random($foo)

Continuing the detaching, removing the following feeds:

• Yahoo! Upcoming Customer Feedback: Suggestions
• BlogPulse Search Results for: “upcoming.org” – “upcoming.org/event”
• Google Blog Search: “upcoming org” -upcoming.org/event
• IceRocket blog search: “upcoming.org” -“upcoming.org/event”
• Technorati Search for: “Upcoming.org” yahoo

OK, here’s my last SXSW Music post (I’ll be working back to SXSWi and ETech after that). After hitting some speed bumps I was able to finish uploading the rest of my vids to YouTube. They’re mostly short snippets to help me remember who I saw (there are a few vids, like Spinto Band, Z-Trip’s beatboxing friend and MSTRKRFT that I still have to dig out). They’re not particularly high quality (YouTube transcodes don’t help) but there’s some good fun in there:

My schedule had a lot of acts that I knew or had heard their albums, but hadn’t seen live (Via Audio was a standout there, as was Jean Grae), and a few favorites (Okkervil River, Cloud Cult) and some random shows thrown in between.

SXSW Music was pretty chill for me since there wasn’t anyone that I felt I absolutely *had* to catch, and there were more than enough venues to be able to hop around comfortably. I particularly liked the day shows in that regard (no crowds!).

I’m pretty sure I’ll be back next year, so here are the lessons learned:

• Sunblock actually handy, having a tiny daybag seems like not much hassle
• Arrange staying nearby to better roll out of bed and get to early (11 AM) shows
• Pick up party bands early on the *very first day*
• SXSW sells Etymotic plugs reasonably priced ($12) at their general store booth in the ACC

Bands I would have liked to catch (but I guess will have to wait until they’re in town): Litespeed Champion, She and Him, Holy Fuck, Fuck Buttons.

Yesterday I dropped off all my stuff (although I’ll be back @ BH for the Fire Eagle meetup, so I don’t think its all that sudden of a shift), but today was my first “full” day of being on my own. It’s definitely a great feeling, and I have more than enough to keep me occupied.

I’ve run an internal Confluence installation for the past couple years (the personal license is free – if you’re looking for a good personal wiki and have the spare RAM to run Tomcat, it’s worth giving a try, it’s IMO the best wiki software out there – Deki Wiki is also nice, but impossible to install), which has been pretty successful for gathering together notes and projects. In an effort to keep focused on how I’m spending my time, I’m getting started on keeping a daily worklog again.

In the past, I’ve found that it’s good for helping me to keep on track (and also on focusing on the things I really want to get to for the next day). I’m revamping an older Dashboard widget I’m writing (which banged against WP’s XML-RPC) which hopefully I’ll publish soon when I get the “public SVN” todo item done.

Well, it looks like I’m about at my 500MB/week limit on Vimeo. So far I’ve gotten up to Wednesday. I spent most of the day getting set up crashing at a friend’s friends place (who knew air mattresses at Target were so damn cheap?) More later I guess? (or who knows, maybe I’ll have to fire up the ol’ YouTube account…

Note: I’m uploading the rest on YouTube since I decided I didn’t want to drag this out over 5 weeks. I’ll post that when it’s up. While the quality is lower, YouTube also has some advantages, such as a somewhat-working multi-video uploader. I say somewhat working, because after entering in the titles, descriptions, and tags for 39 videos, it looked like the “onblur” wasn’t firing and filling in the object info and it kept throwing empty title alerts at me (nothing like clicking through 39 of those a few times).

I used JesseR’s jsenv bookmarklet and the following code snippet:

for(i=0; i<39; i++) { 
  uproxy.setMetaData(files[i], 'field_myvideo_title', document.getElementById('video_title' + i).value);
  uproxy.setMetaData(files[i], 'field_myvideo_descr', document.getElementById('video_description' + i).value);
  uproxy.setMetaData(files[i], 'field_myvideo_keywords', document.getElementById('video_tags' + i).value);
}

Obama addresses the race, religion, and politics:

This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own American story.

I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.

It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one.

Full Text.

I brought my Leica carry-around camera with me, and ended up taking little video clips of a lot of the acts that I caught. They’re pretty big files, even after running them through Compressor, so will take a few weeks to upload w/ Vimeo’s bandwidth caps. Sometime soon I’ll probably also post up a mini-review/thoughts of my first SXSW music. In the meantime, here’s the first clip from a short set by Cassettes Won’t Listen:

Cassettes Won’t Listen from lhl on Vimeo.

I probably won’t have time to unwind for a couple more days (see my sched) but a quick update (which should all get their own longer entries eventually)

• ETech was much better than the past couple I’ve been to. I also worked on some cool FireEagle stuff that unfortunately didn’t go live, but once I get back, and have a few days to recover, something should go up.
• A full writeup of SXSWi and SXSW Music (w/ video hopefully)
• Gordon published his good byes. Coincidentally (really), my last is also today.

Late last night I was feeling sort of down about Ohio, and especially in how going negative seem to have really worked for HRC this past week. I decided that I didn’t want to look back and realized I could have done more, so I set up my own personal fundraising campaign, and I will match every dollar contributed with one of my own up to $2,000 ($4,000 total goal).

If you support Obama and want him to be President, consider clicking through and donating, and I’ll match it, whether it’s $5 or $500. I posted the link on Twitter last night and Facebook this morning, and it looks like we’re making progress. Thanks guys!

Bonus link:

• 25-minute interview w/ Lakoff on the campaign