Category: Movies

Twenty Things I Learned at SXSW 2011

Posted by Rich Harris – March 18, 2011

What an exhausting and amazing experience SXSW was this year. I met Dave Grohl. I watched an inspiring and yet heartbreaking documentary on Fishbone. I met many new people, the good, the bad and the douchebag. If you’ve never been to SXSW, there is nothing like it. With music blasting out of every venue, new technology being introduced, and the number of human facets being displayed simultaneously in one city at once is astounding. One hour at SXSW is like 8 hours in real life. It just flies. Anyhow….I had to list some of my observations and experiences here otherwise I’ll never stop buzzing from it. Until next year…

Love it or hate it, here’s my list

  1. Lone Star beer, if consumed gradually over several days, changes your body chemistry, most likely permanently.
  2. Dave Grohl and the Foo Fighters crew are some of the nicest guys on the planet. They also put on one of the best rock shows I’ve ever seen.
  3. Hoards of drunk women trying to look sexy walking through mass crowds on cracked streets and brick roads with spiked 6-inch heels is one of the funniest damn things I have ever seen.
  4. Tight V-neck shirts, tight black jeans, white belts and white patent leather boots with a haircut resembling Greg Brady in the late ’70′s is something I will never ever wear. I urge you to do the same. Mick Jagger and others made it look good …..back in ’72 where it belonged.
  5. Not all music industry vets are self-serving thieves and ass clowns. I met some real people and my bleak outlook on the music biz has been lifted slightly.
  6. Fishbone are the biggest, greatest and most uniquely influential band to never make it huge. Their documentary “Every Day Sunshine” is hard to swallow, yet a testament to how many hearts they’ve touched with their unrelenting individuality and talent. There will never be another Fishbone. Ever. They deserve a spot in the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame, hands down.
  7. Homeless people would rather have an iPad 2 than food.
  8. Rafael Saadiq’s backup band are some of the funkiest dudes I have ever met. Everything about their playing smells like some of the greatest peak moments in James Brown’s prime funk era.
  9. I’ve always hated hard cider but Strongbow Dry Cider from England was pretty damn good.
  10. Walking around wearing Chuck Taylors on pavement for 6 days straight when you are made out of 268 lbs of  pure pancakes and hot wings does not bode well on the feet, knees, hips, lower back, sanity, or the soul.
  11. Angelo from Fishbone is the snazziest dresser from Jupiter that I’ve ever had the pleasure to photograph or be in the presence of.
  12. There is such thing as shitty BBQ in Texas…. (street vendors)
  13. ATM fees ranging from $4-5 don’t hurt so bad when you are exhausted, parched, and hurting…..until you realize Austin’s desire to make your life ‘convenient’ at SXSW was really just legalized rape.
  14. No one can possibly see everything there is to see at SXSW and still live to tell the tale.
  15. Booth babes never get old.
  16. When an inebriated man dressed as Gumby wandering the streets has something to say, people listen.
  17. If you look like a conservative software engineer at SXSWi, it’s still ok to check out mobile app booths wearing green tights, a cape, and knee high Doc Martens.
  18. I’m glad it only happens once a year.
  19. Always pack 2 extra livers and a spare aorta.
  20. Being around that many people is still electrifying to me. Bands blasting out of every venue, great food and good friends remind me of the importance of being alive, sharing with others, and why I dig it so much.

Until next year.

Onward…..

If Hunter S. Thompson Wrote for The Tech Industry

Posted by Rich Harris – May 13, 2010

Sooooo…..I work for Seagate. They make hard drives. I’m subscribed to any and all Google alerts where Seagate’s products/services are mentioned to keep my thumb on the pulse of what people are saying about the company so that I can do my job. The latest Google alert I had received had a link titled ‘hard drive seagate‘. It linked to this URL: http://hooydgzznq.co.cc/2010/05/13/hard-drive-seagate/

If you look at the page that I just gave you the link to, it’s pretty harmless/innocuous. When you visit it nothing bad will happen to your computer, (or at least it didn’t to my Mac) but you’ll notice that you can’t *see* the copy I’ve pasted in below but what you can see is ads. I couldn’t figure out from the link I saw how the hell the link ranked so high in the alert until I viewed the source and to my lack of surprise, the copy below had been hidden in the HTML code to trick search engines and suck you in to click on their PPC ad to make you think you were going somewhere. This is a very common thing for hackers to do to cash in on PPC (Pay-Per-Click) ads….but alas, that is not why I’m writing about this.

The reason I’m posting this is that I have to give whatever acid trip’d existential mofo hacker a strong and well-deserved “Hunter S. Thompson of Technology Blogger of The Year” Award. While he/she/it put this little ditty together in an attempt to lure in search engine users looking for products in the high tech industry, I say he did it because he’s trying to connect the dots in the universe for us all to understand better…..well not really…but I got a good laugh out of it….so here it is. Enjoy this literary journey.

“Sony was also naive, but its business name was the most odd, dell inspiron 4000 audio driver. Josef mengele, the due angel of death of auschwitz, who has given versions for more than 30 classes. The 1540 place of layolle s voice is own, but no vote or rainbow boys attend. Commercial barebone computers and laptops, the state s bedroom this battery was sound s of santana. Denna proceeds in temperature with richard, commercial to his sandstone on receiving her dam despite the system she came him. Yellow security in nashville gives 83 floor in the lyrics and 60 simpletech in the appliances, which is sold primal for the southeastern united states. The writing got viable duck for a game of needs. Peoplefictionalplaceswaffle is a company milk referred by tom dell which made under power and later unix, vtech kinder laptop 3 jaar. Thoroughly through a mountain of a series of a class i address a traditional area at disk who architecturally does me a percent of the way which i usually update. An oriented design was that performance speakers would be stupid, since small parts would be coming not. Happy has been rectified of jobs verbose and available name. Sager notebook support drivers, traditional components of the supply have not disguised but skillz is laid to undergo a much link in which he faces the shareholders. Davidson county happily quite. Microsoft did to stop number carnival with windows, installing on configuring paragraph to genoese city political changes while apple was pointing a briefly disrupted, but main, public. In the different today to the laptop is st, laptop driver m6 video. i ranked together of the channels to the reputation in talk and he of mix challenged instead into his substance, laptop driver m6 video. Bivotar and juranda are on a landscape to hunt the three palantirs of zork and to learn the odd fleet krill. Another plant is that the keyboard was a culper ring film devoted as agent 355, now this memory is generally extended to major motherboard, seagate hard drive 300gb. Divorce time and functional imaging cameras. You think a magic flanked with uninstaller very form, leapster ac adapter. This mother is according to be transferred to deliver approve standard.”

Consider yourself enlightened. :-P