Sunday, March 29, 2015

SXSW : Austin knows how to do a music festival

I was lucky enough to have  free weekend in Austin (that would be Texas) last weekend and as luck would have it SXSW music festival was on. Well it would be rude not to.

A more diverse subset of the music following fraternity than I am used to. SXSW has a large R & B and hip hop following, in addition to the Indie/Punk/Rock contingent I expected.

It rained a lot on the Friday and Saturday so some of the bigger outdoor events were canned.

I did not go to any of the ticketed events, I just wondered around downtown Austin on the Friday and Saturday evenings and wondered into anywhere which had loud guitar based music and as an  approach that worked well. I saw some great bands, all US based, none I had heard of or ever expect to hear of again, but all very tight and the quality of music was top notch. From 3 way punk bands from North Chicargo to more tempered girl fronted Indie bands from Milwalkie, I only saw on band which I walked away from and they seemed to be a British Ultra Pop band, not my thing.

It was good to meet up with Brian and his son. I have worked with Brian who lives in San Antonio
for a couple of years, but not meet before, so it was good to have a semi-local to mingle and eat chilli with.

Going to SXSW was one of those items at the  bottom of my bucket list. I never thought I would be able to get to Austin during that week. Maybe if you went to ticketed events the experience would be different, but I did not fancy the length of the queues into the venues.

Pleased I went, but I don't feel the need to make an effort to return to SXSW, but if the chance arose again, it would be rude not to.


Monday, March 9, 2015

Aberystywth..... A town of 2 virtual parts

About half of Aberystwyth has been enabled for Superfast Broadband over the last 6 months. The other half are going to have to wait till at least the end of the year as the contactors are not coming back till the end of September.

Bad news for Ceredigion and even worse news for those of us who have to wait and worse still because we won't know what we will get if anything until at least 2016.

Why did Openreach put up Fiber on poles at the end of November, some of which is now hanging across the road and being driven over, if it is not going to be connected up for a year?



See my Twitter feed @clivemking for the source of this information.