If you’ve been following me on Twitter or Facebook recently, you’re already well aware of the fact that I’ve finally been offered, and have accepted, a job with Rory Reid’s gubernatorial campaign in Nevada. I think my friend Ying summed up everyone’s thoughts in a tweet:

But here I am, at a New York State freeway rest stop, 150 miles from home with 2650 left on my journey to the real world.

My life has been a whirlwind for the past 2 weeks. After many months of searching, 3 separate organizations displayed an interest in hiring me and I was completely split. The more I discussed the options with my friends and family, the more confused I was. Everyone had a different opinion.

Besides the relative merits of the jobs themselves – each were equally exciting in their own way – the conversation often ended up being a discussion of location. It seemed nearly everyone was drawn to the idea of the great adventure. The 3000 mile drive across the country to an unfamiliar place and a foreign culture was enticing.*

“You’re young and you don’t really have any commitments. Why not?”

Why not, indeed.

So if you’re interested in following my progress on this, the first leg in my great adventure, check out my posterous feed. I will be updating it as often as possible with video, photos and more. I hope to see you there.

As one last note, I didn’t take this job for the road trip. While the idea of moving to a new and different place affected my decision making, it was only one of many many factors that contributed to my final choice. Nt least of which was the desire to get Rory Reid elected the next governor of the great state of Nevada!

Courtesy of Apple

I had been following Steve Jobs’ keynote with my brother Rob who previously accompanied me to the Consumer Electronics Show, so I figured we should take the opportunity to do something different. Having seen The Conversation on the New York Times recently, I thought why not give the discussion format a try?

You can read the resulting discussion below. While I’m not sure we’re quite at the Times’ standards yet, I’m very pleased with the results.

Tech Perspectives: The Apple iPad

I’ve been a big proponent of Wordpress, using it for this site as well as a few client sites. It makes my job much easier when the client can easily access and manipulate the backend of their site without getting too confused. It’s a powerful platform that can flex to fit the role of a decent content management system without too much tweaking.

The seminars at the conference covered a wide range of topics, from programming to legal issues to security to SEO. Luckily the organizers put some thought into the layout, letting someone like me – an intermediate user, if anything – bounce between more advanced discussions and beginner presentations, depending on the area of interest. As you all know, I’m a big proponent of online video, so seeing Steve Garfield’s presentation was a treat. You should pick up his new book, Get Seen.

There was an incredible lunch provided by Whole Foods and Legal Seafoods, but the highlight of the lunch hour was a couple of guys rapping about everything from Wikipedia to dungeons and dragons. I was able to catch this one tune about cheese on camera.

Formaggio notwithstanding, I had an great time at the conference. A big thank you to all of the organizers, I can’t wait for next year!

I wasn’t able to bring my dSLR to the conference, but I did manage to snap a few shots with a point and shoot. The first couple were taken at dusk from the 10th floor of the NERD center.

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Note: at the end of the conference I was uploading a plugin when I accidentally deleted much of the site’s structure. Big oops. Although I spent the next day restoring this site to its former glory, if you notice anything out of place please let me know so I can fix it. Thanks!

I went with my brother Rob to cover the show for The Next Great Generation. Our mission was to look at all of the hot new tech at the show from the perspective of our generation. We ended up writing several articles, a few roundups and plenty of video to accompany everything. I threw together this video of our trip out to Vegas, but had some trouble rendering it when I got there. So even though it was too late to post in TNGG, you can still enjoy it here. (note: it’s only 1:15 long but the export got mixed up, so it runs 5 minutes of mostly blank video.)

The material we published is linked below.

Articles I wrote:

• The Worst Idea At CES

• Natal Changes The Way We Game

• Through The Cracks Pt. 1

• Move Over 3G, Here Comes 4G

• Android Lands A Backflip

• TNGG: Live Coverage at CES

Articles Rob wrote (I put together all of the video):

• The Next Great Console

• Bringing A New Dimension to Television

• Intel Leads The Way

• Can The Zune Stand Alone?

In January of 2009 I launched an eponymous website to help with my job search. It was designed to be an online billboard of sorts, showcasing some of my best work to potential employers. But while the site performed that function well, it was lacking in other ways. Chief among these was the static nature of the content. The back-end design didn’t allow for regular updates without removing the showcased material, making regular blogging very difficult. It also made the showcased material seem dated fairly quickly.

As my job search wore on, I decided to commit more energy to regular blogging and content creation. The site you see today helps me achieve that while still showcasing my portfolio. As an added bonus, the site also helps me attract the contract work that has sustained me while I’ve been without a regular job.

But why the new domain name? I bought my original domain, MatthewCadwallader.com after I was encouraged in school to get control of my own name online. The problem was, not only did people not know whether to call me Matthew or Matt (It’s Matt, by the way) but in this age of texting and twitter, having a 22-letter domain was cumbersome. MattCad.com is short, easy to remember and easy to type without looking at a business card. The old domain still exists but it now redirects here.

I’ve really enjoyed putting the site together. It’s built on Wordpress with a theme design by the excellent Elegant Themes. I highly suggest you check out their site if you’re interested in building a Wordpress site. They charge a flat fee of $20 per year to access the dozens of fantastic themes they have churned out. Kudos are also due to my hosting provider, Blue Host, who helped me move everything over to the new site and provided incredible customer service at times when I thought all was lost.

Well that’s it. I hope you enjoy the content to come!

UPDATE (1/1/10): As suspected, the Google Countdown has expired with the passing of 2009. But the Easter egg hasn’t disappeared completely. Now, a click on “I’m Feeling Lucky” sets off a cascade of multi-colored asterisk-fireworks, accompanied by “Happy New Year” text. There’s a screen shot after the break.

12/17/09 - There’s a rather ominous easter egg on the Google page and apparently it’s been around for a few days. No, it’s not an actual colored egg, but a hidden “feature” that was placed in a not-so-obvious place most likely by some bored engineers in Mountain View. If you go to the site and click “I’m Feeling Lucky” without entering anything in the text field, up pops a large countdown with no reference to what comes at the end.

Easter eggs have been placed in software for years – sometime in the 1990s, programmers actually hid a flight simulator in Microsoft Word – but Google has been particularly partial to the hidden gems.

So what do these ominous numbers portend? Be careful not to yawn when I tell you it’s just the new year. Yeah, like we haven’t seen those before. Google, call me when you have a countdown to first contact.

The truth is, the only thing that is sure to get me focused is when someone else is relying on me. This will be the key to my keeping this blog up to date. If I’ve fallen off the wagon at all, please do me a favor and send me an email. No need to be polite. Sometimes I need a swift kick in the pants to get back on track.

But it isn’t perfect. One of the most glaring omissions – for a $3000+ professional machine, at least – is the lack of any eSata ports to plug in external hard drives at speeds 3-4 times faster than Firewire 800. Well, that’s not entirely true. For some reason Apple did install two eSata ports, but they are located deep in the bowels of the Mac Pro, unreachable without some kind of extension cable.

Why they would install ports designed solely for external use in an inaccessible area of the computer, I don’t know. But when I mentioned to a videographer friend of mine that with a little extension cable, he could connect his drives at triple the speed of his current setup, he decided to take the $30 plunge and do it. As we took apart the computer I photographed most of the process.

The cables were bought from NewerTech and came with a very thorough installation manual with pictures to guide through the process, but for some reason the guide was geared toward much older versions of the computer. Still, we managed to make it through the installation with few problems.

The Mac Pro is an incredibly sturdy machine. After opening it up you can see how much care has been put into the organization of everything inside – making the eSata issue that much more perplexing.

After removing the hard drives, we had to remove the fan assembly.

Although most of the parts came out rather easily, one screw that holds down the fan assembly was almost impossible to reach with my large hands.

Luckily we finally got both screws removed. From there it was smooth sailing, plugging in the extender cable and feeding it to the back of the computer.

Of course, in my haste to finish the job, I forgot to take any photos of the actual eSata ports on the motherboard! My bad. Anyway here’s what the final result looked like on the back of the computer.

After boxing the computer back together, we plugged in a hard drive to see how it would perform. We did get a scare when OSX hung on a gray screen during boot. Luckily after a reboot and some patience, it booted right up and everything worked fabulously. Another successful project!

Job Search 2.0