So here we are in San Diego - home of ETech, Graphing Social Patterns and what must surely be the world’s biggest Marriot hotel. We drove in this afternoon after an amazing down the Pacific Coast Highway, via Laguna Beach.

Yep, Laguna Beach - our own mini-spring break. We even managed to get ourselves invited to a party in a hotel suite - some college kids throwing an alcohol-fuelled wake for their friend who had died of a cocaine overdose. They were convinced that the departed friend had ‘sent us’ to drink with them. That was a little weird. We drank for half the night and then stole a bottle of their booze - it’s what she would have wanted.

Anyhoo…

Our jaunt to Laguna Beach marked the end of the ‘holiday’ portion of my trip. It’s been a blast but now I have to do some actual work. Those bills are not going to pay themselves, direct debit or no. I’m here writing about ETech and GSP for couple of outlets back home; which is neat-o, and not least because they want a Gonzo-ish angle rather than straight reportage. One of the pieces links in with my trip to SXSW next week so that’s a couple of weeks of work right there. After that I have a TV thing to do before getting started properly on the Next Book. After Austin I’m going to be on my own out here, so expect dull-arse musings on the loneliness of being and things and people left behind in London. Oh, the larks we’ll have, you and I. Buy the ticket, take the ride, hey?

But for now the gang is doing ETech and GSP - I pick up my credentials at 8am and then it’s a full programme for three days including some really interesting sounding stuff like ‘How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social - Not Electronic by Noah Shachtman from Wired.’ I’m looking forward to seeing Violet Blue in the flesh too, as it were. I’m saving a lot of the good stuff for my paymasters - as only seems fair - but I’ll blog some highlights here too. The blog remains the place to look first for hairdressers-in-togas-related news.

Which reminds me - while I’m here - fuck you, Matt Drudge and more specifically, fuck you the rest of the media for encouraging him. The parallels being drawn between the Harry story and the Clinton one are absolutely right - but not for the reasons everyone seems to be saying. With both stories Drudge did zip all except for publishing a story that other outlets had but had chosen not to run - Clinton because it wasn’t lawyer-ready at Newsweek and Harry because there was a voluntary embargo in place to avoid putting his safety - and that of the rest of his unit - in jeopardy.

This is not, by any definition, journalism any more than when Fox made a series where a ‘masked magician’ showed how David Copperfield makes elephants vanish it could be considered investigative documentary making. Drudge couldn’t even bring himself to warn the MOD that he was about to publish to allow them to get Harry on a plane. This from a man who claims to support the troops. Maybe he just means American troops.

But - hey ho - another reason why, for all the fine talk at events like ETech, citizen journalism and blogging will never, ever take over from the professional kind. Which, on second thoughts, given that paid journalism is basically all that stands between me and the next plane home, may not actually be such a bad thing.

And finally, Michelle finally got her camera card reader Fed-Exed over so I can round off the road trip with a few last photos…

Right, to bed and then to work…