Whether you’re into technical stuff, or not, find yourself a little over 15 mins and watch this from the Web2 Expo - it’s all about community web projects, like wikipedia, and how society is changing what it does with its vast spare time:

http://blip.tv/file/855937/

Really is fascinating!

Just got sent this and felt it worth sharing …

“The cure for anything is salt water – sweat, tears, or the sea.”

~ Isak Dinesen

For the last few weeks I’ve bouncing around some ideas for a social thing in Second Life (TM stuff etc.). There’s a couple of people waiting to hear what it’s about and I just cannot get myself in gear, so I’m going to write something here and see if that helps.

Without going into details of the whole thing (for which I have, so far, pages of notes, a web site and a pretty set of logos!), one aspect of it is a social venue that will have several different builds that can be rezzed out. My current fixation is based around a great gothic castle with many rooms and hiding places.

Aside from hosting themed balls, and such, I have an idea for a vampire hunting game, based on a party game I had a few years back. One person is secretly informed that they are Dracula before everyone goes off to hide. After a couple of minutes a bell tolls and everyone returns to the game room, secretly indicating to the host if they are a vampire – and this is the thing, cos Dracula can turn someone into a vampire if they can find them and get close to them without anyone else seeing them. The game continues in roughly this way until a non-vampire sees Dracula trying to vamp someone or until everyone is a vampire. It needs some refining, but I kinda like the idea, to play in amongst some dancing and general fun.

Similarly, I am working on a cross between murder mystery dinners and Cluedo, whereby guests are invited to a themed event, and given character bios in advance. Throughout the event, events occur, clues can be found, discoveries are made, and characters are secretly told additional facts about their own involvement and history (including at some point, the murderer finding out that they did it!). At the end of the event, each person votes on who they think the murderer was, and why. If the majority guess right then they win, otherwise the murderer does. It would have to be adaptable to the number of people attending and different venues, without too much work, but I’m rather taken with this one too.

All of which is but the icing on the cake of this project

I’m going to stick this in amongst some light-hearted posts, not because I want to make light of it, but because it’s only part of who I am. I’ve suffered from depression since I was in my early teens and (nearly thirty years on) I am still no better prepared for the way it subtly creeps up on me, until one day I just feel like curling up in a ball in bed and crying my eyes out.

I’ve been on meds for it for a fair while and they help immensely, but I still get those days, or weeks. This seems to be one of them. Everything seems to be so much more work and so much less worth it. Everyone else seems to be going places and I’m just sat here feeling lonely and lost. I’m not of course, it just seems that way. I know I’ll get better again, and each time that happens it is faster and lasts a little longer.

There’s nothing I would change either. The magic and joy of this life would mean so much less to me without these times of darkness and despair, and I would not lose those for anything. I just needed to talk. Just for a minute. Thank you for listening.

The idea of food on sticks has been around since at least the “invention” of fire, and remains in various forms today. I read somewhere recently a rather excellent question: What was the best thing before sliced bread? My answer would have to be food on sticks. Assuming the hygiene of the stick, it’s an effective way to avoid handling your food without need for cutlery, and it’s fun!

There’s a specific type of food on sticks that I am thinking about here though. Amusing as lolly sticks are, especially the joke kind (even more fun when they are in the wrong way and you have to guess the joke from the punchline!), there is nothing quite as fun as “party food” on cocktail sticks. And here’s my issue, why on earth do we limit ourselves to parties? Some people even think “grown-up parties” (as opposed to “adult parties” with all sorts of things on sticks!) are above such things!

Last week, when buying the ingredients to make lunch for Phoenix, I picked up some lovely sliced ham and crusty bread. Knowing we had some gorgeous mature cheddar at her place I was heading to the checkout, envisioning ham and cheese sandwiches, when I spied a tin of pineapple slices. Grinning happily, I grabbed these and headed back to the wines and spirits for a pack of cocktail sticks. Yep, I made us ham sandwiches with cheese and pineapple on sticks! Any you know what? It was wonderful!!!

Yes, I poked myself with a stick, but I don’t care! So, next time you go shopping get yourself some cocktail sticks and some nibbly things to go on them, then let me know what combinations you come up with

For those who have not heard yet - and it won’t take long if you haven’t - LL are dropping the setup costs for private islands from US$1675 to US$1000. As yet they are not intending to alter tier costs. Have a read here for details and other land news:

http://blog.secondlife.com/2008/04/07/quarterly-land-supply-and-island-pricing-update/

As you can probably imagine, this has triggered a flurry of outraged comments, no doubt soon to be followed by a flurry of equally outraged blog posts. I normally stay out of these things, but since I cannot post a comment to the blog now I shall say something quietly here.

It’s pointless thinking of the setup cost for a private island as representing anything other than that - a payment to LL for their time and effort in setting up a sim for you. The tier charges then reflect the running and management costs for that server space. Service charges are NOT an investment! LL could fold at any point and no one would get their money back!! Phoenix and I have been talking about this today, and as she rightly said you might be pissed off if you bought something and then it was in a half-price sale the next day, but you wouldn’t give the shop a hard time for not telling you the day before! Or maybe you would! LL have said they will work to offer something to those who have paid the higher price very recently, but they certainly aren’t obliged to do so.

We’re considering buying a sim, and have been for a while. The price drop will help immensely, but we both accept that up-front figure as a one-off service charge. Loads of hosting companies would charge for that and no one thinks of it as a returnable investment. Yes, if you change your mind and “sell” the sim to anyone else then they are likely to be willing to pay you around about the same figure as they would pay LL to set up a brand new sim for them. That is a separate transaction at the time you decide to sell your sim. It still doesn’t make your original set-up cost an investment!

If you really want to “invest” money in land then go buy a field somewhere. If you want the fun of owning your own virtual island in SL (TM etc.) then that is a very different thing and could clearly vanish overnight!

Rant over :o)

So, it’s been a while since I posted anything, I figure I might as well come back with a rant as anything else ;o)

Monday this week, I get a letter from my landlord slid under my apartment door. Worth noting here that I live in a small block of apartments right on the narrow one-way main road through Falmouth. Anyhow this letter tells me that they are going to be “sprucing up” the front of the building, as they do every ten years, and that the decorators will be erecting scaffolding and netting across the front of the building, including my two windows. The work will commence this week and take 2-3 weeks. As residents we are warned to be aware of security and will need to be sure our windows are closed at night, especially as we get a lot of drunks at this end of town who might try and climb the scaffolding!

Wednesday this week, I get another letter to say that the scaffolding company will attend to erect the scaffolding on Thursday morning, and asking that we make sure we are in as they will need all the windows open at least a little so that they can attach their scaffolding to some or all of the window frames for stability!!! What happened to security then?!!!!!

Thursday morning I get up and dressed bright and early to be sure I can do whatever I need to do. The scaffolding truck arrives at 3pm. They sit outside, blocking traffic for about quarter of an hour and then drive off. Two hours later the landlord phones. There will be a delay of at least a couple of weeks, possibly many months, as the council will not let them erect scaffolding. Apparently the building opposite is erecting scaffolding next week and nothing would be able to get down the road at all if we have scaffolding on this side too!!

And I thought I was disorganised!!!!!!!

UPDATE : The scaffolding went up yesterday with no further notice - I give up!

Well today saw my graduation from Mentor school. In a few days, when the groups are sorted out, I shall be very proud to be a shiny new mentor in Second Life. It’s something I have wanted to do for a while, as my own welcome experience would not have been anywhere near so good without the mentors that I met on that first day.

I only hope I can live up to the reputation ^^

I’ve been really excited, for a while now, about the idea of story blogs, especially ones using SL for images that accompany the story, and those stories that are told entirely in SL images. Chloe is writing one over at Kyūketsuki that is already establishing itself with great depth and empathy, and is a superb read! Arahan’s amazing Small Story is a masterpiece. Phoenix has also been playing with some ideas that I think are brilliant, and I keep nudging her to do something about them!!

For myself, I’ve been toying with a couple of concepts for the last few days, and I finally narrowed it down, I think. It’s going to be the story of a man named Erasmus Shade. This man has withdrawn from the world, become effectively invisible, seen by only a very few and ignored by the rest, a ghost among us. He is also the perfect assassin, feeling no connection to humanity. That, however, is about to change.

I’m still not convinced about this idea, and other RL issues are currently taking priority, including the need to rapidly make some money and avoid eviction! I did want to post something though, partly because I know it will then encourage me not to give up on it, and partly because Chloe has promised to keep nudging me until I do this, for which I am grateful ;o)

I’m not one for labels, as a rule. I understand their benefits when used to convey a small aspect of a thing. It’s “blue”, or it’s “round”, or both. Those things don’t imply more than a single aspect, a tiny part of the whole, but other labels, people labels especially, they have a terrible sense of definition about them. That man is “a depressive”, that woman is “disabled”. Labels like that define limits, boundaries within which we are confined, in other people’s perceptions and even our own!

We have words for things, a fundamental requirement of most languages, and we take that so much for granted. We understand the concept of “tree”, and we understand that “branch” and “twig” and “leaf” and “root” are parts of the whole “tree”. That’s pretty simple, but just stop for a second. Who drew the line around “tree”? We know where tree stops and earth begins, and where leaf stops and where air begins. But the tree cannot exist without those connections, any more than a leaf could exist without the twig. Who determined where to draw the boundary? Seriously, just think about it for a moment, that thing we take so much for granted, that “definition”.

There are tribes of people whose languages have no word for “tree”. These are not people who have never seen a tree. These are people who live among trees! The very concept of how we delimit and define “tree” is utterly alien to them. They cannot grasp it! Babies don’t see trees. We teach them that concept. This is fundamental. In order to communicate, we define words, what they include and what they do not. The boundaries. There is nothing wrong with that so long as we never forget that it is just a word, something that is infinitely inadequate to describe a thing, but the very best we can do with language.

The trouble is, though, that battered and drowning in words as we are, immersed in an eternal torrent of communication, our perception becomes subject to the words, and not the other way around as it should be. If we lived in a cave and never spoke to anyone, we would not need to know the word “cave” and so we would not perceive its boundary. But we do.

It limits us, this perception framed in language. Have you ever sat for a while on a beach, or a hillside, and allowed yourself to stop thinking? Have you felt that connection with everything around you? Have you felt, even if you did not understand it, the boundaries vanish for a moment? That simple truth that there aren’t any definitions, any invisible lines drawn around things. You have to stop thinking in words to do it, but it’s an amazing experience if you do. I really strongly recommend it to anyone to try if they have not!

In talking with a very dear friend about this recently, it occurred to me that labels are like chalk outlines around a corpse. The moment we draw them, we constrain what shape something is, and prevent it from growing or even moving. If something, even a perception of something, is restricted in this way, it dies in that instant.

Don’t allow words and labels to define you, or anything around you. They are just tools, and very inadequate ones at that.