onfocus

Hey fellow Oregon geeks, Orkut Buyukkokten from Google (yeah, his namesake Orkut) is going to be speaking at OSU on Monday night. The talk is called: Google: A Computer Scientist's Playground. See ya there!

A few groups of hikers were rescued in Yosemite this morning after a blizzard snowed them in. SFGate: Three groups of missing hikers rescued. Sadly, two men scaling El Capitan weren't as lucky.

Note to self: don't broadcast on 121.5 MHz. Area Man's Television Sends National Distress Signal (aka Mystery signal traced to TV). Television malfunctions, hilarity ensues.

Update: This story is now international news. (Corvallis is world-famous for a malfunctioning TV!)

As I was describing Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire with sk, I was comparing him with Andy Kaufman because he's pushing the boundries of the audience. And David Weinberger's post—Stewart on Crossfire—compares him with Lenny Bruce and Richard Pryor. I think Stewart is making the leap from great comedian to icon.

What country do we live in, again?

"President Bush taught three Oregon schoolteachers a new lesson in irony - or tragedy - Thursday night when his campaign removed them from a Bush speech and threatened them with arrest simply for wearing t-shirts that said Protect Our Civil Liberties..."

Bend.com: Teachers' T-shirts bring Bush speech ouster. [via Jack Bog]

William Gibson is blogging again.

Here are 16 photos from my trip—Yosemite Oct. 2004.

My friend Jake just let me know that he was in Yosemite this last weekend too. He posted some great photos from his trip.

I just got back from a quick trip to one of my favorite places, Yosemite National Park. Not only was I in one of the most beautiful spots in the world, I was away from politics, TV, and the web—and it was good. I have a mountain of photos to sift through, and I'll be posting some. I couldn't decide which one to post first, so I just grabbed the first photo I took on the drive into Yosemite Valley.

Evan is leaving Blogger (Google).

An article I wrote for O'Reilly Network is up: Hacking Books with Safari Web Services. You can get book catalog info via Amazon's API, but Safari's API is the first to make some of the contents of books available to developers. The article is about creating RSS feeds with the Safari API to track what offline books are saying about specific technologies.

If you're in Oregon you only have eight days left to register to vote. The deadline is October 12th. It only takes a few minutes, and then you get to brag for four years that you didn't vote for the guy who won. If you don't vote, you don't get to talk about politics with anyone, ever. Those are the rules as I understand them. You can register in Oregon here. If you're somewhere else, check out Jason's Voters Information Guide for the 2004 US Election to find out how you can register.