SecondWynd

Please use new link for SecondWynd

SecondWynd now has its own domain at http://www.secondwynd.com

Please see that website for future posts ... this site will be retired at the end of the membership.

Thank you for visiting ;D

Wyn*.

SecondWynd is moving!

I have been running SecondWynd from typepad.com and it's been great. There is a time for the fledgeling blogger to leave the nest to test their wings.

Thank you Typepad for everything,

I am moving SecondWynd to its own domain at http://www.secondwynd.com where I just have more control. Though I do believe that everything hooked up is working, but if it's not just let me know. If I'm online the chat box to the right will show my status, feel free to open a chat.

Welcome to SecondWynd's second wind...

Second Life: Camp Dreams ~ Building Competition ~ Part 2

The Camp Dreams: Camping RL Style in SL competition is in the last stage having entered the voting phase that ends this afternoon at 1:00pm (SLT/PDT). So if you haven't strolled though the campsites or voted yet, nows the time to do it.: Camping RL Style in SL competition is in the last stage having entered the voting phase that ends this afternoon at 1:00pm (SLT/PDT). So if you haven't strolled though the campsites or voted yet, nows the time to do it.

My entry is all ready, here I am making voting for my favorites, you'll have to guess which one cause I'm not telling you.My entry is all ready, here I am making voting for my favorites, you'll have to guess which one cause I'm not telling you.

See for yourself if you have a SecondLife account. There are a lot of very talented Residents in SecondLife and this is really a chance to see them at their best. I should say, I've only won honorable mention in the Dream competitions, and that is fine, its a chance to meet and greet, share building tips, or just hang out, with some of the best builders inSL.

As you can see by this last snapshot with my vote there are 151 Residents that have voted, each one of those squares is one camp site built by one person. By the way, a hint, when strolling though the campsites, take note of the builder's name. The voting board in in alphabetical order by first name which makes it easy to find your favorites. By the way, I'm on the bottom row. :)

You got two (2) hours left to stroll and Vote! DOIT!

Everything I know about Twitter I learned from @TheExpert

Though I have had a Twitter account for a while I never really got into it until finding myself jobless once again and looking for alternative ways to make a living and find jobs. 

Listening to the tail-end of KGO Talk Radio's Leo Laporte show and hearing him speak about using Twitter to network with people of like mind. Or something like that, like I said it was the tail end of the show.

I do not know how I started to follow @TheExpert, but it was love at first bubblesweet tweet of "Howya doin? I'm The Expert." I had found my mentor Twit.

Whatever you want to know about Twitter'ng you can find in @TheExpert's list of bubbletweets that I happen to find thanks to a Tweet of the greatest Twitter'r (Twit) I have met so far. He's like a celebrity without being one, or maybe he is one (sunglasses all the time, hrm). With his striking rugged good looks, resemblance to Jack Nicholson and biting Bronx Wit he is one shinning light at the end of the Twitter Tunnel.

So whatever you need to know in TwitterLand check out list of bubbletweets @TheExpert.

Some of my favorites Twitter educational @TheExpert bubbletweets are:

    * Why Celebrities Might Not Follow You Back 

    * How Do You Measure Up on Twitter? 

    * Been Unfollowed? Don't take it personally.

    * You're on Twitter: Watch your mouth ! 

    * Quick Impression: A Twitter Automated Direct Message 

    * The Definitive 'Twitter' Guide 

Then you have the general good advice bubbletweets:

    * Sing ... sing ... sing

    * Following / Unfollowing / Refollowing: Gimme a Break

    * Twittering: Learn to Identify These Three Birds

And just plain (how the heck does he do that) fun:

    * The Expert Reads Your Mind: Think of a Card

Also we have the Autobiography Tweet:

    *  What Makes an Expert an Expert

That's just a small sample of what's available for Twitter advice from one who knows, you go to find the rest of the treasures yourself. If  you don't follow anyone else you must follow @TheExpert.

By the by, who is @TheExpert anyway... Some comedian in disguise? Just someone's dad? Will we ever know? It's a Twitmystery.

~ Sweet Tweets & Sleep Sweet ~

SecondLife: To Bot or Not to Bot...

I was re-evaluating the software behind Nevermore the Bot checking out some of the options I had not studied yet. One is sim stats. Very handy for causal couriosity about how the sim is running when I'm not on. 

As you can see this model has some nice options. When you click on Graphs in the menu of the top most console, you get a lovely choice of sim statics for wherever the bot happens to be setup. 

It was interesting to see gaps in the stats when Nevermore was not logged in, system crash or SecondLife was down. What was really painful was the huge toothy gap from the end of February to the middle of March where I had issues with Earthlink and AT&T which caused my DSL to be down for 21 days. It's funny how they will not listen to the customer. I told them March 1st it was a bad phone line, it took 3 chats, too many calls to count to both Earthlink off shore support and AT&T to get the thing fixed. Then, then! both companies tried to charge me the fees as if it had been my fault. Nothing good comes without struggle it seems. So now I'm set for at least another 5 years, though the gap in the grapht below will remind me till that time next year.

This bot software comes powered by Pandora for it's AI and is customizable, which I  have not gotten around to changing to include knowledge about the band Forever's End. 

Even so it can carry on a interesting if cryptic at times conversations with passersby:

17:05: Nevermore TheBot: Hi there!
17:05: SimVisitor: aloha
17:06: Nevermore TheBot: Hi there!
17:06: SimVisitor : goodbye
17:06: Nevermore TheBot: TTYL, .
17:07: SimVisitor : can i sit on you?
17:07: Nevermore TheBot: No I don't think that would be a very good idea.
17:08: SimVisitor : oh, ok, sorry.
17:08: Nevermore TheBot: Awesome.  There's no need to apologize.  Hurrah!
17:08: SimVisitor : yay!
17:08: Nevermore TheBot: I'm glad your impressed, .
17:08: SimVisitor : are you impressed?
17:08: Nevermore TheBot: I don't know whether or not I am  impressed.  
I am  a chatterbot.
17:08: SimVisitor : good answer
17:08: SimVisitor : are you glad i'm impressed?
17:09: Nevermore TheBot: I am as delighted and happy as I ever was, .
17:09: Nevermore TheBot: Am I a clever robot or what?
17:09: SimVisitor : i haven't decided yet
17:09: Nevermore TheBot: Me either.

Not all bots are bad bots, some bots are chatterbots of very little brain. 

Second Life: Camp Dreams ~ Building Competition

One of the most interesting things about Second Life is the ability to express ones self by building and texturing objects. While building is relatively easy, it isn't easy for a newbie, or noob, to just step inworld and acquire the knowledge of prims (SL building blocks) instantly. 

A way to learn more quickly is to take advantage of the free classes available inworld. One of the locations of some of the best classes is at Dreams. A wonderful lady inworld and in real life, known as The Sojourner in Second Life, hosted the Dreams sim until her passing in real life May of last year. Since her passing I have not competed in the Dreams competitions mainly due to missing Soj. 

The last time I spoke to The Sojourner was at a winter building competition. I didn't think I would miss her, but every time I go into my inventory for textures, there sits directory after directory of Soj's textures, objects, notecards, everything she gave out free, to remind me of a lost most people would not understand.

What that brings me to is this, it is time to join the competition again, to honor her memory by participating in one of the events she loved. And to seal the deal, just as I paid for my building plot, Golda Stein, the caretaker of Dreams, was placing my name on the plate that marks my spot. 

I asked her if I could choose the font, but she had already chosen it for me. I said that was ok, sometimes it's best to give in to faith, serendipity is often a great muse... low and behold... what font did  Golda choose? The very font I had just selected a couple of weeks ago for future logos that involve me. 

As Wyn is my usual Internet ID, taken from the longer longtime netnick of Elwyndas, the W had to be well defined. At first I was going to choose something exotic, or handdrawn by me. Instead I went with a font common now on most systems of Vivaldi (which typepad doesn't support it seems). Golda chose that font, of the 200 some namefonts in her inventory she chose the one that most closely identifies me.

Now I'm not saying that I believe in ghosts, spirits or any other kind of mystical magick, well ok maybe I do somewhat, though one must admit that this is way seriously weird and wonderful in the realm of life, that things such as this happen it cannot be by accident or cawinkadink. 

I dedicate this competition, win or lose or draw, to The Sojourner who brought so much joy and laughter to this person's life. 

This is Camp Dreams, Part 1: First acquire a plot.

Second Life: This region will REALLY shut down in 30 seconds... Honest!?

The reports I get from Nevermore, the Bot @ Forever's End, Foyle Gully on the mainland of SecondLife, are sometimes very interesting and sometimes humorious. While checking the activity of the sim through the bot I found this IM'd message as the region was going through a rolling restart.

11:34: Second Life: Your region will start the restart process 5 minutes and 0 seconds for maintenance.  It will really restart 0-10 minutes after that.

11:36: Second Life: Your region will start the restart process 3 minutes and 0 seconds for maintenance.  It will really restart 0-10 minutes after that.

11:38: Second Life: Your region will start the restart process 1 minutes and 0 seconds for maintenance.  It will really restart 0-10 minutes after that.

11:39: Second Life: Your region will start the restart process 0 minutes and 30 seconds for maintenance.  It will really restart 0-10 minutes after that.

11:42: Second Life: This region will REALLY shut down in 30 seconds

Bots can be useful. ;) Nice to have Lindens with a sense of humor... made me giggle.

Wordle me this! SecondWynd...

While digging around in the TypePad backend of my blog I found a notices about Wordle and took it for a spin. The results are: 

Not bad, was fun to see what words seem to stand out in my blog. Wordle generates "word clouds" from the text you provide giving more importance to those words that appear frequently. 

You can put in your own list of words or a URL of a blog site. You can change the fonts, the colors and the layout of the 'cloud'. The site also gives you a word count so you can see what words you use the most, so check it out at Wordle . 

What exactly is Mythiculture?

I watched a TIVO'd CSI: Crime Scene Investigation - Episode 20: A Space Oddity 

A delightful tale about two of the CSIs from the crime lab that run into each other at a science fiction convention for one of their favorite classic television shows, AstroQuest. Neither of them knew the other was a "Quester" and they end up investigating a murder at the convention.

Of course it is totally a tongue in cheek take off on Star Trek: The Original Series. Puns and references were abundant much in the vein as those in Galaxy Quest, which had my brother and I rolling in the aisles at the theater when it was released.

In one of the scenes a character said they were researching the "... gestalt of SciFi mythicultures..." and I thought Mythicultures what the heck is that. 

So far I cannot seem to find a definition for the word mythiculture. There is mythic , "of or relating to myths; described in a myth; of the nature of a myth; fabulous; imaginary; fanciful." Such as in this quote:

"The mythic turf where danced the nymphs." --Mrs. Browning.

The meaning of cuture is "the quality in a person or society that arises from a concern for what is regarded as excellent in arts, letters, manners, scholarly pursuits,..." etc. Wandering down the definition page one finds "The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought." 

We have culture everywhere, not just from where we live, or how we live, it's in business, The cuture of Autodesk, for example, allows the employees to bring their dogs to work, as well as other small pets, within a certain structure.

So then, Mythiculture is what we have with Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galatica (both series), Babylon 5, Stargate, Dr Who, Firefly and all the other fabulous, imaginary and fanciful myths we tell ourselves in this day. One can actually apply some of those modern myths to our every day life such the 10 people in Scotland who list their religion as Jedi.

So now all the random knowledge this head holds about the mythology of all the above mentioned influences and unmentioned ones (like game mythiculture, Harry Potter, et al) is just that, mythology... or is it?

 

Postcards from the SLEdge

While pouring through the snapshots I have taken since I began my second life I realized that those with my avatar in them were much like postcards. Of course, when thinking of postcards I think of that wonderful book, and then movie, by Carrie Fisher of Star Wars and Blue Brothers fame. So when naming the album that holds samples of these 'snapshots' of my avatar and Second Life locations that I found interesting, the title screamed out at me and so is born the Second Life album -- Postcards from the SLedge.

Several of these snapshots were actually taken with fake backdrops at some open photography studio I stumbled on while exploring. Others are builds found in Second Life.

When I take snapshots I rarely jot down their locations or what and who they might be mainly because to do so seems to bind the serendipity of Second Life to the doom of no longer being a mystery and a surprise of discovery.

If you recognize some of the locations please feel free to comment about them. If you do not recognize the locations I am sorry that I cannot steer you towards them. Some may even not be around to be visited as things can change in Second Life as quickly as a thought.

On the back of each image imagine, "Thinking of you. Having a great time! Wish you were here. Love, Wyn*."