There's emotional and creative burn-out to blogging. After a while, it's just hard work, but you're in the zone, and you keep doing it. Add being in a war zone onto that, and you never get to complain about updating MyBlueHamster at blogspot again.

Dr. Carlos Brown, now a surgeon at Austin's Brackenridge Hospital, choked up guiding SXSW attendees through Trapperlos M.D., his blog of his time as a U.S. Navy trauma surgeon in Ramadi in Iraq. There's something slightly surreal about the way he put music to images of life in the operating room: but it was the little things that made life bearable for his family, like letting his daughter know that he had a birthday cake; or when he and his family, separated as they were, could all wear Star Wars costumes at Halloween; and the less grisly memories (like drinking one of the two beers he was allowed during his tour.)

Brown (who has since resigned his commission) calls the blogging experience an essential part of his time there. But he did note that the military has now started cutting back on access to YouTube and MySpace. "People who came after me had a much harder time running a blog, and I guess I got lucky."

Remember Minority Report? Remember the uber-cool control gloves that Tom Cruise used? Remember thinking "I wish I had those?"

The guys at Cynergy Labs were displaying their prototype in the Interactive Trade Show of a real version of the technology. The great/scary thing? They actually work. Running Windows Vista on a Mac, the demonstrators digitally (pardon the pun) manipulated a series of images on a test grid, from a 3D map of the Louvre to a stack of snap shots. The shocker for everyone that was expecting some super-duper high tech solution is that the backbone of the sensor system is a WiiMote. That's exactly the kind of innovation that Enspire's Patrick Sanchez talked about in the interactive issue. Apparently, Microsoft are very, very interested in the results.

Now if we can juuuuuust get that funky projected display Cruise had as well …

One day at the festival, Rooftop Films founder Mark Rosenberg tells me all about Benh Zeitlin’s short film “Glory at Sea,” (partially funded through the Rooftop filmmakers’ fund), making sure I put it on my SXSW can’t-miss list; the next, he’s telling me that Benh and three others from the “Glory at Sea” crew had been in a terrible car accident on their way to the festival, and now Benh’s in surgery. It’s the sort of sudden turnaround one hopes never to happen at a film festival, potentially compounded by the fact that the 25-year-old filmmaker doesn’t have health insurance.

After weeks spent holed up with screeners and furiously editing copy for our SXSW Film issue, it was great to finally put names and films to faces at last night's Chronicle-sponsored SXSW Film Bash at La Zona Rosa. It was a packed house, and everybody seemed to be enjoying the hell out of themselves. (Those little blue drink tickets certainly helped grease the wheels, although I had to hit up the Luv Doc for replacements after I foolishly tossed mine, thinking, um, they were for a raffle or something.)

A gentle reminder to film festival attendees: there is life beyond the down-town nexus of the Convention Center, the gorgeous Paramount and the beloved Alamo Ritz. And it is more than worth the tiny effort to get to the other venues

Take a little trip (it's about a ten minute drive, or you can take CapMetro's no. 1 or 5 buses) to Dobie Landmark. The outside looks like an innocuous cinema in a mall, but inside is a true gem. Four screens, each with different design theme: Egyptian, French Tudor, Gargoyle Gothic and Space-Age Art Deco. There's murals and gargoyles and vintage glamor and, yes, SXSW films.

Also, if you feel like duplicating the Alamo "dinner and a movie" experience, don't forget there's also SXSW films showing at the Alamo South Lamar. If you need an extra incentive, they have the real Bone Shack sign from Grindhouse in the lobby.

Whether it's a "drop dead, scumbag" blog entry from an ex or a negative rating on eBay, everyone has had somebody say something nasty about them on the web. Thor Muller of Satisfaction Unlimited argues that redress isn't just about sue, sue, sue.

Case in point: yesterday's now-notorious keynote discussion with Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, where half the Internet seemed to lay into moderator/interviewer Sarah Lacy for how she handled the event. Muller argued that she could have salvaged her end of things by one of a hundred methods (one of the best he found was a New York-based film maker who turned hate screeds on the talkbacks on his blog into a jaunty song.) Instead, she blamed the crowd, and that rarely works.

And by the way. Thor Muller? Unless there's a Quetzalcoatl running a panel somewhere, that may be the best name of the whole conference.

Variety's reporting that IFC Entertainment bought worldwide rights to Joe Swanberg and Greta Gerwig's Nights and Weekends, which world-premiered at South by Southwest last night.

SXSW has been interpreted by some industry figures as a great place to hang out, but not necessarily to buy films – a perception that might be shifting.

The Nights and Weekends deal marks the first time a SXSW world premiere film has been purchased at the fest.

Check out the Variety story about the acquisition here.

One of the great things about SXSW is (wait for it, wait for it, buzzword ahead) the synergy of it. Events like this morning's panel, Pimp My Film Website, where film makers learned more about this webernet thing.

If this sounds, in this post-The Blair Witch ARG-fired era, obvious stuff, moderator Tim Nolan of Firstborn Studio asked for a show of hands. The result was about 50-50 techies/film makers, which Nolan said almost never happened. Film makers are not interactive designers who are live their life around industry-defined best practices: they're working on the best film they can make.

Quick tips from Nolan: the nice, simple, clean website you built to attract investors won't sell your movie to viewers. For those of you behind the lens who don't have time or resources (or the techy friends) to build up a kick-ass website, then take advantage of the tools that are there, like Flickr and MySpace. Plus, Flash is your friend. And don't forget: you're creating lots of content anyway (your film, the scripts, cast bios), so this is just putting it in a different, non-scary format.

It’s de rigueur to bemoan the media – too much, too chaotic, too raunchy, too closed, too open, too, too, too whatever. Well, there is a lot to talk about, but if you take a walk through time with new media writer for Forbes Magazine Quentin Hardy, who spoke at Saturday’s panel Managing the Media Blur, there’s nothing and everything to complain about. In fact, “complain” isn’t the right word for it. Like puberty, middle age moments, and getting your heart broken (at least once), the current media revolution is not unlike those that came before it – inevitable, necessary, and endurable. Whenever a new medium exploded on the scene – books following the invention of paper, hand scripted books to books printed in signatures on a printing press, radio, TV, film, VCRs, DVDs, video games, the Internet – human beings, Hardy reminded the audience, wrestled with it, charged it with the extinction of intellect if not mankind itself, but ultimately, somewhat unceremoniously, accepted it as another thread in the fabric of communication life.