next storm which has the potential to be pretty severe north and east of the city. We might catch somewhere in the neighborhood of five inches, but nobody really knows for certain right now. The National Weather Service issued a Winter Storm Watch that starts tomorrow night and extends to Thursday night.

Compared to what we just went through, five inches of snow doesn't seem like much.

According to AccuWeather.com, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and New York better hold on tight:

Stay tuned, folks. This just got real-er. Again.

2010 is going to be packed with trips, global events, new technology, great sports, and lots of cool stuff I'm sure I don't even know about yet.

But it all starts right here, at home in Baltimore.

March 6 - My 30th Birthday

I will be 30 years old in less than two weeks.

I just had to see that sentence written out. Granted, this is much more of an adventure for me than it is for anybody else, but it's a big event nonetheless. Truthfully, I'm pretty stoked to be entering my thirties. It's like reaching a new level, a place where I can take all the things I learned in my twenties and apply to a brand-new, awesome decade. Some people might call it "growing up", but I prefer my description.

April 9 - Opening Day for the Orioles

Another year, another baseball season for my Baltimore Orioles. No, we're not expecting this to be a record-shattering year for the birds. No, most fans aren't making plans for the playoffs. Many people doubt the team will even have a winning record. But, season after wretched season, we have Opening Day, the day when we all rally behind the Orioles, when the slate is wiped clean and a brand-new baseball season stretches out before the team and the city of Baltimore, they day we halfway expect for all the tumblers to fall into place, for the team to come together as a cohesive unit, and rack up the wins. Even if we lose our optimism for every proceeding game, even if Camden Yards is mostly empty in August, we'll always have the magic of Opening Day.

Grad School

In May, I will finish my first year in the Creative Writing and Publishing Arts MFA program at the University of Baltimore. So far, I love this program. It's motivating me to write more and sparking all kinds of great ideas. I'm channeling my thoughts and ideas about the future of publishing into honest-to-goodness schoolwork. Plus, I'm surrounded by talented and friendly people who provide a seemingly limitless supply of creative fuel.

That's Krafty on the bass and me on guitar, singing.

Whether or not it was welcome to everyone, 2010 started off as a very adventurous for pretty much everybody in the mid-Atlantic region when we received more snow in a single season than we've ever seen before. Harrowing as it sometimes was, it was still exciting to see three feet of snow stacked on everything in the city, and sidewalks dug out in long ice canyons along the road.

There was something thrilling about being stuck in the neighborhood, weathering the storm. When the sun came out, so did the people of Hampden who walked their dogs, went sledding down 37th street, and packed the bars and restaurants. Most people, it seemed, were making the best of it. So many people found fun in the face of an emergency. Though it took me a week to move my car from the ski slope that used to be my street (which also meant a week away from work without pay), it was nice to have time to spend watching the storm, with friends, at the bars, or a combination of all three.

A week after the storm, I played a reunion show with my close friends Josh and Matt in our old college band, Three Track Mind. It was amazing to play the old songs, our first show in six years, and catch up with a huge number of friends who braved the ice to see us perform. It was a wonderful, touching night all around.

Last night, I looked at my calendar and was astonished at the exciting chain of events still to come. So, I'm officially declaring 2010 the Year of Adventure, and I plan on using this site as a way to document as much of it as I can through blog posts, photos, podcasts, and video.

Over the next few days, I'll highlight some of the big events I'm looking forward to. I was going to put it all into one post, but I realized halfway through that it was going to be a really long one.

Are you having a Year of Adventure, too?