Archive - 2007
Aldon in Wonderland
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/01/2007 - 21:16She's the best one that we've ever had
She sits on her hair and she's tall as my dad
And she tie-dyed my shirt and she pierced her own ear
And it's peace, man, cool, yeah, the babysitter's here.
Today was a different sort of day for me in Second Life. A friend invited me to storytime. Seven kids sat around in Second Life. Some on the floor, others on their parents lap and listened to a teenager with magenta hair read parts of Alice in Wonderland.
Most of the stories about people portraying themselves as children in Second Life have a distinctly unsavory aspect to it. However, there is another side to people portraying themselves as children in Second Life. My friend who invited me had previously pointed me to a blog post entitled Mere Child’s Play, which puts the whole subculture in a very different context.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, and a blessed Advent
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 12/01/2007 - 09:52Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit. A new month starts off with the traditional lapin petition for beneficence. Fiona’s first request this morning was for that calendar with the chocolates in the windows, you know that we do every December. Yes, December. Advent. A time of expectation and longing.
Normally, as we enter Advent, I would find myself humming Joni Mitchell’s river,
Its coming on Christmas
They’re cutting down trees
They’re putting up reindeer
And singing songs of joy and peace
Oh I wish I had a river
I could skate away on
Yet these years of hoping for a miracle has left my ability to hope somewhat dull and blunted. Nonetheless, hope remains. It is rekindled by emails I receive, like one from the ‘Social Issues Games’ mailing list I’m on. The writer highlights a few different organizations that he felt were worth pointing out during this season of giving.
Coming from a list of people interested in using games for positive social change, it isn’t surprising that the first charity listed is Child’s Play. This is a charity that delivers video games to children in hospitals, led by a group called Penny-arcade. Bill France, who wrote an article critical of video games is quoted on their website noting,
Penny-arcade published a letter from one of its readers. He is the father of a 5-year-old boy who had spent most of the previous five months at Children’s Hospital getting chemotherapy for lymphoma.
Almost every parent can immediately identify with that father’s distress, and with his heartfelt "thank you" to Penny-arcade for its Child’s Play toy drive.
The email went on to note that
Child's Play has also given support to programs that look at behavior
change (such as maintaining your visit schedule for dialysis) and
Robert Khoo biz manager for Penny Arcade/Child's Play attended last
year's Games for Health Conference.
A similar group is Get Well Gamers which accepts online donations through Network for Good.
Another site highlighted is One Laptop per Child. They have a program where you can donate $399 to their program and they will send a laptop to a developing country and one to you. These are not the typical laptops you get in the United States. They are specially designed to perform in areas where there is little access to electricity, WiFi and educators. The laptop gets mixed reviews. People used to the powerful laptops that many Americans have access to complain about its limited functionality. Yet the laptop is much better than having nothing.
So, we wait to celebrate the miraculous birth. We wait for miracles in our own lives, the lives of our friends and the lives of our nation. Yet we can celebrate the little miracles, the joy of children opening the their Advent calendars, and the charity of people who are helping out children in hospitals and children in countries where laptops are not easily accessible.
Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit, and a blessed Advent.
November 30th
A Brief Analysis of Macroeconomic Forces in Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 21:41Recently, there has been a lot of discussion about the IPOs on the VSTEX stock exchange in Second Life. Stock sales have been going slowly and everyone is offering their opinions why. These opinions range from concerns about the secondary public offering of SLC stock to what the marketing plans and road shows of the various companies are like. On these later points, VSTEX has written some helpful information for new CEOS. Yet I think there is another aspect that needs exploring, the macroeconomic forces in Second Life.
Over the past two years, the money supply in Second Life has been growing at a monthly rate of around 9%. At some points, that growth as been as high as 15%. At other points it has dropped to as low as 3%. In the past few months, it has been around 6%. (This is based on data retrieved from Second Life’s Economic Statistics.)
How does this compare with the growth in the Second Life Markets, and with VSTEX in particular? Detailed data from the exchanges is a little hard to come by. It can be sliced and diced a bunch of different ways and may be a bit misleading based on the newness of the exchanges. Nonetheless, there are some interesting ways to slice the data that I’ve received.
During the month of November, VSTEX deposits grew by around 1.5 Million Lindens, or around 35%. In October, they grew by 1.8 Million Lindens, which was about a 68% increase over the preceding month. That is around 3.3 million during the two-month period. During the same period, the Second Life money supply grew by approximately 223 Million Lindens, meaning that VSTEX accounted for approximately 1.5% of the money supply growth in Second Life during October and November. I am impressed with that number and it emphasizes my belief that financial markets in Second Life are more important than many people realize.
Is this because VSTEX was in startup growth mode? How much of this is because of IPOs during the two months? Will this number increase over the coming months? Working with the assumption that growth will continue at between 1.5 and 1.8 Million Lindens a month, it is useful to go back and look at the status of the outstanding IPOs on VSTEX.
Currently, there are six companies with IPOs and a seventh that has a secondary offering. How does the amount of IPO shares outstanding compare with these numbers?
As of earlier today, for all of the IPO shares to be sold, 5.8 Million Lindens will need to be invested. For each company to meet the minimum 50% that VSTEX requires for a successful IPO, 2.6 Million Lindens needs to be invested over the next two weeks. The current rate of investing only can account for about 30% of this.
This brings us back to key issues about IPOs. New CEOs need to think carefully about how much money they need from their IPOs, how much it is reasonable to get, and how they are going to go out and get it. So far, I’ve only heard from one company about their IPO, and I’ve invested with them.
Who Won Last Night’s Debate?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 13:19As with any debate, each campaign likes to claim victory, independent of what actually happened, and I like to take a different viewpoint. So, I am going to declare two winners of last night’s debate in Ridgefield.
The first winner was Howard Dean. Yes, he isn’t running for President this time around and none of the proxies were there to speak on his behalf. However, three of the five proxies had been very involved in Gov. Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid. I don’t know about the other two, although one of the other two did benefit from a fundraiser that Gov. Dean did on the proxy’s behalf.
At the 2004 Democratic National Convention, Gov. Dean spoke at various venues, and one of the key lines I remember from those speeches is, “If all you do is vote, you get a D.” He was pointing out that being involved in our democracy is so much more than just making it to the voting booth. The proxies on the stage, in addition to having worked hard for Gov. Dean in 2004, in addition to being proxies for candidates in this debate, have each run for elected office. They are the A students.
On top of that, every person who showed up for the debate, and those that listened to the stream on MyLeftNutmeg, somewhere between 70 and 100 people, are also honors students. Instead of simply catching a soundbite here and there and going to the polls as low information voters, each one of them stopped and participated in a grassroots discussion about where our country should be going. They are the other winners of last night’s debate.
Major kudos should go to Susan Cocco and everyone who worked together to make this wonderful event happen. It should be a model that Democratic committees and clubs around the country should emulate.
Today in Second Life
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 11:37The other day on the Second Life Educators mailing list, in quick succession, I received two interesting emails. One was from a group of students organizing a game of Laser Tag in Second Life. It will take place today from 3:30 to 5:30 PM (SLT). For those of us on the eastern coast of the United States, that means the games start at 6:30. You can stop by at the Educators Coop island.
Then, starting at 5:30 PM (SLT), 8:30 PM for me, there will be an art show sponsored by students of the same class. It will take place in a different part of Educators Coop island.
Both events are sponsored by students in Joe Sanchez’ class, Working in Virtual Worlds. For more information about what Joe and his friends are up to, I strongly recommend you stop by and read his blog.
I haven’t gotten a chance to read it as thoroughly as I would like, but looking briefly, it looks like a great blog. In particular, one of the groups from his class raised L$ 72,00 for charity. I’ve also spoken with some of the students, as well as with Joe and I’m looking forward to attending at least one of these events, if not both.
If you can make the time, I hope you’ll stop in as well.
