Archive - 2008
June 8th
New Social Networks and what you can find with them
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 06/08/2008 - 13:54Over the past week, I’ve been suffering fairly badly from my sinus infection and bronchitis and haven’t been writing nearly as much as I would like. There are several important blog posts I want to get to, and perhaps even some that have become moot, or at least changed direction considerably over the past week.
I have been trying to keep up with emails, social networks, visiting various blogs, and so on, and have lots of notes to highlight.
In the social network space, the big development is Plurk. You can sign up and follow me there, or if you want to boost my plurk karma, you can signup here.
Plurk is yet another microblog. You write 140 character messages to say what you are up to and your message gets displayed with messages of your friends. Sound a lot like Twitter? Well, it seems a lot of the users are people who were frustrated by Twitter’s downtime. Yet there are some interesting differences. Plurk is a bit like what you might expect to get when Microsoft attempts to take Twitter, shoehorn it into a Gantt chart and display it on an ajax version of MySpace. When I described it that way to my eldest daughter, her eyes just sort of glazed over, but I’m used to that from my daughters. So, if what I said doesn’t make sense, just go over and take a look at Plurk.
So far, most of the discussions on Plurk seem to be about Plurk, with a bit of emphasis on how you build karma there. So, I’ll keep playing with Plurk and building my karma there, but I’ll probably stick with Twitter, even with its downtime, to get my real news.
People have commented that they don’t want yet another site to update their statuses. Why can’t someone build one place where you can update your status and have that sent out to all the other sites? Well, I’m told that ping.fm does that, but you need an invitation, and I haven’t scored one yet. If anyone can get me an invitation, drop me a note.
Ping.fm’s current competition is hellotxt. I’ve signed up for hellotxt and sent a few messages from it. The MySpace and Bebo connectivity didn’t work for me during my test, it doesn’t cover as many sites as ping.fm does, and there isn’t a nice SMS interface right now for people in the States, but it looks promising.
The other site that just came on my radar is mento. Mento is a tool to save a link to a bunch of different places at the same time. They have a Firefox addon which I’m about to start testing. No opinion on this one yet.
My first attempt at using Mento, after bookmarking Orient Lodge, to bookmark an article about an effort to build a Croquet VM. Croquet is a virtual world system, based originally on SmallTalk. It is an important part of Qwaq, and I want to keep an eye on the what goes on in that space.
If I had Mento installed earlier, and felt that it was working properly, I might have used it to flag three recent posts I’ve stumbled across via EntreCard. New York Renovator has this post about Victory Gardens. She talks about people growing victory gardens as part of the effort to live greener lifestyles, less dependent on foreign oil. It fits nicely with my interest in Project Laundry List, an effort to get more people to dry clothes outside, even fighting restrictive covenants that prevent it, and noting that “Electric dryers use five to ten percent of residential electricity in the United States!
Another cool blog entry I found through EntreCard was Your Fun Family’s pointer to a 50 State map game. I’ve played it twice, and do pretty well. Some of the first states that I put on the map are a little bit off, but once a few states are on the map, it becomes easier. My average error has been 11 to 13 miles, missing 3 to 5 states. My last round I got a score of 90.19.
One last blog post, found through EntreCard, is of a waterslide, which I believe is in Germany. Check it out.
One final note: I did get a chance to check a few of my Facebook requests. Facebook has a new application for blog networks. Stop by and join the Orient Lodge blog network on Facebook. If your blog is in a Facebook blog network, let me know.
Enough for now. Now, I need to try and sleep off some of the heat and the sinus infection.
June 7th
Remembering Soj
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 06/07/2008 - 12:06
So, what do you wear to a memorial service in Second Life? This morning is the memorial service for The Sojourner. If I were attending in real life, I would find the solemnest suit I can find. Yet this is Second Life. When I appear in human shape, it is a very simple avatar, with simple clothing, blue jeans and a T-shirt.
I ran into this situation sometime ago, when I went to a pajama party in Second Life. Not having any good pajamas for the pajama party, I chose to go as a small black cat. I was agile, running around the party, dragging a pillow behind me and knocking over guest after guest. Being low to the ground, it was hard for the other guests to stop me and there were numerous cries about that damned cat.
One person that I tripped up numerous times that evening was Gentle Heron. Afterwards, she approached me and said that she hoped I didn’t take all of the complaints personally. To her, it was all part of some sorely needed relief. I appreciated her concern and explained that it was all part of the fun for me as well, and if I thought people were genuinely upset, I would have changed back to human form.
Gentle spoke a little bit about this group she was part of, The Heron Society. She explained that people in the group were having a difficult time. A friend had recently committed suicide and everyone was busy supporting one another. The pajama party with the fun of a cat running around knocking people over, was just the sort of outlet she needed.
Gentle and I became fast friends after this, and from her, I learned a lot about the caring community in Second Life. There are many people struggling with many disabilities and Second Life is a place for them to gather and find support, friendship, and the chance to dance, fly, swim, or simply chase a cat around at a pajama party.
One of the people Gentle introduced me to was The Sojourner. Soj, as she was called her many friends had survived multiple strokes. She gathered with others to help them deal with their own struggles and helped build an important community called Dreams.
When I spoke about the memorial service, Gentle thought that coming as a cat would be appropriate. After all, the ability to come as you are and be accepted is so important in caring communities.
Nonetheless, I arrived at the memorial service in my human shape. I saw Gentle sitting on a bench and I though of her need for comfort, and I know how comforting it is to pat a cat. I looked at women in elegant black dresses, and I decided that it would be best to be at the memorial service for Soj as a black cat. As we waited for the service to begin, people handed out red armbands entitled “Wearing my heart on my sleeve for Soj”. I added this to my outfit.
The memorial service started off with Grace McDunnough, who chose a human shape and an elegant black dress, singing a wonderful song. Then Pathfinder Linden spoke about how he met The Sojourner many years ago and how they worked together to form the Dreams community. I’m not sure exactly how I would describe Pathfinder’s outfit other than to say it was only vaguely humanoid.
After Pathfinder, many other people added comments about how wonderful Soj was and about how much she brought to the community of people in Second Life, and perhaps that gives us a clue into what to wear to a memorial service in Second Life.
Wear your heart on your sleeve, show the people around you how much you care. Bring a little of the compassion that Soj brought to Second Life. Bring it to the memorial service, and then bring it with you beyond Second Life. Don’t worry about what you look like, what you’re wearing, or what sort of disabilities might hinder you. Instead focus on being a caring person, the way Soj was, and the way so many of the friends she has touched are.
June 6th
I’m Engaged!
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 09:18Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
The dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I’ve looked at love that way
Recently, I’ve been spending time reading blogs that I find via EntreCard. You will note that I said, ‘reading’, and not just ‘clicking on’. You see, I want to hear what other people are saying. I might not comment a lot, but what I read adds into my background thinking.
As an example, I seem to recall a post, or perhaps a few posts about people getting engaged. There is this excitement, “OMG! I’m engaged!” People post about where the question was popped or perhaps the picture of a shiny new ring. Do you remember that dizzy dancing way you felt when you became engaged? Well, how about being ‘engaged’ in the blogs that you read?
For me, my engagement in blogs is related to my engagement in politics. My wife and I, who have been married for seven and a half years, are engaged. That may sound strange, and that may be unfortunate. Husbands and wives need to stay engaged with each other after the courtship. We are not only engaged with one another, but we are also very engaged in politics. She works for Common Cause, which has a tag line of ‘Holding Power Accountable’. That is a very important way to remain engaged. A week or so ago, Bob Edgar, the president of Common Cause came to speak in Connecticut. He met with bloggers before hand and we had a great discussion with him. He has a strong message of being engaged that deserves a blog post of its own.
Back in 2003, we were very engaged in Gov. Dean’s Presidential bid. When he ended his campaign, he urged his supporters to be engaged, to do more than just vote. So, Kim ran for State Representative and I managed the campaign. When Ned Lamont came along, he got many people engaged in politics and Kim and I both worked on his campaign. Ned has remained engaged and spoke last night at Central Connecticut State University. I spoke with others involved with politics, policy and higher education, ant those discussions deserve a blog post or two of their own as well.
While my wife and I have been engaged elsewhere, the Obama campaign has done great work in engaging new people in the political process. I hope many of them will remain engaged after the general election is over.
So, back to my blog. I’m engaged. I’m engaged in other blogs, a wide selection of blogs, the blogs of people who are engaged in the lives of their families, their pets, their businesses, their lives and the spiritual aspects of their lives. Hopefully, some of my blog posts help people connect different parts of these engagements.
Are you engaged?
June 5th
Sane Energy Policy
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 06/05/2008 - 09:37We need a saner energy policy. How often have you heard politicians say that? At the Northwest Leadership Breakfast, shortly after an important Broadwater decision, speaker after speaker spoke about our need for a saner energy policy. It was a gathering of Connecticut politicians and much of the focus was on energy policy as it applied to Connecticut. Connecticut has the highest energy prices in the Nation.
Yet where is that energy policy going to come from? The current energy policy, crafted in secret between Mr. Cheney and some of his buddies in the energy industry clearly is in the best interest of Bush and Cheney’s cronies, and not in the best interest of our country.
Last night at the New Haven Democracy for America Meetup, two members of ‘Fight the Hike’ showed up to talk about their efforts.
June 4th
What does Katatemoto mean?
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Wed, 06/04/2008 - 14:09When Fiona first came to understand that certain letters strung together in a particular order spelled certain words, she would randomly ask, “What does K-K-D-A-E-B-D-G-E-G spell?” She was disappointed that the random combination of letters rarely made recognizable words. So, I suggested that we try to make it easier and do only three letter words, where the second letter was A. With this, she often came up with words and was quite happy.
This came to mind to day when I visited Zental Floss. Laura has a game where you substitute letter from your name to a combination of letters for making a ‘Japanese name’. Using that, I came up with ‘Katatemoto’ was my ‘Japanese name’.
I thought of sending this off to my eldest daughter who is fairly advanced in her Japanese to ask her if that meant anything. It reminded me of my Fiona’s favorite game. It also reminded me of another popular game online where you figure out your stripper name. I guess you could combine them to come up with a Geisha Girl name. So, instead of just sending it off as an email, I thought it might be a fun little blog post. I’ll send this along to my eldest daughter, if only to get a virtual roll of the eyes.
What is your ‘Japanese name’?
