Cafe Bucky

I am staying offline tomorrow, Saturday August 30th.

Why?

To switch gears a bit. Think of the last 20 years, and all of the change that has snuck up on us:

• cell phones
• blogs / facebook / myspace / linked in
• web
• twitter
• IMs
• email

It’s amazing when you think back to the 80’s.  In terms of communication, and the sense of being ‘always on’, they seem almost tranquil by compare…  It will be good to stop for a moment and reflect a bit.

So I will do my best to play hooky from the online world tomorrow.  One of the best parts is that I wont be checking online to see if anyone joins me.  It is a switch off day.  I’ll apologize on Sunday :)

I am in the midst of getting my Second Life Portfolio together.

After 2 years, I have quite a bit of scripting, building, and management experience with in-world projects.  It seems like a good complement to the resume.

Although it is in the process of being written, I’ll put some pressure on myself to finish it by pointing at it now!

Pictures will come soon.  If you want a tour of some of my work, contact me and I will take ya in-world and show you around :)

Many folks know me from Second Life.  I’ve been in that wonderful Virtual World since March 2006, and have done many projects and have met many great folks.

(more…)

“put the wax on the table / let the dj spin it” -BBoys

I am back y’all! Rusty and shakin it off … It’s been a long while since February 2007.

Resurrected the blog from a noisy 1U rack server that I used to have hosted at sonic.net. Got all of my postings (March 2003 onward) here for your amusement.

Looking back, some of them are not what I would write now. It would have been cinchy to just start from scratch. On the other hand, it’s more fun to have the history (almost 4 years!) and show some evolution.

Evolution — I’ve made it out of the newbie blogging waters and am up on the warm beach dunes. Off in the distance is a shiny plastic city of one-track blogs on multilevel marketing. Over to the left is experimental artsville, rickety blog tents that amaze for a moment and then blow over from the wind of ISP overage charges.

I see a couple of other destinations — one of them is rural, with a beautiful barn studio full of computers, musical paraphernalia, and a video / lights set. It’s the blog of creative and tech that is the grounded contrast between nature and tech overload.

The other view from the dunes, of course, is the city loft in the midst of graffiti sprayed subway signed watch out for that speeding taxi high volume pedestrian hubbub. Get into the freight elevator, go up, stream some dub reggae, and write.

Back to the hot sand on the beach burning my paws … I dont head for country or city just yet (although I can certainly indulge both in Second Life). I have my for-pay work (3D Web), an amicable divorce to go through, a house to sell, and lots of connections to refresh. Time to get out of so much hermit mode!

Feels good to be back into it. I had flitted with tumblr and some Pownce, but this is really my home.

Unlocks the door, steps in, opens the double hungs to air out the blog room. Brews coffee and ponders the updating and tweaks to make.

Another one for Woody Allen, Bette Midler, and Carol Alt! (and me :-)

I wasn’t ready for this one. It kind of snuck up and tapped me on the shoulder. “psst!”, it said. “more age for you! a big tablespoon of it! .. here it comes!” And I dont mind. What am I gonna do? Take my birth cert back to the hospital and have them change a number?!

Nah, I really dont mind that much. I think age is more of a state of mind. It’s a “how open are you to keep learning new things?” kind of deal. The ones that shut off their mind when they get out of school bore me, and the ones that keep adapting, learning, and creating enthrall me. That’s the nutshell …

You wont generation gap me. I take pride in being on web early, and being in Second Life in the first few hundred thousand. I wont sit around and wait for developments to make their way to Readers Digest :-)

So, Age 46, let’s see whatcha got!

“One .. Two.. You know what to do …”

So begins “Elevator Music” off of Beck’s new album “The Information”.

One, Two, I know what to do. Back and bloggin’. I never quite left. Tuned into Second Life and dropped out of the web for while. Needed the break, now comes the balance. How to tie my newfound love into my oldfound profession?

Much of the following will not make sense if you have never spent time in Second Life …

2L Builder. 2L Scripter. I have a one-man photo exhibit. Own land. Happy in many dimensions. Lovin’ Second Life. It appeals to my creative and technical bents. Web 3D.

And there are wonderful people and flakes. Wow, just like real life. And there are great places to see, and virtual strip mall big box regurgitations of suburban fucking hell.

Most Second Life builders do what Desktop Publishers did in 1985. Prims are tortured. Textures are stretched. Real estate and virtual buildings are The Wild West - some people here and there seem to know what they are doing. The landscape of Prefabs reminds me of Gary, Indiana. I’ve seen gaps and overlaps; rooms too small and doors too tall. You want how much for that? Ya must be jokin’

And there is no sense of day. If you dont like the sun, make it midnight. There’s a menu for everything, if only you can find it in time.

So what happened in Web 2.0 while I was gone? Suppose I’ll catch up. Suppose I’ll blend these worlds somehow. The 2.0, and the Web 3D. I’ll even put up with LSL until we get Mono. Not like we have a choice on that one :-)

Yeah, I’m back. Hi there. I want a gig in the metaverse. See ya on the grid.

What some numbers mean to me. One of those silly lists.

• 1 - Pacific Coast Highway, The Beach, West Coast. I may leave, but I’ll always visit.
• 2 - cats
• 3 - Nikons
• 4 - airport wireless base stations at home
• 6 - World Cup Soccer games (’94)
• 11 - countries visited
• 19 - states visited
• 26 - years of coffee
• 27 - years of programming
• 110 - mph on the track
• 130 - on a nice open stretch, uh, somewhere
• 155 - target weight
• 170 - current weight
• 185 - glutton weight
• 212 - favorite area code
• 250 - paid for a noisy, slow, clunky dot matrix printer in 1982
• 300 - my tech book review fee
• 400 - Atari 400, my first computer
• 501 - levis (when I lose more weight)
• 550 - levis (sick of them)
• 1999 - best year
• 3900 - miles driven in one cross country trip
• 5600 - songs on iPod
• 58000 - E36 M3 miles driven

2005 built character. Enough already.

There are some highlights from this year that I really enjoyed, such as living in NYC, driving across the country, and making significant progress on FlexiPhoto. My daughter got to go to a stellar school in NYC, and thrived. My wife got photos into a couple of exhibitions. I’m frikken healthy.

But there were mistakes aplenty. A bunch of “should haves”. Shoulda pulled the plug on working with AOLServer & Tcl much earlier (career detour). Shoulda rented out the West Coast house so that we could have stayed in NYC. I haven’t done a good job at marketing FlexiPhoto, or my own blog, or myself, for that matter (my resume and site need a going-over). I haven’t done enough to keep up with friends. Wasted a lot of time fretting about things I can’t change. bla bla bla. Terrible birthday [1], and worse Christmas (not in the materialistic sense, but in the sense of not being enthusiastic about either one).

It’s not a true “Annus Horriblus” (just sounds more dramatic than “year that sucked”). If it were, I may not be fortunate enough to write the words, right? No Hurricane Katrina here. No car crashes. No upside-down goldfish. It could have been a lot worse. Still, I’m glad it’s just about over. Onward.

[1] with the exception of being with a couple of wonderful folks in Mill Valley for a few hours.