I noticed it had been a while since I updated this site. Lately business has been accelerating and I have been spending more time just living than writing about it. I went ahead and knocked out a few posts tonight to start “catching up”. I still have a lot of cool adventures to write about if I ever get the chance, and I also have many more photos and videos, but these will have to wait.
Aside from the usual trips, concerts, and business stuff, I have been actively trading stocks lately and have been doing quite well at it. I have been swing trading breakouts and price patterns using technical analysis/charts. I plan to refine these methods with further practice. Wish me luck.
Mike, Louis, and I have been playing basketball every Tuesday and Thursday, and we now have another group of people who are playing so we have regular 3-on-3 games now. I am dominating them on the boards thanks to my impressive hops and superior reflexes.
Ashley has a fancy title now and can put the letters CCC-SLP behind her name if she so chooses. This means she is now “making that cheddar”. She also received her Vital Stim certification this past weekend, making her an expert on swallowing (I’m serious).
I had a birthday recently and am officially older. To celebrate, I ate an unlimited number of steaks with the gang at Fogo de Chao. Thanks to Louis for taking a picture of me pigging out.
Speaking of getting older, George Carlin died. Below is a quote I recently came across which is attributed to him:
“I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, start out dead and get it out of the way. Then you wake up in an old age home feeling better every day.. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, then, when you start work, you get a gold watch on your first day. You work 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement.
You drink alcohol, you party, you’re generally promiscuous and you get ready for High School. You go to primary school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a baby, then, you spend your last 9 months floating peacefully with luxuries like central heating, spa, room service on tap, larger quarters everyday, and finally you finish off as an orgasm.”
I tagged along with Ashley and her friends from Grad School as they celebrated Christine’s 26th birthday at Austin Karaoke. The place was cool in that each group got their own private room/booth and it was BYOB. While I was hesitant at first, I soon participated in nearly every song. I was told I “acted a fool”. I apologize for any embarrassment this may have caused for my loved ones. Highlights involved songs by Queen, Prince, and Madonna — these are always karaoke classics, so no surprises there. The low point was when it turned out that no one else was familiar with Patience by Guns ‘N Roses and I had to sing it by myself.
When hanging out in Berkeley, I walked past some club and noticed that The Coup was playing. I totally dropped everything and went. The show was in a basement club called Shattuck Down Under and reminded me of the Elephant Room here in Austin. It was a fantastic performance, especially since The Coup are from that area. Here are some highlights:
40 Acres Fest was last Sunday. This year the Octopus Project opened for the Roots in front of the famous UT Tower. In case you didn’t know, the Octopus Project is an Austin band that plays some sort of electro-pop-rock. I’ve seen them several times already and they are always fun. They are perhaps best known for dancing around with their instruments and rocking the theremin more than most.
I remember back in school when a guy was building his own theremin in the Electrical Engineering Lab. The schematic was pretty simple and I always wanted to build one myself, but that one has since been filed in my large folder labeled “Projects Larry plans to work on, but never will”. Join the club.
The Roots took the stage afterwards and really tore it up. Check out this guitar solo from their epic cover of Bob Dylan’s Masters of War.
It’s been a while, I know. South By Southwest occupied all of my time the past couple of weeks. And damn was it fun. I’ll have to write more later as I’m still catching up on work and recovering from the beating my body took. For now, you’ll have to settle for another one of my concert videos.
As usual, I filmed segments of various performances and combined them into one video, this time using Final Cut Express. This was my first time using the software, so it actually took me a really long time, and I didn’t even do anything cool with it. Don’t worry, my new goal for the year is to become awesome at video editing, so prepare yourself for much better videos in the future. Another first is that I’m using Vimeo to host the video since YouTube has lame size and length requirements that would force me to sacrifice the quality of the video. It’s about 20 minutes long and I don’t want to divide it into two parts. Try using the “full screen” functionality — it looks pretty damn good.
The video features performances by Ben Harper, AA Bondy, Kimya Dawson, Akron/Family, Ice Cube, Tom Morello, Autolux, Longwave, Perry Ferrell, Saul Williams, Ra Ra Riot, Serj Tankian, Talib Kweli, Vampire Weekend, Tapes N Tapes, Black Keys, Yeasayer, Bon Iver, Blue Scholars, Brett Dennen, Canada, The Cool Kids, Fanfarlo, Does it Offend You?, Holy Fuck, and random people on 6th and Congress.
Where else but SXSW can you see Tom Morello jamming with Ben Harper at a venue that seats only a couple hundred people? Enjoy!
Can you feel it? This week, thousands of web geeks, video game producers, indie hipsters, filmmakers, and over 1,600 bands will be gathering in Austin for one of the largest festivals in the world. Sorry Kevin, there’s nothing like this in Birmingham — only crappy Nickelback cover bands. But hey, we offered to fly you out here so you have no excuse.
Yours truly has acquired a shiny badge and will be attending as many events as possible over the next 2 weeks. After having a blast last year, but feeling as though I missed out on many opportunities, I resolved that in 2008 I would not be working and would be enjoying the full festival without limitations. And now that time has come. Check out my awesome schedule and try not to be jealous. Note that there are several “conflicts” here. There are several times when there are 4+ places that I want to be at the same time, so I’ll have to do what I can.
The Interactive Festival
This part of the experience will involve the most “business” — for us non-music industry folks at least. The SXSWi portion of the festival will be crawling with bloggers and web standards evangelists, so watch out — these guys will get all offended if you use a table tag. I typically don’t like talks on professional blogging (even though I’m writing on one) or web standards (no offense guys), but I’m pretty damn excited about the talks on startups and location-based gaming.
I’m most excited about seeing Kathy Sierra speak. She wrote one of the best software development blogs I’ve ever read and has written some fantastic books that I have on my shelf at home (Head First Java, Head First Design Patterns). Unfortunately some assholes made all kinds of threats towards her because she is a woman. It’s really sad that when a woman does something intelligent and all people can comment on is her looks. For instance, there was a post on reddit called Google Talk on Map Reduce and clustering by cute girl which started a lot of discussion. Anyways, Kathy Sierra’s presentations are supposedly awesome, so I’m looking forward to it. Her talk is titled “Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users”. It’s on Sunday. Don’t miss it.
Another highlight is the keynote by Mark Zuckerberg (Founder of Facebook). I was able to see Mark Zuckerberg talk during Startup School at Stanford last year. He didn’t really do much preparation for that particular talk (he’s a busy guy), and his speech basically could be summarized as “don’t trust MBA’s and old people, young techie guys are better”. This offended some of the audience and I heard some people say some really negative things about him afterwards, but I think they were just jealous. Despite some of the criticism he has received, I think he’s a pretty good speaker. I mean, he wasn’t nearly as good as the other speakers at the event (Chris Anderson, Max Levchin, Paul Buchheit) etc., but who is? You know Zuckerberg is good when he can convince investors that a network of online profiles is worth 15 billion dollars and will revolutionize the next 100 years in advertising. I mean, that’s 4 times as large as AMD’s market cap, and AMD actually has billion dollars fabs for producing microprocessors. But then again, even Sephira Software is more profitable than AMD.
I’m also looking forward to the talk by the 37 Signals guys. You know, the creators of Basecamp, Ruby on Rails, and other shiny web applications and frameworks. These guys are what every small web development company strives to be. Not only are they agile developers, they are great writers and are extremely profitable while being very open and real.
The Film Festival
I love watching movies. The fact that I will be watching movies in the middle of the day when many other people are hard at work in their cubicles makes it that much more fulfilling. This part of the festival is particularly interesting in that I know much less about film than I do about web development and music. I’ve been to plenty of music festivals and tech conferences, but I’ve never been to a film festival. Heck, I even have trouble saying the word “film” out loud since it just seems like a more pretentious way of saying movie. I’m pretty excited that I will get to see some random low budget movies that I probably won’t be able to see anywhere else any time soon.
21 Movie
I plan on seeing 21, which is about the MIT students who made a killing counting cards in Vegas. The description sounded pretty cool, I always enjoy movies involving casinos, and I’m about to take a trip to Vegas at the end of this month for my friend Kevin’s wedding. I thought the trailer was kinda lame though, so I’m already expecting to be underwhelmed by this one. See for yourself.
Choke
Hey, another movie based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk, who is best known for writing Fight Club. I vaguely remember reading Choke in college, and I seem to recall it involving sex addict meetings or something, but I suspect it was about much more than that. This one should be fun.
The Music Festival
We live in the Live Music Capital of the World, so most people are excited about the music festival portion of SXSW. I don’t blame them. I’ve tried my best to give most of the bands on the lineup a listen, but it’s almost impossible to do so unless you don’t do any work for a week. There are well over a thousand bands performing, so there’s definitely something for everyone. Below are some of the acts I am most looking forward to.
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony
What better way to kick off the festival than to see none other than Bone Thugs -N- Harmony at Emo’s? Sure, most SXSW types hate Bone Thugs because they only listen to the indie-rock-pitchfork-band-of-the-moment, but what could be better than seeing guys named Layzie Bone, Wish Bone, and Flesh-N-Bone performing classic hits like “Mo’ Murda”, “For tha Love of $”, and of course “Thuggish Ruggish Bone”. And if they encore with “Buddha Lovaz” I will totally go krayzie. Seriously, check out the video for “Foe tha Love of $” below. It brings back great high school memories for me. R.I.P Eazy E.
Fanfarlo
I recently heard about these guys on some random message board. From what I’ve heard, they are unsigned, but I suspect that will change very soon. Here’s a great clip of them performing in a “Black Cab Session”. I really enjoy raw recordings like this in unique settings.
The Black Keys
Josh and I saw these guys rock out at the Coachella Festival last year. They are often compared to the White Stripes in that they are a two piece band with some bluesy influences. Check out this performance of them kicking ass in Austin. Note the sheer awesomeness of the drummer.
Black Moth Super Rainbow
To be honest, I don’t know quite what to think about these guys yet. The following song sounds so trippy, like Pink Floyd mixed with Air or something. I think it will make for a great night show.
The Cool Kids
The Cool Kids are a couple of young rappers I’ve been hearing a lot about. I think they are about 19 or so. Here’s a video of them freestyling.
Tom Morello
What is the best concert I’ve ever been to? Rage Against the Machine. A large part of that has to do with the fact that Tom Morello is awesome. He will be performing both as the Nightwatchman and in the band “Body of War” with Serj Tankian of System of a Down and a “Special Guest” — I’m thinking Eddie Vedder. Check out Tom showing off some of his tricks. Apologies for the Carson Daly appearance in this video.
Akron/Family
These guys appear to rock. I love how they sing in unison also. Sounds very powerful.
Vampire Weekend
This is one of those buzz bands that everyone is talking about. They are playing so many shows during SXSW that I’ll have to see them once just to see what all the fuss is about. So far the songs I’ve heard have sounded very catchy. I can’t help but think Weezer when I hear them.
Ice Cube
Little known fact: Ice Cube’s Lethal Injection was the first CD I ever owned. I am probably looking forward to seeing Ice Cube perform at Auditorium Shores more than most people. I celebrate his entire catalog. The fact that Talib Kweli is opening for him is an added bonus.
My Schedule
And now for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. Behold, my South By Southwest schedule.
Thursday, March 6th
12:00AM - Bone Thugs N Harmony @ Emo’s
Friday, March 7th
01:00PM - Badge Pickup and Registration
02:30PM - Pro JavaScript Design Patterns (Dustin Diaz, Engineer @ Google)
03:30PM - How to Rawk SXSW (Matt Mullenweg, Creator of Wordpress and Tim Ferriss, Author of the Four Hour Work Week)
05:00PM - Bankrupt Your Startup in Five Easy Steps (Joshua Strebel, Andrew Hyde, Sean Tierney)
06:00PM - Super High Me @ Paramount (Film, Comedian Doug Benson, a famous marijuana advocate, decides to test the limits of his body during two, 30-day stretches.)
07:00PM - Austin Coworking Meetup @ Hotel San Jose on South Congress
09:30PM - 21 (Film, MIT Students take down Las Vegas in Blackjack) @ Paramount Theater
Saturday, March 8th
10:00AM - Quit Your Day Job and Vlog
11:30AM - You Are Here: Gaming and User’s Geolocation in Web 2.0
02:00PM - Location-based Entertainment, Animating Overlooked Spaces
03:30PM - 10 Things We’ve Learned at 37signals
05:00PM - Transparent Business — How Much is Too Much
06:00PM - Google Party @ Light Bar
06:30PM - Mr. Lonely (Film, Michael Jackson impersonator lives alone in Paris and performs on the streets to make ends meet)
08:00PM - Brent’s Party, Real Ale Brewery
09:00PM - 02:00AM, Austin Museum of Digital Art Showcase @ Club de Ville
10:00PM - 02:00AM, 16Bit SXSWi Party @ Scoot Inn
Sunday, March 9th
10:00AM - Social Design Strategies
11:30AM - Blogging for Dollars - Blogging’s a Profession?
12:00PM - ScreenBurn Arcade
02:00PM - Keynote Interview with Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook)
03:30PM - Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users (Kathy Sierra)
05:00PM - Data as Art: Musical, Visual Web APIs
07:00PM - The Promotion (Film, story of two mid-level supermarket employees who compete ruthlessly for a coveted post at a new store location.)
07:30PM - 11th Annual Web Awards by Adobe
09:45PM - Nights and Weekends (Film, A man and woman must face the tension that builds between them during a long-distance relationship.)
11:00PM - I Slammed My Dick in the Drawer (Film, Based on actual events, its a harrowing tale of a young man, a drawer, and his dick.)
Monday, March 10th
10:00AM - The Care and Feeding of Your Startup
10:00AM - The Art of Self-Branding
10:00AM - Scalability Boot Camp
10:00AM - Building Developer-Friendly Web Service APIs
11:30AM - Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing
12:30PM - The “Bloggies” Award Ceremony
03:00PM - 06:00PM - Facebook Developer Garage @ Pangaea
03:00PM - Instant Buzz: Drugs in Film
03:00PM - Upgrade Your Life: The Lifehacker Guide
05:00PM - Stories of Failure: Surviving Start-up Mistakes
05:00PM - Coworking and the Evolution of the Independent Worker
05:00PM - Bootstrapping through Entrepreneur Collaboration Networks
07:30PM - Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden @ Alamo Lamar (Film, If Morgan Spurlock has learned anything from over 30 years of movie-watching, it’s that if the world needs saving, it’s best done by one lone man willing to face danger head on to take it down, action hero style.)
09:45PM - 02:00AM - Facebook Developer Party @ Pangaea
11:00PM - Southern Gothic @ Alamo Ritz (Film, Hazel Fortune (Yul Vazquez) works in a strip club in the small Southern town of Redemption. Haunted by the death of his only daughter, Fortune has become a self-destructive, suicidal alcoholic, until he meets Starla Motes (Nicole DuPort))
Tuesday, March 11th
10:00AM - Insiders Guide to Angel Investing
10:00AM - Future of Corporate Blogs
11:30AM - Casual Multi-Player Online Games: Serious Revenues
01:00PM - A Conversation with Billy Bob Thornton (Film talk)
02:00PM - Secrets of JavaScript Libraries
03:30PM - Building Webapps Together
03:30PM - Considerations for Scalabale Web Ventures
05:00PM - Building a Startup You Love is Hard
09:00PM - 02:00AM Paste Magazine SXSW Music Opening/Film Closing Party @ Stubb’s
09:00PM - 04:00AM The Big Digg Shindigg @ PureVolume Ranch
Wednesday, March 12th
11:00AM - Octopus Project, Two Gallants, and More @ Red Eyed Fly
01:30PM - These New Puritans @ Emo’s
01:30PM - Bananaz (Film about cryptic cartoon band Gorillaz) @ Paramount Theater
02:30PM - Bowerbirds @ Emo’s
04:00PM - A Place to Bury Strangers @ Austin Convention Center
04:30PM - Akron/Family @ Austin Convention Center
05:30PM - Saul Williams @ Austin Convention Center
08:00PM - The Nightwatchman (Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine) @ Esther’s Follies
09:00PM - These New Puritans @ Antone’s
09:30PM - Choke (Film - An adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s (Author of Fight Club) novel, this is the sardonic story about mother and son relationship, fear of aging, sexual addiction, and the dark side of historical theme parks.) @ Paramount Theater
09:40PM - Canada @ Soho Lounge
10:00PM - Lightspeed Champion @ Emo’s
11:00PM - Peel @ Maggie Mae’s
11:00PM - Sons and Daughters @ Antone’s
11:30PM - Yeasayer @ La Zona Rosa
11:45PM - Will to Live @ Red 7
12:00AM - R.E.M. @ Stubb’s
01:00AM - The Black Keys @ Emo’s
Thursday, March 13th
12:00PM - Okkervil River, The Cool Kids @ Yard Dog Gallery on South Congress
12:00PM - My Brightest Diamond @ Volume Night Club
12:00PM - Tapes N Tapes, Shout Out Louds, Tokyo Police Club, The Stills, The Onion AV Club Party @ Emo’s
12:00PM - Akron/Family (Under the Radar and Team Clermont College Party) @ Flamingo Cantina
01:00PM - Nada Surf @ Volume Night Club
02:30PM - Gibson Guitar Party @ Maggie Mae’s
02:30PM - DeVotchka @ 7th and Red River
02:30PM - Cadence Weapon @ Austin Convention Center
04:00PM - Beautiful Losers (Film, D.I.Y. spirit that unified a loose-knit group of American artists who emerged from the underground youth subcultures of skateboarding, graffiti, punk rock and hip-hop.) @ Alamo Ritz
04:40PM - The Cool Kids @ Austin Convention Center
05:00PM - Vampire Weekend, Shout Out Louds (NPR Music Show) @ The Parish
07:00PM - Body of War (Tom Morello of Rage, Serj Tankian of System of a Down) @ Stubb’s
07:00PM - Del the Funky Homosapien @ Auditorium Shores
08:00PM - Elena Mendell @ The Ale House
08:00PM - Spoon @ Auditorium Shores
09:00PM - Tia Carrera @ Light Bar
09:30PM - Yo La Tengo @ Austin Music Hall
11:00PM - Genghis Tron @ Emo’s Annex
11:00PM - My Morning Jacket @ Austin Music Hall
12:00AM - DeVotchKa @ Cedar Street Courtyard
12:00AM - Perry Farrell (Jane’s Addiction) @ Pangaea
12:45AM - Serj Tankian (System of a Down) @ La Zona Rosa
01:00AM - Black Mountain @ Mohawk
01:00AM - Yeasayer @ Emo’s Lounge
01:00AM - The Octopus Project @ Emo’s
01:00AM - Holy Fuck @ Wave Rooftop
Friday, March 14th
12:00PM - Hot Water Music @ Red 7
12:30PM - Hot Topic / Xbox / Rock Band Party (Serj Tankian of SOAD) @ Spiro’s
12:00PM - The Black Keys @ Scene Magazine Party, La Zona Rosa
04:00PM - Dizzee Rascal @ Austin Convention Center
08:00PM - Ravens & Chimes @ Club de Ville
08:00PM - YellowFever @ Buffalo Billiards
08:00PM - The Virgins @ Cedar Door
09:00PM - The Builders and The Butchers @ Club de Ville
10:00PM - A-trak @ Emo’s
11:00PM - Vampire Weekend @ Antone’s
11:00PM - Dr. Dog @ Cedar Door
11:00PM - Fanfarlo @ Wave Rooftop
12:00AM - Tapes ‘N Tapes @ Cedar Door
12:00AM - Akron/Family @ Emo’s
12:00AM - Russian Circles @ Emo’s Lounge
12:00AM - My Brightest Diamond @ Central Presbyterian Church
12:40AM - The Paul White Quintet @ Elephant Room
01:00AM - King of Prussia @ Light Bar
01:00AM - N.E.R.D. @ Stubb’s
01:00AM - Atlas Sound @ Prague
01:00AM - Blitzen Trapper @ Bourbon Rocks
Saturday, March 15th
12:00PM - San Francisco SXSW Party @ Bourbon Rocks
12:00PM - Seattle SXSW Party @ Palm Door
12:00PM - NME Party @ Wave
04:30PM - Lyrics Born @ Auditorium Shores
05:30PM - Talib Kweli @ Auditorium Shores
08:00PM - Ice Cube @ Auditorium Shores
09:00PM - Mission to the Sea @ Hilton Garden Inn
11:00PM - This Will Destroy You @ The Hideout
11:45PM - Blue Scholars @ Prague
12:00AM - Two Gallants @ Dirty Dog Bar
12:00AM - Kid Dakota @ Thirsty Nickel
12:00AM - Z-Trip @ Vice
01:00AM - Tokyo Police Club @ Dirty Dog Bar
01:00AM - Dr. Dog @ Emo’s Annex
01:00AM - Black Moth Super Rainbow @ Thirsty Nickel
01:00AM - MSTRKRFT @ Vice
01:00AM - The Virgins @ Wave Rooftop
01:00AM - British Sea Power @ Maggie Mae’s Rooftop
XX:XXXX - Duffy @ Stubb’s
Sunday, March 16th
12:00PM - 06:00PM, NME Party @ Wave
04:00PM - 07:00PM, Q Magazine and Guitar Hero Party @ Driskill Hotel w/ Lightspeed Champion, These New Puritans, and more
07:00PM - Rest of Life - Reflect on how awesome SXSW was
