ConFonz put it in words, here it is in pictures: Sun's JavaOne conference fills the Moscone Center with beanbag chairs, applet hounds, and mobile developers. Paul Boutin provides photos by Patrick McGovern.

Didn't make it to the second iteration of the Stirr emerging tech event? Neither did I, despite digging Stirr #1. But through the magic of the Internets, we can pretend we were there. Photos courtesy of Hot From Silicon Valley (actual approval pending).

This weekend, PBWiki founder and coder Dave Weekly hosted the ninth in his grand series of SuperHappyDevHouses (where guests have included the inventor of the mouse, and where each iteration is unpredictable, like a fractal and unlike a King of Queens episode).

Last night's Dorkbot SF was Boing Boing in a box. First, Mikey Sklar explained how he implanted an RFID tag (a simple chip with a 40-digit number) in his hand. Then he showed off some projects using the tag, including a proxiity-controlled trampoline-triggered oven...flamethrower...thing. (The upshot: You jump on the trampoline, the flames shoot up.)

Don't mind that old fart ConFonz — this weekend's Maker Faire was a two-day rockfest of hackers and crackers sprawled across the San Mateo Fairgrounds. This was a fair with sponsorships from Lego and Digg, this was a festival with an official scooter. MAKE Magazine pulled its best and brightest — MAKE blogger Phil Torrone, editor and BoingBoing blogger Mark Frauenfelder — into a campus of hangars and lawns, where the crafty boys and girls smashed, launched, and hacked the hell out of everything in sight. I showed up to write, and Laughing Squid's Scott Beale showed up to shoot.

Recent Technorati emigrant Niall Kennedy hosted a swanky demo session last night at the Westin St. Francis. This is the second of his SF Tech Sessions. Chicago startup Blish.com bought the room, the drinks (for the record, I stuck to beer and coffee), and the pricey salmon platters.

Wasn't that New York blogger wedding so grand? Oh dear, you weren't invited? No worries, neither was I. But we can peek at the wedding of Blogger founder Meg Hourihan's wedding to designer Jason Kottke. The highlights of Meg's Flickr set:

Web-and-mobile design firm Rubyred Labs held its regular Cereal Bar breakfast this morning. This week's cereal social (held every Monday at Rubyred's office in SF's Soma district) was documented by camera-not-for-hire Scott Beale.

Microsoft's Vegas conference, Mix 06, keeps rocking, and still no photos of Bill Gates gettin' funky on the dance floor. In the meantime, blogger Paul Mooney shares his Flickr'd pics from yesterday:

Mix '06 is hot and, like all tech conferences in Vegas, debaucherous. Thanks to Flickr for making what happens in Vegas not stay in Vegas.

ETech 2006 rolls on, and Scott Beale keeps photographing the folks who make the Internet. Tuesday's highlights include Tim Bray's Indy outfit, Esther Dyson's spelling, and Jen King's primal scream.

The O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference (or ETech for the impatient) is in full swing today, after a rousing start on Monday. The event sold out ages ago, but through the magic of Scott Beale's photography, we can pretend we made it in. (If you want to pretend you met Cory Doctorow and he loved your sci-fi story idea, have that fantasy on your own.) Here are highlights from Scott's meticulous Monday photojournalism.

Over 400 people at the Arrington Ranch, gateway to the Valley. Mike Arrington stuffed all of Web 2.0 into his ranch for the fifth TechCrunch meetup. The night's excuse to drink major event was the launch of Robert Scoble and Shel Israel's book, Naked Conversations.

A crowd of famous-for-the-Internet digerati descended on Varnish Fine Art to break the champagne over Valleywag. Poppa Denton introduced his "hungry little monster" to society, Spot-On's Chris Nolan passed the tech-gossip torch, and a crowd of bloggers and dot-commers dutifully drained the open bar. After the jump, photos shot by SFist's Jackson West and lomo'd up by the talented (and occasionally NSFW) Nikola Tamindzic.