« November 2007 | Main | January 2008 »

December 20, 2007

Headed to Colorado

We're heading to Colorado for the holidays, and even though Dani is fighting a cold (which she graciously shared with Jenni and me), I'm looking forward to it.  I love going back to Colorado.  I'm excited for friends I haven't seen in a while to meet our little girl.  Also, Jenni and I get to enjoy another overnight - the grandparents get their baby fix and we spend an evening on the town, so everybody wins :).  Even the thought of security lines at San Jose Airport is not dampening my spirits, I'm ready to go!

Posted by Scott D. at 11:46 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 16, 2007

Reflections on a sleepless night

I like to keep myself busy.  I've found I'm happiest when I have a pile of things to do and am working through them, ticking off little achievements to fill the day.  I make to do lists for everything and pretty much run my happiest days by them.  Days when I don't have something to do are uncomfortable at best.

This is changing, I'm now realizing.  Little ones don't live their days against a to-do list, they simply are.  Dani, for instance, has been an amazingly good sleeper for months.  Now, she is beginning to have a sleepless night every now and then.  And last night was my night to stay up with her until around 2:30 am.  She wasn't necessarily fussy, she just wasn't tired enough to go to sleep.  So we played, we snuggled, I fed her a little bit more formula (hate for an empty tummy to keep her awake), and we enjoyed living moment to moment for several late hours.

Ironically, I had pointed out to Jenni at 9:30 last night that our Saturday evenings used to be just *beginning* at that time rather than winding down.  I guess I got what I asked for!

Shortly after my pre-arranged "shift" ended, Dani fell asleep and stayed asleep until morning.  It may sound strange, but I'm very relieved that all night long I never felt put-upon or exasperated (which I'm likely to do if I spend time without feeling like I'm really *doing* something).  We really had fun being together. It was an evening where the right thing for me to do was to give myself over to being a parent, so I did.  Selflessness doesn't come naturally to me, and it's being fun to practice.  And having an adorable little girl who giggles as she's falling asleep in your arms makes it just that much more fun.

Posted by Scott D. at 08:37 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 14, 2007

Happy Friday

 

RicAstl.jpg

 

Partly to get the AFF logo off the top of my blog, and partly because there was a time when I did a wicked Rick Astley.  And now you have that damned song in your head, don't you?

Posted by Scott D. at 02:12 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 13, 2007

$500 Million sale for AFF

 

afflogo.gif

 

Wow.  Adult FriendFinder, the leading social network dedicated to sex, just sold.  Actually, its parent company, Various, did.  For $500 Million dollars.  To Penthouse Media.

This was a bit of a tricky sale, I'd have to believe.  For a while, it seemed as though AFF would be unable to generate a viable "liquidity event."  The thinking was that a sex-based social networking site could never go public (this is probably still true).  And Google, Yahoo!, and MSN would never buy it.  And the major players in adult media wouldn't buy it either - it was already too huge and would be too expensive.  I'm honestly not certain why Penthouse bought them.  I'll take a look, but it's possible that Penthouse had already tried duplicating AFF's success and realized just how hard community is to get right.  Or, they negotiated the price on AFF down from what it could have been worth if it had been, say, a dating-based social network ($500 Million for 260 Million registered users and 1.2 Million paying users could seem a bit low, compared to the $1 Billion bandied about for Facebook's 50 Million users).  Or perhaps the stars just aligned for AFF.

Either way, congrats to the good people at Various on the sale.  Way to go!

Posted by Scott D. at 07:08 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 10, 2007

Amy Winehouse - good songs, bad sound

 

amy_winehouse.jpg

 

I broke down and bought Back to Black over the weekend.  What a strange reaction - I really enjoy the songs, the performances and the instrumentation, but I *hate* the sound.  I have to imagine that what I'm hearing was done on purpose.  The album sounds like you are listening to old 45s through crap speakers.  But, honestly, the attempt to recreate a Mowtown sound is incredibly distracting.  The album is chock full of what we would now consider bad EQ work, clipping, and distortion.  Perhaps one could call it "wall of unpleasant noise."  May I get a properly mastered and engineered version of this album, please?

Posted by Scott D. at 02:15 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

December 02, 2007

Loldani

 
Jenni and I have been on a bit of a lolcats kick this weekend.  In a tip of the hat to the Internet phenomenon, I offer a loldani.  May my little girl forgive me when she gets old enough to be embarrassed by this!

Posted by Scott D. at 09:51 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I made the New York Times! Did I really say *that*?

Last week I gave a series of interviews about the release of Yahoo! Widgets 4.5.  This was a huge release for us, offering consumers an entirely new Widget Gallery and introducing powerful developer features including full support for HTML and Flash.  I was excited to see the New York Times pick up the story ("Yahoo adds Flash to widget platform" from November 29, 2007), but the quote bearing my name isn't me at my most eloquent:
 
"What we're seeing is authors are wanting to write movies and video, and that's a new capability that can now add to desktop widgets," Derringer said. A widget can be built that runs assets that already existed in Flash.
 
"Video can now be run inside of a widget," said Derringer. Full HTML support, meanwhile, provides capabilities like flow layout and more standard control.
 
"That can now add"??  Not "that can now be added"?  I fear that I might actually have said that.  Yes, I, the fierce grammarian, really did form that first sentence in a conversation.  I think I might even have said that HTML provides "flow" layout.  Ack!  If I'd heard someone else say such a thing I would have corrected them.  But I'm the one who said it.  In my dreams, I am requoted, sounding a bit more like myself:
 
"We're seeing a powerful trend emerging as authors create Widgets for the Web using video and other rich media.  With our newest release, these authors can now extend that great content to the Desktop," Derringer said. A widget can be built that runs assets that already existed in Flash.
 
"Video can now be run inside of a widget," said Derringer. Full HTML support, meanwhile, provides powerful design capabilities like flowed layout and a standards-based format for creating UI.
 
Alas, I said what I said and there it is in print.  The reporter was perfectly accurate, I'm the one who simply couldn't talk that day.  Good lesson for me, and now I can't wait for the next release in hopes of a shot at redemption.  But, hey, at least my name was spelled right!  And in the end, I did still end up in the New York Times.  That's pretty cool. 

Posted by Scott D. at 09:26 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)


Hosting by Yahoo!