How to prepare for SxSW, version 2009

SxSW starts March 13th in Austin. This is my SEVENTH year and these are my helpful tips for the novice. I’ve tried to revise the info over the years as things change.
ABC – Always Be Charging – If you bring a laptop, you need to be charging it every single chance you get. No battery lasts long enough. Try to sit near an outlet in the session rooms. Share power outlets with others.
Don’t hog bandwidth – There is good wifi, but a limited amount of bandwidth at SxSW and everyone there is highly connected. That means don’t be a bandwidth hog. Don’t run bittorrent, for anything, at any time. Don’t download large operating system patches at the conference. Don’t try to live broadcast anything. Don’t upload all your photos from your 10MB DSLR camera during sessions. Don’t update your podcast downloads. Don’t download fresh builds of linux distros. Do not backup your laptop to Amazon S3 at the conference. Am I getting through here? Your actions can affect the experience for others. Nothing you are doing is that important that it is worth preventing others from having net access. Beat the hell out the hotel broadband in the evening, but do everyone a favor and show some restraint so everyone can do simple web surfing, IM, and email at the convention center.
Introduce Yourself – People are at SXSW because they want to meet people and see new things. Strangely, many of the blogger types that go are introverted types that are a bit shy. Do yourself a favor and say “Hello, I’m So-and-so” to that person you are sitting next to. (Don’t say So-and-so, use your name…) I guarantee that they will be happy to talk to you.
Personal cards – Make up business cards with your name, email, and website info on them to hand out. Bring your regular business cards if you want, but what people really want is a card that ties you to your online persona so they can find you after SxSW.
When asking a question in a session, don’t make a sales pitch – From time to time, people use the question time during sessions to pitch their own projects. No one cares. You look stupid if you do. Ask questions that the rest of the audience might care about. If you make a sales pitch during question time and I’m in the room, I will throw a brick at your head.
Session Info – When you arrive on Friday go to the Convention Center and pick up your badge. They will give you a large canvas bag of swag. You don’t want to haul this around, so you need to figure a way to drop this off at your hotel before a long night of partying. In the bag are two crucial items. First is the program which has detailed session descriptions. Second is a small pocket card with the session schedule on it. You want these to be in your daily walk around bag, not in your hotel room.
Don’t sleep in – Many of you are not parents that are used to getting up at the crack of dawn, but sleeping in past Noon means you are missing plenty of good stuff you paid a lot to see. Get up so you can grab breakfast and be at the 10AM sessions. If it’s more important to you to stay up till dawn and sleep in until 2PM, you probably shouldn’t be coming to Austin. You can do that at home.
Shiner Bock – Shiner Bock is a local Texas beer that you find everywhere. Often referred to as simply ‘Shiner’.
Badge Surf – Badge surfing is a perfectly acceptable behavior at SxSW, but don’t use it to fake knowing someone. If you want to talk to someone, say “I see from your badge…”. Don’t make them think that they should know you or that you’ve met previously.
Fray Cafe – Go to the Fray Cafe on Sunday night. Fray is people telling truthful stories about their life. It’s one of the best things about SxSW. Kevin Smokler is the new host and is longtime SxSW veteran. Get there early for a good seat, otherwise you will be standing for the whole thing.
Stay Warm – It can get cold and rain in Austin this time of year. Bring a good jacket or coat just in case.
Sharpeners – There are no pencil sharpeners at SXSW. People think writing on a pad of paper with a wooden pencil is a bit strange.
Secure connections – Wifi traffic is in the clear and people are sniffing packets all the time. Arrange for secure email, FTP, and if possible, secure browsing while at SXSW. It’s unlikely that a malicious hacker is gunna do bad things, but it’s best to be prepared.
Street Signs – For some reason, downtown Austin has few street signs. Get a map and study it before venturing out.
Food – Eat food. Austin has a great bar scene. You will be drinking. Don’t drink on an empty stomach. It also would be a good idea to keep a couple energy bars in your bag during sessions.
Texas BBQ – IMHO, Texas BBQ pales in comparison to BBQ in other areas like Kansas City and Carolina. That chopped beef sandwich stuff just doesn’t cut it, but people will want to eat it for lunch. That said, Stubbs makes a great brisket.
Say Hello to Me – I would love to meet Loyal Cruft Readers. On Twitter I’m @cruftbox or email me or IM at pusateri AT gmail.com and I promise to respond.
Any questions?

Steampunk Lamp Insides

Some of you have requested to know how I built the steampunk lamp. It’s really fairly simple.


I used a simple household dimmer (aka rheostat) in line with two light bulbs in parallel. I glued the dimmer in place and used a little duct tape to hold it in place while the glue dried. The most difficult part was shaving down the shaft of the dimmer to fit into the knob, which is actually a drawer pull. I got a snug fit and then used cyanoacrylate (Krazy Glue) to permanently fix it.
The the power cord enters the box, you can see the Underwriter’s knot I used to prevent the cord being yanked out. The rest of the wiring is trivial with wire nuts.

Here is the circuit diagram for those purists. I think my symbols are right, but it’s been a while since I’ve drawn a schematic.
Hopefully this answers your questions.

Mint Buzz Bites

The folks at Vroom Foods sent me some Mint flavored Buzz Bites to try.


I’ve reviewed Buzz Bites before. The new version had a new flavor, Mint, which I thought would be interesting.

According to Energy Fiend, each Buzz Bite has 100mg of caffeine. That’s a lot in my book, so I only tried a half to get started.
The new flavor is actually pretty good. The bitter caffeine taste is masked well by the chocolate and mint. I’m keeping these in my desk drawer at the office for those times I need a pick me up, but don’t have time for a cup of coffee.

Steampunk Lamp

A few weeks ago, I saw a post on Boing Boing about steampunk lamps. I liked them and decided to build one for myself.
I used an old wooden cigar box, a few ceramic bulb mounts, a rheostat and few other odds and ends. I did get a little fancy and paint the ceramic mounts with textured copper paint. The wiring was trivial, but I got a chance to use an Underwriter’s Knot.
There’s a lot more steampunk I could have thrown at it, but I like the simplicity of this.


I used two 60 watt bulbs, so it can get quite bright. It’s much more pleasant at a lower light level.

Here is a short video of the steampunk lamp in action.

Steampunk Lamp from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

I have no idea what I’m going to do with it now, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out.

Adam Carolla Gets it On

It’s been a hard month for Los Angeles radio listeners.
First, Indie 103.1 goes off the air. It’s online still at indie1031.com, but 103.1 is now ranchero music. A sad state for the station once named by Rolling Stone magazine as best radio station in America. Of course Michele would argue that WOXY is the best radio station.
Second, KLSX flipped formats and the Adam Carolla Show is off the air. I really enjoyed Adam’s show. It was a bright spot everyday. I would listen live when I could, but mainly listened to the podcast, which was a segmented recording of the actual show.
CBS Radio, in their corporate wisdom, decided that Los Angeles would be better served by a Top 40 (CHR) format station. And so, KLSX died and Adam was off the air.
Not a quitter, Adam decided to continue his “conversation with listeners”. His words, not mine. His new site carollaradio.com is now posting daily podcasts he produces at home with help from friends and former co-workers. His very first podcast, had over 200,000 downloads. Those numbers make any podcast saavy person sit up and recognize the size of his fanbase.
Adam absolutely gets where media consumption is going and is working to give it a shot and see what happens. Jesse Thorn (the man behind the wonderful Sound of Young America show) agrees and posted a good bit of Adam’s rant with a little commentary. I agree with Jesse, if you think of Adam as just the Man Show/Crank Yankers guy, you are missing what he’s all about. He’s honest and a bit of a blowhard, you won’t agree with everything he says, in fact you’ll sometimes think he’s wrong. But he speaks how he feels without resorting the the usual talk radio hyperbole where jocks say anything to get the audience revved up. That’s a very rare thing today, where almost all radio bits are heavily scripted, edited, and basically fake.
Give it a listen. Adam curses a bit on the podcast, so I’d call it NSFW, but it’s better than anything else on the radio these days.

Fix: Last line cut-off with HP Printer

Seems like I’m not the only one having trouble when printing Office 2007 documents to an HP printer and having the last line cut in half. Most of the computers in the house are running Microsoft Vista Home Premium with Office 2007 and trying to print on an HP printer.
We had continued problems in which the printer would cut off the last line in half. Very frustrating.
After a bit of research and trial & error, I came up with this solution.
Go to Control Panel
Select Printers under Hardware and Sound
Right click on the offending printer and select Properties
In the new window, select the Advanced tab
Select the Print Processor button
In the new window, select WinPrint (it’s likely set to hp-something instead)
Click OK (the window will shut)
Click Apply then OK on the Properties window
Try printing a document
Hopefully this works for you. Leave a comment here is if works or doesn’t so we can see if this a good solution.

Stuffing Sausage

Loyal Cruft Readers will recall my work on making sausages from scratch. The most difficult part was stuffing the sausage meat into the casing. I decided to get a better stuffer and settled on a Grizzly 5 lb. sausage stuffer I found on eBay. The grizzly company has a huge range of tools and machines. When the stuffer arrived, a huge catalog of all their products was also there. Everything from hand tools to lathes to welders to kits to build guitars from scratch.
I went to work prepping the meat for stuffing. On my second time around it went much more quickly. Soon the moment of truth was at hand and I stuffed the sausage. Here is a video of how it worked.


Stuffing Sausage from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

Obviously I sped up a few parts, but the entire stuffing process took me less than 10 minutes compared to well over an hour the first time. A huge improvement.

This is the stuffed sausage before I twisted it into links.

After twisting into more familiar links.
Having a real sausage stuffer makes huge difference. I think I went from raw ingredients to sausage to clean kitchen in about two hours. Good fun and good sausage.

Palm Springs

The family was in Palm Springs this weekend for a mini-vacation. Michele was riding in the Tour of Palm Springs. She did 55 miles!
We had some great Jewish food at Sherman’s Deli. The pastrami/latka sandwich was amazing. Their matzoh balls were gigantic.
Here is the obligatory tour of our hotel room:


My Hotel Room in Palm Springs from Michael Pusateri on Vimeo.

And here is Michele, just after she finished the 55 mile ride, waiting for her teammate Allison to arrive. I am very proud of her!

Update:
Here’s a video of the ride made by Steve Mackel, Michele’s coach during the ride. I have a breif cameo as the support team.

Owl Wrap

I don’t like tangled cords or wires. Perhaps it’s my career as an engineer, but cords and cables should be neat.
The iPhone headphones are good, but they tend to make a nice knot when left alone.
Enter the Owl Wrap


I found the Owl Wrap on Etsy. It’s a simple device to wrap my iPhone headphones around.

It’s simple, neat looking, and works. What more can you ask for? At only $5, it’s a steal!