I really enjoyed my recent trip down to SXSW. It was one of those experiences, thought, that can be difficult for me to process -- whole buckets of new information coming in without really strong unifying themes. I'm not going to bother trying to make sense of any of it just yet, and am instead going to just throw out some impressions, things I learned, and notes on people I met. Enjoy.

• The guy sitting one row ahead of me on my American Airlines flight down to Austin was watching Entourage on his video iPod and holding it just out of my line of vision, though I was able to see several seconds of a scene where Vince and Eric are walking and talking around a pool. The palm trees were a mere inch high, crystal clear, and swaying in the digital breeze. I'm not much of a coveter by nature, but at that moment I wanted to rip the iPod out of his hands and run and hide in the bathroom with it.
  


• I have discovered Google's technique for acquiring new "web 2.0" apps: (1) wait until I hear about them and resolve that I am unable to live without them, and then (2) rewind the Google time machine a bit, scoop them up, and shut them off new users. See Measure Map for website stats and Writerly for online word processing.


• Under the category of, as my dad says, "it's amazing the ways that people can make a living": there are people, Burnie Burns for one, whose work consists of writing short dramas that they perform using the characters in immersion video games like Halo and Second Life, "filming" these interactions, and then selling them on highly-popular DVDs. This is called machinima, a terrific sounding word.
  


• Mike Krempasky is a dangerous man because he's a supremely bright conservative operative who says funny, non-threatening things like: "College Republicans just turn mice into rats. They don't move them up the evolutionary chain, they just make them meaner" and then liberals laugh and forget that he's plotting their destruction and the global domination of Walmart.
  


• I got to eat BBQ (well, fried green tomatoes for me, meat for him) with Craig Newmark, the Craig of Craig's List, and pretend that I didn't know who he was until it came up in conversation after the question, "so what do you do?" He's a super nice guy who for a long time handled all of the customer support for Craig's List himself. Now he has a few folks who help him with it but he stills does a lot of it, day in and day out. A few weeks ago, I wrote a rather stern email to Craig's List when I was mistakenly blocked from the site for "abuse" and now I feel kinda bad about it.
  


• danah boyd hosted a panel in which we played a game where we each came with an original secret and then saw how it spread across the room, a la the game of telephone. Of the secrets, two of my favorites were: "When I was a kid, I thought that I was an 'Injun,'" and "I mix cereals," which I have to imagine could only come from the mind of a Catholic. Five or so were of the variety of "I have a crush on danah boyd" who is undeniably cute but I mean, come on, isn't that just embarrassing for everyone involved?
  


• It's hard not to like Henry Rollins. More on that here.
  


• Matisyahu, the Hasidic reggae superstar from right here in Brooklyn and a favorite of mine, is sweeping the nation. When Liza Sabater and I pulled up to Stubb's BBQ on Friday night in a bicycle cab (long story involving several pints of Shiner Bock, a few hours at the Cedar Street Cafe, and a several block walk that seemed far too long at the time) and I saw his name on the list of acts for the weekend, I jumped up and down, rattling our peddler/driver quite a bit. And in a sure sign that he's quickly becoming a phenomena, his name later came up during a panel discussion on online viral self-marketing.
  


• Mark Warner is running for President and his new online team of Jerome Armstrong, Nate Wilcox, and Trei Brundrett were at SXSW to gin up interest and support. I'm intrigued, I admit.
  


• There are some genuinely cool people working in this "space" -- a term I generally dislike but seems appropriate when discussing the broad swath of things covered by SXSWi, just a few of whom are Christian Crumlish, the aforementioned Liza Sabater, Lisa Stone, Amanda Marcotte, Neil "The Ethical Werewolf" Sinhababu, Henry Copeland, Tikva Morowati, Michael Silberman, Justin Oberman, and and many more seemingly cool people that I didn't get a chance to meet but look forward to doing so, like Jason Fried, Jim Coudal, Joel Spolsky, and the aforementioned danah boyd.
  


• And finally, I don't know how I have lived this long without the very tasty Michilata, a Bloody Mary-esque drink made with Mexican beer. As far as I can tell, the recipe is thus: Combine 1 1/4 oz. tequila , 3/4 oz. fresh lime juice, 1/2 oz. fresh lemon juice, 3-4 dashes of Tabasco sauce, 1/4 oz. white wine vinegar, 1-2 pinches salt, 1-2 pinches seasoned salt, 2 pinches black pepper, 3 oz. tomato juice; shake and strain. Fill glass with Mexican beer of some sort (I had Negro Modelo), salt the rim, and garnish with a lime wedge. Yum!