US Highway 31 in northeast Central Texas

You don't have to go far outside Austin before you start to see the "real" Texas depicted in popular culture. Here are some images from a drive on US Highway 31 in northeast Central Texas.

Our hood

Downtown East 6th Street in Austin is nationally famous for its bars and live music, but head just a few blocks east of the Interstate, and you'll find a "neighborhood in transition". It's a great part of town to live.   Sometimes this place is a hustling and a bustling with a mix of hipsters, sketchy dudes, and homeless people.  But on this Sunday afternoon, it was eerily quiet.

Spotted at CVS

BluBlocker Viper Wide-Angle Sunglasses "Complete surround vision"

Bumpits Hair Volumizing Leave-In Inserts

Snuggie for Kids

Revolutionary Self-Cooling Towels

Phoenix in Austin

Here are some pics from Thursday night's show. Phoenix performed excellently, but as you might expect with a band that has reached new heights of popularity, the crowd was kind of lame.  La Zona Rosa is a really weird venue too. Oddly laid out. You have to walk through a crowded bar to get to the entrance of the actual performance hall, which was a little confusing at first.  Inside the hall, lines for the bar became ridiculously long. And there was no merch table! WTF! Still, Phoenix killed it.



Here's a very shaky video of one chorus from Armistice.

Here's the YouTube version.

Bus ride through Shanghai

My good friend and fellow Canadian ex-pat over at chungkingmansions.com posted iPhone video of his bus commute to work. It's a very interesting experience and just the kind of transportation video we love here at distracteddispatches.com. I urge you to take ten minutes and watch the videos maximized on your screen. You can totally imagine as if you are taking the 109 through Shanghai!

"Some highlights:

- PLA marching band! (1:58 mark in first video)
- Fire off of Shunchang Road (1:30 mark in third video)"

Phoenix tonight!!!

Phoenix sold out La Zona Rosa tonight but we got the tix!

"Toys for big boys"

This video has been making the rounds on the internets. Air is decent band, but I'm not a die hard fan. I just love the hardware! All that hard-to-find expensive vintage gear just sitting there in the studio. Their job is just to sit around it until they "feel inspired". Bastards! I doubt they would miss it if I stole their MS-20!

You can also watch the video on the Guardian's website.

The Sad Bike is still there

I first noticed this bike almost two months ago locked to a parking meter on Guadalupe Street.  I'm sure a City of Austin parking attendant walks past this thing everyday and sees it locked to municipal property, but I guess removing it is just not a priority.  Too bad, because it's depressing.

Spotted at Wal-Mart Supercenter

Miniature Christmas saloon

Choco Taco

Betty Crocker Easy Flow sprayable frosting

One gallon of mayonaise

Ten pounds of pork chitterlings

Crazy looking car with spraypaint and foam tubes

We saw this car cruising down 6th Street yesterday.  How many people buy a Mercedes and think, "What can I do to spiff this thing up? I know, pool noodles!" Chalk it up to another person just trying to Keep Austin Weird, dude.

Montreal snow

While I was complaining about rain and temperatures in the 40s °F / 5 °C, Montreal was being blasted with snow.   Using Flickr's advanced search tool, I found pictures of Montreal's snow taken over the past week and put 18 of them in this gallery. Take a look!  I still reserve my right to complain about the mild winter weather in Austin, because it is usually more pleasant, and the summer was painfully hot.

Chrome for Mac released, but not for losers like me.

Two days ago, I posted about a TechCrunch report saying a Chrome for Mac release was imminent.  And wouldn't ya know it?  Today, they announced a beta of the super fast web browser is available for download.  Cause for celebration, right?

Wrong.

Chrome only works on Mac OS X 10.5 or higher.  Losers like me who are still running 10.4 can either go through the painful and long process of an upgrade, or just say fuck it. For now, I'm saying fuck it.

One weird thing is that even I though I signed up to be notified about Chrome's release by email, I never received the notification!  But S. did receive the email.  In fact, she was the one who informed me about it!  Google, if you're going to run the internet, you really need to improve your email notification system!

Chrome for Mac release "imminent"

It's not exactly breaking news, but TechCrunch reported last week that the lighting fast web browser Chrome is finally coming to Mac OS X soon....like, any day now.   This is a development I have been anxiously anticipating, as FireFox has been getting increasingly bloated and annoying.  If you want, you can sign up to be notified by Google when Chrome for Mac is released.

Collective beat making

Last night, we went to a party sponsored by a large vodka company at Pine Street Studios (1101 E. 5th St in Austin, Texas). The venue was known as Fader Fort during SXSW 2009. The event ended early, like 10 p.m., but drinks were free and so was the entertainment. Peanut Butter Wolf was there to do his DJ/VJ thing, where he mixes music videos together on two big screens. (It reminded me of a much better version of the Much Music video dance parties we used to have in junior high.)

One room had this cool installation that involved a bunch of light sensitive sound making circuit boards mounted on a table. People were invited to manipulate the sounds. It was hard to tell exactly how you were affecting the music, but it was still fun!



Youtube version is here.

Snow far, snow good

Houston might think it's the Snowpocolypse, but so far central Austin has received only a smattering of flakes. If you click on this picture and zoom in, you can almost see a few snow crystals gently fluttering to the ground.
Being Canadian, I felt compelled to walk out in the street and take pictures of people needlessly bundled up so that we might have a healthy chuckle at their misery.

Click here to read more! >>

Construction Zone Came and Went

Blogger offers two options for running your site. Classic and Layouts mode. With Classic, you can publish via FTP to your own server, but you surrender the ability to use tons of cool, easy-to-use features offered in Layouts mode.

Update on Friday, December 4, 2009 at 9:48 PM: The transition is pretty much done now. The lamest thing was that when I switched back, it didn't copy any of the photos I uploaded in the past year, so I had to reup them.

Austin's winter, usually awesome, currently sucking

WTF Austin? I sweated through a hellish summer and I was supposed to get the pay off now. It's cold and miserable and I'm no longer adapted to this kind of weather. At least we didn't get a "snowstorm" like they did in El Paso. Here are some pictures I took of today's shit weather.



SPECIAL WEATHER STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE AUSTIN/SAN ANTONIO TX
1130 AM CST TUE DEC 1 2009

..COLD RAINS ARE EXPECTED TODAY THROUGH WEDNESDAY MORNING WITH THE POSSIBILITY OF A RAIN...SLEET OR SNOW MIX OVER THE HILL COUNTRY TONIGHT INTO WEDNESDAY MORNING...

COOLING TEMPERATURES TONIGHT ARE EXPECTED TO SUPPORT A MIX OF RAIN...LIGHT SNOW AND POSSIBLE SLEET OVER THE SOUTHERN EDWARDS PLATEAU AND HILL COUNTRY. A LIGHT DUSTING OF SNOW IS POSSIBLE ACROSS EXPOSED SURFACES...HOWEVER...ANY ACCUMULATIONS WOULD BE VERY SHORT-LIVED DUE TO WARM SURFACE CONDITIONS.

WITH CLEARING SKIES FRIDAY NIGHT...FREEZING OVERNIGHT LOWS ARE EXPECTED...WITH LOWS IN THE 20S ACROSS THE HILL COUNTRY TO THE MID 20S TO NEAR 30 ACROSS ADJACENT PARTS OF CENTRAL AND SOUTH CENTRAL TEXAS.

Update on Tuesday, November 24, 2009 at 4:27 PM: In response to my frost bitten fellow Canadians calling me out for whining about rain in December, you didn't suffer through Austin's hottest summer on record this year! Not only has my maple syrup blood thinned to the consistency of tequila, but I also entered into a tacit deal with nature that I would tolerate its sun lashing in exchange for being able to wear t-shirts year round. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Never trust nature.