I think we all knew it would happen, or at least ‘horns like me thought about it enough that it almost seemed a memory. Major Applewhite, one of the most loved and decorated quarterbacks in University of Texas history, has come home and joined the University of Texas coaching staff.

The boy-man that filled the turn of the decade with brilliant on-the-fly calls, and snatching us from sure defeat so many times. Racking up a ton of school records even though he shared quarterback time with Chris Simms. The beautiful teamwork with Ricky Williams. Man, I loved those seasons. I loved watching him cool as Eastwood while the pocket would collapse around him.

Anyways, enough nostalgia, we’ll have plenty of time for that, as we’ll see him on the sidelines on every game now, just not in the same uniform. He’ll be taking over the vacant running back coach position… which is a fantastic timing, as we are the top pick of the top pick high school running back: Darrell Scott.

“I don’t know who that is, but it doesn’t matter,” said Scott

Oh, you’ll know! Scott is stunning to watch and I am excited about him possibly donning the orange, especially after we lost Jamaal Charles to the NFL a bit early. But hearing that Applewhite was coming back eclipsed all my excitement for Scott. Unfortunately I wont be getting student tickets for free after I graduate in May, but that doesn’t matter.

“He does everything right,” Coach Mack Brown said. “He’s got class, he’s smart, he’s got great faith. He competed his tail off.”

He also is being given the title of Assistant Head Coach.

Awesome.

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Here’s Will Wright displaying a creature sequence from beginning to end in Spore at SXSW yesterday. It’s much like the original videos he showed when introducing the game a year or so ago, but obviously it’s being demo’d with the current engine and with a new creature being made up on the the fly. He gets all philosophical in the middle, as game designers are wont to do, and skips over village creation. But he goes much more into planet and space modes than before. The 17 minute video shows off planet weather, terraforming, planet invasion, creature encyclopedia, and galactic and intergalactic exploration.

Looks like the game is coming along just as expected. I’m hoping the replay value turns out as good as it seems, from the videos. And I hope the release date doesn’t get pushed back anymore (it currently resides at Q2 ‘07).

Living in Austin since the 80’s, it’s bittersweet for me to see what SXSW has become. On one hand, we get the best of all media worlds coming here: started with music, and expanded into movies, and now is huge on electronic entertainment. On the other hand, as a perpetual student, I can’t afford even a portion of the events anymore, much less the one grand fee of seeing everything.

Le sigh.

In a study of the top 20 American cities, Austin, Texas topped the list of cities with the most time-saving services. The city has the highest per capita “in and out” gyms, quick-copy centres and quick-change oil services.

Additionally, the city is building a toll road around the city that only accepts electronic tolls.

The EBay Express study assessed a city’s “impatience” by the number of convenience-oriented services on a per-capita basis. Services included convenience stores, one-hour cleaners, Wi-Fi hot spots and speed dating services among others.

Guess it’s not just the drivers

read more…

While this could go the way of elitist hobnobbing, it also has some great potential.

Details are emerging of Nintendo doing their own viral marketing just before the release of the Wii console. They will be having private parties in select major cities. In fact, Austin is one of the only four cities rumored. The others are LA, Chicago, and Denver. Nintendo chooses several people as hosts and those luckies invite 30 of their closest friends. Little is known about the content of the parties beyond messing with the new console and guests being whisked there in secret. The parties will start in mid-October.

The quality of the parties will be in the hosts. Who are how they are picking them is anyone’s guess at this point. Will they pick local celebs, hardcore Nintendo geeks, General gamer types, or regular people wandering down SoCo? I doubt it will be entirely random.

Seems that they are trying to make it sorta trendy, so I would bet they are going for the 4th-6th street crowd or possibly even focus on University of Texas students.

A bit ago I reported that Nintendo was going to be promoting the Nintendo Wii grassroots style by using a series of private sessions with regular gamers and non-gamers across the country.

Nintendo is going to use some mysterious formula to calculate buzz and cool and then select a few people as “hosts” for this private Wii parties. The plan, it sounds like, is for Nintendo to select a few of these hosts for each city.

Then the host gets to invite a couple dozen friends, family and the like. The hope, I hear, is that it won’t be just a Wii and 30 Nintendo fanboys. What Nintendo really wants is a nice mix of soccer moms, dads, grandmas, worker bees, technophiles and, yes, some hardcore gamers.

The event will feature a number of Wii games, but the only two I’ve been able to nail down are Wii Sports and WarioWare: Smooth Moves.

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wooohooo! We won 41-38 over USC. What a beautiful feeling.