Reading material

Prompted by a (mild) tweak from Matt—and yeah, there is a certain pattern to the subject matter around here :)—I thought I’d post links representing a tiny excerpt of the online writings that keep me informed, entertained, and occasionally outraged:

Technology

• Tim Bray never fails to have something of interest at Ongoing. It’s not entirely accurate to list the site under technology (although he is Sun’s Director of Web Technologies), because he’s just as likely to post a review of a great CD in his 5 ✭ ♫ series, or photos of his travels in Vancouver and around the world, or his analysis of the political situation in the Middle East. But technology’s what took me to the site originally, so there ya go.
• Sam Ruby‘s eponymous blog is generally more tech-oriented than Ongoing, but always as engaging, whether he’s writing about web services, personal projects like Planet Venus, or just pointing to other items of interest around the web. Anyone at work who’s heard me talk (and talk, and talk) about syndication or moan with displeasure at our intraweb (and other servers) ultimately has Sam to blame.
• Ditto on assigning blame to Eric Meyer, who writes about CSS (and other things) at meyerweb.com.
• Dive Into Mark, Mark Pilgrim’s recently-restarted blog, is one of the ones I’ve been reading longest, and is almost certainly the first I subscribed to via RSS. He’s big into technological freedom these days, a topic that’s lead to discussions of things from backing up terabytes of data to website accessibility.

Music

• Lenni Jabour’s petites pensées are a monthly snapshot of the loveliness that can be found in day-to-day existence, if you just know where to look. sigh
• On the Road is Kristin Sweetland’s occasional journal and a jumping-off point to disparate and distant parts of the web that make perfect sense together once you start to understand a bit of who she is.
• I came to Scott Andrew’s lo-fi acoustic pop superhero! site for the JavaScript techniques, and stayed for the music and insights into the world of indie musicianship.

Politics

• Rick Mercer takes few prisoners and eats sacred cows for breakfast. His blog posts are like scripts for the streeters he performs on his weekly comedy show, made only slightly less biting by being in print.
• Mike Watkins dot net (which is actually a .ca domain) is the blog of a Progressive Conservative—you remember what those were, right?—who I came across during the last Canadian election campaign. He’s very vocal about the arch-conservative turn his party has taken, and also happens to live in turncoat David Emerson’s riding. It’s surprising sometimes how much his opinions match mine, me being a social libertarian on the economic left and all.

Friends and Family

• Donna’s denim blog has been through a few sites and incarnations, but it’s currently a place where she posts snippets about her life and travels, accompanied by photos taken with her vast array of cameras.
• I’ve mentioned that brother Ed and sister-in-law Tara both have blogs; as far as I know we’re the only three in the family that do.
• Coworkers John and Mike haven’t had a lot to say on their blogs recently. Perhaps this tweak of my own will shame them into a post or two. 🙂

A short coda, just for interest’s sake: of the current Technorati Top 100, I read exactly… wait for it… one. And it’s A List Apart, which is really more of a magazine than a blog.