Posts, Musings & Stories

Dick Costolo Taught Me Project Management

If you want to know how I got to be so good at shipping world class software and managing teams of people much smarter than me, it all began with a killer project management course that Dick Costolo customized for me and the team.

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Winklevii & Bitcoin

This photo was taken during SXSW on March 11, 2016. I was lucky to hear the Winklevoss twins talk about their stake in crypto.

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The Greatest Answer to This Question ...

What was the best concert you've ever seen? It is a question that I've asked friends for years as I'm curious about their tastes in music and things they've seen with their own eyes. My friend Kate has the ultimate answer that no one will ever be able to beat.

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Commander Mark Rules

Famous designer Frank Chimero tweeted a few months ago that he was a fan of Commander Mark growing up. I responded to let him know that Commander Mark still lives(yes!) and his library of drawing videos lives on YouTube and he even streams on Twitch. Commander Mark rules.

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Easy Sketch Wallpaper Generator

I've probably built wallpapers for desktop and mobile by hand for years and finally decided to automate it somewhat. Just use this Sketch file (who still uses Sketch right?), place your wallpaper image on the Symbol layer and it will export nicely sized desktop and mobile wallpaper with ease. This is my most self serving post ever.

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Herman's Great Idea

Herman had the idea to create Hall of Fame-type busts of ex-athletes that would be used at university alumni facilities to help recruit new players to their school. You see, everyone wants to be immortalized but the fact is those Hall of Fame busts in Canton are very very expensive and quite exclusive.

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Anne Rice Signature

My buddy Fred reminded me of the time that I waited to see Anne Rice at Book People here in Austin many years ago. He wanted a signed copy of her latest book and I waited in line for hours for a 10 second hello and signature.

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SXSW Interactive Schedules

This blog is turning into a "remember when" article generator. I have done a lot of interesting projects and promise I continue to do them now. Here is an old one I did for Hugh Forrest at SXSW back in 2004. The problem to solve was realtime session information on a big screen TV for attendees. Now it is common place, but in 2004, it was pretty remarkable.

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A Precursor to NFT Madness

About a decade ago I had an opportunity to fullfill a childhood dream. Well, I'm not exactly sure it was something that I even knew I could do as a job as a kid, but I got to create and design baseball cards. Not just a few cards, over 3700 of them. And a few of the card collections were for players that never had a card for themselves.

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James Harden Prototype

One of the real benefits of high-end 3D printing is the ability to take an idea and get to an initial prototype that you can feel in your hands in a short amount of time. For this project, our goal was to create a collectible James Harden figure.

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Rackspace Swag

The best partner swag that I've ever received came from our friends down in San Antonio at Rackspace. They gave us a tour of their amazing facilities and at the end let us hit up their swag room. A dedicated store in their building with Rackspace branded swag.

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Bringing Innovation to Airlines

One of my absolute favorite projects was the opportunity we had to deeply innovate POS (point of sale) systems for airlines. Specifically overseas airlines where duty-free luxury good sales inflight are common and our goal was to make it easier for flight attendants to sell more product.

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My Afternoon with Molly Ivins

About 30 years ago I had an amazing opportunity to spend a few hours talking with Molly Ivins as she came through El Paso to promote her book. I used to work at a book store and would help out as authors set up their wares and managed the crowds.

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LeBron James Model

Working on a fun project in Akron, I decided to pitch an idea about how to engage with one of LeBron's charities and the local hospital. The original 3D model wore a yellow and green "LeBron James Foundation" jersey.

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My Design in Pop Culture

16 years ago I got an opportunity to completely rebuild and redesign one of the most famous movie sites on the Internet. With over 30,000 articles at that time and hundreds of thousands of community members, it was a juggernaut. Because of it's notoriety, the site was spoofed in pop culture.

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Fate Lions 3D Album Cover

15 years ago I got to realize a personal dream of mine and got to design an album (CD really) cover for a band here in Texas. I got to do something fancy and they trusted me with their passion project.

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Steve Jobs 10 Years

It is hard to believe that Steve Jobs died 10 years ago today. I remember pretty clearly where I was when I read the news. I was on the train back from downtown and looking at some geek website when the headline was that Steve Jobs had died.

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Oculus Connect 6

It is hard to believe that it has been 2 years already since the last Oculus Connect conference. Things have gone fully metaverse even if Zoom became the killer app of the pandemic. And yet, all of us have mostly only existed as pixels on someone elses video call. VR revolution is finally being distributed to the masses.

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Longhorn Network in Austin

10 years ago the Longhorn Network was started. With all of the changes coming to the Texas Longhorns and joining the SEC, I dug out this great photo of the Exhilent crew sitting on the Longhorn Network set. A team of absolute geniuses that I miss very much.

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Insights Profile

I'm fascinated with team chemistry and how a mix of different backgrounds and personality types can somehow congeal into a winning product or development team. I've been lucky to build and be a part of some amazing groups of innovative workers. How do you quickly understand what each person needs to do their best, feel rewarded and be respectful of work/life balance?

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Rockets 50th Prototype

What would the ultimate NBA season ticket holder in-arena fan experience look like? How about a 3D scan of yourself or family, then at a later date you are presented with a commemorative full color branded 3D Lego of yourself? I got an opportunity to prototype just that kind of promotion.

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A Certificate of Appreciation

I've spent much of my career as a catalyst for change and one to push the envelope not only of what an organization can do but doesn't belive they can. It is hard work changing a culture rooted in "old ways" and in some cases indecisiveness.

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Horizon Workrooms Reactions

Facebook finally released just a glimpse into their Horizon's strategy with Workspace Beta. Here is a breakdown list of things I love and hate about this new platform.

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Friday Night Lights Coach

I am lucky to have a bit of Forest Gump in me in that I have had a ton of interesting and odd opportunities in my life. One of them was when I played a coach on the pilot of Friday Night Lights.

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Secret Disney

One of the most fun and strange and wonderful projects I was able to work on was for Disney as they prepped to build a new Cinderella castle in Hong Kong.

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Divergent Thinking

I'm always game for scientific measurements of knowledge and creativity. This latest online test measures your verbal creativity and divergent thinking.

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Rest in Peace Dr. Amato

Dr. Robert Amato saved my brother's life 20 years ago when he battled Stage 4 testicular cancer. I discovered today that Dr. Amato passed on 2 years ago but left a legacy of helping patients and families like ours. Thank you sir.

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Happy Fourth

What a difference a year makes. To celebrate getting out of the house, shooting some fireworks and enjoying some family time, I built an augmented reality experience and projected it on a local beach.

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My Interview in the Chronicle

What the heck is an NFT? The Austin Chronicle interviewed me to chat about how NFTs can augment artist income and give another venue for creative outlet.

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SXSW VR Event and NFT Drop

How about a Chicken Ranch x ScreenDUET collab during SXSW? We built a VR world that highlighted Chicken Ranch artists and included a livestream right in the middle of the venue. Custom avatars wearing CR gear and an NFT drop with one of the most talented artists (Peelander Yellow!!!)

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Career Day Thank Yous

For the past 10 years or so I go to my nearest middle school and volunteer for Career Day. Even though my children have long left middle school (and even high school), I like to present interesting technology that I've got skills in to a bunch of 12-14 year olds.

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Monteiro Time

Today was a day for the books. I got an opportunity to chat with Mike Monteiro about the design biz, getting older and our role as a leader to the next generation.

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Virtual Booths for Conferences

The future of entertainment and business will be more virtual. We are definitely experiencing it right now, but we'll have better hardware delivered to us. In the meantime, here is a booth I created to promote initiatives at my employer.

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Oculus 8 Conference

I headed to the Oculus 8 conference in San Jose, California. Was lucky enough to sit in the very first row and had a great seat to all of the announcements and technology reveals.

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Tesla Factory Tour

Today I got to take a tour of the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. It’s in the Bay Area and is HUGE. As an owner, I get the opportunity to tour their facilities. However, you can’t bring your camera into the factory floor.

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Adding Memoji to Your Stream

Here is an easy solution to have a live animated cartoon as your Twitch personality. Using the motion capture and depth mapping on an iPhone X, you will be able to keep your identity hidden while allowing your audience to have a living breathing avatar.

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Stratasys 3D Printing Tips

We’ve been keeping busy working on digital and physical solutions to particular business problems for our clients. We’ve also put in hundreds and hundreds of hours on various 3D print systems making sure that the models we create come out successfully.

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One Handed Video Gaming

We recently converted our in-office arcade video game machine away from Windows to run on a Raspberry Pi with RetroPie. While we were working on that project, we wondered if there was a way that video games could open back up to people with hand and arm disabilities.

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3 Tips for Sports Hackathon

This UT Sports Hackathon was very different than I expected and much more professional and structured in every good way. It was a competition and there was going to be a winner. Not a subjective show and tell, we were here to ball.

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Tech Lessons of Pokemon Go

We are impressed with the almost immediate global adoption of Pokemon Go. It represents a seismic shift in functionality used in popular applications. Even though accelerometers, GPS, compasses, and cameras get built into every mobile device, the majority of applications use only one of those functions.

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Can't Unsee UI Test

How do I do when it comes to detecting UI differences between two images? I rate very high with this test from Can't Unsee.

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