It’s some guy with black hair using Instagram to take a photo. Could be anyone. Raishad does love instagram though.

But you know, that photo does look like this one from his instagram feed

It must be Raishad! Or at least the back of his head!

If I examine my instagram log, I saw ~25 bands over the course of 3 days. This year, I had left looking for a hotel a little too late and after getting rejected by a few AirBnB listings I thought I would be skipping this SXSW. But luckily, after complaining on Facebook, a friend living in Austin offered to let me stay at her place. So big thanks to Jen and Shane!

Going in to SXSW, if you don’t have a badge or a wristband, you need to do a lot of research and RSVPing. It’s the only way you’ll find out about the free parties and get into them. But I was busy this year with school and work, so I left everything to last minute. I decided to make a list of must-see bands and find out where they were playing and pick events from that set. My must see bands were

• Alabama Shakes
• Big Deal
• College
• Frank Turner
• Grimes
• Slow Club
• The Twilight Sad
• The Wedding Present

Of those, I only missed Alabama Shakes, College, and Frank Turner. Pretty good overall.

My favorite performance:
The Twilight Sad at the British Music Embassy
Catching The Twilight Sad was going to be tricky. But by luck, after Glen Hansard finished at the Paste & Sennheiser Party, Jen and I stopped by the British Music Embassy on the way back. I was just looking to see if they had any free food, but it turns out they were running late. So I got to see The Twilight Sad play a full set. I really enjoyed the set a lot. I asked Jen afterwards, and she didn’t care for it. But to me, they were on fire. I felt it in my gut. Tectonic plates were shifting.

My favorite band:
The Wedding Present
The Wedding Present is a band I got into late. They have been going since the 80s and I first started listening to them probably in the mid 00s. So I wasn’t there for the release of their most amazing album, Seamonsters. This year, The Wedding Present are touring Seamonsters, playing the full album. Unfortunately, for all but one of their Austin shows, they would not be playing the full Seamonsters (and that one Seamonsters show would require a badge). Forget all that though, The Wedding Present in concert are fun! They give off this feeling that they are having a great time. And as a person standing, watching them, it makes it fun.

Also, the bass player is hot

My favorite party:
Music For Listeners I’ve been going to this SXSW party for 3 years now. And every time, I always enjoy myself. For one, the guy running the party has great taste in music. And secondly, his choice of venue is perfect. It creates a lovely atmosphere. For the first 2 years, he had it at the Red House Pizzeria. But the Red House Pizzeria closed down, so he moved it across the street to Flat Top Burgers.
2 of my all time great concert moments occurred at previous Music for Listeners parties – seeing Stricken City in 2010 and Summer Camp in 2011. Unfortunately, there were no additions to that list in 2012, but the Django Django show was pretty fun. I would add it to my all time pretty cool concert moments.

My favorite venue:
Spotify and MSN on top of a parking garage
I’ve never seen a band play on top of a parking garage. It was pretty cool.

My favorite discovery:
They Look Like Good Strong Hands I heard They Look Like Good Strong Hands when I was walking under I-35 on 6th. They were just some post rock band jamming. I had to stop and check them out.

My favorite lighting:
The stage at the Hype Machine Hype Hotel was amazing! It made everything better

My favorite thing to hate:
Standing in lines. Getting in to the Spotify and MSN party, I waited in line for almost 2 hours. Same story getting in to the Hype Machine Hype Hotel.

I took my NEX with me to SXSW. I recorded a lot of video and took a lot of photos. You can see them on Youtube

And on Flickr

On to SXSW 2013

So, when it came time to buy the textbook for my class this year, I decided to try out an eBook textbook. Get in on the ground floor. Plus, Amazon had the Kindle version of Secure Programming for $20 cheaper than the paper version. Can’t resist a bargain.

What do I think of eBook textbooks after 2 months of eReading? They work in one dimension only, and that isn’t enough for a textbook. When I read a textbook, I don’t read it as a novel. I need to be able to scan, jump between sections, and easily look at charts and footnotes. These things just cant easily be done in an eBook, today. Also, reviewing for a test using an eBook is brutal. I’m so used to remembering the layout of pages. So when I want to recall something, I have a pattern to look for. This doesn’t work for eBooks because they reflow the content for orientation and screen size.

What are some good things about eBook textbooks? Highlighting and definitions.

What is surprisingly horrible? Searching. Unless a term only appears once, you’re going to have to look at a good chunk of the search results to find what you are looking for. There is no way to say hey, exclude stuff from chapter 7 and onwards cause it’s not intuitive to think of what LOCATION chapter 7 is.

In summary, textbooks cannot be treated as eBooks. It just doesn’t work.

You know what is better than eBooks? PDFs. PDFs have a structure that is rigid so you can easily find things in context. They are perhaps not as easy to read as eBooks, but they do have most of the other annotation benefits.

1. British Sea Power – Who’s In Control
2. Yuck – The Wall
3. Los Campesinos! – Hello Sadness
4. Stricken City – Losing Colour
5. The Chemical Brothers – Hanna’s Theme
6. Little Dragon – Ritual Union
7. Ringo DeathStarr – Kaleidoscope
8. Anna Calvi – Blackout
9. Those Dancing Days – I’ll Be Yours
10. jj – The End
11. Childish Gambino – Freaks and Geeks
12. Lana Del Rey – Video Games
13. Smith Westerns – Weekend
14. St. Vincent – Cruel
15. College – A Real Hero (feat. Electric Youth)
16. Summer Camp – Losing My Mind
17. Big Deal – Talk
18. Radiohead – The Daily Mail
19. The Joy Formidable – I Don’t Want To See You Like This
20. Ghostpoet – Survive It
21. Basement Jaxx – The Ends

Some fun facts:

Returning bands from last year: jj, Stricken City, and Summer Camp

Tracks from Movie Soundtracks, 3: Chemical Brothers (Hanna), College (Drive), Basement Jaxx (Attack the Block)

Tracks from Bands I’ve seen live, 7: British Sea Power (Best Concert of my life?), Yuck (SXSW 2011), Stricken City (SXSW 2010), Childish Gambino (FFF 2011), Summer Camp (SXSW 2011), Radiohead (Starplex 2008), The Joy Formidable (SXSW 2011, FFF 2011)

Tracks from Bands that I was supposed to see live at SXSW 2011, but did not because of some reason, 2: Anna Calvi (broken arm), Those Dancing Days (visa issues)

Nationality breakdown: 12 – UK, 5 – US, 3 – Sweden, 1 – France

Track Notes:

British Sea Power’s Who’s In Control was chosen because it’s the perfect anthem for the year that is 2011.

I think about Stricken City breaking up and still feel a bit sad. I was lucky to see them at SXSW 2010. I have to thank Long for suggesting that we go to SXSW for the day, and me for tricking him to go see Stricken City because they played right before Soko (French singer that he loves ever so much). Stricken City should’ve taken over the world.

jj didn’t release an album this year, but this track did appear on their blog this year. That’s how much I like jj.

I think Childish Gambino might have peaked with his EP. I’ve listened to Camp, and nothing really grabbed me.

A lot has been said about the authenticity of Lana Del Rey, but you can ignore that because Video Games remains an epic track. Everything else she’s released so far has been kinda mediocre.

Fun Fact, St. Vincent is my age and grew up in Dallas, graduating from Lake Highlands in 2001. Kinda neat.

Radiohead’s track is not from their disappointing King of Limbs, but rather their From the Basement live cd. If you were disappointed by King of Limbs like I was, give the From the Basement version a try. It’s not a bad album.

I saw The Joy Formidable the most out of any band this year, 3 times. Twice at SXSW and then at Fun Fun Fun Fest. I’ll never get tired of their live antics.

I saw Ghostpoet while I was in Melbourne for business. I’m really glad I went. It was really fun to go to a show in another country. The venue was a small room behind the bar, Northcote Social Club. I really liked the venue. It was on the main street of this suburb of Melbourne. It felt real. Traveling to the venue was a great experience too. I had not taken the Melbourne tram out of the city proper before. And then I had to leave the bar at 11:30 so I could catch the last tram back to the city. It gave me a taste of what living in a cool city could be like. After the show, I ended up telling Ghostpoet that I had flew all the way from Dallas to see him. He was surprised. Then I waited a beat before saying really I was there for business. He still thanked me for coming out.

And what a single “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” is

I know “Tainted Love”. Everyone knows “Tainted Love”. But I’m not really familiar with Soft Cell’s catalog. I can’t say if “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye” is a good representation of their work – sort of how like “Song 2″ sounds nothing like the rest of Blur. But this song is so killer, does it matter? I would be happy just listening to an album with just this song on it repeated 12 times. In fact, I’ve made that album, Soft Cell’s Greatest Hit. I’ve been listening to it on repeat since yesterday.

September’s Bond was The Man with the Golden Gun

and what a Bond it was.

The Man with the Golden Gun has a lot of problems. The opening credits weren’t too strong. The opening credits were interesting, with everything being projected on water. But the song was super cheesy. They are still trying to improve upon sexy silhouettes and failing. On my trademark notes page, I use the phrase “the stupidest thing ever” 4 times. 4 times! But if you take the story idea – mistress of the world’s best assassin pits 007 against the assassin in a game of cat and mouse through the far east that culminates in a duel at the assassin’s island fortress. It’s a very compelling idea. No amount of contrived karate schools, boat chases, racist southern sheriffs, and fun house mirrors can ruin it. Though they try very hard.

The Man with the Golden Gun is a very fun Bond where the action moves from one location to another keeping things interesting. All of the locations are amazing. You have Hong Kong, Macau, and Thailand plus some super cool bases. Scaramanga’s island base is leading the green initiative for bad guys everywhere, being entirely solar powered. But my favorite of the movie has to be the MI6′s base on the wreck of the Queen Elizabeth. I love how everything is slanted. Reminds me of that level in Jedi Knight. You know the one.

I also enjoyed the Bond girls. Weirdly, Andrea Anders had a very unpunny name (and was sidelined for being such an important part of the story). So to address the balance, the film makers threw in an Asian girl named Chew Mee. And then there was the most amazing Bond girl yet, Mary Goodnight. She is played mainly for comic relief – a sort of ditz with values. Luckily, she doesn’t end up dead and still gets to sleep with Bond.

The Man with the Golden Gun also has one of the coolest stunts paired with a slide whistle ever

So overall, I really enjoyed The Man with the Golden Gun. Some of the movie doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the parts that do work really work and it is an enjoyable watch. There were no silly gadgets (I completely bought the flying car). Scaramanga was supremely cool, though he had the faults of your traditional Bond villain (enough with the talking, just ice Bond already). And I wasn’t bored by tedious investigation. These are all things I look for in a good Bond movie.

My trademark notes page:

On the Official Bond Chart

1. From Russia With Love
2. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service
3. Dr. No
4. Goldfinger
5. The Man with the Golden Gun
6. Live and Let Die
7. Thunderball
8. Diamonds Are Forever
9. You Only Live Twice

Raishad will return later this week with Blogalongabond #10, The Spy Who Loved Me.

Is it a good movie? I don’t know. I enjoyed watching it and I ended up giving it 4 stars on Netflix. But I don’t think I would ever watch it again, unless I’m trying to impress someone. There’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (which I’ve seen a few times), and then there’s Tree of Life.

If the Tree of Life wasn’t so beautiful to watch, I would’ve lost interest quickly. The non-linear narrative really hurts comprehension. But if it was more straightforward would we get all of the milk drop visualizations of the universe forming?

I could sort of understand what Malick was trying to get across about life, the universe and everything, but don’t expect me to write a book report about it. But if I had to, it would be one sentence:

The Tree of Life is a big swirl of life, visuals, and classical music.

I can’t watch any extras because I rented the movie? Why am I being punished?

I turned 28.

Then, I time travelled 1 day into the future and completely skipped Friday, October 14th.

And then, I spent the next 10 days in Australia. Nearly 1/3rd of my October was in another hemisphere.

I destroyed the Melbourne sky line,

touched the Sydney Opera House,

assaulted a tired koala,

and hung out with kangaroo jack.

I really need to get back to Australia.