A real SXSW write-up - Thursday

A late wake-up and off to downtown again, this time over to the eastern/run-down side of downtown Austin. I left my friends waiting for a concert at 4 PM and walked to UT again to take pictures of the campus, practicing focusing with the phone camera and generally refilling on UT again.

One of the many posters
for day parties, scattered
around Austin.

Visited the turtle pond. Also bluebonnets!

 The turtles love to cluster on top of each other in the middle of the very crowded pond, or...

...swim around underwater, or even...

...sun themselves on the ledge. They are rather tame, even allowing themselves to be touched. There are always visitors at the pond, many aiming for that perfect shot.

I wandered over to check the biology greenhouses, noted with satisfaction the great growth of the tangerine tree since last year, and walked on.

The one on the left is shot with a Powershot A630, focal length 7.3 mm at 1/640 and f/4.0. The right is the best of the focusing experiments done with a phone camera, at focal length 4.6 mm, ISO 100, 1/1486s and f/2.4. Neither accurately describes the beauty of that day.

How best to get the concrete
ledge with the building in
the background...

Then it was over to Whole Foods for dinner, with the massive green wall to keep me company.

There are bromeliads in the upper left! How do they do that??

One of many open-topped official party/band buses (there were some seedier ones too)

The last photo is a reminder of what it's like in an actual brick-and-mortar music store (Waterloo Records). You just can't stumble upon the complete set of Jean Sibelius' works on Amazon. (Hint hint.)

Wandered around 6th street again, saw Brothers-in-Law at B.D. Riley's, and discovered their "Sweet Tea Vodka Lemonade" on a whim.

Later saw the backstage of a Houston rapper, Master P, (see review here):

...and payed $5 to see the porch of the place where Gepe had just played. We all took a shortcut across the capital, and played hooky with some streetlights.