After a pretty long hiatus from blogging, I’m finally starting anew. This time, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be writing as myself, rather than hiding behind hideously ’90s social constructs like screen-names and what-all. This time, WYSIWYG.

I won’t pretend to believe that very many people even knew about me, or missed me, but to those who did, thanks.

Now that that’s out of the way, I’d like to share one of my finest memories from Austin this year. My wife, Sarah, and I went to South by Southwest, she to the film festival and I to the interactive web nerd-athon. What made my week wasn’t the weather, which was downright frigid and damp at times. It wasn’t the food, which started out as this amazing novelty, but after a week of Tex-Mex and chicken-fried steak, I just wanted a good old PBJ. No, the highlights for me were, not surprisingly, the people I met (and almost-met), and the incredible panels I was fortunate enough to attend. OK, and maybe a party or two!

Some of the panels actually made some brave incursions into niche comedy, defying their very panel-ness. In particular, Merlin Mann’s pitch for the Worst Website Ever un-panel had a room packed with geeks eating out of his hand. Warning: If you’re not a web geek, you may not find this very funny. But if so… enjoy. You’ve probably seen this already, though.