As doublegood reported recently, not only is Capital Metro planning drastic changes to the Dillo service downtown, they are proposing schedule changes across the system. Although the public hearing on the issue was held last night, the only aspect of the changes that the local daily focused on was the proposed removal of the “Capitol transit center” which is really just a bus stop that happens to serve a large number of lines. Cap Metro is proposing moving this stop to 10^th Street (removing the stop from a couple of lines) because the Governor and State Preservation Board asked them to “for security reasons.”

Although I think the Guv is being silly, I don’t know if this one change should be the focus of news coverage. There is a huge list of changes. Strolling down South Congress this weekend, I spoke with one of the shop owners and she really didn’t understand why they were cutting off the Orange Dillo’s service down South Congress. Many tourists, locals, and students use it to get to SoCo, not only on the weekends and during SXSW, but regularly throughout the year. I am personally concerned as I’ll be moving to the area soon and am hoping to use the Dillo or the bus instead of clogging the road with one more car.

Again, there are a number of changes across the system that are being proposed. If you ever ride the bus or think you may start riding the bus because of rising gas prices, climate change, stress levels from driving, or a desire to keep or witness Austin at its weirdest (I was hoping to link to a post by a friend of mine of the guy stripping on her bus ride, but oh well), then you might take a few minutes to check out these proposed changes and e-mail your comments to planning@capmetro.org. Although I don’t know how good Cap Metro is at responding to public comment and actually incorporating it into their planning, they need to know that people are paying attention!

Austinite Terrence Malick’s latest, Tree of Life, has been filming in here since February.

The Wife was in the GNC in Sunset Valley a couple of weeks ago and was told by one of the clerks that she had just missed Brad Pitt.

Today, she’s at ABIA heading out of town and spotted Sean Penn who she described as “taller than I thought”. I told her to tell him that she loves Bad Boys (no, not the one with Martin Lawrence and Will Smith) & Fast Times and to give him props for his appearance on the ”Fort Knoxville“ episode of Viva La Bam. We won’t speak of I Am Sam, Shanghai Surprise or the overacting in Mystic River. Penn also had a small part in Malick’s last film, The Thin Red Line, along with a ton of other well known actors.

Matt Dentler, who just recently moved on from doing the programming for SXSW Flim. blogged last year about an unexpected dinner with Malick that also included Richard Linklater and Francis Ford Coppola at Vespaio. Malick also produced the documentary about development and Barton Springs, The Unforeseen, which is currently playing at Alamo South Lamar (and mentioned earlier this week on this blog).

Aloha, Mr. Hand.

From the Chronicle via SXSW Baby:

[At] least 400 more wristbands, priced to move at $165 and limited to one per customer, are going on sale Wednesday, 9:30am, at Waterloo Records (cash or credit only). There are no residency requirements, but the wristband must be put on at the time of purchase. More wristbands will likely become available through alternative outlets.

I thought it was pretty cool that Dolly Parton was coming to SXSW this year. Unfortunately, she’s had to cancel due to back problems. I’ll let you come up with the reason for her back problems on your own. The Reuters headline removes all doubt.

In what’s becoming an annual tradition, I once again scored some free tickets to Fun Fun Fun Fest this weekend in Waterloo Park (Thanks, Austinist!). I went last year and enjoyed myself despite the cold temperatures. By moving the festival a month earlier, the organizers were rewarded with near perfect weather. In fact, it was a bit on the warm side with temperatures reaching the low to mid 80s in the afternoon. As with last year, I completely neglected the third stage which features mostly DJs and dance music, not really my cup of tea…
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I spent the Monday of SXSW Interactive attending panels. I went pretty geeky this year.

First, I hit Mobile Application Design Challenges and Tips. The panel was moderated by Kevin Cheng of Yahoo!. It included Simon King, who works on ZoneTag for Yahoo! Research, John Poisson of Radar, Matt Jones from Nokia and Anita Wilhelm from Caterpillar
Mobile. I personally haven’t done a lot of development for cell phones. I’ve watched the mess that is J2ME and the consensus on this panel was that things are still a bit of a mess. It’s difficult to deal with the carriers. There are still a lot of problems with compatibility. I learned that there’s a version of Apache for Symbian 60 phones called Raccoon. The consensus also seemed to be that Flash Lite is no good for applications on the phone. Matt Jones seemed to be a bit of a comedian. I did like his mention
of the carriers as a “proud pipe”. I remember Russell Beattie mentioning Anita a couple of years ago as someone to pay attention to for mobile application design. The panel assembled a group of smart people with a lot of experience in mobile application design. I think it could’ve been moderated a little better though and kept a bit more focused. Small Surfaces was mentioned
as a good mobile design site and more than one person mentioned that Brian Fling’s Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Mobile Web…but Were Afraid to Ask. I’ve been hoping a podcast of that one would appear, but it hasn’t yet. You can watch for it here as well.

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My SXSW Friday kicked off with a continuation of the parking karma from Thursday night. I hit the Dog and Duck around noon for the Pop Culture Press party and scored an unmetered spot right around the corner. They were running a little late, so I found a few friends and settled in for The Figgs. I’d never seen or heard them before, but our bass player is a big fan, so I thought I’d check them out.
They were good stuff, catchy songs, great start to the day. I caught a few songs of Graham Parker before heading back to South Austin to pick up some sticks at Tommy’s Drum Shop on South Eighth.

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Do not be fooled. These are dangerous tacos. My friend ate one nuclear taco and while he was fine afterwards, oh, he was not fine the next day. Poor guy.

The rest of SXSW has been a blur so far. I’m going to Cat Dancers at 1:45 and Helvetica later and out shopping with a dude at some point, but I really took it easy these past couple days- between school and SXSW I’ve been going nonstop for a week and a half, you know? I needed a minute. But once everything settles down I promise to list my favorite movies, etc.

If you’re not doing anything Friday you need to go see Jim Boggia at Cafe Caffeine at 6. He opened for Duncan Sheik at the Cactus Cafe and I really like him. Cafe Caffeine’s far enough away from the whole brouhaha that I think it should be very chill, so come on out!

After much debate and wringing of hands, we’re going to have a meetup on Monday night. As many people have pointed out, plans tend to fall apart during SXSW so we’re going with the flow.

Let’s meet at Nuclear Taco Night in Brush Square Park (Neches between 4th and 5th) at 6pm. If it’s crowded, we can move on. If we feel the need to move for no reason at all, we can move somewhere else. There’s a party at Sidebar for Lifehacker only a few blocks away. The EFF-Austin Steampunk party is at Scholz’s, several blocks (13) to the north. There’s a Mozilla/Democracy Player party in Brush Square Park as well. There’s a Creative Commons party. We’ll find something to do.

I’ll be wearing a bright red Metroblogging shirt and I’m 6′5″. I should be easy to spot. I’ll be running around SXSWi all day Monday, so grab me.

We’ll stay at least until 6:30 before moving on, so don’t be late. If you think you’ll show, e-mail me at my gmail account, my username is my first initial and last name (take that, you dirty spambots). I’ve got the same username on Dodgeball and Twitter. I’ll check in with both when we move on.

For all you out-of-towners coming to Austin from cities where the public transportation system is widespread, you’re in for a shock. Texans love their cars. That being said, Capital Metro is doing several things that are useful for SXSW attendees without cars, so I thought I’d pass them along.

Some of the highlights are:

• Ride from the airport to the convention center or your hotel for just 50 cents on the Airport Flyer.

• Save your cab cash for popcorn and beverages by taking Route 3 to SXSW film theaters.
• Park & Ride free to the Free Dew Concerts at Auditorium Shores March 15 - 17.
• $1 day passes are available for purchase on board buses and provide unlimited use of trips for an entire day.
• Ride the free Dillo service. The `Dillos operate north to south between 23rd Street and Oltorf Road, and east to west from near MoPac at Lake Austin Boulevard to Pleasant Valley Road.

SXSW Baby points out that Capital Metro has become part of the Google Transit Trip Planner.

I also heard on KUT this morning about a new service called Dadnab that lets you text your location and get the nearest bus that will take you to your destination.

For example, you can text “5th & lavaca to barton springs & kinney” to austin [at] dadnab.com (You’d type it like an e-mail address with the at symbol and no spaces. I’m just trying to avoid them getting spammed because of this post.) and get back “W 5TH ST & LAVACA ST to BARTON SPRINGS RD & KINNEY AVE/depart COLORADO & 5TH at 02:00 PM/29-SB/arrive BARTON SPRINGS & JESSIE at 02:08 PM”. Their site has more information on how to use the service. Pretty sweet.