Lesley Yarbrough

Basically this shows how far technology has come in the last 10 years. However, I may be one of the few people that actually prefer’s Ang Lee’s Hulk to the 2008 version. Sure it’s a little cartoony, but it’s far better than CGI Ray Liotta. Joss Whedon wins this one hands-down though, he finally gave us a Hulk that actually looks like his human counterpart in the film. He also had much more fun with the character.

Hulk…smash.

Delta Heavy – Get By

My best friend got married! And I took a bunch of photos. Full album here.

Okay maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration, but this insertion of sponsored search results sure did lead to a lot of confusion on a day where it’s pretty important that people be able to find the venue. You see, my best friend of 25 years was getting married at this adorable little B&B, tucked away in a wooded area, just off of a small county road. A place that doesn’t show up in Google Maps when you search by name, but does when you search by the exact address. That is, unless your search results are hijacked by a Sponsored Link.

As most of the wedding party and attendees used their smartphones to look up directions, they found themselves taken to a Montessori Academy about 10 miles south of the actual venue — completely confused. Unfortunately I didn’t think to grab a screenshot while I was in Austin, but the promoted link looks like this:

Only in our situation, the sponsored link was so far south that the red pin didn’t even show on the screen — if you’re not paying full attention, you’re just going to go to the big, shiny thing that popped up on your screen. While I admit there’s a certain responsibility on the user to verify the results match their search, at the same time you kind of expect Google to do its job when you type in the EXACT FUCKING ADDRESS. As a result, the officiant almost missed the rehearsal, family members got very lost, and at least a third of the guests missed the actual wedding.

In the end it wasn’t a disaster, all of the important people were in their spots on cue for what turned out to be a beautiful ceremony. It’s just frustrating when a technology that people rely on and blindly trust bites you in the ass, especially during an already stressful time. You can do better Google.

No idea who this guy was.

I have mixed feelings about this show. The handful of songs that I really like were fantastic to experience live, the rest just didn’t really do much for me. They tend to mash very different sounds into one song, which doesn’t always come together. They do have a hell of a stage presence though, and there’s something to be said for that.

We Are Augustines opened and simply killed it. Instant fan.

Bill Nye was basically the face of science when I was growing up, needless to say we jumped at the chance to see him speak at our alma mater. It was a somewhat disappointing, but still enjoyable talk that turned out to be more of a “yay science!” peptalk than the college-level lecture we were expecting. We had fun though, and it was incredibly surreal to walk around a campus neither of us had seen in six years.