Sunbeams illuminating a coastal forest in Port Orford, Oregon

Chuggnutt!

Author: Jon

  • Deadwood

    Only two episodes in and I’m already liking HBO‘s new series, “Deadwood,” quite a lot. It’s quite a bit different from any other Western series I’ve seen on TV; they’re certainly pulling no punches.

  • Frontier Doctor

    Frontier Doctor: Observations on Central Oregon and the Changing WestI was browsing at Barnes and Nobles this evening and found a book that looks very interesting (so I bought it): Frontier Doctor: Observations on Central Oregon and the Changing West. It’s the autobiographical account of a doctor during the formative years of Bend.

    Urling Coe came to the new town of Bend, Oregon, in 1905, a young medical student graduate seeking adventure and opportunity in the West. Frontier Doctor, Coe’s autobiographical account of his thirteen-year residency, details the extraordinary experiences of a young physician in frontier Oregon and offers a vivid social history of town and ranch life on the Oregon high desert.

    Cool! Looks very much like a fun and interesting read.

  • Bend.com Needs RSS

    Okay, Bend.com seriously needs an RSS feed. I’m seriously considering writing a script to scrape their archive page for headlines and producing one myself.

  • Conspiracies in Web Tracking

    Despite my headline, I’m not really going to go all Mulder on you and start ranting about Big Brother and privacy issues and all that. Instead it’s just some thoughts I’ve been entertaining lately on technology and tracking people and habits on the Web. Some people may choose to see the things I’m writing about as conspiratorial, and that’s fine for them; they may not want to read on, though :) . (more…)

  • South Sister Quakes

    Sweeping the local news this evening is the South Sister earthquakes: more than 100 shook the area three miles west of the South Sister today, with a magnitude of up to 1.5 on the Richter scale. Bend.com has the best writeup on the story I’ve seen online.

    The quakes were occurring in the northeast part of an area centered three miles west of South Sister, in which the ground has undergone what scientists call “crustal uplift” (but others have called “the bulge”) by as much as 25 centimeters (about 10 inches) since late 1997….

    The magma appears to be accumulating at a depth about four miles below the ground surface, and measures about 50 million cubic yards in volume.

    Interesting stuff; of course the entire Cascade Range is geologically active, so it’s not really a surprise, but with the South Sister about, oh, 30 miles away, this news has more than a few people worried, I’m sure.

    Personally, I’d expect Mount Hood to be the one to erupt first, of all of them.

  • Oregon Weblogs

    Just wanted to give a few plugs and props to one of the better weblog-related sites out there, Oregon Blogs.

    I thought about trying to describe what it does, but the best I could come up with is that it’s equal parts RSS aggregator, group blog, and weblog directory rolled into one; really, the way to find out about ORBlogs is to just visit it. It’s one of the more solid, useful and innovative blogging apps I’ve seen (even if it is written in ASP! :) ), and continues to surprise me with new features; for instance, clicking on the “info” link for a blog reveals a detail-rich page devoted to that site, including a snapshot of what the site looks like, state and city-scale maps showing where the blog lives, metatag data gleaned from the HTML source (much of it clickable), and the most recent blog posts.

    Definitely a great site. Worth looking at even if you’re not from Oregon.

  • Button Trendsetter

    After I last posted about the buttons (see “Button Sites” from March 14) on Web sites, and the button maker, I’ve noticed that others are taking notice, and it’s popping up elsewhere:

    Damn, I’m ahead of the curve! I must be some kind of trendsetter!

    … and if you believe that, I have some lovely oceanfront property in South Dakota you might be interested in…

  • WTF is up with Amazon?

    Just WTF is up with Amazon.com this evening? I’m trying to place an order and I keep getting a “We’re Sorry!” message every other page load:

    An error occurred when we tried to process your request. Rest assured, we’re working to resolve the problem as soon as possible. If you were trying to make a purchase, please check Your Account to confirm that the order was placed. We apologize for the inconvenience.

    It’s totally unusable and just completely pissing me off.

    Heh. You can tell I have a lot of patience for this sort of thing, eh?

  • American Gods

    Didn’t post anything yesterday because I was wrapped up finishing American Gods, by Neil Gaiman. Amazing, fascinating book. Absolutely worth it.

  • And another Bend blogger

    Add to that ever-so-slightly growing list of Bend (Oregon) webloggers: Brainside Out. Excellent.