It has begun. In response to the “Stop Online Piracy Act,” many sites are raising their voice today, and as of 1:30AM EST, the two biggest I’ve seen are Google and Wikipedia.

More information on SOPA. (The only live Wikipedia page)

Google’s Call to Action

I live in Indiana, and while I know some New Yorkers now, I only knew one in 2001. Like a lot of people, I was left feeling helpless and confused on that day. I worked at a comic store in Indianapolis at the time. I opened the store at 10 AM, and like most mornings, woke up at 9:00, showered, jumped in my car, and drove straight there, listening to something on CD. I didn’t listen to the radio, then either, or I am sure I would have heard about the planes hitting the towers. So I drove to work that day like any other, completely oblivious. I arrived at the store and turned on the small television on the counter. This was the only store with a TV, and for some reason I felt like watching it. I flipped through the channels a few times, and was a bit confused about what I was seeing. At first I thought I caught some mid morning Die Hard knock off, and that I was only getting one channel. Once I realized what was happening I was on the phone with my mom, and trying to make sense of everything.

While I had spent plenty of time cavorting with the counter culture, I had remained fairly apathetic toward current events, politics, and the world in general. I didn’t know who was responsible for the attack, or why it was happening. Honestly, I didn’t even know who Osama Bin Laden was, save a face on a most wanted poster that had been hanging on the wall where I worked while at Ball State University.

I spent most of the day sitting on the curb. No one came in that day to buy comics. I sat there and watched as cars lined up to buy gasoline and wondered if there would be a draft for this war the media was talking about. I spent the day alone, finishing out my shift, then returned home to my friends where we all sat stunned as the only person I knew from New York called everyone he knew from the other room.

A decade later, as I watched the memorial and caught the occasional Facebook update, I attempted to explain to my son what had happened ten years ago. He seemed to understand on the surface, but in a manner that appeared to be like my memories of history lessons. I felt thankful that I am able to tell my son about this, that he and his brother have a full family to protect him and love him. He will grow up knowing the importance of acceptance, remembrance, and the strength people have to carry on and persevere.

I can’t imagine what some people lost that day, but today I remembered what I have.

The mid-west froze in it’s slow paced tracks last week as, “Icepocalypse 2011″ slid it’s way across the country.  Quickly followed up Snowpocalypse, meteorologists now turn their gaze toward something far, far more sinister.

Aprils’ Reign of Showers.
“I’ve already got me a pontoon boat.” said James “Jamie” Kurnch of Mooresville, Indiana. I use it down on Lake Cataract every summer – way I figger, I’ll just be getting drunk sooner!”

Not all residents are as laid back. “I DON’T HAVE A BOAT, OMG WTF WILL I DO TO SAVE MY TRENDY RESTAURANT!” wrote twitter user @winecellar1977. To translate, we went to local president of social media expert science lab, and mayor of 93 local foursquare locations, Kenny Savage, and he gave us this totally unrelated quote.

“Many have come to me, saying… how will you cope with the intrusion on your bohemian lifestyle,  and attend all of those networking events?! Let’s just say… someone owns some special twitter handles, and has already started working on something special for the future of the web.”

How will the world cope?! Time will only tell. Be sure to come back for our next report:

“Pilgramage – how May’s flowers will bring us home.”

I borrowed this from Paleo Future - an awesome blog. Please check it out.

This year I finally figured it all out.

After bringing home the Sony Bravia and hooking it up to the Mac Mini, I quickly realized that the mini was not powerful enough to run everything I wanted to run. I sat dumbfounded at the unintentional mess I had created.

My PlayStation 3 quickly rose to the top of my list of solutions. I loved that I didn’t have to worry about ram or processor speed – it was an all-in-one device that required little mental overhead. I started looking at it as a total replacement for the mini, but found myself wondering if the solution would be worth the process of trans-coding the 200 + gigabytes of media and installing a new hard drive in the PS3.

Then I got distracted with a new toy.

On my birthday Apple gave me an iPad. I had to pay for it, but it came out the same weekend as my birthday, so I indulged.

The wi-fi only media player kept me distracted long enough to realize I didn’t necessarily need to experience everything on the TV. I loved watching movies in bed or on the couch, but as the apps rolled out and all of my new viewing options were presented, I realized I still like to watch TV on the big screen in my living room. This got my mind racing once again, and I decided it was time to upgrade to an iMac and just get this taken care of.

However, I never bought the iMac.

The mini was quickly becoming nothing but a receiver for my Macbook Pro, thanks to Airfoil from Rogue Amoeba. I looked back at my mini with more frustration, and I started thinking about the PS3 again. Hulu Plus was released, and I was excited to see it available for the PS3, as well as the iPad and iPhone.

“All I want is a box to get everything I want from – is that so hard?” I thought to myself.

Then it happened. I bought a new Apple TV.

I started writing this post before it was out. It was actually just a rumor. It is crazy how

1. I take so long to finish blog posts, and
2. How quickly everything can change.

I bought it on a whim. I had a gift card and picked it up at the Indianapolis Apple Store. I recommend you get yours from the Mac Experience, though.

I took it home and was streaming video from the mini instantly. I wasn’t surprised that the experience was much better than using the mini on the TV, so I quickly retired the mini to a new home under a chair and began enjoying it’s new life as a dedicated iTunes box.

I thought again about the iMac, but decided to upgrade the drive in the mini, keeping my music on my Macbook Pro. Airplay made it extra easy and removed my need for Airfoil, although I still use it on occasion.

What I hadn’t realized, but should have, is that Apple would change everything by updating iOS a short time later. The heavens opened and I witnessed it.

The holy trinity of Home entertainment = the iPhone, the iPad, the Apple TV.

It finally happened. I can stream from any device. Video, audio -  anything.  Access to all of my media, and more importantly, control. I can pull media up on my ipad and quickly toss it to the living room, I can play something right off of my phone, I can control 2 media libaries. It is so simple, it was always simple. I just needed Apple to connect the dots.

I’ll be keeping an eye out for new apps that can take advantage of the AppleTV Airplay connection. I’d love to see some full screen games with the iPad or phone as controller.

I have friends who have told me they are “just getting a mac mini” instead of an Apple TV, because they “will have a entire computer.” I tell them again and again, get an Apple TV, and save your computer for computing.

You’ll be glad you did.

I must say, it was a worthwhile experience. I definitely recommend watching the original before you go, as the film is not only full of eye candy and epic action, but nods to the original film as well. The plot is what you’d expect from the trailers, and not much more, but I left wanting more; which tells me Disney has definitely set Tron up for a new franchise.

My only criticism is the Jeff Bridges CGI. I’ll try to not to spoil anything – let’s just say that sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t.

As I mentioned, it is worth seeing at the iMax if you can. This was the first feature I’ve enjoyed in that experience, and I’ll look to do it again. The 3D in the film is tasteful and enveloping, and helps bring the viewer into the new, updated world of The Grid.

The Indianapolis State Museum iMax is raffling off a working vintage Tron arcade game as well during the run, so be sure to enter the contest, and throw a big Tron themed party if you win.

In 2006 I screwed everything up by buying a Mac Mini. I intended to use it to stream media to a TV, only I forgot one thing.

I had no TV.

It would be more accurate to say that I did not have a decent television. I was aware that connecting a computer to a tube television was a terrible idea, but having recently purchased my first home, I needed a computer more than I needed a large flat panel LCD television.

When I brought the Mac Mini home, I ran all sorts of cables, bought a DVI splitter, and tried just about everything I could think of before I realized my obviously poor judgment.

I should have bought an iMac, or simply saved up for a new TV.

Choosing the Screen

Eventually I made right my mistake, and took the plunge. In 2008 I bought a 42 inch Sony Bravia. I rushed home, tore open the box and hooked everything up. Once I made my TV purchase the floodgates of new HD awesome and apps and online video amazing-ness started to pour out of the world. I downloaded the Hulu Desktop App, Plex, Boxee, and everything else.

After all of this it became quite apparent that my Mac Mini was three years old, and not able to provide the horse power required to run everything I wanted it to run, and I was really starting to look at the PS3 and blu-ray with envy.

I still wasn’t happy. The pieces were there, but the performance wasn’t. It was then I started to consider the (at the time) rumored new Apple TV.

Next Week – how I got my content organized and omnipresent (sorta).

I recently bought a new AppleTV, but this post was originally drafted when the new AppleTV was merely a rumor. Henceforth, I’ve had to adjust it many times. Here it is though, part 1/3 of my home entertainment saga.

Many moons ago I saw the future, and the future was a flat panel TV in my living room hooked up to a small footprint computer. Providing stunningly intuitive access to all of my music, movies, TV shows, pod-casts, photos, and news – it made all of my entertainment dreams come true.

I’d like to share the story of how I have finally arrived in this future.  I have noticed a common thread of threes in this experience, so I will be breaking this post up into a three part series, one a week until Christmas!

When I wrote “many moons” earlier, well… that was 2003 – the year that I first bought an iPod and the year I truly became an Apple geek. I vividly remember standing  on my back porch speaking on my Sony Ericsson cellphone (it could use iSync over bluetooth to keep my contacts up to date!)

“I can’t wait until this is all in one device…” I told my good friend Matt Mansueto.

Looking back, I should have bought Apple stock the moment those words left my lips. Seven years later I still don’t own Apple stock – but I have owned many iPods, three iPhones, an iPad, a MacBook, a MacBook Pro, and a Mac Mini.

These three posts aren’t all about Apple gadgets, though (maybe only 90%). Next week I’ll let everyone in on how I did it wrong, but ended up right.

Well, the cobbler’s kids and all that – last week my website went down.

I’ve been going through a process throughout the last year of consolidating some various web properties I own, shutting down experiment sites, consolidating blog posts, setting up new hosting, and transferring domains. Kind of a year long housecleaning project that I have placed on myself.

Well, that is all well and good, except that last week I really screwed up something. I forgot to renew brianwyrick.com.

It seems stupid, it seems obvious, and believe me, I swore at myself many times that day, but here is how it happened.

1) e-Mail

I have not used brianwyrick.com for email in quite some time – I have however, traditionally had a catch all address for this domain that I monitored and let SPAM fall into. I registered brianwyrick.com almost 10 years ago – when I registered it, lord knows what email address I used. During my cleaning, I moved the DNS for this site to my shiny new DreamHost account. When I logged in back in May, I noticed that I still had some time on my registration, but my intent would be to move the registration at a later date. I should have moved it then.

After deciding to move the DNS to DreamHost, I opted to set up a Google Apps account for all mail going to @brianwyrick.com – at my old host I had an in-box set up and mail was forwarded to my main address, and I had just completed moving all of the leftover mail to that account.

Now, here is where the first problem arises – in order to complete the gMail set up, I must prove I own the domain – in order to prove I own the domain, I must upload a file to the site – I do that, but realize my DNS is still propagating, and Google is not catching the new site yet – so I decide to come back later and do that. The only problem? I don’t.

Since I don’t really use brianwyrick.com for email, I don’t really mind not getting all of the SPAM – I realized later that I have yet to complete that, so I do (If memory serves, there was an account I needed to adjust that was using brianwyrick.com) I finish the Google Apps set up and set my forward and life goes on, hunky dory.

I don’t remember when all of this happened, and I don’t know if it they really did, but I will give Register.com the benefit of the doubt that this entire time they were sending renewal emails to an email address at brianwyrick.com.

2) Register.com Lets me down – hard.

It was my fault – I assume they where sending me emails. I didn’t get them. I didn’t renew my domain. It expired. I didn’t notice until I when to my site and it was gone. I will admit that, but here is what I wish would have happened.

Register.com had to get a message back saying the email had failed. They have other ways to contact me. I wish they would have called or sent a letter. If they has sent a letter, it honestly would have went to the wrong address, since my information was so out of date. I would have gladly updated that, had they attempted at any time in the past few years to get in touch about updating it.  I realize that it isn’t their fault they had bad information, but I would think they would want to attempt to keep it current. Hell, they could have just checked brianwyrick.com and found a million ways to contact me.

3) The chat

I’ll admit a bit of a panic fell over me when I saw my site was down – I immediately attempted to transfer to DreamHost. A few minutes later, when my wits came about me, it occurred to me that I would not be able to do that, so I logged into Register.com to renew.

I forgot how expensive they are. Goodness.

I logged into the chat to talk to a sales rep and asked directly if I could be waived the 25 dollar reinstatement fee and if I could register my domain for 9.95 instead of 35 dollars. I also asked if I could get free private registration, since that was the deal at DreamHost. I was told no.

I pressed until I got the domain for 35, without the reinstatement fee and opted for no private registration (I will be transferring to DreamHost when I can). Now my site is up and running again and and all is well, or so I thought.

4) Google results gone.

I’ve had my site since before I cared about search – but for the past 5 or so years, I have used my name and Google as a play ground for SEO. Today I searched for my name and found that my site was already blown away and gone. This was terribly disappointing, and I am glad that google has already re-indexed my site – but as you can see from the screen shot above, all was not well over the weekend.

The Lesson

This has been a great way to get down to the root of the problem I had, and honestly a great experiment in what happens when sites fail, and how fast search positions can be lost and (hopefully) be re-gained. I would still like to know why it takes Google so long to re-index 301 re-directs though. Anyone know?

In 2008, I went to the State Fair.

I saw many things.

I saw many things I wanted to post to Twitter.

I had intended these to be tweets from the state fair, but things where happening too rapidly, so I spoke them into Jott.  Now it is 2009, and another trip has been made.  This year I was too busy witnessing the sheer joy of a 4 year old on the Tilt a Whirl to pay any attention to the other ridiculousness, so I will share my observations from the past.

Anyway, here we go, love ‘em or leave ‘em.

“Hey fair band – we don’t need the bios of the whole band, save it for your Wikipedia page” – This actually turned into a funny idea for my wife’s “Save it for your blog” shirts.

“Fat kids at the fair.” - Enough Said.

“Favorite part of the fair? They guy yelling “HEY!” at a crowd of thousands of people and expecting his friend to respond.”

“I am so glad that we picked High School Cheerleader day to come to the fair.”

“A lady just referred to the giant pig in the pig barn as “some sausage”"

“Excuse me sir, you weigh 450 lbs, easy. Maybe the Mountain Dew isn’t such a good idea.”

“High School kids are playing the pick up the duck game… and they don’t get it. Pick up a duck. Pick out a prize. It is for 3 year olds.”

Next year I will try to be a bit quicker on the draw. I did manage to tweet out that MC Hammer was playing though.

“I had this brief dream last night that made me wake up laughing.

All it was, was a picture of a guy that had coke bottle glasses so thick you couldn’t see his eyes and he looked like teen-wolf’s dad. On his lap was a monkey that looked exactly like his owner.

At the bottom of the picture it said, “Gerald with a feather beard, and his monkey with exact beard”.