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30 November 2010

 
Awww

Jess just rang me from SF to which city she departed on Friday in a rented truck. I'd told her BE EXCITED and get the hell out as this is no place for a 3(2? 3?) year old single, and she reports she's settling in, has a job in a vegan medical marijuana dispensary, and that her animals are adoring the sunshine (bird and cat I think is all now). She was unbelievably nice, inviting me to visit, urging me to email if I have an emergency as her Oly network can be motivated, she says. I knew she'd be worried about me a bit, but things here will settle down, I hope, and in any case it isn't for her to worry.

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I've always been fond of AARON.

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I haven't had a television for decades, so I don't know if THIS is about a real show or just droll commentary on the state of programming. Or rather, I choose not to know. And don't tell me.

It gets me how I've read 10000 times that it's a superbad sign if someone adjusts his real-life doings in order to be online (say, he's having a meeting inside SL at 2pm with 7 other real people from all round the world so turns down an invitation to help an aquaintance move house) however no one ever says, "If you adjust your real-life doings (say, decide to go visit a friend on a different night than the one your fave toob show i.e. passive recorded entertainment airs) to watch television it's a superbad sign."

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From Flummel:

Highrise buildings. The world's unlikely beautiful places. A new interactive 360 documentary.


 
Teh Twinity Sex0rs

I haven't been in Twinity for absolutely ages but still keep an eye open for developments there. Today I received an email that proclaimed, "New erotic animations in Twinity!"




29 November 2010

 
Absolutely crashing wind is shaking the entire house.

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Last Ditch Effort
I'm going to try taking quercetin to see if it helps at all.
I just ordered some. I've been wanting to ever since I heard it was helpful but held back because I wasn't sure if the ordinary kind worked, what the optimum amount is, and don't have any money to throw away, but there's a year's worth of anecdotal evidence online that indicates it's worth a shot.


 
Lists
There are all kinds of viewers now, and certain innovations are just on one or the other: no viewer at the moment has all of them. I'm trying to think of the ones meaningful to me:
V2-based viewers:
  • Katharine Berry's shareable WindLight assets (in Kitty and K-Lee)
  • Depth of Field (newest Mesh project viewer)
  • Mesh (Mesh project viewer)
  • Qarl's Align tool (Ascent, Imprudence Experimental and maybe other TPV by now)
  • Export to xml (Imprudence, and other TPV)
  • Grid Manager (all TPVs I believe)
What else? There are more, I think, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

There are more viewers now than I even know, I think, but not all are authorised to connect to SL (and so are used for OpenSim grids). Viewers include:

Official: V2, V2 Beta, V2 Mesh, Snowstorm, v1.23
TPV: Imprudence, Ascent, K-Lee, Phoenix, Emergence, Kitty, Hippo, Dolphin, Restrained Love, Inworldz, and others
I fear Meerkat is defunct.
Browser-based viewers are beginning to show up, including Spoon's cloud runner, the fruits of the Skylight project, and IBM's Canvas for low-spec biz/edu-puters.
Pocket Metaverse runs SL (purportedly) on iPads/iPhone.
There are light viewers like texty Sparkle and Metabolt but I've never used them.



28 November 2010

 
Kôrin gafu = The Kôrin Album. Digital ID: 1401055. New York Public Library

From the Korin Gafu, pointed out on Journey Round My Skull, comes
this illustration by Ogata Kôrin (1658-1716).

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1930 Henderson Custom Motorcycle

As pointed out on SCmlkII by Uncle Fester.



27 November 2010

 


Depth of Field



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26 November 2010

 

Whisky

This droll film from Uruguay observes a stultifyingly boring elderly man and his lively younger brother through the eyes of the woman foreman at the elder's tiny sock factory. The piece is a character study and (I reckon) symbolic representation of the state of Uruguay; although there are only one or two laughs, they come from a deep understanding of the characters.

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Netflix: "35 Shots of Rum is recommended based on your interest in Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, Seven Samurai and Taxi Driver."

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25 November 2010

 
Depth-of-Field

The newest mesh beta has the ability to simulate depth of field - that's a huge thing! I haven't tried it yet, but here is an SLU thread about it.


 
Howard Finster
(for HBA)
In the spring of 1990 I had sudden numbness in my right leg following a chiropractor's appointment, and because I had a show of my paintings in New York before my doctor's appointment, and because an initial doctor had said it was a bruised spinal cord that would be helped by exercise I flew there although in the photos I look unwell.

I came back, was diagnosed with m.s., and thrown out of house/marriage/bank account. I had great friends who all seemed to be traveling and so I house-sat for six months (good thing as I was broke). I house-sat for Chris while he traveled to see various whacky destinations foremost of which (and the reason for the trip I think) was to see Howard Finster's place.

Chris came back with all kinds of fabulous Finsters and he had bought me this one as a kewl present. The handbag is not original - I should've taken it off before taking pix.

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Cloud Hills
I'm melting, melting...

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Cool Scar

SJ and Michael were going to come over to leaven my existence, but unfortunately SJ has an ankle sprain so wasn't up for the icy situation here and had to opt out. Michael came alone and in addition to a thoughtful care package (SJ always asks me for a list then adds fabulousness to it) and great conversation showed me his bitchin' new scar. It's by far the best scar I've ever seen. Michael first announced he'd been Potterised, then whipped off the covering to show me:

I've been holed up trying to keep warm but it's currently balmy - above freezing! Life may resume!



24 November 2010

 
They say now it won't get out of the teens before Thursday afternoon - with more snow likely before the big melt.


 
I just noticed it's snowing again and way below freezing, but I bet it'll not amount to anything as it's supposed to warm up tomorrow.

It's snowy tiny flakes coming straight down.

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23 November 2010

 
George's Secret

Vote on the T shirt design.


 
Now I Know I'm Weird

Netflix is recommending a Guy Maddin film to me.
I've seen a couple of his films at the proper cinema but that's not going to make me watch this one, categorised as (surprise!) "quirky, visually striking."

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Sometimes there is an "El Niño" weather pattern that indicates a warm winter.

The term El Niño comes from Spanish, meaning "the Christ child" as the warming of the sea was noticed by South American fishermen around Christmas. That weather condition causes poor fishing.

The opposite was noticed - colder water - so it was called La Niña.

This is a La Niña winter.


 
Cold
brrr
low = 15 degreesF
Is 25 now I think

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22 November 2010

 
Blogspam

Hello
Is it possible to altercation element with you?
Regards, Mirek

Sadly, kumquat hovercraft makes me inflation feral.

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Wow HUGE fake-looking flakes like white feathers, and a total white-out ==:O
Too cold to be on the puter for very long.

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Snow

Through a screen

It's hard to say, but I think about 1.5 inches - not much but enough to keep me indoors as I'm so unsteady on my pins. It started lightly yesterday around noon then turned into a white-out, then stopped after a few hours, but there was more this morning. It's been snowing all day so far with varying degrees of intensity. COULD turn into rain and go away but somehow it doesn't look like that will happen today.



Through a window

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21 November 2010

 
Burn After Reading



The Coens are hit or miss but even their misses are worth watching. Fine performances, a few very funny scenes.

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Making Bacon.


 
Paul Thek

Prompted by a New Yorker review I'm enjoying surfing through Paul Thek's varied work. It's too bad he didn't take Susan Sontag up on her offer to bear his child. Someone should write a novel with the fruit of that union as the main character.

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Been snowing for a couple of hours...

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Airport security stripsearching a little boy. There can be a reason for this?

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20 November 2010

 
It feels sort of like we are on a moving bus and things are being changed that aren't making the bus run better, so everyone on the bus is screaming and yelling. At some point we'll suddenly realise it's no longer a bus, it has been changed into a train, and a whole new type of passenger is being provided for.


 
Username Login Formats for TPV Based on 1.X
The noose tightens.

I should give this a try if I can muster the energy, but apparently any viewer* with two fields (i.e. both first name and surname fields) now requires you to enter your name in this format - first: osprey.therian surname: resident. New accounts have but one username so are - first: osprey surname: resident.

Any one-field viewer uses the name formats - Osprey Therian OR osprey therian OR osprey.therian, which for new accounts would be Osprey (or I suppose osprey).

* As in Imprudence and many others.



19 November 2010

 
I wish I hadn't had a flu shot. Not that I'd feel much different, most likely, but I'd at least be certain these past weeks of feeling mind-bogglingly terrible were unavoidable.


 
I keep meaning to mention the SL MOTD which advertises "timeless watches."


 
THIS is an interesting New Yorker article about cyber espionage. The reason for the 2001 plane crash and subsequent capture of monitoring hardware, software, and data by the Chinese is pretty awful and makes me despair as it seems like no one is competent anymore.

According to Seymour Hersh the daily monitoring by the US navy and airforce of the former Soviet Union were recommended to be cut back in autumn of 2000, but when it came due no one had the authority to make the change as "There was no leadership in the Defense Department, as both Democrats and Republicans waited for the Supreme Court to decide the fate of the Presidency."

'“So the system defaulted to the next target, which was China, and the surveillance flights there went from one every two weeks or so to something like one a day,” a former diplomat said. '

Although the "U.S. has long viewed China as a strategic military threat" what was essentially a mistake led to increased US air surveilance of China and aggressive Chinese fighter pilot actions as they sought to deter the unwelcome invasion of their airspace. A mid-air crash led to the compromising of US spying techniques, which meant that hundreds of millions of dollars would be required for their replacement, which was only done in 2008.





 
MAMIKA

A photographer and his nonagenarian grandmother collaborated on these images depicting her as a super hero.



18 November 2010

 
Social Whirl

  • Italian doctors warn that Facebook could trigger an asthma attack in some susceptible users.
  • If someone would like to for some unknown reason he can now log into My____ from FaceBook.
  • New Twitter doesn't seem to work terribly well.
  • On De-Friend Day I logged into FB but then decided fake friends were useful static and camoflaging cover so left them.

Cyber Security

  • Surprise! The ones raising US government fear levels about cyber warfare are the security firms that fill contracts to solve the problems that apparently only they say exist, to the tune of billions.
  • Decentralised infrastructure is less vulnerable to attack than centralised, which is what governments seem to push for.
  • There's some sort of Batman-sounding underground cyber command cave at the Pentagon, or perhaps it's just being built (by the people in the first bullet) as I speak.


 
Tiny bit of snow

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PC Magazine: 'Scientists at CERN, the research facility that's home to the Large Hadron Collider, claim to have successfully created and stored antimatter in greater quantities and for longer times than ever before.

Researchers created 38 atoms of antihydrogen – more than ever has been produced at one time before and were able to keep the atoms stable enough to last one tenth of a second before they annihilated themselves (antimatter and matter destroy each other the moment they come into contact with each other). Since those first experiments, the team claims to have held antiatoms for even longer, though they weren't specific of the duration.

While scientists have been able to create particles of antimatter for decades, they had previously only been able to produce a few particles that would almost instantly destroy themselves.

"This is the first major step in a long journey," Michio Kaku, physicist and author of Physics of the Impossible, told PCMag. "Eventually, we may go to the stars."



 
Today

I'm batch-editing 19 clips right now, so I am not really able to do much until they are converted.
Jess stopped in to say there'd be a big van here Tues/Wed and she's moving to SF on Thursday.
I stuck my video camera outside as is my wont and had to rescue it from rain.
There's a dusting of snow on the hills.
I couldn't sleep last night OR the night before.
The new SL naming system is in place so I toddled over and snapped up "Osprey." No more surnames - from now on Display Names are needed in order to be anything other than Resident. I THINK the schism is complete and new noob.resident people won't be able to log in with anything other than a V2-based viewer.



17 November 2010

 
Coming Soon!

HOP NO MORE, MY DARLING

A simple choice in Preferences sets letter-key presses to
EITHER
activate chat
OR
wasd movement

No more default to movement.

Currently in Snowstorm but will eventually hit V2.

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16 November 2010

 


The Tracker

A tracker, policeman, noob, and another man track a man accused of murdering a woman in this film set in the Australia of 1922. I liked the film but have to admit the music drove me a bit crazy.

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I found a delightful gift on my doorstep last night, besprinkled with liquid sunshine. Enjah had sent me a book about British petroglyphs, and I just finished it - short but excellent, and illustrated with lots of cups and rings and spirals and so on. Gorgeous rock drawings! They are probably some kind of map or calendar, but if I'd made them they'd be rocks I'd coat with pigment in order to transfer the designs to cloth. I also want to coat them with mud and take a copy of the map :-D (so the original might be backwards).

Anyway, thank you, Enjah. I'm not avoiding you, it's just that being weak is extremely time-consuming - yesterday it took me all day just to go to Frank's then come back.

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Japanese Tourism Bra

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Clown Wearing Mask Robs Elderly Ninja

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15 November 2010

 
I always get all the festivals mixed up as they all have the same-ish name, so mostly I don't enter and sometimes I try to enter twice because I thinks one is two.

Anyway, apparently I entered Machinexpo 2010 as I have two films in it, Forest of Scissors, and Sentimental Gentleman.

I had a bunch at the Shanghai machinima exhibit, too, that showed them on a huge screen across the building (I think).

Promoting myself, I do it wrong. Actually I don't do it at all - I even go the other direction. I'm not sure why - but I see everyone else furiously promoting themselves and it never makes me think well of them, though it works as they want it to. Light, meet bushel basket.


 


beta
Originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion

Set on Flickr ^^^^

Hey, Karan - give this a try and tell me how you get on.
Elucidation: Don't click Join Now! - sometimes there's a beta sign up with a field for an email address. Refresh the page and you should get it.

Cloud
Second Life has a new cloud-based version that allows casual explorers to dip a toe in the virtual world. It's on *Gaikai, which is like OnLive one supposes (I did the OnLive beta so that's my touchstone). The interface is stripped-down and there are limits as one would expect, in most things - it's for new people, and is trying to deliver the goods but not overface. No map, for instance, no inventory (not needed), no search.

I dunno how it runs on normal hardware as I don't have normal hardware - well, I would hope it is zippy on normal gear. Your bandwidth is the crucial thing, though. There's a storm making my power flicker at the moment so I hardly had the best conditions yet it ran fine.

Great:
  • Click an avatar picture in the interface and become that avatar
  • Spiffy pictures
  • Simple and clear
  • Limited destinations but choices seem varied and good overall
I chose the rocker girl and it took a while to appear, but it looked fine. I went to a place I'd never been before and almost immediately fell down a crack into an oubliette, but truthfully I'd've paid more attention to signs had I really been new. The destinations need to choose their estate time VERY CAREFULLY as it was a bit dark in some places.

Bad:
  • Ixnay on the invisiprims
LL, well done. I think this is a useful lead-in to SL proper.

*Gaikai is a cloud-based gaming technology that allows users to play major PC and console games like Call Of Duty or World Of Warcraft instantly, with one click. No download or install required.

Can somebody compare Spoon to this using normal hardware?
This is considerably lighter as far as data streamed.

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Asteroid about to hit us? Gor found? Mothership approaching?
Probably not as exciting as it sounds.


MEDIA ADVISORY : M10-157
NASA Announces Televised Chandra News Conference
WASHINGTON -- NASA will hold a news conference at 12:30 p.m. EST on Monday, Nov. 15, to discuss the Chandra X-ray Observatory's discovery of an exceptional object in our cosmic neighborhood.

The news conference will originate from NASA Headquarters' television studio, 300 E St. SW in Washington and carried live on NASA TV.

Media representatives may attend the conference, join by phone or ask questions from participating NASA locations. To RSVP or obtain dial-in information, journalists must send their name, affiliation and telephone number to Trent Perrotto at: trent.j.perrotto@nasa.gov by 10 a.m. EST on Nov. 15. Reporters wishing to attend the conference in-person must have a valid press credential for access. Non-U.S. media also must bring passports.

Scientists involved in the research will be available to answer questions. Panelists providing analysis of the research include:
- Jon Morse, director, Astrophysics Division, NASA Headquarters in Washington
- Kimberly Weaver, astrophysicist, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
- Alex Filippenko, astrophysicist, University of California, Berkeley

For NASA TV streaming video, downlink and further information, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/ntv


Also: UGH I HATE YAHOO.



14 November 2010

 
Vooper had a fun Combat Cards tournament at Splintered Rock today and for some reason I neglected to take pictures! Drat! Anyway, the setting is rich and the players, most of them brand new to the game, are learning fast.


 
Strangeness in a group IM: "I was propositioned on my first night in SL by a gay Canadian raccoon."

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I saw a schoolbus on the road the other day.



13 November 2010

 
The loss of so much forest land is not happy, yet the great forests may rise again one day - who knows where.
Enjah flew her balloon and kindly gave Art a tour.
A well-forested area
Abbotts Aerodrome in the background
Cowell

In Noyo at the hairpin turn by the rez area, the lookout in the background.


 
A couple of shots fom Raglan's talent show, which I popped in for, crashed, popped back, then regrettably had to leave due to rl stuffs. Songbird and Eren were fab!
Eren's magic act

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Cybernaut Molly sent me this link to a Gizmodo article entitled "The Pope Doesn’t Want You Hanging Out In Second Life"

The pope is quoted as having said:

"New technologies and the progress they bring can make it impossible to distinguish truth from illusion and can lead to confusion between reality and virtual reality…

…The image can also become independent from reality, it can give birth to a virtual word, with various consequences—above all the risk of indifference towards real life."


It makes me wonder where pie-in-the-sky falls in his scheme.


 
Before Digital

Editing video before digital was HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE. I got involved in video when my right arm started dying and I was having increasing difficulty painting and knew what was going to happen so moved my art-making to a format I could continue with. That was before digital, and initially I edited using a Hi-8 Sony camera, tapes, television, vcr, and a computer bought for just that purpose, and (a few times) at a community television studio using their professional gear. It was difficult, imprecise, and time-consuming. I taught all my students at the Lut to make simple animations, and ran a children's animation camp a couple of years in a row. Editing was HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE.


The first program I used was probably Pinnacle Systems video editing program - analog version. It had some good sound effects and things, but holy moley analog was HORRIBLE HORRIBLE HORRIBLE. Shortly thereafter the digital revolution took place and I immediately bought a (very expensive) Sony digital video camera and Adobe Premiere. After slogging away in the foggy midnight of analog, digital was like the sun came up and the birds began to sing. I was able to teach my kids to edit, but because Premiere was too hard for 5 - 13 year olds I caused school to buy Ulead VideoStudio, which was kid-friendly. It was buggy, but never mind - I had arrived from the analog wastelands to the new digital continent and digital was simple, comparatively speaking. I had a couple of great animator student brothers and bought them a digital camera.

I still had Premiere at home but really never bothered to fire it up. Somewhere along the way (fairly early on I think) VideoStudio had stopped targeting children and moved into the normal home video market. I gradually got so used to Ulead VideoStudio (upgrading time after time after time) that it seemed simpler just to keep using it even after I left the Lut. I reasoned that if I hit a blockage and needed a more complex program I'd buy one - but until then VideoStudio was fine. Corel bought out Ulead and it became Corel VideoStudio.

I had been taping bands, events, making video letters, videotaping everything all the time (I look back in horror, but oh, well). At some point, oh about 2004 I stopped being able to film, and started making my first forays into machinima. I was using Fraps free version at first, as well as trying to get Second Life's built in video recorder to work (which was buggy and didn't record sound anyway, but which I swear was the open-source Taksi program as I installed that once and it caused the SL video capture to work). My first attempts were typical - dancing, flying, etc.

It's heaven not to need a camera at all. I bought a Space Navigator way back before SL supported them, and we had to do all kinds of complicated things to get it to work. Someone in the 3DConnexion forums had written a driver etc etc - you get the picture. Then SL started supporting it! W00t! That's really helpful, especially these days for me when I can't really do much in the way of keyboard chording. The missing Flycam notification onscreen has been nonexistent for so long now that it hardly bothers me. The V2 suppression implementation DOES, a lot, as it's all wrong for machinima and makes a lot of things impossible, but I honestly can't see LL changing that now.

I recently decided I wanted an easier-to-shoot still camera as mine, a Sony Cybershot which had been a great product when I bought it, was just getting too hard. I poked around and decided the full HD mini camcorders that also take stills would be useful. I read up and tried to decide which features were must-haves: self-timer, tripod-able, optical zoom. I was looking at W00t! one day and saw the Sanyo Exacti. A new version, I reasoned it was there due to its major ugliness rather than any technical failing. I bought it, and have been using it for time-lapse videos. I'd had it a week and dropped it - and thought it was busticated - yet it recovered and has continued to be invaluable, a very useful and easy-to-use camera.



12 November 2010

 


Gentle good son Gianni, taking care of his aged mother in the heat of August,is not the only son with an aged parent in this excellent little film.

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Er... What?

Offline IM from a person? bot?: You are now my master. IM me with "help" for a command list.

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10 November 2010

 



 
A friend's three year old:

We were playing a new game where he got under the table and we blocked out all the light by draping blankets over the table-then I passed items under the blanket to him and he needed to guess what the items were. One of the items was a deoderant--Right away he said, "Armpit Shampoo".



09 November 2010

 
Ugh, water is out again. The plumber warned...

Update: I rang the plumber and left a message, he had the water on at 2pm. He says this time he removed the elusive pipe jammer.

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Divine Hunneh Bunneh sets off the dark side of Harry in Enj's new film.


 

Last Leaf

OK Go | Myspace Music Videos


Latest OK Go

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08 November 2010

 
Interesting article about initial product marketing positions using Blackberry and TiVo as examples:

Hubris Versus Humility: The $15 billion Difference
by Steve Blank


 
Today's film: "The Gift."

HBA pointed me to a uni graduate project, Spool, which shows the best of the internet short films daily. Spool says, "Spool is the premium space online for professional short-form entertainment content. Each day we scour the web to find the best premium animated shorts, exclusive music vidoes, creative adverts, and classic short films and broadcast the best of the best here for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to discuss and share your daily spool, and be sure to tune in every day for a new and exclusive video."

Update: "The Gift" with subtitles and credits along with other short films all using the same snippet of dialogue are at http:www.philips.com/cinema

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New York Times editorial:

Our Banana Republic
by Nicholas D. Kristof

In my reporting, I regularly travel to banana republics notorious for their inequality. In some of these plutocracies, the richest 1 percent of the population gobbles up 20 percent of the national pie.

But guess what? You no longer need to travel to distant and dangerous countries to observe such rapacious inequality. We now have it right here at home — and in the aftermath of Tuesday’s election, it may get worse.

Read more »


 


Time comes in waves, too.

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07 November 2010

 


Call of Duty commercial

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Friends


 

Jude Buffum's 8-bit meat charts are HERE.

As seen on Drawn.


 
Collapse of the House of the Gladiators in Pompeii reported HERE.



06 November 2010

 


Early Sound

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Catching Up with Tranquility

Astra Thorne pinged me when I logged into Inworldz and after a brief conversation asked me if I'd met Tranq, who is the major force behind the grid ( "One of many," he says modestly). I said "No,"* so was whisked away to... well, I never did note the sim, but it was glowy purple and all magical-like :-D

*[08:20 PM] Osprey Therian: he scared of ducks? I hope not
[08:20 PM] Astra Thorne: he loves ducks

Astra had already told me he was through with assets and is currently working on the asset servers, and that Inworldz has two landing sims, now. It's expanding at a decent clip and has both Raglan Shire and Elf Clan, which are very active communities (it has others, too, but those are two I am associated with). Tranquility said the coding team of three has two full-timers, and the current focus is platform stability with large avatar group load (sounds like a Raglan specialty - lots of avatars). Their Inworldz viewer is contracted out. **

**[08:29 PM] Osprey Therian: Do you have your own viewer now? I'm using Imp. atm.
[08:29 PM] Tranquillity Dexler: yes. but there is a new one almost finished coming out
[08:29 PM] Tranquillity Dexler: Imp should work good here
[08:29 PM] Osprey Therian: Is much diff about your own? Should I try it?
[08:30 PM] Tranquillity Dexler: The current viewer shouldn't be a lot different
[08:30 PM] Tranquillity Dexler: The new one will let us integrate some of the features Im working on now


Inworldz has a good reputation with everyone I know, and part of that is because they are friendly, humble, and value their customers. I've never felt uncomfortable or out of place, and although I don't spend much time in there right now, it has a feeling of home.

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Phoenix Phooey

Wayfinder said: "Word is going round that some people are putting password grabbers and stuff in the Phoenix viewer and offering it for download via mediafire or wherever. http://phoenixviewer.com and http://code.google.com/p/phoenixviewer are the official sites. Please take care!"

After hearing Katharine's lament that Phoenixers made her miserable enough to cause her to leave SL, I have limited interest in it.


 
Current State of Affairs

I changed viewers because almost everyone was ??? ??? and now everyone is (Loading...) instead.
It's been that way since Display Names hit the beta viewer a few days ago.

I need to pay my rent but I can't see who is who. When I can see someone and open an IM the window is full of someone else's IM with me, so I'm reluctant to send it.

I'm very tired today and will just go and phlop. I hate giving up but I've been online since 8:30 because of Rita.


 

A Tale of Two Ritas
or
Two Husbands, One Wife, Two Grids, One Production
, Two Friends, Three Avatars

I reserved a spot to see the Opera de Rennes production of Donizetti's Rita, which their virtual-world division - operabis - was streaming live into both Second Life and their own Francogrid. Because I was sent a group invitation that didn't "take" and assumed the sim would be closed I decided to go ahead of time to Francogrid as a reserve. It turned out the organisers hadn't understood the times correctly (their clocks turned back a week ago) so I had an hour to fiddle around - which was fine as Enjah turned up and said the SL event was sold out. We spent ages trying to get her into Francogrid on Imprudence, but failing for unknown reasons, then at the last minute - five minutes before the curtain FELL, she decided to try SL, mapped me, and teleported to the theatre. The sim was open! What a race!

The production was wonderful - voices and staging equally impressive. I'm not a Donizetti fan by any stretch, but I'd love to see this in real or just a better video, as the chunky stream allowed only the broadest staging to be seen. I hope they do more productions in VR!

I was probably the only person on both grids, and I was interested to see the crowds were similar sizes. Peak SL that I saw was 31, Francogrid was 29. I may've missed peaks, but those were what I saw. The theatres were the same; SL event had drinks in the atrium. On Francogrid I saw flo and Pathfinder from SL.


In Second Life
Enjah managed to get there just before the curtain fell.
On Francogrid
I'm in the front row, on the left side of the picture. I was originally worried Imprudence wouldn't stream the sound well, and it did cut in and out and was low so I tried SL and that's when I received the landmark and went to that theatre. I'm sure I blew my puter's tiny mind as the sound started coming from my speakers instead of headphones. SL V2 sound was reliable. I had NO crashes on either client, despite my abuses.

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05 November 2010

 


Every so often I remember iamamiwhoami but not by name and have to search and search. This time I definitely subscribed (I thought I had before).

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Nice Blizzard handling of the situation HERE.

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Interesting imagery.

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04 November 2010

 
How similar are the waves in water to the waves in air? When I see ripples in the water are there invisible ripples in the air that match?

Why are human reproductive organs surrounded by hair?

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Sicko
Trying to hang in there.

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