The Northwest Folklife festival was great as usual. The kids loved it, though they have a different perspective. Bobby's fave was the man dressed as a monkey. I was impressed by the beautiful banjos from Romero Banjos. I am not much of a banjo player, but I loved the look of these handmade wooden instruments.

Some new pages from me:

• Espresso Coffee Shops with Free WiFi on Seattle's Eastside
• Folk Music song lists
• Folk Music Airplay Charts
• Eye Magazine, 1968-1969

Wine Press Northwest magazine online has some great tables of results from competitions and blind tastings, plus a newsletter and more. Some goodies:

• $9 Barnard Griffin Fumé Blanc - One of the "Outstanding" Sauvignon Blancs from a blind tasting.
• $10 Eola Hills Wine Cellars 2000 Oregon Chardonnay, a gold medal winner at the 2003 Florida State Fair.
• $12 Sagelands Vineyard 2001 Columbia Valley Merlot, Gold Medal at the 2003 West Coast Wine Competition.
• $10 Arbor Crest 2001 Sauvignon Blanc, best buy

MedPundit covers the latest medical news in an interesting way.

Clark Humphrey reports that the espresso stand at Nordstrom's in Bellevue Square has free WiFi from the nearby Apple store.

Test your firewall with Symantec security check. It's free.

Tommy Williams has an interesting weblog, which I found via GeoURL (he's near me). Tommy works at MSDN and writes interestingly about technology. I like his report on a talk about social software. Many good points here. Years ago I wrote a multi-line "dating" BBS called DLX, so I have some experience in this area. We liked the sex talk in DLX.