Live from Austin, Texas
Reply
Seaholm Power Plant
One of my favorite buildings in Austin is the Seaholm Power Plant on Cesar Chavez. This Art Deco building was built in 1950 and is now slated for redevelopment. Plans call for the building to contain 80,000 square feet of retail, restaurant and office space. It will also contain meeting or conference space and event space and a possible culture entertainment component. I would bet that the price of the condos looking down on Town Lake will be well above my budget.
Austin Downtown Photo Shoot–Got any Ideas?
The staff of AroundAustin.com is going to go downtown Friday evening to do a photoshoot. We’re going to photograph the Austin Energy Building, the Pedestrian bridge and then just wander downtown looking for cool spots to shoot.
Any ideas for a great spot for a picture? Add it as a comment. Get specific. If we get a decent shot we’ll send a print to the person that suggested it.
Deep’s Happy Hour Deals
Our favorite Realtor, Deep Nasta from Deep in the Heart of Texas Realty sent us the Deep’s Infamous Happy Hour list with permission to use it. Add your favorite deal in the comments and I’m sure Deep will update his list.
Hudsons on the Bend Cooking School
by Joe Payton and Leslie Hall
Recently we got to attend Hudson’s on the Bend’s Cooking school at the home of Jeff Blank, owner of Hudson’s on the Bend. As you enter Jeff’s home, you immediately descended in the pool area overlooking Lake Travis. Attentive waiters kept wine and appetizers flowing freely. I anticipated an evening of slicing, chopping, and grilling, and came prepared to have my sleeves rolled up to my elbows.
After the chefs had prepped and we had sampled scrumptious appetizers all while taking in an amazing view of Lake Travis, we were ushered into stadium style seating that perched us in front of two witting, entertaining, and knowledgeable chefs. The two creative geniuses that made us both laugh and gasp were Robert Rhoades and Jeff Blank. The menu included: “deep sautéed” hot-n-crunchy shrimp; a glazed quail, prepared in a stovetop Cameron smoker (I want one!) over hickory chips, and served over a tossed baby spinach salad; and an herb butter grilled lobster tail sitting on grilled tenderloin of beef with a spicy cilantro and jalapeno hollandaise sauce.
Day Trip: San Antonio Botanical Gardens
I had to go down to San Antonio for a business trip and had some extra time. What to do? Seen the Alamo, seen the missions, the River Walk….aha what’s this…something I haven’t visited–the San Antonio Botanical Gardens.
The San Antonio Botanical Gardens has 33 acres of gorgeous botanical gardens and indoor displays. Their are many different gardens including: Rose Garden, Kumamoto En Japanese Garden, Garden for the Blind, and a Herb garden.
The gardens are gorgeous and well worth a visit.
Lake Travis Mansions
When I first moved here in 1984 I drove out Lake Travis and truly fell in love with Austin. The view from the area around St. Luke’s church was just stunning. In 1988, I looked at lake lots on Lake Travis–found some for around $80,000 with cute little houses. Recently, I took a ride out on a friend’s boat and snapped some pictures. These aren’t $80,000 cute little houses are they–Here’s a few snapshots of how the other half (well ok 1%) live.
eLearning Symposium 2008, Austin, Texas
I spend my days trying to figure out how to improve the productivity of the most valuable part of any organization–it’s people. I’m excited that we’re having a conference for like minded folks in Austin–usually I get to get on a plane and travel to these conferences. The elearning Symposium 2008 is on April 23, 2008 at the Doubletree Hotel in Austin. Speakers include Debby Kalk, Hiram Kuykendall, Hank Jones (yeah he’s a lawyer but he’s also a heckuva musician and a great speaker), and Chris Justice.
The symposium will focus on helping you create cost-effective e-learning programs that help make your folks more productive. So if you’re an instructional designer, trainer, or just someone your boss is bugging about implementing learning programs go to www.elearningsymposium.com to sign up. You can save $100 if you do it by April 9th.
Oak Tree, Blue, Texas, Easter Sunday
Image
Austin based Spocal launches Spocal March Madness
AroundAustin.com was invited to the sneak preview party for Spocal.com, the sports calendar site during SXSW Interactive Festival–thanks for the beer and muchies guys. It’s a cool new website that lets sports fan add the schedule of their favorite teams to their own calendar–no more peering at the fine print in your local newspaper to figure out when the Longhorns are playing.
Today they anounced special functionality in conjunction with March Madness. At www.spocal.com/marchmadness you can see the March Madness game bracket and download the schedule to your calendar by clicking on the iCal link next to each game. Cool!
By creating an account at the Spocal website, you can choose to follow any of your favorite sports teams and be notified when their game schedule changes. “The idea for the website came to me when I got tired of entering games into my calendar by hand,” said Deep Nasta, Spocal founder. “I thought it would be a huge time saver for me if I received an email message notifying me of playoff schedules and game time changes, and I could download those changes into my calendar as well.”
The website is still in the “sneak peek” stage but what a great concept from well known two local entrepreneurs–Deep Nasta and Brian Menell.
