Recently discovered Connecticut Activist Websites
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/12/2008 - 22:42www.citizenselections.org. Okay, this isn’t all that recent a discovery. I just haven’t written much about it yet. It is tied to Common Cause, where Kim is now working.
http://ct.teachagainstgenocide.org/. Today, I got an email from Tim Salem. Tim is the teacher at Danbury High School that helped a group of students produce The Promise, a video about Genocide in the Sudan.
Both of these sites provide ways for people to get involved here in Connecticut.
1983 Journal: Jan 23-25
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/12/2008 - 22:32I continue to post journal entries from my journal twenty-five years ago. Back then, I was leaving my job as a computer consultant to travel. Not all of the entries are all that coherent, but I’m posting most of them as is.
January 23, 1983: Gone is the intensity I once had. Gone too is that religiosity. Looking in the eyes of people whose approach to Christianity is the starting point of what I detest. Live a complicated life so that those who don’t live can live through you. Story: Hacker breaks security, discovers industrial espionage. Cynical Resolution.
January 24, 1983: Vacation day. Have I burnt myself out? Striving for relaxation and intensity. Blood pressures seemed higher. Is private space possible? Roommates next door, friends in the mind. Victim of the aesthetic realists. Soho Chainsaw Massacre. Puking on a gallery window. Am I burnt out? Spent? Wasted? Dead? Or merely silent? I’ll not write more now due to my spaciness.
January 25, 1983: Freakdom and Scotch on Robert Burns Birthday. Jimbo called during party. Sounded like Doug. Steve Wilson: Chaz and Steve here. Joys of Decadence. The women I’m interested in. Riding the train as an outlaw. Goodnight.
Random Potomac Primary Notes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Tue, 02/12/2008 - 10:03Andy Carvin is voting! Get the play by play at Twitter and Flickr.
Debbie McCormick, et al, of the Behavioural Studies Department, School of Political and Social Inquiry, Monash University is doing a survey about “people’s attitudes toward law and order in Second Life”. If you spend time in Second Life, please fill it out here.
The John Edwards blog goes offline today. Various online supporters have set up different sites to stay in touch with one another. JRE Grassroots was created back in 2004 and is alive and well. It is joined by The Edwardians Meeting Place, We Choose John, and several other spreadsheets, Google groups and so on.
More about Avatars, Part 2
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Mon, 02/11/2008 - 11:23Recently, Reuters ran an article about what sort of avatars adults want in Second Life. It was based on a poll done by Zogby for the U.S. Congressional Internet Caucus Advisory Committee. It found that 14.7% of the respondents would dramatically alter their avatars appearance from their real appearance.
This raised lots of interesting comments from the Second Life educators list. One question was about what constitutes a dramatic alteration of an avatars appearance. Presumably this would include presenting as a robot or a furry. Does it include presenting as a different gender, a different age, a different race or a different level of physical ability?
As I noted in my email, my primary avatar is constructed to look as similar to me as possible, without me spending a lot of time or money tweaking my avatar. As alternative OpenSim grids become more common, I’m spending more time trying to get my avatar on these other grids to look essentially the same as they do on the Second Life main grid.
More about Avatars, Part 1.
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sun, 02/10/2008 - 19:08Over the past few days, I’ve been spending a little time setting up my avatars on Central Grid and OpenLifeGrid. I started off by copying down all of my shape settings from Second Life and then re-entering them into the new grids. It seems like there are to be a standard for defining shapes for import and export. Doing it as a simple XML file might be a good starting place, so using the names from the Second Life viewer, I created this xml file as an example of some of how this could be approached.
I also started playing with Second Inventory. It seems like this could be a great tool to manage inventory for all the worlds you are part of. It doesn’t work that way yet, but I’ve written to the developer about how that might be a good idea. I did use it to easily extract some textures from objects I have in the Second Life main grid, and bring them over to Central Grid and OpenLifeGrid, so I now have T-shirts like the ones I wear in the main grid.
I’m also kicking around porting Lillie Yifu’s wikiHUD to some of these other grids. I meet people in Central Grid, and their definitions are not set up the way they are in the main grid, so it is harder to remember who I am talking to. To compound this, in OpenLifeGrid, they have followed the Linden Lab approach which means you have to choose from a list of names. I chose Holden as my last name there, so in the main grid and in Central Grid, I’m Aldon Huffhines. In OpenLifeGrid I’m Aldon Holden. I think I’m Aldon Beta and/or Aldon Test in some other grids. secondlife.wikia.com might be a tool to help keep track of some of that.
Meanwhile, there has been an interesting discussion about what sort of avatars people chose over on the Second Life Educators list. That will be part 2 of More about Avatars, coming up later.
