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31 December 2008

 

Leyla Gencer


 
The Avatar Inside

SELF AWARENESS: THE LAST FRONTIER [1.1.09]
By V.S. Ramachandran

'We postulate that in " normal" individuals there is a genetically specified homunculus in S2 that serves as a template acting on limbic and visual areas to determine aesthetic preference for ones own body type. Hence pigs are attracted to pigs not people. (Which is not to deny an additional role for olfactory and visual imprinting) But if the image in S2 is missing a limb this may translate into an aesthetic preference toward an amputee - mediated by reverse projections that are known to connect the ("emotional") amygdala to every stage in the visual hierarchy.'


Human beings live too long and gather too much damage.
Time to go digital.

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Responses so far on my New Year's graphic:

twisted
sadistic
weird


Success!

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30 December 2008

 
Seducing Doctor Lewis
(La Grande Seduction)

A dying fishing village in Quebec tries to lure a doctor into the community in order to fulfill the requirements for a factory. It's along the same lines as Local Hero, Waking Ned Devine, and The Full Monty, and just as good-hearted and quirky.

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Weird high winds.
========:O


 
She's got her father's eyes.


 
Modern Hobo Code
by Cockeyed by way of Laughing Squid.


 

Panorama of Summit Lake at 8 am this morning.
(one small part of it, anyway)

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29 December 2008

 
Molly Montale IMed me when I logged on, exhorting me to come and see the tiny Venice in the IBM sandbox. I love scale changes, so was off like a shot, and met the creator, PatriciaAnne Daviau. I rudely rezzed a poseball, sat in the middle of the build, took pictures, then ran off - snap and run (I had work to do as always).


 

Girl with collection of dolls
Originally uploaded by George Eastman House

Autochromes from George Eastman House
'Girl with collection of dolls' circa 1910

In response to a comment a curator said, "When we make scans and reproductions of photographs in the collection it is our policy to try and duplicate the object as it is now. While we have some idea of how a photograph may have looked when it was first made, we cannot be sure, and feel it is more important to represent the collection in its current condition.

Your idea, to make a copy of the autochrome, color correct it in Photoshop and then display it next to the original, is a good one. However, if we were to embark on such a project we would need to know what an autochrome looked like when it was first made. Unfortunately one of the dyes used in the process came from a fish that is now extinct. While other dyes might be usable we will never be able to recreate it exactly as it was."



Foolish House, Ontario Beach Park in 1910
Originally uploaded by George Eastman House



 
News from Tiff in the Dominican Republic

"We arrived at Jarabacoa and as usual made a great contact at the bus station. How would we ever travel without bus stations. Anyway today we are going all over with him. We went to 3 gorgeous waterfalls. Hanging off cliffs and sliding up and down piles of mud and loose rock. I fell from one vine but was a blast as slid down a mud cliff like Indiana Jones. It was perilous all the way but a great adventure unavailable to any other tourists. They go to the waterfalls but on paths. Not us-we went over the side and down the cliff."

I should perhaps note that Tiff is in her 60s, although a casual reader might be excused for assuming her age to be three or four decades younger.


 
Just got home. I had not been able to leave for weeks, so after jin shin (10:15 or so) I went to the grocery store but couldn't manage to get much as I just felt horrible. Surprised that after days above freezing + an absolute deluge of rain everything is STILL white with huge piles of snow everywhere - I saw some that were 10 feet high. Main roads were ok but parts of Olympia are impassible. It started sleeting after I left Frank's - not my fave. Very, very windy + sleety/snowy/rainy.

Update: now it's snowing hard.

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28 December 2008

 

Postcard from Second Life.
Originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion

My b'loon. All the arenas* are free.

* so far:
Steampunk
Scifi
Tree
Basic
Combat Cage
Ancient Stones



 
Dezombification
I had to go to the beauty salon to get back to my normal live appearance. (As always click to view larger).

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I can't imagine why anyone would need a
Ronald and Nancy Reagan cut-out in Second Life,
but if you do there's one for sale for 20l.
*scratches her head*

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27 December 2008

 



26 December 2008

 


Tired of being snowed in.
/me shovels more raw material into Photoshop.

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25 December 2008

 
When the sun is out the snow melts. That doesn't do anything to the 3.5 foot heap of snow and ice behind my garage, however, as that's the shady side. I need to go and see if the garage is staying dry, however.
The snow on the trees doesn't show up very well in a photograph.

I fiddled with my thermostat (it looks very non-techno inside like it was designed by a ten year old for a science fair in 1965) and turned it all the way up then all the way down, with no good results, but my landlord said turn it up and leave it that way for a bit before turning it down (tch, too impatient, Os), so I did and now at least it's off (I'm by far happier that way than at 75ยบ).

It's not cold. This kind of melting-inch-by-inch is much better for the salmon than the zomg-warms-up-to-40-and-pours-with-rain-for-5-days type, which scours out the streambeds.



24 December 2008

 

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More From the Dominican Republic

"Well, we took our bus from Bavarro to Boca Chica, Voodoo Juice and all.
We have a great hotel here. It is right on a white sand beach with aquamarine water. Its shallow and calm and we actually just hung out for one full day just enjoying our 2 balconies overlooking the beach scene.

Tuesday//well we just had to mix things up a bit. We aren,t far from Santo Domingo and in Santo Domingo is a Harley dealer that sells shirts/so we decided to get the shirt buying thing out of the way. Everyone laughed when we said we were going to take a bus into Santo Domingo and then clear across town to the shop. Well, we did make it to Santo Domingo but were totally defeated at getting across the city. Everyone on the street tried to help but no one had ever manmaged such a thing//now I know why. We were defeated and got a cab. Anyway there is a happy ending. We got a great shirt and spent the day with the most fearless taxi jockey ever. He backed up onramps and one way streets and several other things I closed my eyes for//All the time talking to us in the back seat. The streets here are full of people, cars, motorbikes, huge trucks, venders, fruit stands, and hanging dead chickens, not to mention people trying to sell you hog heads and, in fact, whole roasted hogs. Of course there is music and horns and people yelling just to make it all a bit more manic. It was heaven to get back to our little cozy beach.

Thank goodness the Voodoo juice is almost gone. We carted 2 gallons of the stuff on the bus here but it should be gone by our next connection to Santo Domingo. Plus Brad really stinks from it so bad I can,t sleep with him."


 
Hmmm.

It's snowing and melting still, at the moment.

Update: Now it's windy but less snowy.

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It's melting and snowing at the same time.
My thermostat is broken (sux) as of this morning.

Marilee rang to say it's snowing hard where she is (north of me), and that if I need anything she and Pete will beat their way to my door in a four-wheel drive. Frank rang up to say he's cancelling Monday's appointment as another big storm is predicted, but maybe by Wednesday things will be better. He said Olympia, which does practically nothing for snow as a rule, has brought in heavy machinery and is loading snow onto trucks to clear the main roads.


 

Footage shot at The Gap, not far from Anji's house in Brisbane, during an incredible storm in November. The end part of the tape is hair-raising.

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23 December 2008

 
Another good find from Candide:

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You are cordially invited to the Combat Cards Undead Christmas Party! Undead attire encouraged but not required. Prizes, fighting, and - best of all - we are rolling out Combat Cards 2.0 with a new free-and-modifiable series of arenas. AND real life cards!

Real life Combat Cards are now available and can be purchased at http://us.shop.combatcards.co.uk (US customers) and http://uk.shop.combatcards.co.uk (UK customers) You can also buy a set of real life Combat Cards in world for 3500L$ which will give you a 15US$ value gift certificate code to use at http://us.shop.combatcards.co.uk or http://uk.shop.combatcards.co.uk and a full set of Second Life Combat Cards. Currently real life Combat Cards can only be delivered to domestic US or UK addresses.



22 December 2008

 
Inventory folder update: It has changed its name to 45.



21 December 2008

 
The Bothersome Man
Mysteriously transported to a city where everything is "nice" and bland, the main character is too passionate to fit in and attempts to escape. I liked it.

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20 December 2008

 
News From Tiff
Hi
Well, last night after writting, we walked a little and ran into a guy from Haiti and his friends. We hung out with them awhile and talked (mostly in Spanish and Creole mix) but anyway we learned a lot about Haiti and Voodoo. Today one of them took us to a very remote and primitive Haitian village here in the Dominican Republic (similar to going to a Mexican agricultural workers camp but poorer). Anyway the people were wonderful and the children stole my heart. I took dozens of pictures of them as they came from near and far to see themselves in the review window. I have great shots.
Then we got permission to attend our own private voodoo ceremony to sell Brad's house. We ran all over finding and buying at least 20 ingrediants locally and then returned for a 2nd ceremony making the solution Brad has to bathe in and the potions we need to take back to bless the house with. It all weighs a ton. We have a full gallon of bath stuff and at least another quart of house stuff plus about 10 candles. Voodoo is big on depending on lots of stuff. At least the bath stuff will run out before we have to start taking taxi motorcycles hauling it all on our backs.
Tomorrow is beach day -hooray.
Love
Tiff and Brad

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YES!
[2008/12/19 15:33] Osprey Therian: DOC MADE CLICK TO DESELECT
[2008/12/19 15:33] Armath Severine: gasp
[2008/12/19 15:33] Osprey Therian: AND SET TURN INTERVAL
[2008/12/19 15:34] Armath Severine: so you can fix miss-clicks?
YES!

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Release the Flying Monkeys

Yesterday I said something unbelievable knowing no one would believe me - but someone did! We were talking about bad actors we can't stand. I had started off with Kevin Costner (retching noises), then later in the conversation Enj brought up (!) Jerry Lewis.

Enjah Mysterio: in the Nutty Professor
Osprey Therian: Jerry Lewis =================:O
Enjah Mysterio: Jerry Lewis said
Friend: oooo - haven't seen that since I was a nipper
Enjah Mysterio: see how initials get things confusing?
Osprey Therian: Father of Kevin Costner
Enjah Mysterio: yes
Osprey Therian: lol
Friend: whaaaa?
Enjah Mysterio: ego the size of jupiter
Osprey Therian: muther was...
Osprey Therian: who...
Enjah Mysterio: hrm
Osprey Therian: thimk
Friend: Kev is really his son?
Enjah Mysterio tries to imagine a woman who would sleep with Jerry Lewis
Osprey Therian: lol
Osprey Therian: YES
Enjah Mysterio: no
Friend: well bugger me
Osprey Therian: LITTLEBKNOWN FACT <--laughing so hard I couldn't type
Enjah Mysterio: she is SHITTIN YA
Osprey Therian is lying.
Friend: I'll google it later... /me eyes Os...
Enjah Mysterio: the mother was ....
Friend: a jackal?
Osprey Therian: wait
Osprey Therian: wait
Enjah Mysterio: who?
Friend: waiting...
Osprey Therian: JANE FONDA

Remember, you heard it here first.

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Warming up?


 
Hah
01001111 01110011 01110000 01110010 01100101 01111001 00100000 01100110 01110100 01110111 :D
---Skell Dagger

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19 December 2008

 
It's rare around here to look at a weather forecast and see Sat: snow, Sun: snow, Mon; snow, Tues: snow, Wed: snow. Of course, the forecast I saw might be wrong.

Saturday
Cloudy with a chance of snow. Highs in the upper 20s to mid 30s. Southeast wind 5 to 15 mph.
Saturday Night
Windy...snow...possibly mixing with or changing to freezing rain or sleet after midnight. Snow accumulation of 6 to 12 inches.* Ice accumulation up to one quarter inch possible late. Lows in the mid 20s to lower 30s. Southeast wind 10 to 15 mph increasing to south 20 to 30 mph after midnight.


Oh, joy - variety! An ice storm!

I'll be sad if my electricity goes out (which it tends to do when it's windy).
* There's about... oh... (tries not to exaggerate) 9 inches or so on the ground at the moment (except it's hard for me to see). Quite a bit has melted and lies under the snow as an ice layer.

Update: It's been snowing all day, but no ice/wind so far.

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Animated short film:
For Sock's Sake


 
I was just reading an article about the difficulty in predicting how efficient a person will be at his or her profession. It's obvious that for many fields education is so far removed from the job itself* that it would be better to have an apprenticeship program, while for others the education is useful but doesn't weed out people who are merely good at school but unsuited for whatever it is they studied.

It seems woefully inefficient to send a person off for four, six, or eight years of school and have them pop out the other end with a 50-50 chance of actually knowing how to exist in the practical world - that's why some of the old methods currently poo-pooed should be reexamined. The friend-of-the-daughter of a friend, whose mother is a nurse, went through umpteen years of art school, only to wind up getting a job as a nurse. Although heredity** is only one clue it seems rash to disregard it entirely.

It would seem as though the point at which the likely fit of student and job could be assessed should be identified and education applied to get the person to that stage. Then for the sake of countless wasted hours in education and on the job, there should be some kind of practical assessment. I wonder is it so evil to look at someone and tell them they are likely going down the wrong path? Obviously this is a kind of utopian idea, but anyway it's interesting to think about. The example in the article was young teachers in videotaped short lessons sorting themselves to the viewers quite obviously as good teachers, mediocre teachers, and bad teachers. Then I think, well, was the good teacher born a good teacher or was she taught by a good teacher and so absorbed those methods? I suppose you'd have to sideline that question and focus on identifying good teachers because then, presumably and in an ideal world, all children would be taught by good teachers so it wouldn't be relevent.***

I am a believer in mentoring, too. In my oddball Wa He Lut existence every once in a while a student would say something like this to me, "Miss Kendall, I want to learn to carve," and I'd find a mentor (not an easy task). That's how I got to know Pete and Marilee up at Skokomish - Pete mentored some of my boys. It meant picking up the student, driving up to Skokomish, then hanging out with Marilee for hours, driving the boy home, going home. Took all day. I got SJ to mentor little Sonia - by mail, I think. It didn't last very long but I'd wager Sonia remembers to this day. I had a couple of brothers I used to loan my video camera to - I was the mentor in a way. I took them to where a movie scene was being shot, once, and we just watched (zomg excrutiatingly boring) as the independent crew shot clips that would be edited together to simulate a car coming a cropper in an alley, without actually wrecking the car (as they were too poor to do that). I got Victor Navone to agree to mentor a boy by email - hah. Would've been fun, but I think the child moved or something. Anyway VN was nice. My point being - yes, it's boring-ish for adults, but it's important for children - especially children with fewer than the ideal number of functioning adults in their family.****

It seems there are a lot of ways to train people to do things, but as with everything else, merely making it a money-based system is not very useful.

* My father used to tell me that young engineers, having been hired, would then have to learn how to be engineers as nothing they had learned in school was useful. Digression: I remember a young engineer saying to me once with great horror having just realised, "Oh my God - you're HIS daughter."

** My friend Harold, who was of Great Age when he died, spent many years in China and (in one anecdote he told me) was dressing for dinner when the Japanese invaded the seaport town where he lived. The Japanese commander was kept waiting while he finished dressing - no weak-kneed sister was Harold). Anyway, Harold had grown up in an orphanage in the North of England, where he learned to perform Gilbert & Sullivan (knew all the words to every part and would sing at the drop of a hat). At one point the headmaster called him in to discuss his future and asked him what his father had done for a living. He stammered that he understood his father had drawn up plans for ships, and so Harold was trained as a naval architect and did very well in his field ("out standing in his field" as my pater would have said).
*** My brother, speaking about his boarding school life as a very, very small boy, said the masters were young men returned from the war. One of them had a habit of lobbing large and heavy books at anyone who irritated him, with a deadly aim meant to hit, not scare.
**** Once I said something, in front of two boys, disparaging about fathers because I was exasperated with my own. I thought for a minute, then said, "I apologise for saying that. You two are going to be fathers one day, and I'm sure you'll try hard to be good at it."
Student: (laughs) Well I KNOW I'll be a better father than mine.
Me: How do you know that?
Student: I never even MET mine.


 
Inventory folder update: It has changed its name to 35.

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18 December 2008

 
December 08 grid map compilation from Infrared Wind:
The grid not long after I joined:The old map stuck onto the new map:Conclusion: SL's a bit bigger.


 

'In the two weeks after Hurricane Katrina made landfall, the media created a climate of fear with trumped-up stories of Black lawlessness. Meanwhile, an armed group of White vigilantes took over the Algiers Point neighborhood in New Orleans and mercilessly hunted down Black people. "It was great!" said one vigilante. "It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it."

The Nation's article tells the story of Donnell Herrington, Marcel Alexander, and Chris Collins -- a group of friends who were attacked by shotgun-wielding White men as they entered Algiers Point on September 1, 2005. As they tried to escape, Herrington recalls, their attackers shouted, "Get him! Get that nigger!" He managed to get away. Alexander and Collins were told that they would be allowed to live on the condition that they told other Black folks not to come to Algiers Point. Herrington, shot in the neck, barely survived.

And there's the story of Henry Glover, who didn't survive after being shot by an unknown assailant. Glover's brother flagged down a stranger for help, and the two men brought Glover to a police station. But instead of receiving aid, they were beaten by officers while Henry Glover bled to death in the back seat of the stranger's car. A police officer drove off in the car soon afterward. Both Glover's body and the car were found burnt to cinders a week later. It took DNA analysis to identify the body.

Then there's the story of White militiamen who tried to drive their Black neighbors from their homes. Reggie Bell, who lived just two blocks down the street from the vigilantes' ringleader, was told at gunpoint, "We don't want you around here. You loot, we shoot." Later, another group of armed White men confronted him at his home, asking, "Whatcha still doing around here? We don't want you around here. You gotta go."'
------ColorOfChange.org


 
It's just a whiteout at the moment (and dark), but earlier, while I was talking to Candide I leapt lightly out onto the deck and snapped this picture:

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Inventory folder update: It has changed its name to 26.

oops - 2 minutes later:
Inventory folder update: It has changed its name to 28.


 
Very odd-looking snow is falling - it looks like that fake snow glitter that is glopped onto cheap decorations. It's jumbo, crystalline, glittery, and rough.

There's about, oh, an inch or so of new snow (and it falls yet).

Lu rang to see how I am faring in this weather. She has a lot of pain and was telling me about brain surgery intended to stop a brain with faulty wiring due to brain damage from wrongly interpreting signals as pain, which I thought sounded Not Good. Also being recommended methadone* by the doctors was not what I consider to be useful advice.
Me: You'd be better off taking heroin than methadone. It wouldn't even help if they could transplant your brain into another body if it's the brain that's the problem. They need to start digitising brains. I'd volunteer like a shot if they wanted to make a robot/cyborg body and load my brain into it. It would be made of very light but resiliant material. And you'd be able to fly in my version of the future. And you'd keep a backup of yer brain and every night you'd plug in and backup your memories in case you got hit by a piano.
L: I suppose it will be how human beings finally are able to live forever. Would it be popular?
Me: I think it would depend upon whether or not people could have sex.
L: It would be like those Viagra warnings - "if you have an erection lasting more than three hours..."
Me: It might be more a digital experience - you have a usb port in your finger and the other person sticks their drive in it and there's a non-physical experience.
L: Hmmm maybe but I think people would want simulated physicality.
Me: Then I suppose it all depends upon the development of digital genitals.

*blecch

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17 December 2008

 
Seventeen

My sweet little inventory folder grew overnight from 6 to 17. I logged off then logged on again almost immediately and it had become 22. At this rate it will be middleaged tomorrow.

I wonder how it's possible for this to happen; it's probably got an easy explanation for anyone who knows anything about these things.


 
I await with bated breath the continuation
of this tale: In Memory of Absent Friends


 
"Springtime in a Small Town" is an old story of unhappiness in marriage, but is finely played and sensitively nuanced. A young doctor goes to stay with his boyhood friend, unaware that the other man has been ill for a long time. The infirmity has caused his married life to be unnatural, so he says. Although he is just just thirty, he and his wife have separate rooms and her tepid manner towards him indicates her lack of passion. The doctor struggles with his feelings. The husband bears his illness with great sadness as he sees the contrast between himself and his healthy friend. The little sister is a wonderful young actress, bubbly and natural.

At one point they were in a small boat singing to the tune of the Blue Danube Waltz, which was one of the only uncomplicated scenes in the movie, I think. Most of the rest of the time the adults were wrestling with their emotions, an occupation of great difficulty.

Sadly, it had no robots at all in it.

Or maybe:


 
In a bizarre turnaround it's slightly warmer where I am* than in Olympia. I set out at about 1:30, and the closer I got to Olympia the worse the roads got until they were reduced to one snow and ice covered rutted track. At that point it began snowing hard, so I decided it would stupid to continue as it doesn't matter what's there or what's at my house if in between it's just a frozen mess at rush hour in the dark.

I should go and eat something.

*It's usually slightly colder and more snowy here, and the snow/ice usually lasts much longer as it's the hinterlands. It's only 500 ft here a Summit Lake, but Olympia is on salt water which helps it.


 
Now We Are Six
That funny file folder that called itself 4 then 1 has now decided to be 6. It's like having a little pet in a way - I check on it every day to see how it is. Maybe it will grow. I haven't the heart to change its name to a word and thereby cause its demise, presumably. It's such a sturdy, independent little thing that I can't help but root for it.



16 December 2008

 
Another development - as far as grabbing at a piece of the virtual world pie goes, anyway.



15 December 2008

 
LL announced they are going to have a new homepage for Second Life, done by Big Spaceship. I saw the announcement in my feed and immediately wanted to know if it was going to be Flash, so I ran over to read the post.

"The design is optimized for the new user coming to secondlife.com for the first time and not logged in. The logged in homepage (which is what most Residents, as opposed to potential Residents see) will not be changing.

Here are the goals for the design:

  • Express the richness and breadth of Second Life
  • Allow us to address a wide range of potential Residents
  • Set context for what a potential Resident might do in Second Life
The team produced a gorgeous design that uses Flash..."

I don't have anything against Flash, really - it's seductive but holds the viewer at armslength, which is not my fave, but I was actually curious because when Big Spaceship was introduced to us (so to speak) everyone flew over to their site, which is all Flash, then came back and screamed bloody murder. I haven't yet seen the new homepage, but the good thing is that the logged-in website will remain unchanged. The addition is to entice new people into taking the plunge and signing up by showing them choice bits of SL - it might be good. Flash is only interactive in the way being given a piece of chalk so you can draw on a shuttered door is interactive, whatever anyone says, but it's attractive and that in itself might be useful. After all, a potential customer might prefer a shuttered door and with it the formality of standing outside and deciding whether or not to knock, to being thrown into the middle of a busy and foreign environment.

Realistically we are never going to go back to having a responsive and human LL (although if they don't do something to better their customer service I am not sure what will happen), but we are like a nestful of hungry baby birds with upturned faces, needy and peeping loudly.

Update: This is one proposed homepage (hope there are more).


 
The only thing that's not good about this computer is that the sound has never been right. I remember when the puter men were running down the list of components and said onboard sound was good and talked me out of a nice soundcard; zomg, I should've stuck to my guns or at least added a proper soundcard later. But no, I am not sure why but I just adapted to its quirks.

One quirk being that things record at 10,000 times the noise level that they sound like when they are experienced (i.e. that Cobalt clip is MUCH louder than the sound as it came through the speakers), another is that the front plugs have never worked. I think part of it is me being just a bit too adaptable, but the other is not wanting to think about it too much or I'll be having the case off and be trying to tinker, which is not really possible for me now.

I am too adaptable, though. I'm not quite sure why.



14 December 2008

 
Weirdness of the day.
I have a folder in my inventory that I made today. I called it .3 and did a few things then looked at it again and it said 4. I changed it to .3 and did some more things. I looked at it again and it was called 1. Progress has been made as 1 is closer to .3 than is 4.

I was going to fight Anchor and jumped on an arena. On Anchor's client I had jumped onto a different arena.

Sometimes I was animated and sometimes not, so I stopped doing what I was doing as there was no joy in it. I couldn't tell if it was working but not showing it, not working due to some blunder I'd made, or doing something odd due to something else.

Forgot to say: at one point I logged Anchor off and maximised my SL window, which promptly went black. I made it small - it came back, I maximised it, it went black. I just did my tasks in a smaller window and assumed all would be well after a relog, which it was.


 
Birds sitting on a little tree out my window (and down), with the lake a grey blob beyond.

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Film Festival
I watched "The Science of Sleep"* on Friday, "3-Iron"** yesterday, and today threw the last DVD from SJ into the tray: "Babel."*** I was surprised to see the winsome "Stephane" from Sleep in the film Babel.

*Fun to look at. It was in my Netflix queue but SJ gave me a copy.
**From Netflix; golfing is different in Korea.
***Just seen part so far but is somewhat interesting.



13 December 2008

 
I had work I was supposed to be doing in SL, but instead I sloped off and downloaded Cobalt and went through the tutorial by way of licking my wounds as our show was ZOMG the worst EVAH with massive lag resulting in A) attachments not attaching, B) animations not running. HBA crashed 5 or 6 times, he said; Alazi crashed mid-act; I crashed during Margaux and relogged and closed the curtain. I had to tp home every time I needed to change, but that didn't help drill as the unicycles were busticated. All of a sudden that pall lifted and we could attach again, but by that time the show was more than half over.

Anyway, I spent an amusing hour in Croquet X years ago (three? two?) playing with the deformable uh- maybe it was a mirror, I can't remember, so I downloaded Cobalt, offspring of Croquet, and played around following the tutorial to script "Hello World" in a Transcript box and then a crying baby sound. That's appropriately baby-stepped for me as I don't know anything, but it was fun poking around and I found a neat skeleton.

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Human brain tissue found after two thousand years.



12 December 2008

 

The Bloody Olive

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Patsy Cline
I supose this would've been in about 1958.


 
I usually have 16Q AA on all the time, so decided to drop it and lower my settings in general in the interests of making sure I'll have a decent time on Saturday as Earpoint will be maxed. I'd forgotten what a difference it makes in fps. Everything looks bad, but zomg SL goes like the clappers.



11 December 2008

 
I hope it isn't right, but the weather whatnots are calling for winds on Friday, snow on Saturday and Sunday, and on Monday it isn't supposed to get out of the twenties :( Same-ish Tuesday.

Update (but it's prolly not right):

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10 December 2008

 
Negatively Biased Stories

As usual when it comes to SL a lazy writer is seeking a sensationalistic story to stuff into a pre-baked biased article:

"Hi, I'm an editor at a national U.S. women's magazine and we are looking for an American woman, ages 20s-30s, who is willing to speak about how her addiction to Second Life has impacted different areas of her life-especially on top of today's dismal economy.

The economy has made so many of us edgy, anxious, depressed and frightened about the future--the kind of feelings that make us vulnerable to addiction. We'd like to highlight a woman in her 20s-30s who has an addiction to Second Life who can speak about the effects of her addiction on her career or her family/relationships.

Please respond to this post if you are interested in telling your story. We will protect your identity.

Thanks!"

Hah - first it just said "national" so I asked, "Which nation?" which got an edit, so the OP is out there watching. Quick someone - make something ridiculous up!

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09 December 2008

 
The first Muslim virtual world: muxlimpal


 
I know nothing about anything, obviously, however I was PMing with someone on the forum and he said, "One thing, if you are interested in the old videos games like from the 80's... ... and want to play them - romnation.net
It has the emulators and the ROMS. ROMS is their name for games... Most sites like mame.com just have the emulators,

MAME is the emulator you want for arcade games. Just pick the appropriate version...
There are also Atari 2600 and other platform emulators. Some work well some don't. Atari 5200 emulator sucks, just like the old system.
The thing is though, the games [roms] are exactly as they were back then, so any lag or graphic problems the game had with will still be there even if your computer is powerful. The ROMS are a perfect copy, not a re-program or anything.
My favorite games were Green Beret [1985] and Rygar [1986]
Rygar had some lag issues and the graphics were known to act weird.
OK so if you decide to check out romnation.net and have any questions, let me know. MAME is kind of a pain to get going but once you figure it out it is easy.

It sounds like it might be fun to play around with (truthfully I usually install things, play around with them for a day or two, then move on, since installing them and setting them up is the fun part if there are weird issues to solve). If there aren't any weird issues to solve I probably won't have much fun as the game, to me, is not the GAME. Same with CC.

Given the level of my ignorance it doesn't take much to form a weird issue for me, which is good.


 
70-Year-Old Woman Gives Birth


 
Yule News From Tina

Hia Osprey first of all - you are invited! We have a time that are perfect for our USA friends.. not for me its 0200 in the night:-))

Lucia it self are on Friday this week 12th... in USA time zone as well!!

The goat - yule bock - will burn down at lucia in SL- its a funny special thing that happen every year IRL (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%A4vle_goat) Made by Adrina Welders.


I am producer of all this : Tina (PetGirl) Bergman

The typical Swedish Christmas market will be held from 12th until late December


 

Just a jaunt to Beneath the Waves.




07 December 2008

 


 
LisaHot Juran decorated the NA infohub excellently well, and today was the community tree unveiling. The sim was full so it was hard to get in, but we had fun and the tree has a number of ornaments on it already - more coming, I'd guess, as well as Zip's toy train to run rings around the base.

A bit later I was in conversation with Salazar and he mentioned again the strange things he has been enduring. I asked a question and *poof* he disappeared - I'm afraid it indicates another of those events carried him off. :(


 
Time flies like an arrow; fruitflies like a banana

I rarely check the email account my Theremail goes to, but I was moved to do that today. In it I found:
'Congratulations to TMP for 5 wonderful years! We began as a "hood" in URU Prime 5 years ago and the community has grown into a sustained presence on numerous MMOs across the Internet.'

I remember when the Uru-ites showed up; I had no clue where they were from or who they were so I did a little investigating and found out about the Uru diaspora. That kind of thing is facinating to me, so I hung out with them a bit to learn more. Actually, that's where I met Enjah, who had been an Uru-ite. Many fine SLers are from Uru - for instance Salazar. I'll never forget how sad the Uru contingent in There was. One person said to me, "Our world was so beautiful. I wish you could've seen it." When Uru revived I tried the beta but the fly-eye* thing** made me go crazy, so I left, never to return.

But five years - they will surely go on forever now. Cyan has had a huge impact on virtual worlds, and that stylistic influence will endure.

*shards

**also to me it seemed swampy/mildewed/fungal



06 December 2008

 
The Airship Theatre
First show: 13 December at Earpoint.
We are ending the old show then; after that we will ready the new show.
I flew it from Phobos to Earpoint and set it up today after the rehearsal. It handles a bit clumsily, but is roomy and should do well for an anti-lag strategy. Looking like a cross between a turkey and a pram as it does, it certainly won't win any beauty contests. Still, we got a good deal at the used airship lot and being high in the air will help keep the fleas (from Antfarmovsky's circus) from roaming, too. Note to self: frisk furries as they leave just in case.

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05 December 2008

 

I do miss it a lot now I'm not at Wa He Lut anymore: here's Blacklodge, who are mega-famous in Indian Country. One of the Scabby Robe boys is married to an old student of mine; we shared a space at Wa He Lut for a while when he was teaching culture. They were host drum at a couple of our pow wows.



 

Playing For Change: Song Around the World

pointed out by Luceh




04 December 2008

 

Jojo In The Stars



 
Well, the idea of Evelyn Waugh's Daily Beast has always made me smile, so I am not sure if I'm irritated or happy that Tina Brown has started (in October, but I just saw it today) a website with that name - it is a great name. I'm not an anti-Tina-ite, because although she certainly didn't do The New Yorker any good when she was editor, she is well-suited to projects with more of a popular culture slant. I decided that if the website clearly says where the name is from I'd be OK with the reference, but since the DB website might end up being known to more people than Scoop it would otherwise have the uncomfortable feeling of boosting something belonging to everyone and making it into one person's brand.
/me goes to check on the DB website.
No reference to Waugh. Oh, well - I can hardly blame her for wanting to use the name, and it makes the name live in another realm, so all is not lost, but the site's content is rather soft.

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03 December 2008

 
The plastic cards boxes arrived today - now we just need more cards. I'm going to unpack them all tomorrow to count how many are busticated. They were woefully inadequately packaged considering FedEx and UPS say there is the potential for a four foot drop off the end of a conveyer belt onto a concrete floor. I see two broken, which, if it's the total, is ok.

My dentist's office rang up today to confirm an appointment tomorrow - I surprise to me, but oh well. My landlord is coming tomorrow morning, and Tiff is coming in the evening, so it's a rather oddball day.

Just watched Hellboy (SJ brought it as she knows I like Guillermo del Toro). It was ok-ish. Indiana Jones crossed with Batman, maybe. Not quite Pan's Labyrinth or Devil's Backbone level.
Watched recently The Visitor, The Italian, and Broken Flowers. I liked Broken Flowers the best although they all had a degree of merit.



02 December 2008

 
New photography contest: FAKE AD



01 December 2008

 
I've got to stop writing posts then leaving them unpublished. I have dozens - some will never see the light of day, others get published when if I see them.

Also here are some long ignored pictures (all are October 08 I think):
NPIRL meeting in Jopsy's new meeting space.
Unsuccessful New Orleans/Katrina installation - my visit was made interesting by another visitor - Tuna Oddfellow - who was willing to talk about his experiences there before and after the hurricane (he is unconnected to the installation).
Plasma City


 

I saw this film when it was new and never forgot this great scene (or the fact that the schoolroom had an anacronistic Canadian flag image), so it was nice to stumble across it on youtube.
From Pennies From Heaven (1981)(Yes, I do remember it was based on an English series.)


 

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I want to ask for thoughts about improving the world -- what do people need? How can things be organised?