Max Engel - the 8BitKid
living bit by bit

This Onion News Network sketch features a good friend of mine from high school as one of the catatonic Obama supports left wandering after the victory:

Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters To Realize How Empty Their Lives Are

Last week was my last week on the road, at least for a while (hopefully). I was at the Internet Identity Workshop and the OpenSocial 1-year birthday party. IIW is like a really intense and productive summer camp for folks in the internet identity space. The OpenSocial event gave the containers and app developers a chance to celebrate the successes of the past year and go over what’s coming down the road.

I wanted to share some of the videos from the week. This was my first guest appearance on “thesocialweb.tv“, where I discussed my work at MySpace on Data Availability.

Next up is Joseph Smarr from Plaxo giving a talk on the Open Stack and the social web. Part of his presentation included a demo of the new Portable Contacts spec and how you can access MySpace info through the Data Availability platform. The video doesn’t do the audio justice ;-)

Joseph Smarr on Portable Contacts at IIW from max engel on Vimeo.

So this past weekend I made the trek with my friends down to the Alpine Village in Torrance to experience Oktoberfest. This was my first time attending the event, and I had no idea what to expect. I can barely describe the unbridled awesome hilarity and revelry that occurred, so check out the media below to get a sense of the flavor…

Sashaying Away from max engel on Vimeo.

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So the last thing I saw last night before falling asleep was this video. I’m not exactly sure why that happened, but it’s Friday, and I feel like sharing some silliness as I close out the week…

First off, sorry for having to severely cut down on posting. Work has been amazingly interesting, but also incredibly busy. I have been out of town a bit more than I thought, but now I’m back for a wee bit.

Anyways, as I driving with a friend this weekend, we spotted this:

The Dueling Banjos of Sign Twirling from max engel on Vimeo.

Sorry folks that this is my first post of the week. I was up in San Francisco for TechCrunch50 and Portable Contacts Summit, and didn’t have any time to do much of anything but work. Next week I’m off to NYC, so you may find the same posting pattern.

However, do check out this video:

So I spent the day on the road, and the night at an Art and Architecture Pecha Kucha, but made it back in time to get my Friday post up.

Jon Stewart, for the win:

I’m going to be unplugging myself starting tomorrow for a bit, so you are getting the video a bit early. I go to these excellent dance parties every Wednesday, and heard this song. My friends, the Gaskets, do an excellent cover.

I didn’t know until recently that the Rage Against the Machine song is actually a cover. Damn, Afrika Bambaataa is cool…