– Carl Bidleman

Natalie Zee Drieu is the Senior Editor of Craft magazine and spends way too much time online. But when Doug invited her to log off and come outside, she picked one of her favorite places to play…San Francisco’s beautifully rejuvenated waterfront near the historic Ferry Building…and brought her terminally cute dog, Lulu, along for the fun. Good choices. To watch the video, “click to play” beneath the photo.

Doug has a delightful chat with Mindy Roberts, author of The Mommy Blog, and hears about her notion of a perfect day around the San Francisco Bay.

Click to play

– Carl Bidleman

David Allen Ibsen is a San Francisco-based marketing guru and author of 5 Blogs Before Lunch. When he’s not online, David loves to spend time in the coastal community of Cambria, California. The beauty of the town and it’s surrounding environment has inspired David to self-publish several books of his photographs of the area through a company he advises, blurb. In this episode, David talks with Doug about Cambria, photography and his dog Gracie.

– Carl Bidleman

Rhett Butler is my new hero. No, not THAT Rhett Butler. The Rhett Butler who publishes MONGABAY.COM, the comprehensive environmental science website. Rhett is a one-man operation. 100-hour work weeks have yielded an enormously valuable resource about the state of the environment with specially formatted sections for kids that have been translated into more than 30 different languages. He now generates enough traffic to make his travels, research and website self-sustaining. I’m in awe. To be able to make a difference and make a living is something many of us aspire to.

As a world traveler, Rhett has his favorite places and in this video episode of Life Outside the Box, he shares his love (and some of his photos) of Madagascar and, closer to home, Big Basin State Park where he goes when it’s time to log off and live. And he tells the story of how he got his name, too. Enjoy.

– Carl Bidleman

Doug and I are TV guys who started working in this web world over two years ago and I’m amazed at how much of my life I now spend in front of a computer. 10-11 hours a day, six days a week. It seems way out of whack and I got to wondering how others who make their living in the virtual world get reconnected to the real one. So today we’re launching a new video blog series we call Life Outside the Box. In the coming days and weeks we’ll post conversations with Rhett Butler of Mongabay.com, David Allen Ibsen of 5 Blogs Before Lunch, Mindy Roberts of The Mommy Blog, Scott Beale of Laughing Squid and Natalie Zee Drieu of craftzine.com about places where they love to spend their precious time. But we’re very pleased to inaugurate the series with a guy we’ve come to like very much, David Pescovitz. David is an editor of Boing Boing, one of the most popular blogs on the internet that bills itself “a directory of wonderful things.” The editors report on internet esoterica, anomalies, and curiosities across an insanely wide range of topics, from innovative technology and contemporary art to culture and weird science. The only filter is “interestingness.” And interestingness is exactly what David shared with Doug at one of his favorite off-line places, the Musee Mecanique on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf, home of the legendary Laughing Sal. Have a look.