Life has been on hold around here for three months, and just got confirmation that it’s likely to stay that way into the fall. What next? My chosen career in corporate travel isn’t coming back anytime soon, and my current hobbies (sewing and knocking around virtual worlds) don’t really fill the bill. School? Learn a new skill? Take up where I left off? Use my chameleonic superpower for good, not napping on the couch undetected? I shall make inquiries.
Machinima artist Drax has a new episode up in his “World Makers” interview series – I love the visuals he gets with his machinima, and the way he cuts it so that his avatar appears to be interacting with “normal” humans via Skype. Jo Yardley listens to Marlene Dietrich on a hand crank gramophone because she lives in Weimar era Germany and electricity is rather scarce: oh yes, although Frau Yardley lives in Amsterdam, her house is decorated with original furniture and accessories from the 1920ies and German magazines from the Interbellum Period are everywhere. This week he talks with…
Yes, yes, Ginny Who? here. It’s been a busy and eventful few months since our vacation in Hawaii… whoa, really. There’s a lot going on in the family (can’t blog about that) and there’s a lot going on at Holy Moly (hey, Faddah Manny is our vicar now!). My husband David had a little contretemps with a local streetlamp the other day while riding his bike, and now sports a nifty scrape on one of his legs. He pointed the lamppost out tonight on our way back from dinner with his brother Dan and said “That’s the lamppost. I’m plotting…
Darn it, we have theater tickets Sunday, so I won’t be able to make this event, but you can check out the details on the #Cafe Wellstone Ning, and listen via streaming radio if you can’t make it inworld. Doubtless you’ve read them, perhaps you’ve quoted them (‘What digby said.’), now you can hear them. digby & mcjoan aka Joan McCarter take to the stage. What will* they talk about?
Back at work after a somewhat-fragmented work week last week, I managed to get everything done (or contented myself with what I was able to get done) for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day… I had to work to the bitter end on Christmas Eve, after getting off early a couple of days in a row, but still I managed to fly home, put up the tree, decorate it, and wrap the gadgetty little gifts I’d gotten for the small number of family members that came over on Christmas Day. I didn’t make pancakes, as we already had plenty…
[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/QJ-CqT5orEI" width="425" height="344" wmode="transparent" /] This card was waiting for me when I got home – THANKS, DEBBIE!!! I love it! It was a really early start – I had to be in the office by 7am as I’d switched shifts with someone. And it was my birthday, and it was my day to keep an eye on queues and emails, but of course we were short 2 agents and we had lots of calls, so forget keeping and eye on emails and queues. In the middle of all the chaos, some pretty flowers arrived at my desk, courtesy…
UPDATE II: Today’s date is April 7, 2012. About a week ago, the graphics card fan on my computer started making these eeerie WOOOooooooOOOOooooo noises, like a cartoon ghost. And then a few days ago, it just stopped running; the fan was stuck and my computer would run for a few minutes before the screen would go black. So, farewell good and faithful friend. Now I need to figure out what to do next. My husband David removed the card and reconnected the inboard graphic card back into play. I can do everything I need to do with the exception…
… they’re the American uniform at home and abroad. UPDATE: Just wanted to add what inspired this: And Far Away | Footwear that should be burned and buried The way American tourists dress drives me crazy. Khaki shorts, worn-out and drab-colored t-shirt (or shirt), and the infamous sandlas, often with socks. Damn. It’s as if this “uniform†comes stamped out with their visas. I’ve never been to the US so I don’t know if that’s how they dress in their daily lives, but I sure hope not. Yes, well, many Americans dress like this in our daily lives, because it’s…
We are a globeful of dopamine addicts. We endlessly seek and never find the newest new thing. Slate: Seeking Seeking. You can’t stop doing it. Sometimes it feels as if the basic drives for food, sex, and sleep have been overridden by a new need for endless nuggets of electronic information. We are so insatiably curious that we gather data even if it gets us in trouble. Google searches are becoming a cause of mistrials as jurors, after hearing testimony, ignore judges’ instructions and go look up facts for themselves. We search for information we don’t even care about. Nina…
Second Life provides virtual meeting space, may replace millions of airline seats annually someday. May need to learn building skills in SL beyond rezzing a box… New World Notes: What the US Navy’s Undersea Warfare Center Is Doing in SL (Updated) The last time I tried to visit the Second Life islands owned by the United States Navy’s Naval Undersea Warfare Center several months ago, I was blocked from entering most of it. This machinima above shows what they’ve been doing in Second Life, including rapid prototyping, data modeling, and VoIP-driven conferencing, much of it between other branches of the…