Here goes:

1. My wife and I were married in Brisbane, Australia in September, 2003 and nobody from either of our families attended. I don’t think it’s because they didn’t want to; we just didn’t really give ‘em the chance. We organized the ceremony in short order, and it simply wasn’t practical — or affordable — for them to make the journey from the US (my fam) or Kenya (hers). But rest assured they made up for it by throwing us impressive receptions when we went back home.

2. I learned to speak Portuguese in June 1998 in order to impress my then Cape Verdean girlfriend. It turned out to be a fortuitous decision for my career development as well, because a couple of months later I was able to shoot the bull on a job interview with a university professor who had lived in Portugal. I got the job!

3. When I was a kid, I turned the kitchen floor and adjacent hallway into a playground for baseball, hokcey, and nurf basketball and football. I dreamed up the games, announced them out loud, and amazingly performed the roles of all the players from both terms. It might have helped prepare me for my days calling Syracuse University women’s basketball games in college, but, alas, it did nothing for my athletic prowess.

4. I smother waffles, pancakes, or french toast with molasses instead of syrup.

5. I’ve been in Belgium ever so briefly — even though I can’t prove it. In early January 2000 I jumped on a last-minute European travel discount and flew to Europe for a five-day long weekend. I landed in Paris, and then took an express train to Amsterdam (the answer is “yes”). Along the way, we stopped in Brussels, and I hopped out of the train and snapped a quick photo, just so that I might one day say, “Heck, yeah, I’ve been to Belgium. Great place.” Unfortunately — and this was in my pre-digital days — my camera self-destructed a few days later when I was back in Paris, and the negatives couldn’t be recovered. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

6. I’ve visited 32 of the 50 United States and hope to hit all 50 before I kick the bucket.

7. While I can boil water (c’mon, Mitch Joel!) I’m otherwise pretty much hopeless in the kitchen. The lone exception: I can cook a mean chicken noodle casserole dish.

8. My daughter and I have just started our third annual reading competition, where we compete to see who can finish more books in a year. She kicked my ass in years 1 and 2, but I have a good feeling about 2008. The kid’s going down.

I think I’m meant to tag eight others as well, but I’m breaking the rules and picking just three: mdy, Simon Young, and Kyle Flaherty.

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* Podcast recommendation I: Episode 20 of John C. Havens’s About.com Guide to Podcasting, featuring an interview with Nic Wolff of Foneshow. It doesn’t take much a leap to work out that audio content for your mobile phone is an area with huge potential, and Foneshow is making a big play to get into the game. Watch this space for some experimentation of my own with Foneshow.

* Grammar Girl is an outstanding example of why podcasts need accompanying blogs to build community. The Grammar Girl blogsite has 10-50 comments to each post, polls with hundreds of votes, and full transcripts to each show. Mignon Fogarty’s audience after just five and a half months? 60,000 downloads per episode. Want to hear more about her success? Take a listen to my interview with Mignon on Episode 23 of New Comm Road.

* Want to hit the theatre, Second Life style? At 5pm Linden Time (8pm for us East Coasters) tomorrow, Tuesday, January 9, the independent film Four Eyed Monsters will make its debut … and it will happen in in the Sundance Channel screening room, in Second Life. The film will also screen in several other locations throughout SL, including Crayonville.

* Paul Colligan has started an interesting project. For the whole of 2007, he and his family will only consume media via the Internet. No watching broadcast or cable TV. No reading print newspapers or magazines. No buying CDs from the local retailer (though via Amazon is just fine). Indeed, 2007 will be Paul’s “year of living digitally.”

* Who wins this Long Bet?

In a Google search of five keywords or phrases representing the top five news stories of 2007, weblogs will rank higher than the New York Times’ Web site

Dave Winer is banking on blogs. Martin Nisenholtz, CEO of New York Times Digital, naturally, is still betting on mainstream media. Check out Michael O’Connor Clarke’s take as you stew this one over.

* I’m a podcaster, and I don’t yet own an iPod. My 18-month-old iRiver is wearing down, but still gets the job done — both for listening and recording.

* Podcast recommendation II: BizIII. A daily three-minute podcast chock-a-block full of new-media resources and tips. Now, if the site could only enable comments …

* Joseph Jaffe asked these two questions on his Episode 67 of Across the Sound: 1) Would we be willing pay for a 10-minute condensed version of the show? 2) Would we be willing to pay for a transcript of the show and/or executive summary?

My short answers: 1) No 2) No. My longer retort to the second question: If I want a summary of the show, I’ll look at the show notes. Transcripts are just as beneficial to the podcaster as they are to the listener, because they build Google juice.

* My baby boy turned 12 weeks old yesterday!

Happy Monday.

Technorati Tags: John C. Havens, Foneshow, Grammar Girl, Mignon Fogarty, Four Eyed Monsters, Paul Colligan, Long Bets, Sundance Channel, Crayonville, Dave Winer, Michael O’Connor Clarke, Martin Nisenholtz, iPod, iRiver, Across the Sound, Joseph Jaffe, bizIII, Amani

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Here am I with my family just a few weeks ago …

We all wish you a very merry Christmas!

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This post tugged at my heart strings, to be sure, and I’ll be giving Amani an extra big kiss when I get home tonight.

Michael is a PR pro at Thornley Fallis Communications by day, and that’s how I came to find his blog in the first place. But he also a wonderful way of mixing in so much of everything else that life has to offer in his writing, and that’s what keeps me coming back.

Technorati Tags: Michael O’Connor Clarke, blogging

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My daughter was the only kid to knock on our door, and that was all for the camera, of course.

Technorati Tags: Halloween, trick or treat

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Here’s a video of my newborn son Amani having his first bath, not long after he was born last weekend.

(Click still image below to stream video)

Once I uploaded the video to blip.tv, I was able to choose the video format (and I still have more to learn on that front — anyone want to give me an overview?) and given options on how I wanted it streamed on this blog — within the body of the blog post, with a link to a pop-up window, or through a link back to the blip.tv site.

Code is provided for embedding the video on MySpace (I’ve done that, too), and posts to Flickr and del.icio.us can be set up as well.

Want more? blip.tv also allows you to “cross-upload” your video to Archive.org.

And, yes, blip.tv comes with the usual Web 2.0 goodies — friends lists, RSS feeds, commenting features.

All very cool.

Technorati Tags: blip.tv, Amani

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Amani and his mother are both doing just fine, and we couldn’t be happier.

I’ve thrown up a few more photos of Amani and his family on my Flickr site.

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My son came into the world today. Amani Person was born at 5:45 pm on Sunday, October 15, 2006, weighing a whopping 9.02 pounds. He and his mother are doing just fine! I am so proud. More when I can.

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