• RSS Feeds – a Website Owner’s Friend in Disguise.
• 10 Steps to a Hugely Successful Web 2.0 Company.
• Webzine 2005 – Looks like fun.
• Weather Underground Blog Directory.
• Fascinating overview of Linux technologies used to build 2000 processor clusters at LANL – This is why I love Kernel Traffic; I can keep abreast of what’s going on in the Linux kernel development world without reading hundreds of messages per day.

• Weather Underground Blog – Lots of technical discussion about Hurricane Katrina.
• Central Florida Hurricane Center.
• OSVDB – Open Source Vulnerability DataBase.
• Future of Flight Aviation Center – Opening October 28th in Mukilteo, Washington.
• Gibeo – Shared Web Annotation and Content Aware Services
• MSNBC: Hurricane Katrina RSS feed.
• Meteorologist Blogs.
• OPML List of feeds tagged with ‘weather’ on Syndic8.

• New issue of Kernel Traffic – The sane way to track what’s happening with Linux kernel development.
• XML-RPC Debugger
• PHP News Network
• PHP Function Reference

They always say, “Blog about what you know,” and Duane Fields from Pluck evidently knows his barbecue!

Duane has been blogging at The BBQ Report for a little while, with news (“Tailgate barbecue destroys 6 cars“), reviews, recipes (The Atomic Buffalo Turds look delicious), and how-tos.

Nice work, Duane!

After spending 8 days in the idyllic climate of Cabo San Lucas Mexico, I am back in Sammamish, and ready to live a reality-based life once more. I don’t usually get to take 3 weeks of vacation in one summer, so please don’t think of this as a vacation blog.

For the past couple of years I had been accumulating vacation time at a rate faster than I could use it, and early this year I started to get messages from HR telling me that I would not be accumulating further vacation time. I work too hard to let this happen, so we were lucky enough to have two vacations this year: our California Road Trip, and our usual trip to Cabos.

I didn’t think about technology or web services very much while in Mexico. In fact, I renamed a bunch of common acronyms to better suit my state of mind:

• REST – What I did.
• SOAP – Used for washing.
• XML – Shorthand for “eXcuse me, I need More Lemonade.”
• RSS – Relax, Sleep, Suntan.

We did get to experience a tropical storm, with high winds, pounding surf, and lots of thunder and lightning. I will post some pictures soon.

Ok, so now back to my regular life! The kids start school next week, and that will mark the official end of summer.

• Gentoo Linux 2005.1 Released
• Radio Open Source – Interesting fusion of public radio, podcasting, and open source.
• I Podcast, Therefore I Am” – One podcaster’s story.
• Feld Thoughts: Discovering Work Life Balance – 5 important habits to keep your life livable.

• ebayNess – No, it is not a disease!
• Findory Feed Reader – Fast, smooth, and easy to use. Nice work, Greg.
• TagHop
• Podsafe Music Network.
• How to Find a Great Domain Name.
• Ten Tips for Improving Your Podcasts.
• BIOCOSMOLOGY – “This paper unveils the non-linear quantum foundations of biocosmology as the founding science of life.” – I’ll be reading this by the pool in Mexico next week!

In the past couple of days I have seen some new Google ads that look like this:

I have clicked on several of these ads more or less by accident, finding out that they are ads only after getting to the “landing page” with the actual revenue-generating ads. I assume that the site owner doesn’t get paid unless I click twice — once to get to the landing page and then again to get to an actual ad.

I don’t like this at all.

On the one hand, Google’s targeting algorithms seem to be working really well, since the text links appear to be very relevant to the containing page.

On the other hand, I didn’t think that I was clicking on an ad, when (in fact) I ended up doing so. I realize that there is that “Ads by Google” text to the left, but forcing me to check the visual context of a link to make sure that it is not an ad seems to be misleading.

Does anyone else find these offensive or misleading?

• Seattle PHP User’s Group – Rises from the ashes, and may one day have an actual meeting!
• Oracle Blogs – Blogs by Oracle employees and Oracle experts, including an OPML feed list.
• A Day in the Life of an Internet Entrepreneur – He runs BetterEdit – “The net’s best proofreading and editing service.”
• Geotagging Web Pages and RSS Feeds.
• Life-changing moments… – I really like this thought: “If you keep looking for life-changing moments that never seem to appear, try examining your readiness to accept change. When you are actually ready for a change to occur in your life, it is almost as though the universe seems to get it, and your opportunity appears.”
• OPML Directory.
• Propaganda – Podcasting tool (courtesy of Scoble).
• Creating Passionate Users.