Author: paulryburn

Two popular Downtown restaurants will be closing temporarily for renovations. Circa will be closed this week as it undergoes a transformation into John Bragg’s new concept, a chef’s pub. It will be called Bar None – “Best Bar Food, Bar None.” Chef Antony Feld will be in the kitchen. Menu will be previewed next week during Downtown Dining Week. If you have Circa gift cards, they will be honored at both Bar None and the soon-to-open East Memphis Circa location. Menus both both locations will be posted on Circa’s website in a few days.

Huey’s Downtown location will also be closing for renovations. It will be closed November 14-21, and reopen for lunch on the 22nd. The place will still look like Huey’s, but a newer Huey’s, and improved facilities for servers will be installed. I’m sure the renovations will be nice, but it means I have to make alternate arrangements for Paul’s Drunkass Food as I stumble home at night.

There’s an article in the Commercial Appeal today about the planned redevelopment of the Pinch neighborhood near the Pyramid. With Bass Pro moving in, planners want to purchase land within the boundaries of Front and Third, Jackson and Shadyac and redevelop the area with a mix of restaurants and retail. This sounds very cool… I frequently “head south” to the shops, restaurants and bars on South Main, but rarely do I “head north.” Looks like I’ll have a new direction to wander in the coming years.

Lifehacker article of interest to Downtowners: What alcohol actually does to your brain and body

I want to clarify something about tomorrow’s Downtown Night with the Grizzlies: You can’t walk up to the ticket booth at game time and ask for the deal. You need to call Carl Rosen in advance to purchase your tickets. For $50 you get a $99-value club level seat to watch the Grizzlies vs. Mavericks, food and beverages, and an hour and a half to mingle with your neighbors in Opus Restaurant. Carl will be taking orders for Downtown Night tickets until noon tomorrow, and you can reach him at 901-205-1445.

Congratulations to Division II school Indianapolis on their 79-64 victory against the Tennessee Vols basketball team last night. Yet another embarrassment for Bruce Pearl and his team. I’m guessing Tennessee will be out of the Top 25 for a long, long time beginning next week. Wonder if UT is a step closer to showing the Bruchebag the door after last night. By the way, this reminds me, does anyone want to purchase an orange blazer that’s only been worn three times?

I had fun recording my beers on Beerby last night, and I’m well on my way to earning the Conquistador badger (that’s not a typo – you earn badgers, not badges) for drinking a lot of Mexican lagers. My frequent consumption of PBR will get me the Hipster Superstar badger fairly quickly, too. This is a game I can rule! I already have several Beerby friends and I get to see what beers they’re drinking.

Unfortunately I won’t be able to check in my beers tonight, since it’s trivia and I can’t have my phone out. We have $350 accumulated toward our next party and hope to make it to the 400 mark tonight.

I just read Kerry’s I Love Memphis Blog and saw that the Majestic Grille has set the date for their annual half-price gift card sale. It will be Wednesday, December 1, and they’ll start selling at 9 AM and continue until they run out of cards.

Note that these cards do have a couple of minor restrictions you need to know about. You can’t buy alcohol with them (that’s a major ABC no-no), and you can’t use them until after the first of the year.

These things tend to sell out pretty quickly. If you work far from Downtown, you’d do well to arrange to show up late so you can hit the restaurant right at 9. If you want to buy gift cards on your lunch break, I’d look to take that lunch break closer to 11 than to 1:30.

Can’t recommend these highly enough… there are so many good things on the Majestic’s menu. The filet is at the top of my list, of course, but the whole chicken, the flatbreads, the salads, the brunch menu… you pretty much can’t go wrong.

People have been reading about my trip to Geekend last weekend, and I’ve received a couple of “wish I were there” comments. Well, there’s an event coming up this Saturday which will have some of the same flavor and content. There won’t be bands playing Wii instruments or huge after-parties like I experienced, but there will be a lot of discussion of social media and web 2.0 topics.

That event will be BarCamp Memphis, which will happen this Saturday, November 13 at EmergeMemphis on Tennessee Street. BarCamp is a little different from the event that I attended in that topics are not determined in advance. Rather, it’s an un-conference where a list of topics are proposed at the beginning of the day – topics that may be of interest and which have someone ready to present. All the attendees then vote on which presentations they’d most like to hear. After that, the group breaks up into smaller groups for 30-minute presentations. Usually several of these run simultaneously, so for each period you can pick the presentation that appeals to you most. A list of possible topics can be found here.

There’s also time built in for networking and breaks. Last year they did “PowerPoint Karaoke” at lunch.

Here’s a link to a MemphisConnect post with more info about BarCamp.

One other conclusion I drew while listening to the presentations at Geekend last weekend… audience behavior during presentations has changed. Presenters much recognize that it has and change with their audiences.

Five years ago, if you were giving a presentation, and you looked up and saw many in the audience typing away on their phones, you had a right to be upset. It would be safe to assume that they were being rude, that they were bored with your presentation and were texting their friends to entertain themselves.

However, in 2010, if you see many people typing on their phones as you talk, it’s a good thing. It’s a sign not that they’re bored, but that they’re engaged. They’re taking notes, they’re tweeting, they’re Facebooking, they’re blogging to share what they learned in your presentation. Embrace that. The best presenters at Geekend did. In fact, they encouraged it.

Let your audience tell the world about the great things you have to say, and next time you find yourself speaking, you’ll probably have a bigger audience.

This morning, a new iPhone app was recommended to me. I downloaded it from the App Store and can’t wait to try it out tonight. It’s called Beerby.

With it you can track what beers you’re drinking and share with your Beerby friends. You can take notes on beer, and find good beer to drink near your current location. You can discover bars that have your favorite beers. You can also compete with your friends to win “Badgers,” similar to Foursquare badges.

Oh, speaking of Foursquare… you can connect it to Foursquare, and if you choose Beerby will check you in at a bar when you let it know you’re drinking a beer there. Beerby can also be integrated with Facebook and Twitter. May leave those turned off… I doubt my friends/followers want to see 9 “Paul is drinking a Dos Equis Lager” notifications in one night.

Beerby has a database of over 40,000 beers with ratings.

Can’t wait to try it tonight for Pint Nite, as I work on beers for my 5th plate!

If you don’t know what to do with this…

 

…you better learn. These things are going to be all over the place in 2011.

Hint: If you have an iPhone, download QRReader from the App Store. It’s free. Other smartphones, look for an app with a similar name.

I’ve been busy with my conference and have been forgetting to remind people about this fantastic event Wednesday night… I will be there and hope to see many of my neighbors. The Grizzlies are offering us an excellent deal!

Downtown Night with the Grizzlies

Grizzlies vs. Mavericks

DATE: Wednesday, November 10
TIME: 6:00pm
LOCATION: Opus Restaurant/FedEx Forum

Pre-Game Mixer at Opus Restaurant 6-7:30pm
$50 per person package includes:

Food & Beverages
First Tennessee Club Level tickets valued at $99 each
Music, Grizz, Grizz Girls & a representative of the Grizzlies Basketball Operations Staff in attendance.

For More Information contact Carl Rosen
(901)205-1445 or
crosen@grizzlies.com

At 7:30 I was at the lobby of the hotel in Savannah. I checked out and asked them to call me a cab.

They called Yellow. By 8:05 the cab had not arrived. They called a second cab company, Big Mike’s, who picked me up. Two blocks on the trip, we saw two Yellow Cabs parked, their drivers talking on their cell phones. It’s a 25-minute drive to the airport, so I got there less than the recommended two hours before departure time of 10:10, but it’s a small town and the airport wasn’t that busy.

Boarded the plane at 9:55. At 10:40 we were still on the runway.

And at 11:10.

And at 11:40. We’d had something called a “bird hit” which left a 1/10 inch dent in the side of the plane, and required repair.

At 11:50 we finally got going. We taxi’d to the runway, then had to wait 15 more minutes because ground control in Atlanta didn’t think we were coming and had to reschedule us into the flow.

We arrived at 12:45. Needless to say, I missed my 12:35 connection. Delta re-booked me on a 2:35 flight. I was pleased to see that I’d been upgraded to first class. I ate a Whopper at Burger King and waited.

Oops, it wasn’t really a confirmed seat. It was a first-class seat on standby. So I had to wait while all the other passengers boarded, not knowing if I was getting on or getting bumped to the 4:35 flight. Fortunately Delta’s shitty record getting other planes to Atlanta on time paid off. Someone missed their connection to the 2:35 plane and I got the first-class seat. At least I got a couple of free Coronas for my troubles. Wish they’d had lime slices.

The plane landed at 3:25, only 25 minutes after the scheduled arrival time, which for Delta is an outstanding performance. I got my luggage, hopped a cab, and was home.

7:30 to 3:50. No, wait. 7:30 to 4:50 Eastern Time. 9 hours 20 minutes.  I could’ve driven from Savannah in 10. It would’ve taken slightly longer, but I’d have been in control. No waiting, I could leave whenever I want, stop wherever I want. I’ve long had a rule that any destination within a 6-hour drive, I’ll drive rather than fly. May extend that rule a few more hours.

I am never, ever flying any connection involving Atlanta Hartsfield Airport again. That place is an air traffic control nightmare. I don’t care what I have to do. Hopefully Southwest will be here in a couple of years, taking over the AirTran spots, and air travel from Memphis as we know it will change forever.

I need a beer.

Just got home. Since I live on Main Street which is a pedestrian mall, I can’t have cabs pull right up to the front door. I always tell them, “Madison and Main, just find anyplace to drop me off near there that you can.”

So today, the closest place my cab driver could find was outside the Madison Hotel. The valet started to unload my bags and I said, “No worries, I’ll get it, I’m not a guest. I live in the apartments around the corner.”

He unloaded them anyway and said, “Now you know what kind of service you get at the Madison.”

Nice move.

Geekend 2010 has wrapped up. Well, the after-party is happening right now, a block party outside SEED Eco Lounge. However, it’s 42 outside, dropping into the mid-thirties later. I hate cold weather and the Arkansas-South Carolina game is on. My flight is not until 10:18, but that means I need to be at the airport by 8:18, which means I need to get a cab out of here by 7:48 (the airport is far from the city), which means I need to be up no later than 7. I think I’ll stay in. Here’s a recap of things I learned today and random thoughts.

If you want your audience to retain text you show them, attach an image to it. Studies show 65% retention with an image.

Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug was recommended as a good book on Web usability.

Be careful if you use public Wi-Fi networks. There’s a tool that can be used to steal your cookies, and therefore your identity on social networks. The scary thing is, this thing has been out three years, and Facebook has known about it and has not bothered to secure their system. Gmail has secured theirs.

If you want to get into smartphone app development, this book is a good place to start: Pro Smartphone Cross-Platform Development: iPhone, Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Android Development and Distribution

I attended a really good seminar about testing for the Web. I honestly expected to be bored out of my mind in this one, but found it very interesting and useful. The presenter discussed a language called Cucumber that can be used to make sure developers and customers are on the same page, and to verify that web applications do what they’re supposed to during both the testing and production phases. Go to cukes.info for more information. Examples are written in Ruby but could easily be applied to PHP or other languages.

Keynote on TwitPic was good as well. The guy founded it while holding a full-time job in January ’08, but retained his job until February ’09. He still only has four employees, two of whom are his parents. He’s only 26. The Hudson River plane crash in early ’09 was the first event that really spiked the use of TwitPic, as well as the Iranian protests several months later.

Organizers did little things all weekend to keep the event fun. They kicked it off Thursday with a marching band. People were tweeting stuff like, “Holy sweet mother of moses they have a marching band!” I have to admit, having seen so many of them at parades and festivals in Downtown Memphis, I was like, “Meh, it’s a marching band, no big deal.” They did their job of getting people fired up though. Throughout the weekend, prizes were hidden around the conference center – MailChimp hats, T-shirts, and games. If you found a MailChimp hat, the deal was that you had to wear it for the rest of the day. The hats were knit caps that looked like monkeys. I have to admit, I didn’t try very hard to find those hats. I wish I’d found a T-shirt though.

A lot of my fellow Geekend attendees followed me on Twitter – I think I gained something like 30 followers in 3 days. I wonder what they’re going to think when I get back to Memphis and my tweets revert to their usual crappy material. “Wow he sure does spend a lot of time in bars,” they’ll be thinking. “And what’s the deal with tube tops? Who is this Nuh-Uh person who eats all the time?” I bet I get a lot of unfollows over the next 7 days once my fellow attendees get a sense of my crap-to-quality ratio on Twitter.

Aw, that’s nice… someone just checked in at the Saucer and shouted that the place is not the same without me. Good to be missed. I’ll be back there tomorrow, although a couple of hours late to Sunday Fun Day (probably more than a couple, since I’m flying Delta which seems completely incapable of ever arriving on time).

Arkansas is whooping South Carolina. The Gamecocks will likely drop out of the top 25 after this. Hopefully we’ll move up to at least 15.

All right, laptop battery is running down, time to hit Publish. Memphis, see you tomorrow.