Five stories that have North Texas talking: 3D ghouls and long-awaited movies at SXSW, a huge stack of bills in Austin, and more...
The wild world of South by Southwest got a little wilder over the weekend in Austin, thanks to something called "3D printing." No, it's not a Xerox machine that requires you to wear funky glasses; it's a printer that actually produces a three-dimensional object. That gave 四虎影院's Lauren Silverman a chance to , using a printer from a partner of .
Think this is just overgrown kid stuff? MakerBot says its clients include NASA and seven of the country's 10 biggest architectural firms.
The company's founder, BrePettis, for SXSW Interactive. Here (wearing geeky glasses that aren't 3D), he makes a pitch for his 3D printer:
http://youtu.be/DY6VSu-oOws
- NOT EXACTLY GOING HOLLYWOOD -- The geeks may inherit the earth, but the folks who'll film it all are also streaming through SXSW, at the fest's movie arm. One of 'em is Shane Carruth, a graduate of J.J. Pearce High School in Richardson, who took the Sundance film fest by storm nine years ago with his debut, . 四虎影院's Stephen Becker caught up with Carruth -- who has a pretty good reason for waiting nearly a decade to release his second flick, Upstream Color: "It's about everything that we suspect is the reason why I did that thing yesterday and why I'll continue to do those things tomorrow," Carruth tells Stephen. "It gets to explore big, big, big ideas." []
- AS INTERACTIVE WINDS DOWN, MUSIC CRANKS UP -- The techies move out of Austin tomorrow, and I-35 is jammed up with instrument-stuffed vans heading south for the music portion of SXSW. (Quite a few of them, by the way, stopped in these parts over the weekend for the festival.) Between and the hordes arriving from NPR, we'll have SXSW Music covered, too. []
- MEANWHILE, AT THAT OTHER AUSTIN FESTIVAL -- The legislators in Austin have been almost as busy as the SXSW organizers, with 6,500 bills filed so far this session. The Texas Tribune has been busy, too, and it's charted every single bill in a massive interactive project. (One NoTex tidbit: The No. 1 bill-filer statuette goes to Sen. John Carona, the Dallas Republican, who's loaded in 131 himself.) []
- WHO SHOT J.R. THIS TIME? -- Three months after Dallas legend Larry Hagman died, his TV doppelganger at 8 p.m. on TNT. And, yes, J.R. Ewing was shot again -- but this time, there's almost no chance that a dream sequence will bring him back. It's a good time to look back again at the impact J.R., and Hagman, had on Dallas -- and a farm kid from Maryland. []
