Barack Obama Austin, Tx Rally

Immediately following last Friday morning’s exam, myself and three friends drove over to Austin to participate in the Barack Obama rally. I’ve been looking forward to seeing him speak for quite some time (since his DNC speech actually). Parking in Austin was ridiculous, we tried to get into two parking garages next to the Town Lake park, and were told there was no event parking allowed; luckily we found a small dirt lot not far from the venue.

The sky was overcast and threatened showers all day. Though it never got to be more than sprinkling, 2 hours of sprinkling is a lot of water. Two bands played, one a post-Katrina arrival to Austin who had a lot to say about how our government made a disaster out of that disaster. A black fraternity from UT did a step routine just prior to Sen. Obama’s appearance? [The question mark isn't a typo] I don’t know of any mulatto fraternities out there but what exactly did that have to do with the presidency? Senator Obama came on stage about three hours after the gates opened, and it started to rain again.

Seeing the man speak was more impressive than I’d imagined. No teleprompter, no cue-cards; just a man and a message. I’ll forgo the details of his speech, they can all be found at his website BarackObama.com. The senator spoke for about 40 minutes telling of his history, plans for the country, and several stories about his life. What was most impressive was that our current president couldn’t have spoken for three minutes without making up a new word and the senator spoke for nearly and hour and made me feel like he was just chatting with friends.

There wasn’t anything about the senator’s speach that changed my mind about voting for him. Though a couple of my friends did decide to vote for him. I highly suggest you check out his website and read up on his plans.

After leaving the rally we went to 6th street in Austin to have dinner and play some foosball. The great thing about Austin is that it makes you forget you’re in Texas, which after only 6 months of living here, has become my primary requirement for enjoying someplace here!

web searching … back to basics… finally

Google has started a new search engine called searchmash that they are using to test new concepts. Personally, one of the best features of searchmash is the absence of advertisements. That’s right, no ads. Employing a clean, simple interface, there’s also no sign of Google unless you view the privacy policy or terms of service statement. The engine appears to run using Google’s search algorithm, though I haven’t seen any verification of this — even Google seems to be keeping quiet about what the site can do except to say that it’s being used to test user interfaces etc… The features of the engine can be found here. My favorite ability of the site is a box on the right of the screen that lets you quickly change your search results from web to wikipedia, blogs, images, and videos that play on the search results page. So far I’ve been very impressed with the site.

To make searchmash your default search engine from the firefox address bar just open “about:config” and search for the “keyword.url” variable. Change this value to:

http://www.searchmash.com/search/

now when you type something into the address bar you will be taken to searchmash’s results for that phrase. You can do this with any search engine or search box on the web, because Firefox is awesome!