Merlin is one of those geek micro-celebrities, which means that most people won’t know who he is. Merlin is, amongst various things, the author of the 43 Folders blog on productivity ‘n stuff.

He has an excellent, if extremely infrequent, podcast and gives the impression of being an all around decent guy (how could I not like someone who mixes mac productivity tips with observations on the Buddhist concept mindfulness).

Anyway, Merlin’s going to be in Toronto next week and there’s an open invite for people to come hang out with Merlin and the Inside the Net crew. I’d love to, but I’ll be on a plane headed for Paris. Here’s the details, for any other Merlin fan boys or girls out there:

Amber MacArthur and Leo Laporte’s Inside the Net podcast comes to Toronto’s “No Regrets� on Tuesday, October 3rd, and you’re invited.

For this month’s episode, Amber & Leo geek out with Cali Lewis and Neal Campbell from the popular GeekBrief.TV podcast on the PodShow Podcast Network, plus — in for the week from that country just south of Canada — Merlin Mann from 43 Folders.

Stop by No Regrets around 6:30 to watch the taping, then hang out to grab a beverage, and say “hi� to the hosts and their guests.

Admission is free (as in beer); drinks are on you.

I’m certainly not the first to write about now being a good time to be in the business of doing things on the web, here’s the 37 Signals take on it. There are a bunch of reasons this is true, but here’s one that I’ve found really relevant: open source software rocks!

Perhaps I should expand on that a little. As a one man web development/consulting shop I have a finite amount of time in a given week to get things done. The availability of good quality software components that are free and freely customisable is a huge bonus when I’m trying to make the most of my time, which is why I love open source.

Right now I’m developing a site for a non-profit who are working with Cisco to provide technology for post-Katrina redevelopment of schools on the Gulf Coast. The site spec called for forum and photo gallery systems. Now I could have written them from scratch, but it would have taken me a long time, or I could have bought them off the shelf, but likely the products would have cost a lot or just not been quite right. Open source to the rescue, after a little searching I found projects that provided exactly what I needed, and because they’re open source I can tweak the code to get them working exactly the way I want.

This is great, I don’t want to spend my time re-inventing the wheel in developing what’s already been done, I want to create great stuff on the web. So I can concentrate on the stuff I really love doing because there’s a huge number of great tools out there that I can plug together and alter as I need to. And the price tag of zero dollars (plus the occasional donation to the projects) can’t be beat either.

Trying to get out of post-vacation posting doldrums with a quick post on a couple of design links I liked.
Unto This Last is a cool furniture company base din London that I came across on the often inspirational inhabitat blog. Unto The Last use an in-store computer controlled fabrication process to build funky looking wood furniture with zero stock at near (ish) Ikea prices. Now that’s smart.