onfocus

Congratulations, Meg! (She left the glamorous world of web applications for the glamorous world of cooking.)

My interest in the web and tech was always more about people. With weblogs, it was making it possible for everyone to write online and share and communicate. And while I was doing it, I really did care very deeply about my work...But something was always missing, and I've realized that was true passion for what I was doing.

Want a behind-the-scenes look at meg's culinary skills? Here are some snapshots of her making pasta at my place in Sebastopol years ago.

Corvallis has had nightly anti-war protests for almost three years now—one of the longest continuous protests in the country. The Gazette-Times just did a story, Vigil nears third anniversary.

I went on a long road trip this past weekend, and found a great way to pass the time. I dumped hours worth of interviews from ITConversations onto my iPod, and listened to them most of the way. (Unfortunately I didn't grab enough for the trip home.) Some favorites:

• Bruce Schneier
• Tim O'Reilly
• Philip Greenspun
• Gatekeepers No More

There's nothing like rocking out to geekspeak at 80 mph.

Looks like O'Reilly has a Japanese Blog Hacks book (blog = chisel?). I wonder if they'll publish a version in English. Looks like they have a Japanese version of Amazon Hacks too, cool!

Erik Benson started a company with some friends called The Robot Co-op. Based on the job openings descriptions there, it sounds like they'll be doing something with weblogs.

Inspired by Stop Motion Studies, I put together this low-tech stop motion pic of Matt. [140 kb]

Some scenes from the Oregon State Fair on Saturday...

Happy Labor Day! (tomorrow in the US) Labor Day is brought to you by The Labor Movement. (You may remember them as the folks who brought you the weekend.) Thanks!

Did you know that Journalists have a Code of Ethics? And did you know that the first code is:

Test the accuracy of information from all sources and exercise care to avoid inadvertent error...

Neither did I. The list is fantastic, and reads like an indictment of current news practices. I especially like this one—

Give voice to the voiceless; official and unofficial sources of information can be equally valid.

Most of these could apply to weblog authors as well.

Have you heard Maciej Ceglowski's Audioblogging Manifesto? I wish I had the skills to put together a Flash animation using this audio.

Matt got a great shot above San Francisco.

If you haven't deleted your Friendster profile yet (is anyone still using that?) here's another reason you may want to get rid of it: an employee was fired for blogging. [via matt]