29 posts tagged “austin”
Forbes (through Austin Business Journal) has an article about Austin, saying that Austin will experience the fastest economic recovery when the economy rebounds ...
http://www.bizjournals.com/austin/stories/2009/07/20/daily35.html?ana=from_rss
That sounds great, but Austin is running out of water. Here are some articles on the drought in Austin ...
Article 1 from Austin American-Statesman
Article 2 from Austin American-Statesman
Video about drought in Austin ...
Animation that shows how drought has developed over time.
It reminds me of something out of Mad Max (The Road Warrior or Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome). I would hate to see Austin turn into a desert.
It rained last night (it was a great sound to hear), and I have a video of another time it rained ...
but the number of times it rains in Austin each month can be counted on one hand now. That is pretty scary.
That's one of the many songs I think of when it actually rains in Austin. Another good one is "Showdown" by Electric Light Orchestra. Anyway, it rained this morning in Austin, and I think it is still raining right now. It's so rare to see rain now that I thought I would take a video of it with my little Canon SD750 digital camera. There's nothing special about the video, but it is the best feeling in the world to actually see rain and lightning and hear thunder. Austin is in a drought right now so this rain is very much welcomed.
Wolfram Alpha is a new search engine that is not so much a competitor to Google as it is a complement to all search engines. What it does is take a subject and try to give you mathematical data based on the subject. It's actually kind of cool, and I am sure Google will absorb it one day. Here is an example ...
I typed in "Austin Portland", and here are the results I got ...
In other news, here is another photo of M.I.A. at the TIME 100 party. This time she is with the Twitter guys ...
Here is M.I.A.'s Twiiter if want to follow it ...
Here are the results for M.I.A. on Wolfram Alpha ...
I love it when I meet people at my job or just when I am out and about who have websites. I think it is cool to be able to go on their website, instead of their MySpace or Facebook profile. Anyway, I talked to 2 people today that have websites that advertise their business or band.
The first website is Cake Bite Delights ...
http://www.cakebitedelights.com
These little cake bites are actually really good. I have had the pleasure of eating them a couple of times, and they are very addictive. I don't know where this business is heading (local, national, international), but I do know that once you try the little cake bites, you will want more. If you live in Central Texas, it should not be hard for you to get an order or shipment of them.
Contact: carey@cakebitedelights.com
The next website is for this band called Fossils Rock ...
This is a band of older guys (hence, the name) that play benefits for organizations like Smooches for Pooches and Cause for Paws. I think they play a lot in Lockhart, TX (a small town near Austin) so check them out if you have a benefit, where you need a cover band to play.
OK, that's all the promoting I am doing for now. I really should get paid for this. ;)
Some of you may say "what is an eBill?", but for those of you who use some sort of online bill pay with your financial institution, you know what eBills are, and you probably really like them. Time Warner Cable in Austin used to be really good about eBills. However, I recently got this letter that said they are no longer doing eBills ...
Yes, I can still be notified by email when my bill is due, but it is a lot nicer to be able to just log into my online bill pay that my credit union offers for free, and see my Time Warner Cable eBill right there. I am hoping Time Warner Cable will come to its senses and reverse this decision. It is not in the interest of the consumer. In Austin, Time Warner Cable is somewhat of a monopoly. It competes with Grande Communications and AT&T. However, if you live in certain areas of Austin, you cannot get Grande's service (which I recently heard was not that great to begin with), and AT&T's DSL is slow compared to a cable modem. We definitely could use some competition here.
Here are a ton of photos I took of an area of Austin that is near South Lamar Boulevard and 5th Street.
The first group of photos are mainly of a building going that will one day be Spring Condominiums.
These next two photos are some sort of weird construction that I thought looked cool because the focal point is the tiny triangle in the center that all the other triangles move towards ...
I like this next photo, which also has The Spring in the background just because it is using a wall to kind of frame the photo.
This next photo shows a decrepit, old building near the Amtrak station in this area. This building has graffiti all over it, and a lot of busted out windows. I liked this shot because you can kind of make out some trees and another building through this window.
Summer Moon is a cool coffee shop on South 1st and South Park in Austin. It used to not be open on Sundays, but it is now, and that is really cool because I am usually wanting to go there with a friend on Sunday. They have really cool ice chai lattes, which are my favorite drinks. I think they are much cheaper than Starbucks, too. Here is their website ...
http://www.woodfiredcoffee.com
Anyway, my friend recently told me that there is a publication that he would get at Summer Moon called "Coffee News". Coffee News has little trivia and facts in it, and it also has horoscopes. However, the best part of Coffee News is that you can find a little man hiding in the ads or somewhere else in the publication (it's just one page, back and front). If you find this little man, you can go on Coffee News' website and tell them where he is. You will then win or be eligible to win a $50 VISA gift card. This reminds me of "Classified Critters" (I think that is what it was called), which my hometown newspaper, The Marshall News Messenger, always had in the classifieds section. The distribution for Coffee News in the South Austin and Central Austin region has been suspended for some reason, but you can get Coffee News all over the nation, I think. I think it is Canadian. Here is their website ... http://www.coffeenewscentraltexas.com
Here is the old October issue of Coffee News that we found in Summer Moon yesterday (I don't know why they had such an old issue, but it was the only one they had since the distribution has apparently stopped in that area) ...
My friend, Travis, and I drove around central Austin yesterday looking at all of the condos and houses for sale or rent. Austin is amazing in how there will be a decrepit, old shack next to a brand spanking new "McMansion" (this may not be the right term to use, but it's fun to say) in an old neighborhood. The neighborhood will not even be that great, but because it is located so closely to downtown Austin, its houses are considered very high in property value. I always say that all of the old stuff is going to be eventually torn down, and all new stuff will be built. Then, the property values will be even more expensive. It's kind of ridiculous since Austin is not Manhattan, but I guess people still really want to live in Austin for various reasons. The current economy may straighten out a few overpriced properties, though.
The mixture of old houses that need to be remodeled or torn down with the new, modern houses that are worth half a million dollars or more reminds me of a song by Fatboy Slim called "Build It Up - Tear It Down" ...
We went to a group of condos called 41 Waller that were pretty neat looking. The structure reminds me of a ship. Here is my favorite picture of them ...
There is a condo project going up called The Austonian that is supposed to be 50 stories when it is all done, I think. It looks really cool so far. Here is a picture of it going up ...
A friend of mine and I went out last night for dinner for my birthday and for election night. We were excited that Barack Obama would actually win the presidency. I was still very cautious. I am glad he won. I am glad the Democrats have the majority in the House and Senate. However, they may not get their 60-seat filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but they still did well. I am glad a lot of red states went to Obama.
Austin, TX and Travis County always go to Democrats, and it definitely went easily to Obama this time around. However, it kills me that Texas, as a state, has to be so backwards and go for McCain. If you look at an electoral map, you will see that the large urban areas (where most of the people live) all went to Obama.
Prop 8, which bans homosexual marriages, will probably get passed in California if the current results are correct. That is disappointing, but I guess that will just take time for people to get over their hangups about same-sex couples. I still believe that time heals all wounds, but that's not true if you run out of time.
The positive perspectives from around the world about Obama as the new president are very nice. I like the idea that the rest of the world may like America again. I always think globally. If I had enough money, I would live in a different country every month.
In other news, there is a lot of good music out there right now. Here is a mixtape that became available on the M.I.A. Fans message board today (http://miafans.co.uk) ...
http://fairtilizer.com/radioclit/the_very_best.zip
The music definitely has a "world music" sound to it. Esau Mwamwaya is featured heavily on the mixtape. He has done his own versions of "Paper Planes" and "Get It Up". I have posted his songs on here before. M.I.A. also put some vocals on a demo of his song, "Rain Dance". I think I have all of that right. The mixtape is also available on MySpace here ...
I think Radioclit is the main force behind the mixtape.
M.I.A. has a new song (download it) and video with Blaqstarr that is very good. It is called S.U.S. (Way Down The Hole) ...
As you can see the song has appeared under many different names. "Save Ur Soul" is probably the correct name.
One of the clubs/bars my friend and I went to last night was RAIN on 4th, and I was very happy that they played the song and video of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes". Everyone seemed to really like the song, and they all seemed to know the lyrics to it already, which they should since it has been out forever now. I just wish they would play songs like "Bamboo Banga". That would be more fun for a club.
The restaurant we went to was a great Italian restaurant called Primizie Osteria. It is located on East 11th St. in Austin, and it is probably one of those restaurants that is not getting as much business as it should because people do not know about it. I am probably going to do a Yelp review for it, but it already has a ton of positive Yelp reviews. Here is the website for it ...
http://www.primizieaustin.com
I got this Rigatoni with Italian Sausage dish that was really good, but I think the best part of the meal was the torta di limon dessert ...
My favorite mixtape to listen to right now is "Top Ranking" from Diplo and Santogold. I have posted some of the songs from the mixtape here already. You can download the entire mixtape by doing a Google search for it. Here are two of my favorite songs from the mixtape ...
