Nerdy picture talk: the cafe was really dark, so I decided to throw my camera up to ISO 3200, which I almost never use. The pics certainly show the noise, but at least in my mind, it is a little less offensive in B&W, which is why I converted most of the shots in Lightroom to B&W.

Rahul and I missed the first band, Metric, but apparently they only played a 3-song set. We walked in to the arena just as Vampire Weekend was coming onto the stage. They played a fun set, though most of the crowd didn’t seem to be very into it. Next up was 30 Seconds to Mars, which was…okay? I told Rahul that it seemed like Jared Leto had read a book titled “How to Be A Rock Star 101″, and a lot of the set seemed kind of forced. He tended to stick to these three rules: 1) Wear a quirky outfit, like fingerless rainbow gloves, and spike your hair. The higher the better. 2) Say the city and/or state that you are playing in as often as possible. 3) Drop the F-bomb at random times. That’s rock. To be fair, his singing was actually quite good, it just wasn’t my thing. The most interesting part of the set was when all the sound cut out completely during the climax of their current single, “Kings and Queens” and didn’t come back up for about 5 minutes. I can imagine some sound engineer or roadie got fired that night. After 30 Seconds to Mars was AFI, which was also not my thing, but they put on a good show.

After what seemed like forever, it was finally time for the headliners: Muse! I’ve been looking forward to seeing them live for a long time, and they didn’t disappoint at all. In fact, they’re probably one of the few bands I know of that sounds better live than recorded. Matthew Bellamy, the lead singer, in addition to being an amazing vocalist, is a really really good guitar player. It’s pretty impressive how much sound comes out of a 3-person band. In addition to the incredible live show, I was entertained by a guy in front of me who kept trying to dance with this girl even after several rejections in a row. Gotta give him points for persistence. Overall, the show was amazing; totally worth it just for Muse. But I really have to start taking earplugs to concerts; my ears were ringing for a whole day afterward.

I recently found out that Muse will be back for a US tour next spring, so I’m going to try to get tickets for that, too! If you enjoy a solid rock show, I highly recommend you check them out, too.

Overall, I was really impressed with how well organized the festival was. Although there were a ton of people (apparently 100,000 over the 3 days), it never felt crowded. There were more porta-potties than I’ve ever seen in a single area, and they even had handwashing stations that didn’t run out of water. There were tons of food and drink stands, and I never had to wait in any long lines. I have to give huge props to the organizers; I feel like it went about as smoothly as it could.

As for the music, on day one, we only went to see Pearl Jam, since I had to work during the day. We walked from the Castro to the Park, which is quite far, but it was a warm night and it ended up being a pretty pleasant walk. Not wanting to deal with the huge crowd near the stage, we just picked a spot, laid down a blanket, and listened to them play under the stars. I hadn’t heard Pearl Jam in concert since 2001 (when I blew off debugging my polygon rasterizer for my graphics class to go see them play…) and they were still awesome. I was surprised at how much older stuff they played, especially given that they have a new album coming out soon.

Saturday we wised up and decided to drive and park in the Sunset before walking to the festival entrance. The first act we planned on seeing wasn’t until the afternoon, so we wandered around for a bit before settling at the Sutro stage, where we listened to The Nortec Collective, which is a band coming out of “Tijuana’s burgeoning electronica scene.” (Nortec is a blend of ‘Norteño’ and ‘techno’.) Yeah, I didn’t know it existed either. But I ended up really liking them, so that was a pleasant surprise. Afterwards, we decided to camp out near the main stage to wait for Jason Mraz and The Black Eyed Peas, whom we surmised would be some of the more popular bands that day. I sadly didn’t bring anything to entertain myself with, so instead I took a short nap, and ate tater tots. Sweet. Finally, Jason Mraz came on, and I gotta say although I see the man’s talent, I didn’t really enjoy the music. After a bit, The Black Eyed Peas came on doing their brand of well-rehearsed pop-infused hip-hop, and it was pretty awesome. Call me mainstream, but they’re a really fun band to see live. After they were done with their set, I realized that Dave Matthews Band was coming on next, so we booked it out of the park as quickly as possible, heading upstream against the wave of DMB megafans making their way to the main stage.

Sunday, the only act I was sure I knew I had to see was M.I.A., which left a lot of unscheduled time during the day. We ended up catching Lenka‘s act, which I really liked. Her performance was sadly pretty underattended, so I was able to make my way right up to the stage. Next up was The Avett Brothers, which I alternated between liking and disliking. Their music is pretty good, but they do the overenunciating thing (see Ani DiFranco for a prime example) which tended to get on my nerves. After that we watched most of Lucinda Williams’ set before heading over to the main stage to try to get a good spot for M.I.A.’s show. Even though she gypped us of 10 minutes (she played for 50 minutes instead of an hour), I thought her show was awesome. She’s so very…weird…but it just works for her. She wore an outfit that looks like a leopard exploded on her, and she had two skinny white boy dancers named “White Boy” and “Uh Oh”, and the woman really can’t sing, but she did (parts of) two Beastie Boys songs, so all was forgiven. When she was done, we thought about staying for Tenacious D, but decided that a warm house sounded better.

All in all, I had a great time, and given a good lineup, I wouldn’t hesitate to go back next year. As always, pics below.

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OHWAITWHEREARETHEPICTURES??? Unfortunately, Outside Lands had a very sad “no cameras with detachable lenses” policy, so you all are left to your imaginations (or any major music website.) It was killing me seeing all of the picture opportunities whiz by, so I’m seriously thinking about what I need to do to get a press pass next year. Watching the number of people wandering about with the orange press credentials wrist bands, it doesn’t seem like it’s *too* hard to get one, but I’d probably need to affiliate myself with some music website, or at least go freelance. I suspect I’ll need some more experience doing concert photography, and I know that there are a number of people in bands at work, so I was thinking of emailing and offering my photography services. Any musicians out there need a gig photographer? Let me know.

Now what are George, Dan, and Addison gonna tease me about??

At long last, The Sims 3 has shipped! Go out buy 10,000 copies, pls. For those of you wondering, some of the major features I worked on are opportunities, cooking, moving, lifetime rewards, carpools, the burglar and policeman, and several others. So if any of those suck, you can blame me.

Sunday we went on an accidentally-too-long 8.5-mile training run, which was pretty rough, but we slogged through it. More importantly, we finally put the fondue pot YGB gave me to good use and had a fondue party! AllRecipes once-again came through with amazing cheese fondue and chocolate fondue recipes. I wasn’t involved with the making of the cheese fondue, so I can’t really comment on the recipe other than the fact that it was DERICIOUS, but if you decide to make the chocolate fondue, I took the advice of some of the commenters and used chocolate chips (half milk chocolate, half semi-sweet) instead of grated chocolate, and instead of instant coffee, about a third of a cup of brewed coffee, and it turned out great. The fondue pot performed like a champ and the glass insert was super easy to clean. Given how easy and delicious fondue is, I’m kicking myself for not doing it earlier.

(Spoiler warning. Look away if you haven’t seen the movie.)

1. Call for backup. Yes, you are big robots, and you are very strong, but if you have John Connor, say, in your GIANT KILLER ROBOT FACTORY, why not send more than one robot after him? This is not a judgement about the killing skills of any single robot, it’s just practical.
2. Stay away from open protocols like USB. When John Connor can hack your robot motorcycles with what looks like a futuristic T-Mobile Sidekick, you may want to rethink your hardware interfaces.
3. Make your robot motorcycles less comfortable for humans to ride. Maybe try replacing the handlebars and seats with, I don’t know, BURNING HOT METAL SPIKES.
4. Invest in firewalls. I know that McAfee probably doesn’t exist in 2018, but you’re a super smart computer network; I think you can figure it out. Again, if John Connor just needs to attach a couple alligator clips to some wires and text you “OVERRIDE” to get into your buildings, maybe it’s time to rethink.
5. Program your killer robots to investigate suspicious-looking open doors with wires coming out of them. This one is pretty self-explanatory and related to #4.
6. Define user permissions in your computer network. Yeah, so Marcus is a super-cool advanced prototype, but was it really necessary to give him the ability to turn off your main gun turrets…WITH HIS MIND??
7. Listen to the radio. John Connor makes a broadcast every night on a signal that is apparently strong enough to hear worldwide, and able to be picked up on what appears to be a crystal radio. In this broadcast, he basically details all the plans of the resistance. Like, all of them. Just give it a whirl.
8. If you see Kyle Reese or John Connor, kill them immediately. Like, right then and there. No waiting to upload data to Skynet or BS like that. Even if you’re essentially a flying metal frisbee, just CRASH INTO HIM! You’ll probably do some damage.
9. Make more of those huge building-sized robots. They’re basically awesome and seem pretty indestructible. Just stomp around and see what happens.
10. (Most important) Squish our heads. I’ll admit it: if I could, I’d probably throw people through walls, too. It seems really fun. But if you’re looking to kill someone with efficiency, remember that you’re a REALLY STRONG KILLER ROBOT and that our skulls, while relatively hard, can pretty easily be squished. One strong clap should do it.

Live Footage consists of Topu on electric cello, and Mike Theis on drums and synth, but if you close your eyes, you would swear that there were more members of the band. Topu makes extensive use of live looping on his cello, so many of the songs start with a small riff or melody which he loops, then adds to it more and more, with each loop building on the last. Two of my favorite tracks, “1976 Part I”, and “Freedom Happening”, both have beautiful cello melodies where Topu is essentially accompanying himself, which I thought was very cool. Lest you think this is the result of recording studio trickery, I recommend checking out the videos on their site for a live demo.

iTunes puts Live Footage into the “Electronic” genre, but don’t let that scare you off; I suspect it’s because there isn’t a genre around that really fits the band. It certainly isn’t what I think of when I think of “Electronic” music, at least. So if you’re looking for some new and interesting music, give Live Footage a try; they may surprise you.

Buy “Live Footage” on iTunes

iTunes had 2 versions of the album: a ‘deluxe’ version for $14.99, and the regular version for $11.99. The deluxe version had 2 bonus iTunes-exclusive track, while the regular version just had the album. The Amazon version had a the full album plus a different Amazon-exclusive bonus track, also for $11.99. I spent an embarrassingly long time trying to choose between the two before somewhat arbitrarily settling on Amazon, mostly because I don’t really like the idea of Apple having a monopoly on digital music purchases, but in the end, I don’t really care all that much.

When you buy music online, what do you use: iTunes or Amazon? Neither? Both?

1:03-1:40 may be the most exciting 37 seconds of television I’ve ever experienced. Brilliant.