onfocus

So the cat was let out of the bag today at the eTech Amazon Workshop. I'm working on a book for O'Reilly called Amazon Hacks. They distributed a confidential draft (actually printed in block letters across the top!) printing of a chapter from the book to everyone, and I attempted to talk to everyone about a couple of cool hacks that are in the book already. (I'm not so great at public speaking...but I hope I got something across beyond the fact that I was nervous.) They didn't have enough copies of the sample chapter to go around, and I even gave up my copy to someone who didn't get one the first time around.

Now that the project is public, I'm going to step up my efforts at finding code for the book. If you have a bit of cool Amazon hackery, let me know. It doesn't have to be anything formal, hence the word Hacks in the title. If you've written some unusual way to work with Amazon, let me know! (Or let me know if you just have a dream Amazon feature...maybe it could evolve into a code hack.) You can submit a hack at the O'Reilly site if you want to go the official route. Or just send me an email directly. Like the other Hacks books, contributors are fully credited and have a bio in the book.

The World as a Blog. Interesting combination of Geo-info, RSS, and Weblogs.com. You can see posts as they're posted in their geographic location on a world map. [via irc #etcon]

Even though it was a short trip, here are some pictures I took...



I didn't take any pictures on the bus ride, even though there was a beautiful sunrise as we were passing Mt. Shasta. It's hard to enjoy anything on a bus.

Hitting the rails didn't go nearly as well as expected. I got on board in Albany, OR around 4:00pm. A few hours later I was enjoying the ride as the train was leaving civilization and climbing into the Cascades. Just before I went to the dining car for dinner around 6:30, the train came to a complete stop. This isn't unusual...sometimes the train has to wait for a freight train to pass. That usually takes 10 minutes or so. During dinner we overheard the crew saying that somwhere up ahead a freight train derailed. They were saying it was one car, it would be cleared, and we'd be on our way in about an hour. After dinner we still hadn't moved.

Next, an engineer let us know that four cars had derailed ahead, and that we would be turning around and heading back to Eugene. But first, we'd need to move the engines to the front of the train. This ordeal takes an hour or so, during which there is no power on the train. We eventually made it back to Eugene around midnight where they herded all of the passengers onto buses. So my trip ended up being by bus.

I normally love traveling by train, and this is the only problem I've ever had. But it's a big problem.

I'm about to hit the rails for a trip to CA.

Kim Jong Il (the illmatic)'s Journal. Why do these always show up on LiveJournal?

BlogFodder: Big in Japan? (or mocked in Japan?)

Holy crap, this is cool: Freevo! An open source TiVo clone that runs on a PC. (Thanks, Nate!) Check out the screenshots.

Also: mythTV. [via Slashdot]

The world—
Like an elephant's tail
Not passing through the window,
Although no one is there
Holding it back.

- Dogen

Magazine ranks Corvallis in top 10

"Using 34 variables from cancer rates and cholesterol levels to air and water quality to access to major airports and major cities, Men's Journal magazine in its May edition listed Corvallis as one of The 50 Best Places to Live among U.S. cities with populations between 50,000 and 500,000."

My research ranked Corvallis at the top too. That's why I moved here. Go Corvallis!

The Emerging Technology conference is coming up this month. They have a 30% discount going on right now for friends and family. You are friends and family!


Here are some notes I jotted down after eTech 2002. I was wishing for a ping service to track weblog posts last year, and this year it exists in the form of trackbacks for every session. Sometimes wishes come true. With trackbacks, a centralized note-swapping place might not even be necessary if everyone attending the conference has a blog (and they're willing to post their notes there).

Who else is talking about the conference?

Some photos I've taken in Mariposa Grove.