The sun, which emerged briefly around 2 p.m., darted not 10 minutes later back behind a thick cover of cloud and fog (of the "stinging, cold" variety), and the temperature dropped accordingly. I'm no weatherman, but anyone headed out to the Lands for the remainder of the weekend, one bit of advice: wear layers.

Which leads me to a question, which I'll get to in a minute. The festival's Eco Lands area seems to be more than the token "greenwashing" effort you see at a lot of events along the lines of Outside Lands [ tickets ]. The Panhandle Stage, for instance, is fully solar, running a 4-kilowatt system to power all the equipment onstage. Which is pretty neat, but wait: there's more.

There are compost bins everywhere. When the need rises to dispose of whatever you have in your hand at the moment, you're confronted with a set of choices: recycle, compost, or landfill. There is no lecture attached, and no penalty for contributing to the landfill, you just get a fairly linear multiple choice option, and you have to think about the thing that you're trying to get rid of, maybe just for a second or two, but you do think about it. Especially when there's a guy from the Clean Vibes trash and recycling crew hollering "Don't toss that beer cup! Compost it!" at every station.

They're 100% biodegradable and made from corn, if you didn't know.

Whoops, I promised a question and then promptly forgot about it. So, when the sun goes away and doth refuse to shine, like it did for all but few glorious moments this afternoon, what happens to the solar-powered music from the solar-powered stage? Is this thing being run on batteries, or did they just keep a spare extension cord handy? I'll check with somebody and get the answer later.

I would do that sort of fact-checking sooner, instead of later, except that right around the time Steve Winwood [ tickets ] was finishing up a powerhouse set in front of a huge main stage crowd (including several note-perfect versions of his old Traffic songs, including "Low Spark of High Heeled Boys" and "Mr. Fantasy"), my laptop decided to give up the ghost. The "live" portion of this blog has now been moved to the "file after the show" category.

Earlier, before the Great Laptop Tragedy of '08, M. Ward [ tickets ] delivered a tight, soulful set in front of an enthusiastic Lindley Meadow crowd, many of whom no doubt said to themselves something like "I really should get me some M. Ward albums!" This reporter included, shamefully. And man, does he sound like mid-'70s Dylan, or what?

Hey, what's that enormous circus tent in the middle of the Polo Field?

Answer: Crowdfire is this enormous circus tent in the middle of the Polo Field; it is also this website where people can upload video mash-ups and photos and whatnot, and people inside the big tent at Outside Lands can watch them projected all over the place. You can add your own contribution while you're there at the festival, as a matter of fact; lots of people sprawled inside on big blankets and pillows watching the shifting content, which acted sort of like an instant feedback response to whatever was going on outside the tent or, really, anywhere else on the 'Net.

Radiohead's up on stage right now? Here's some bootlegged video from a European festival earlier this summer. Here's Thom Yorke's voice put through a pitch-changer, and "Karma Police" coming out like Alvin & the Chipmunks. What about Beck from last night? Here you go. Blink and you'll miss it.

I don't know if any of this is actually useful, but the Crowdfire tent is, at the very least, a nice place to spend an hour or two while waiting for Ben Harper [ tickets ] to come on.

Speaking of which, the nice lady who runs the hand-painted light bulb concession (and who let us pet her awesome dog, Rainbow) would like to know why you have too much good stuff going on, Outside Lands organizers.

"Ben Harper, Primus [ tickets ] and Cake [ tickets ] are all happening at the same time," she complained. "Why can't they stagger them out?"

While I agreed with her, I personally wouldn't have made the decision to sit behind a booth selling hand-painted lightbulbs all weekend long, but different strokes....

Tom Petty [ tickets ] & the Heartbreakers closed out Day 2's festivities, no doubt to the delight of Devendra Banhart, who spent plenty of time during his Saturday set bemoaning the fact that he couldn't play the guitar part in "Breakdown" the same way Petty can.

Practice, son; the answer is always: practice.

(Oh, and the other answer: batteries. Big, honkin' batteries.)

Additional Outside Lands coverage:
Blogging Outside Lands, Day 1: Black Mountain, Carney
Blogging Outside Lands, Day 1: Radiohead, Beck
Blogging Outside Lands, Day 2: Devendra Banhart plays! Natalie Portman seen!

Outside Lands coverage from L.A. rockers Carney:
Video Blog: Carney at Outside Lands in San Francisco (No. 1)
Blogging Outside Lands: Carney arrives
Video Blog: Carney at Outside Lands in San Francisco (No. 2)

• Get real-time updates on Twitter
• Visit us at Facebook