Cafe Bucky

I am declaring a little holiday:  Offline Day

On Saturday, August 30, I am going to pretend it is the 1970’s — at least for the online aspect.

• not going to twitter
• or go on Second Life
• or use the web, or blog
• or check my email
• or use my cell phone (or anyone else’s, if I can help it :)

I just want to have a day of being able to turn it all off.  Believe me, I am a total online mammal, so this is not as easy as it sounds.  This will be a day of being out and enjoying, and thinking back to a much simpler time, before we had all this tech.

And Sunday?  Well, that is the day to apologize to everyone for not being online Saturday!

Anyone with me?  (I’ll do it anyway :)

[a quick note for those new to my blog.. this post is from over a year ago .. yep I am interested in gigs that span web 2.0 / SL / and other virtual worlds  -- dls, June 11, 2008]

Need a Web Dev? 2L Dev? I’m available!

Time to touch base — I wound up my contract with LimeLife.com recently (no more web site work to do). I’m proud of the work I did there — chiefly an implementation of Zones & Modules to make the site much easier to maintain..

Time for a new contract! One great thing about working from home over the last 6 months is that I didn’t need to spend 2-3 hours a day commuting. The time was much better spent coming up to speed on LSL and other SecondLife tech. I’m now in a great position to bridge web and SecondLife development projects.

Time to list some current Projects! The two major avenues are Web and SecondLife.

Web

• Update FlexiPhoto - work on a much more dynamic/Ajax front end. Give it an RSS feed capability.
• Update this blog - and incorporate work from the MultArg Demo
• Continue to develop RSS bridge for use by SecondLife Apps (using Magpie, about to try SimplePie parser)

SecondLife

• Give away demo/1st version of my QuickTime-based RSS reader (LSL + PHP)
• Start distributing my RSS browser (llDialog version), web browser, texture chooser, and object giver apps

I am at resume.daniel.org

So I recently received a notice to renew one of my domains. As anyone with a domain knows, the longer you renew for, the bigger your discount is …

However! This notice had an option to renew for 100 Years! I can see renewing for 10, but 100? Imagine the year is 1907, and you have to renew for a license to use a telegraph. Would you spring for 100 years? Believe me, I love the internet. I even left Autodesk in 1995 to go work with it full-time, because I could see where it was going, and they couldn’t. But that doesn’t mean I think it will be around for 100 years. What do you think?

Anyone that knows me will know my love for my ‘97 ///M3. Once in a while, that love is put to the test …

Last night I was heading home from Silicon Valley - about an 85 mile trip. 5:45 pm… I was on 280 North, just approaching where 380 joins from the airport … It was dark …

Kaflump! Kablump blump! pssst!!!!

I was in the left lane, and *felt* something passing under the car. For a moment I thought I had hit something. Then the battery light went on. That’s bad … bad bad bad. Surrounded by rush hour cars doing 50 in the left lane.. ewww .. I wrestled the car over to the right (no power steering), and managed to stop in a nice clear spot next to a callbox. Lots of smoke (turned out to be steam) .. Towing was ~$300 (to be reimbursed …)

So what Happened????

• Water Pump exploded …
• which threw that belt off
• which got entwined with the other belt …
• which then shredded up the fan blades…
• .. and then a fan blade pierced the radiator…

In other words, a pretty impressive laundry list of damage from a chain reaction …

I’m thankful to have some track training which helped me stay calm. Feeling a car start to come unglued under you can be disconcerting :-)

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.

From my wonderful daughter today:

Father’s Day ‘06

You taught me how to walk
You taught me how to talk.
You put band-aids on my knees,
And remind me to take my keys.

You always know what’s best.
You comfort me when I’m stressed.
You sometimes protest about how I dress,
But just having you as my dad as always made me feel blessed.

You give me wisdom, guidance, and support
I love you so much, and it makes me so glad
To know that each and every day, I have a loving, caring, DAD.

Haven’t bothered to blog. Haven’t really thought about every last web site to check out.

It’s not for lack of interest. It’s just ..

I gotta sleep too! :-)

So I’m immersed in the online shared space of Second Life, and the work, and “Real Life”, and it’s all invigorating and exciting, and blah blah blah. If there was never time enough to get bored before, I’ve hit the next level.

See, I haven’t been so excited about a new bit of tech since 1993. That’s saying something, ’cause I’ve done a lot of keeping up (well, I did slack off from ‘99-’03 a little :-) Second Life is flat out awesome. Is it Web 3d? I don’t know. It is a lot like the Metaverse of Snow Crash.

In 2L, there’s so much to learn: building, scripting, gestures, and so on. There’s also a huge social bit to it that I love. I’m hooked. That’s it. I’m frikken hooked.

So now the challenge is to work out the balance. There’s sleep to be slept, work to do, bills to pay, drives to take, and bbq’s to fire up. To say nothing of The Web and the things about it that have kept me fascinated for the last dozen years.

I keep pondering on how to write a proper post on “The Widening Web Gap”; where I’d compare the web geeks pushing the boundaries, versus the dialup folks that barely know how to check email, browse, or use IM. Every day that gulf opens a little further. I’m not even sure yet how to link 2L into that.. it takes the whole idea of interactive community and snickers politely to itself. Myspace? Friendster? The latest AOL or Yahoo Social Networking site? Forget it. Why bother? (that’s overstating it, but the kernel is that 2L can function as a heck of Social Space, if that’s what you’re looking for). I still respect LinkedIn though - there’s some utility there.

So my point here is that I’m working out the whole balance thing - there’s a ton of stuff to learn, and I haven’t felt this energized on a tech level for many years. I won’t spend 5 paragraphs talking about the awesome people I’ve met - suffice to say that being able to connect on a 3d visual level sure beats straight text anytime! More later.