Hung Truong: The Blog!

SXSW 2010 Official Celebrity Sighting Namedropping Post!

I have lots of material to post from this year’s SXSW 2010 Interactive Festival. First thing’s first, though: I need to document all of the celebrities that I sighted and took pictures with!

The first celebrity of South By came fairly early. While leaving the Windows Phone party on Friday night, I ran into my old friend Pete Cashmore. I can call him my old friend because we used to be in that 9rules thing together and he wrote about Notecentric and MapsKrieg on his Mashable blog. I chatted him up a bit to see if he remembered me (he either did or was being nice). And he was pretty nice, too! He told me about the Mashable party at Buffalo Billiards (that I didn’t actually get a chance to go to). Then I had to run off because there was a free taco truck nearby and Pete was trying to get into the Speakeasy anyway.

New Hobby: Letterpress

Recently I’ve become really interested in letterpress. It’s basically a form of printing on a movable type machine that results in a print that’s sort of embossed as well. I recently bought a set of cards from Vince Letterpress:

Meaghan was really nice because she had originally sent me two blue cards and a yellow. I told her that I had intended to frame them as a set of three and she printed a red one and sent it to me for free. It was really good of her to do that.

I think the reason I like Letterpress is that it leaves a very tangible impression. The object itself is a representation of something that’s not quite 2d, but not quite 3d either. In an age of all things digital, when it’s so easy to reproduce something by printing it out on an inkjet or laser printer, it’s nice to have something that’s a bit more difficult to recreate. Sure, someone could scan the card and print it out, but there would be something lost in the translation from a physical object with physical properties to a digital representation back to a physical object.

I like that the printer works by smashing into the paper. It creates something that’s different every time. I like that you can touch the card and feel its texture. I like that you can see it from different angles in the light, and how it changes a bit. In the example above, I really like the colors.

So far my hobby consists of collecting letterpress’ed stuff. I’d really like to take a letterpress printing class some time. It seems like it’d be a good way to balance my love of new technology with some older-fashioned tech.

Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture – Book Review

I recently picked up a copy of Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture. As a self proclaimed cheapskate (I picked this book up from the library, after all!), I was very interested in the subject.

The Bird and The Bee – My New Favorite Band!

I have been getting really into this band called “The Bird and The Bee.” They are composed of Inara George and Greg Kurstin. I’m not sure which one is The Bird and which one is The Bee. Or if it’s just a band name. I bet they get asked that a lot. I’m guessing that Inara is the bee, because almost all bees (the worker ones) are female. Anyway, what was I writing about?

My music-listening tendencies have been pretty unfocused recently. I just kinda try out whatever music I hear about. The last artist I sorta latched onto was Ingrid Michaelson after seeing her in concert in Ann Arbor back in 2007. I listened to some Andrew Bird but didn’t get super into him or anything. The Bird and The Bee is the first band whose albums I am listening to over and over again, and getting really psyched about. I even bought their single to hear some new songs. How crazy is that!?

I will now recount how I first became acquainted with this band. I am not ashamed to admit this is a very “Stuff White People Like” story. I was at The Gap, trying on some clothes in the fitting room. Then I heard this song that sounded pretty neat. So I used Shazam to figure out what it was. It turns out it was “You’re a Cad.” This happened on November 29th, 2009 at exactly 1:51pm Pacific Time. Thanks for the extreme data accuracy, Shazam!

Anyway, I made a mental note to check out the band, after purchasing a cheap sweater. I actually don’t remember if I bought a sweater, but details make a story more interesting. I put a few of their albums on hold at the Seattle Public Library and loaded them onto my iPhone to listen to on my commute to work. The rest is history.

The Bird and The Bee is probably so interesting to me because they have such a unique sound. Their website describes them as a mix of “Brazilian Tropicalia, 60s psychedelic pop, and sparse electronic beats.” Inara has a wispy yet super-focused voice that really adds a lot to the complex arrangements.

To say that their “sound” truly defines them would be a disservice, though. In addition to a neat sound, their songs stand out because they’re really well composed. I think a lot of current alternative music focuses on the ambience, and not a whole lot on a coherent melody. The Bird and The Bee’s music not only contains some neat melodies, they also do some fun things like layering melodies on top of each other, making canon-ish things happen. Their songs actually start somewhere and build up to something. Maybe I’m just being a fanboy, but I really appreciate the songwriting skills of the duo.

At this point in the post, I should really just let you listen to their music. Here’s one of their songs along with a music video: Polite Dance Song. The concept of the song is wacky and the video fits it quite well.

They also have an awesome cover of How Deep is Your Love on the single that I got. Oh, and a wacky song about a weeaboo’s love for Japan.

The Bird and The Bee have a new album coming out, apparently a tribute album to Hall and Oates! I should probably just pre-order this as I’ve liked everything else they’ve put out so far.

Proof That Apple is Obsessed With The Customer Experience

I was at the mall today just wasting my time (and looking at options for getting my eye prescription checked), and I stopped by the Apple Store. As I approached, I noticed an army of people in blue shirts, just waiting to help anyone who walked in. I soon realized that they were just cardboard cutouts.

Neat. I walked in and looked around at the unibody Macbooks (the white ones that are now more curvy) and checked the battery life on them. They apparently get something like 5 hours (when I unplugged them and the computer actually calculated) versus my MacBook Pro that gets like 2 if I’m lucky.

Then I walked around and noticed something:

Apple printed the backs of the cardboard cutouts! They’re in the same poses in the back as they are on the front! If the backs had been blank, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed. But Apple pays so much attention to detail that they decided that peoples asses must be printed.

It is likely due to this level of detail that Apple is succeeding where other companies fail hard. I don’t care what anyone says about Apple, they care more about the user/customer experience than probably anyone else out there.