Update! - This turned out to be a billing confusion issue, and all was well with a few clicks this afternoon -- I was getting different errors last night, but I don't think there was any real outage this morning. Many apo-poly-logies for the false scare! (and to the Lindens that be :-)

Second Life blog is pretending it isn't happening, I guess...

Oh well, lots of backlogged Second Life stuff to blog about....

I'm thinking there's got to be some kind of land grab coming on for the land that used to be occupied by all those gambling casinos. Does anyone know anything about this?

Or will the Linden gods just make all that land "go away?" :-)

Meanwhile, in the real world,
one company's IPO is in a shambles, due to the turmoil on Second Life's economy from the gambling ban:
Crisis in Second Life Financial Sector Deepens

I'm starting to really dig Reuters' Second Life site.
(You can go there inworld, too.)

Here is the full text of the article in case the link goes bad:

http://secondlife.reuters.com/stories/2007/07/31/crisis-in-second-life-financial-sector-deepens/

Crisis in Second Life financial sector deepens
Tue Jul 31, 2007 9:07am PDT

By Adam Reuters

SECOND LIFE, July 31 (Reuters) - A gambling ban, insider theft at the World Stock Exchange and a bank run on Ginko Financial have combined to threaten confidence in the integrity of the Second Life financial sector.

The amount of money spent in-world each day plummeted from nearly US$2 million on Thursday, when the ban went into effect, to US$1.1 million on Tuesday (see chart, right).

The virtual world’s battered financial markets were thrown into more turmoil on Monday when Ginko Financial announced a new public offering and a plan to buy the AVIX stock exchange, all amid a severe cash shortfall at the bank.

Ginko Chief Executive Nicholas Portocarrero told a group of investors that Ginko’s public offering on the AVIX exchange would fund the purchase of AVIX itself, in a convoluted transaction that was not fully explained.

Portocarrero, who for the first time identified himself as Andre Sanchez of Sao Paulo, Brazil, is also the largest shareholder in the WSE’s parent company, Hope Capital.

After the contentious public meeting, the managers of AVIX backed away from the buyout and cancelled the IPO, leaving Ginko’s fate uncertain.

“Ginko Financial was supposed to buy one of Second Life’s stock exchanges, AVIX, using money from an IPO that was to be held on, you guessed it, AVIX,” wrote Benjamin Duranske, who has extensively covered the ongoing crisis on his Virtually Blind blog.

“It didn’t happen. Why not? Because lot of smart people who understand finance, law, and ethics showed up to explain why that wasn’t going to work and ask some very hard questions,” Duranske added. “As a direct result, Ginko no longer has an IPO on AVIX, and is, apparently left to drown on its own.”

Portocarrero said during the investor meeting that he could not predict when the bank’s funding crisis would be resolved, according to several transcripts of the event.

“I do not have an estimate as to when the liquidity crunch will end,” he said. “It is in great part, out of my control.”

So now that the grid's back up, I thought you might like this little movie I made of me on a mediation ball located somewhere high over my land.

I tried to go back and find it later but I couldn't. I only found it because Losta Hax teleported me over there after he had parachuted down to it from some higher location.


That's just the very first few seconds of Hepepe's Lisa and Me as the soundtrack.

Update! - Back up as of 11:49 PST.

Second Life A-Z

Second Life Step by Step

Second Life Utilities (SLUTS) A-Z

All hell is breaking loose in Second Life!

For a couple of different reasons at this point, Second Life was pretty chaotic yesterday, and now is down altogether, as of 10:31am PST.

Yesterday morning, I logged in this morning to a bunch of people who logged in to some dark location, unable to teleport elsewhere.

The teleportation system went down sometime after 8pm PST Sunday night. (I say that because I seemed to be teleporting around fine before that time, when I logged off and went into meatspace for an hour or so. When I returned, I was editing video, and didn't try to get back on and move around till after 11pm...)

It was then that I and others noticed that we couldn't move around how we wanted. Anymore. You would select where you wanted and click on "teleport" and... nothing would happen.

Here's one fix for getting around the teleportation problem.

Second Life A-Z

Summary: This post describes and shows picture of a beach ball that is self-replicating as an example of one form of out of control object that, combined with many others like it, could constitute a type of "grid attack" within Second Life. This event happened on Saturday, July 28, 2007.

I was already writing this up before I read about how grid attacks were taking out Second Life (Here's the SL Blog on the subject.)

Here's a more informative link about the nature of these attacks, actually.

Anyway it's even more relevant now that this all seems like it could be part of the same larger grid attack.

So here's Losta Hax's story...

Losta was vehicle shopping over at Abbotts Aerodrome, when he noticed about 7 or 8 beach balls sort of rolling around behind him.

They seemed sort of out of place there on the landing strip, and he was thinking they must have rolled over from the property next door or something.

He turned his back on them for a moment, and went back to shopping (more on the lovely vehicles he bought and how he learned to operate them later). When he turned back around to look at the balls, there were three or four times as many, and he could see them "popping into existence," one after the other.

Soon, he was standing in a pile of beach balls, and had to fly up to escape them.

A little more explanation - for newcomers as yet unfamiliar with "grid attacks"

One example of a "Grid Attack" is a program that causes objects to replicate without end, (much like a Denial of Service attack takes up a website's resources, causing it to crash).

Were Second Life's resources to be genuinely used up, simply by the sheer numbers of people legitimately using the site, it would be sort of a Slashdot effect for Second Life. (Rather than a D.O.S. attack, in which programs, rather than people, request a site's web pages over and over again, in a non-legitimate fashion.)

So there are a number of different threads of my second life research that are all finally coming together now. Many of them parallel to my first life research :-)

Flying Around In Second Life

Education
One key theme is education. There's a lot of learning going on in Second LIfe, despite the system's inherent technical limitations when a bunch of people congregate in the same space and start moving around and doing things. (Oh, so much more on this soon!)

Software Development and Design
Second LIfe Utilities (SLUTs) - are all the little software applications being written for and to be used within and around Second Life. So far we have two different Twitter integration apps, for example, SL Twitter and Squawk.

Another cool site/application is Sloog.com - SLUT for tagging people, places and objects in Second Life. More on this soon, but for now, just go here and touch the display to add it to your inventory.

"Slogging"
Blogging about Second Life is gaining traction all the time. I blog about everything I do, so blogging about Second Life is just a natural progression of that. Now I see I'm not the only one (and hardly the first) - I look forward to learning more about the slogging community and will start an index for it soon like everything else.

More and more people are vlogging their Second Life experiences, but most of these movies still don't come out very well. I've been working hard to make some cool movies in order to share my experiences with you.

Art Galleries
I've always been the artsy fartsy type, although I never finish any of my art films to date, and haven't even bothered yet to get any of my arty shots or my rock and roll photography online. (I've been a photorapher/videographer since I was about 14.) I'm getting excited about all the opportunities for artists in Second Life.

Museums and Libraries
My original pet project in all this was connecting together all the Museums and Libraries in Second Life. I've been talking to a lot of cool museum curators and librarians and there seems to be significant interest and enthusiasm for my doing so.

Virtual Real Estate
Yup. You're right. This one's a new interest. I cared not about real estate until I wanted to buy some in Second Life and encountered obstacle after obstacle. Now I'm bent on finding a way to make the process easier for people, and starting to keep track of everything I'm learning about this space.

Summary: Here's how you can change your preferences to give you a chance to specify your "Region" ahead of time, before you log in. This way, you can still move around manually - logging in and logging out - until the teleporting functionality is fixed.

Second Life A-Z

Second Life Step by Step

Second Life UTilities (SLUTS) A-Z

So, as I'm about to explain in more detail shortly, all hell is breaking loose in Second Life today, for a combination of reasons (grid attacks due to the usual exploits, reaction to last weeks' gambling shutdown (displaced users needing somewhere to go), and the system still recovering from its shakeup after the power outage in San Francisco last week).

I logged in today to a bunch of users on my IM logging into a dark area and unable to teleport out.

Currently, everyone's having a hard time teleporting around because the system is so overloaded.

But I've been able to get around okay because, earlier today, Devlon Duthie (SL-Losta Hax) found this handy work around so you can at least teleport to the region that you wish. So I thought I'd better share it with you.

1. Click on the "Preferences" button on your web login screen.

2. At the very top of your "Preferences" window, check the "Show Start Location on Login Screen" checkbox.

(You'll also want to have the "Always" radio button selected underneath it, but that seems to be the default.)

Here's how the bottom of your login screen looks before you make the change, and how it will look after right after you've changed checked the "Show Start Location on Login Screen" in your "Preferences."

Before

After

3. Where it says "Start Location:" and currently "My Home," select the drop down menu and change it to "<Type Region Name>."

4. Select the text, type in the name of the region you wish, and click "Connect."

Wow! It's been a long time since I've been over to CC Mixter!

They've been as busy as ever over there, creating a bunch of great new remixes using my Hepepe and Me acapella track.

MC Jackinthebox, one of my favorites, created a CC Chickster track using samples from many of the CC Mixter female vocal staples.

Then I find out that Hepepe created a new song using the acapella track that I originally added to his song (Hepepe and me), Byrd of Cool. He created a completely different track and called it:
Lisa and Me.

How cool is that?!

I've been fishing around in CC Mixter because I'm in the process of editing together a ton of Second Life videos, and I needed music for them.

As usual, ten minutes over at CC Mixter and I'm all set for soundtracks!

Oh yeah, this Dr. GoldKlang remix rocks too... (And it mixes me with death metal vocals, which I totally dig :-)

More info here.

There's an interesting collection of old friends (and one new one) at this event Tuesday night, so I'm gonna try to make it.

I've known RU for years before we ever started working together (via Ron Turner at Last Gasp, who published the graphic novel I edited for Timothy Leary -- Link to phone message from him about the book that I love to link to :)

Recently, I co-hosted an RU Sirius show last October with guest Dan the Automator w/RU and Jeff Diehl -- and also produced the Songs From the Commons Podcasts from 2006 for RU's Mondoglobo.net.

Meanwhile, I just reconnected with Howard Rheingold last week, after about 4 years (!) and took a nice walk out on Mt. Tamalpias, and talked about Second Life, Twitter and Facebook for two hours (and inspired Howard to increase his twittering i think :-)

BoingBoing's David Pescovitz I know well from the old days with Cory when he lived here in San Francisco, and thus I have not seen David for years - so I can't wait to...and...

Jamais Cascio has been a great twitter friend for a few weeks now that I look forward to finally meeting in person...

Let's see if I can make it out of my cave Tuesday night!

See you there!

Steve Woolf twittered about this today -- and I'm with him, as he asks "what the hell is it with people lately?"

Well first of all, we're just talking about one guy over at the Hollywood Reporter, so let's not just write off the whole industry with one stupid article...

(Sidenote: And I'm not saying Steve was doing that - I'm mentioning that because that was kinda my own first response to this article. Kind of like a "fuck hollywood anyway if they don't get it" kinda thing. And that's not fair, because more and more people in Hollywood do get it lately -- so after a few deep breaths. I realized what was wrong with "people" lately -- making these kinds of comments about how videoblogging hasn't met some kind of corporate expectations...)

It's not that there's something wrong with this writer or people thinking like him. They just don't get it, and frankly, they're sick of trying. Things shouldn't be this complicated in the Entertainment industry. They haven't been before, right? It's not like the transition from radio to television displaced any entertainers or anything...or from silent pictures to the talkies...

The point is, they just can't wrap their heads around the videoblogging community. They don't get us. They don't get why we do why we do? Why we want to make money, sure, but we're kinda not willing to do stupid shit for it. And we need not just prefer to be creative - which means one episode of our vlog might be totally different than the last one, or the one coming next - and that's part of the beauty of it -- and that leads to more viewers, not less, in the long run, and provides a richer base for more content of better quality for biz to then pilfer from in the long run.

Even this guy contradicts himself in his own article a little - showing that he is starting to understand a little about what it's all about - when he says: "What we didn't understand about UGC is that it usually isn't entertainment, but communication. The average Joe isn't trying to outdo JibJab; he is simply expressing himself to his friends via video."

Hey dude, what about expressing yourself to your friends in an entertaining video that actually does build on some common joke or theme from the last episode of somebody else's Show Xyz? (which was, of course, a remix parody of something else.)

It is precisely these types of interlocking narrative storylines that weave their way through the videoblogging community that at first inspire before ultimately perplexing the current batch of entertainment moguls. When one or two of them figure it out and come around - providing a model for the others - the transition will take place.

Oh yeah - and we've even been reduced to an ackronym now: "UGC" (User Generated Content).

You know it's a good thing this article sets it all straight for me. When I saw Tyson, the skateboarding dog, on the iPhone commercial last week, I almost thought user generated content had made it into the mainstream!

(Update - oh wow - it's tillman the skateboarding dog -- no wonder he didn't look as snazzy as Tyson usually does.)

Ok here's the article by By Andrew Wallenstein for the Hollywood Reporter:

Net's Amateur Hour Lasted About That Long

Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of user-generated content as a phenomenon.

There was a time not that long ago when UGC seemed poised to topple Hollywood, as if anyone with a video camera and a Web connection was deemed a budding Steven Spielberg. But ask yourself this: When was the last time an amateur viral video actually reached viral status?

Remember Lonelygirl15, the Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments and Ask a Ninja? It's not easy to forget the Web darlings of yesteryear because few homemade videos have taken their place. Although the soda has long fizzled from those carbonated geysers, these videos still are regarded as the standard bearers for UGC, which is telling.

This past week, there were a few developments that amounted to multiple nails getting pounded into UGC's coffin...

Now that the bloom is off the rose of amateur online video, what might have struck millions as a novelty last year doesn't feel as fresh anymore. Videos that once commanded the attention of thousands or millions likely will just be sampled by hundreds.

The main reason the UGC boom went bust so quickly is that advertisers never embraced it. Few brands are going to associate their products with one-off sensations in the Wild West of the Internet...

On a volume basis, UGC may well outnumber its professional counterpart. But while more people are consuming online video -- three out of four Internet users did so in May, according to new data from comScore Video Metrix -- they likely are consuming infinitely more videos, as opposed to gravitating to a select few.

What we didn't understand about UGC is that it usually isn't entertainment, but communication. The average Joe isn't trying to outdo JibJab; he is simply expressing himself to his friends via video.

The paucity of Internet-bred hits has taught us something obvious: Talent isn't as pervasive as it might seem. Although so-called new-media experts fell in love with the notion that the Hollywood elite would have the playing field leveled by the consumers they so poorly serve, that hasn't happened.

In retrospect, 2006 feels less like a changing of the guard and more like a brief moment when Hollywood and Madison Avenue were caught flat-footed by the opportunities for Internet distribution and regular folks stepped into the vacuum. But a year later, UGC has slunk back to obscurity. UGC hasn't left the Internet, but it isn't as popular as it was when it had the playground to itself.

Here is the full text of the entire article in case the link goes bad:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/search/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003612987

Net's amateur hour lasted about that long
By Andrew Wallenstein

July 18, 2007
Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to mourn the passing of user-generated content as a phenomenon.

There was a time not that long ago when UGC seemed poised to topple Hollywood, as if anyone with a video camera and a Web connection was deemed a budding Steven Spielberg. But ask yourself this: When was the last time an amateur viral video actually reached viral status?

Remember Lonelygirl15, the Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments and Ask a Ninja? It's not easy to forget the Web darlings of yesteryear because few homemade videos have taken their place. Although the soda has long fizzled from those carbonated geysers, these videos still are regarded as the standard bearers for UGC, which is telling.

This past week, there were a few developments that amounted to multiple nails getting pounded into UGC's coffin.

Look at the fate of leading viral outposts like Break.com, which Lionsgate took an unspecified stake in July 11, or Grouper, which Sony Corp. acquired and rebranded this week as Crackle with a new arm for in-house original content creation. These sites saw their financial future in strapping on the feedbag of professional studio product, not the free buffet that is UGC.

Or look at the July 12 launch of 60Frames Entertainment, a venture dedicated to linking professional content creators with online opportunities linked to advertising and syndication. Its new CEO is Brett Weinstein, the former digital chief at UTA, where he made his mark scouring the Internet for new talent, even setting up a channel on Veoh Networks for just that purpose. The fruits of those efforts have yet to be made apparent.

Now that the bloom is off the rose of amateur online video, what might have struck millions as a novelty last year doesn't feel as fresh anymore. Videos that once commanded the attention of thousands or millions likely will just be sampled by hundreds.

The main reason the UGC boom went bust so quickly is that advertisers never embraced it. Few brands are going to associate their products with one-off sensations in the Wild West of the Internet.

Ask yourself what was the most viral online video that graced your monitor in past months? The only candidate that comes to mind is "The Landlord," Will Ferrell's hilarious foray into online video via new site FunnyorDie.com. "Landlord" couldn't offer a bigger example of how the tide has turned away from the amateurs to the same forces that dominate film and television.

On a volume basis, UGC may well outnumber its professional counterpart. But while more people are consuming online video -- three out of four Internet users did so in May, according to new data from comScore Video Metrix -- they likely are consuming infinitely more videos, as opposed to gravitating to a select few.

What we didn't understand about UGC is that it usually isn't entertainment, but communication. The average Joe isn't trying to outdo JibJab; he is simply expressing himself to his friends via video.

The paucity of Internet-bred hits has taught us something obvious: Talent isn't as pervasive as it might seem. Although so-called new-media experts fell in love with the notion that the Hollywood elite would have the playing field leveled by the consumers they so poorly serve, that hasn't happened.

In retrospect, 2006 feels less like a changing of the guard and more like a brief moment when Hollywood and Madison Avenue were caught flat-footed by the opportunities for Internet distribution and regular folks stepped into the vacuum. But a year later, UGC has slunk back to obscurity. UGC hasn't left the Internet, but it isn't as popular as it was when it had the playground to itself.

Me at the Second Life Salsa Party - They're line dancing!

Ok it just happened! Something I'd only dreamed of just a few weeks ago:

I was literally twittered in first life about a party going on in real time in second life. So I clicked on the slurl that was provided in the twitter post, and was teleported to the Salsa party.

(Well yeah, and I had to close SL first to get it to work, because that just seems to be the norm with slurls these days. The "secondlife://" links that go direct seem to work more often than the slurls, but still not often enough. And I find myself having to close SL for whatever doesn't otherwise take to take in the Mapping/teleport process. - That's why this goes under quick tips too.)

This kind of SL/web integration is what I've been waiting for for so many reasons...where do i begin? :-)

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Iladil/167/227/72

I'll put up a little movie I made of it tonight.

But right now, on a more personal note, I must work on some actual paying Second Life consulting work. The transition is complete..w00t!

That's why the a-z index is slow coming together...but it's coming. Don't you worry. It's coming :-)

Squawk is here - twitter/SL.

I've wanted this so bad I almost tried to do it myself a couple of weeks ago with a friend of mine -- but we decided to build some other sl stuff instead...

Note that I think the Facebook/SL integration is a result of the Facebook/Twitter integration. Which is just plain beautiful (though I haven't implemented it yet, several of my buds have, and all say it works great...)

But my point is that Facebook got Second Life integration "for nothing."
(Just from having open apis, i mean!) And look what it got them!

here's one post on it. I'll discuss in more detail shortly. Just wanted to start this "tidbits" category, so I can let you know about things in a more timely manner -- instead of waiting a day or two to attach a write-up to it.

I'll also go back through here every week or so and make sure I follow up on the tidbits and link to them properly from the a-z.

I have no idea if squawk thing works yet. Trying to get to it! Seems to be working for others though.

Places to learn about and practice creating objects

Come Visit Me In My Metaverse Playpen In Second Life
Teleport


A Little On Public Sandboxes In Second Life
Teleport

Ok so some of you may have noticed that there's a Second Life A-Z Index kicking around, but I've been kind of hedging on its existence because it wasn't until late yesterday that I figured out how the indexes are going to best fit together.

So basically, I still need this external document, but it will still link, for the most part, back to blog posts *of indexes* of things. Like the one I just put up for "Places to Go Practice with Objects."

(Note just saying hi to the two or three people on the planet that this level of detail is of interest to.
You rule. The four of us should get together some time. Now back to the rest of the world :-)

Now where was I? Ahem. Yes, so anyway. I think I've figured it out and that's why I've been dinking around on announcing it. I've been sneaking links to it into old posts, so I don't forget to do that later. But it really didn't feel like anything worth announcing until it had some meat on its bones. (And I've got a freezer full!) (no offense to you veggies! I have um. tofu in the freezer too!)

So now I've had a nice sleep, where I remember having a nice dream about my new information architecture, and "how interesting...this *does* seem to fit in there" and, "why yes, I wondered about that too, and I just happen to have a little list of how to fix that right over he-are."

And then I awoke, because it was just a dream. And I, of course, won't know for a week or two if mine's even going to work. But it will be fun trying.

Me parachuting in Second Life

See I'm not always complaining about movies, sometimes I just can't get enough of them.

Such is the case with 12 Monkeys.

Bruce Willis, Madeline Stowe, Brad Pitt, yeah yeah yeah, but also incredible to look at, so many things going on, I notice new ones every time I watch it. Great plot. Great script.

Also can be a great party movie because all the scenes are interesting on their own -- even if you don't watch through the whole thing -- and would look up on a big screen if you just wanted something to loop through the night.
(Every single scene is fantastic to look at and will look great large screen.)

Plus it's a great movie in the classic hollywood sense! Classic intrigue and intense character development!

Ok i gotta get back to work!

Just don't miss it :-)

So I've been watching a ton of movies while I've been working on the repetitive task portions of the project I've been working on non-stop these past few weeks, and I'm getting the urge to start doing reviews again...but sometimes they're going to be kinda short, like this one for
Blood Diamond, which I had to shut off after 27 minutes.

What's wrong with it? Boring, bad dialogue, stupid characters, actors trying to seem interested in the boring cliched script....zzzzzz....click!

As I mentioned earlier, I found out the hard way that buying land isn't that easy, and provides a quick barrier to entry when you're trying to jump in and experiment with objects right away. That's why I created my Metaverse Playpen.

But I wanted to step back a minute and talk about the public sandboxes (Teleport Now), because they are very useful and entertaining places to visit for lots of reasons.

They're fun in a Mad Maxxy kind of way. There are explosions and funny noises going off everywhere. People running into you for no reason, and just scuttling away. Intimidating messages being broadcast from Big Brother overhead. The whole nine yards.

I'm working on finding a movie, or making a new one of it.

So sandboxes are fun, but they're a little crowded, and made me want a sandbox of my own.

Me at the public sandbox

To my right are three open windows that you use a lot in SL:

1) Friends - how you see who's online and send them messages and object using their "profile" window

2) Build - how you create, modify, and program objects.

3) IM - how you communicate privately (There is also a public "chat" window where everyone in the room can "see" what you are saying. The chat window is often also used to communicate with objects you've created.)

Second Life A-Z

My 'Metaverse Playpen' (go there)

Okay! Time to start telling my tale of Second Life.

I've been sitting on all this information for far too long, but I just wanted to make sure that I had really thought about it well enough and was able to restructure the information in such a way that would be most useful to everyone.

Today I start posting and indexing and hopefully things will start to self organize a bit.

It's taken me two weeks to figure out that it's just too hard to start from the beginning, so I'll have to back track from time to time -- to fill in the backstory and such.

So let's start off with the land I finally leased successfully! That was an adventure in itself, let me tell you. (Another day - but the story will be linked to from here...)

Let this post serve as a formal and open-ended invitation to come experiment in my Metaverse Playpen. (Teleport Now)

I've left the permissions open, so it's basically my own "sandbox," for those of you who know what that is. "Sandboxes" are public land where you can experiment with building and programming objects. Otherwise, you have to own your own land to do so. (If still don't understand quite yet, no worries -- you'll know in a minute, because it's the subject of the next post.)

I tend to leave my Second Life window open like my IM window or my twitter window - so I should hear you if you come online and slIM (second life IM) me or something. (It will become important later to distinguish between a Second Life IM window (slIM) and a "regular" IM window, AIM, yahoo, whatever later...which is the only reason I make this distinction now.)

I tend to be in there paying more attention at night after 10pm, but if you'd like to meet in world at another time, just ask.

There isn't a lot there right now. I have a little furniture and some example objects for you to use as examples for the learning assignments I'm putting together.

Second Life A-Z

I've set up a
June 10, 2007 blog category so you can see the all the songs in one place. Zips available soon too...

Special thanks to a friend of mine that talked me into including this song in my set.
(You know who you are :-)

I almost pulled it the day before -- and it ended up being one of the best songs of the night.

MP3 (3 MB)

Quicktime File (11 MB)

IPOD file - M4V (15 MB)

Slipping Away
Words by Lisa Rein - Music by Lisa Rein and Ron Taylor
As Performed and Played by Lisa Rein June 10, 2007

Lately, I can't seem to unwind
I'd put my feet in the air
But there's too much on my mind
And I'm just
Traveling with my face in a jar
I got one foot in the door
And things are fine how they are

But sometimes I think
I got it made in the shade
And then, starts a feeling like it's slipping away
In my mind

But everything seems ok
Everything seems ok

Dying
I'm dying to win
And I'll be killing myself
To be born over again
Are you lying?
I ain't too sure who you are
You're just a traveling salesman with your face in a jar

It's always when I think that something's coming my way
Then I get that funny feeling like it's slipping away
For the last time

But everything seems ok
Everything seems ok
Yeah

It's always when I think that something's coming my way
Then I get that funny feeling that it's slipping away
In my mind

But everything seems ok
Everything seems ok
Yeah everything seems ok
Everything seems ok
Yeah everything

Creative Commons Attribution License

Alright, all my hard drives are completely filled up with video I've taken the time to prepare to blog, and never blogged. (DOH!)

Now I have to throw this stuff up...and quickly. Or forget about it for the time being. (eeek! noooo!)

So I'm gonna try to have a slinging hash video day - where I'm just throwing stuff up without much else.

I might end up going back later and filling stuff in. It will depend.

There's just been so much going on so quickly. I've been able to document it all accordingly to explain to you, but haven't had time to organize it and get it up. This last week, I did get it organized, just still haven't put it up. Now...it's a goin up!

more later... for now.... another song from June 10!

Here's a video from my video blogging week on using Animations for dancing in second life.
I'm putting it up here for archival purposes - to link to it from my a-z index....

Lots of stuff going up today that still needs to be linked together a fair amount, so bear with me...

In today’s movie, David Meade and I “getdown” a bit, while I learn about collecting animations in to my “Inventory.”

First Ryce starts dancing, and asks me to join him, and I tell him I don’t know how to dance with him. So he sends me an animation, which I accept and then double click on in my inventory to activate.

Ryce sends me an “animation” called “getdown,” so I can dance with him.

David Meade (Ryce Broderick) does a handstand while we’re Dancing

I used cdk’s “Beat” as a soundtrack, from CC Mixter.

Please visit us at David Meade’s Second Life Pad:
Teleport Now
- http://slurl.com/secondlife/Gyeongju/106/166/73

(Note, I originally wrote this for the mefeedia blog. For completeness, since I have learned that things go away sometimes when you don't host them, I republished it here :)

I've set up a
June 10, 2007 blog category so you can see the all the songs in one place. Zips available soon too...

MP3 (4 MB)

Quicktime File (17 MB)

IPOD file - M4V (21 MB)

Tyrant
Words and Music by Lisa Rein
As Performed June 10, 2007

There's a tyrant coming soon
Thinking 'bout the afternoon
There's a monster that you love
There's an angel

There's a monster coming soon
There's a tyrant
And it's you
Tell me what you gonna do about it

Oh there's a place I used to know
Things would come and things would go on around me

Like I wasn't there at all
Saw the writing on the wall
Guess I didn't see you fall away

There's a monster in the dark
There's a ghost in central park
Tell me who you really are
I ask you

Oh there's a place I used to know
Things would come and things would go right around me
Oh won't you come on out and play
Don't leave me alone today

Tell me what you gonna do?
There's a tyrant and it's you
There's a guilded golden cage
There's that face won't go away

You've been lying to yourself
Ain't been listen to the bells
No more stories left to tell that matter

Tyrant in your head
Curled up next to you in your bed
There's a memory in your mind
Slipping through the sands of time
There's a jingle in your head
Of everything you never said
Tell me
What you gonna do about it?

Creative Commons Attribution License

Hey if you're in San Francisco, there's a
Nerd Salon going on this Tuesday night from 6-9:30 pm at 111 Minna.

The events have been arranged by Jennifer Granick (www.granick.com) and Annalee Newitz (www.annaleenewitz.com)
-- two of my favorite nerds!

This week's guest is "The circuit board stylings of Matt Ettus (www.ettus.com), who will be doing a live demo of GNU Radio, the open source software-defined radio project (www.gnu.org/software/gnuradio)."

Description from upcoming website: "Come out and have a drink with people who won't make fun of you for hacking, hating on DRM, copyfighting, discursing on public policy, building nuclear reactors in your garage, reading science fiction, working in a bookstore, arguing about open source software, collecting Buffy dolls, dancing with robots, blogging and/or podcasting, lusting after the iPhone, or getting excited about the new Hulk comic book."

K cya there prolly!

This is the first of many interviews from the incredible CHI 2007 conference I went to last May. More on all that later. Let's get started! I have a ton of interviews to get up here...and they all tie back in to my Second Life research, and my continued interest in technologies that help us improve our lives and help us learn.
(CHI 2008 is in Florence, Italy -- see you there!)

Blue Tuna Website

Interview part 1 of many with:

Stephan Baumann
Head of Competence Center Computational Culture at the
German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence

Quicktime (7 MB)

IPOD version (M4V 9 MB)

MP3 (2MB)

Transcription:

Me: So tell me about Blue Tuna.

Stephan: Blue Tuna is a new kind of application where you can share your music tastes with people near by. So it's like augmenting First Life. Having a First Life again. Meeting people who share the same music tastes. That's a great socializer I think. So if you are a little bit shy, and want to get into a conversation, you could check with a mobile phone to see who in a close proximity has my tastes, and then you could walk up and have coffee or beer and talk about music and...yeah whatever.

Me: And how can you tell that this user will have similar tastes to the other users, and stuff like that?

Stephan: Ah ok. So, when you MP3s on your mobile phone -- with the new generation of cell phones, this will be no problem -- We can read out the ID3 tags, so the song name, the artist name, the title name. This is part of it. And another thing is that we could connect to these socal bookmarking music sites, such as Last.fm, and there you can track down the profile of your listening behavior to get an even richer profile. And then we compute a kind of similarity match based on how many artists are in common between two people...how many related artists are in common...This is pretty straightforward.

The first time I tried this ice cream, I kinda ate a half pint of it without stopping.

The cone always was the best part of an ice cream cone. How brilliant to break it up, cover it with chocolate, and throw it in with some caramel.

(Shhhh. No worries Steven, my love -- I won't jeopardize your marriage by sitting on your lap like that brazen hussy Jane Fonda did -- we can play footsie under the table during the interview while no one's watching :-)

A little double of political ditties just in time for the 4th!

A perfect bitter pair of tunes on what it feels like to be an American today...

I've set up a
June 10, 2007 blog category so you can see the all the songs in one place. Zips available soon too...

MP3 (4 MB)

Quicktime File (17 MB)

IPOD file - M4V (21 MB)

James Brown Died on Christmas/Improving
Words and Music by Lisa Rein
As Performed June 10, 2007

James Brown died on christmas
They found him in the morning
It came without a warning

It seems like only last december
I was looking up his police record
To settle a trivial family battle

And I don't mean no disrespect
And I'm not saying anything at all
Cause nothing's ever written on the wall
But I hope that he's in a better place
In a better place

It was the first thing I heard on christmas morning
I saw it on the tele
It was a holiday of tragedy and tyranny

When only a few days later
We were hanging a dictator
As a symbol of democracy

And I'm not saying anything
Cause no one's even listening anymore
And there's not much I really know for sure
But I know that he's in a better place
In a better place

(Improving starts here)

Cut off the power lines my friend
Shut off the water too
The benefits will never end
When we're done bringing this to you

We're just improving
improving yeah yeah yeah
improving
improving yeah yeah yeah

Kill off your family one by one
but we'll give you some rights when we're all done
yeah
It's such a drag
but it's not us!
If you can tough it out
You'll make it.

improving
improving yeah yeah yeah
improving
improving yeah yeah yeah

improving
improving yeah yeah yeah
improving
improving yeah yeah yeah
yeah yeah yeah

Creative Commons Attribution License

I've totally always wondered to myself about the guys running the UPS stores on their own...it must be a running joke amongst them...or this video wouldn't be so funny.

Thanks Michael.

Just UPSin' It

I think it's simon frankson - but it's hard to tell from the Vimeo interface!

This song's not about anyone in particular. Just a feeling. I think we've all been there :-)

I've set up a
June 10, 2007 blog category so you can see the all the songs in one place.

MP3 (4 MB)

Quicktime File (15 MB)

IPOD file - M4V (19 MB)

No More Of You
Words and Music by Lisa Rein
As Performed June 10, 2007

Great to see ya baby
ya know it's been a long long time
Got a minute baby?
I got something on my mind

Seems like I should be kissing you
the whole night through
and now you'll never know the things
that i was gonna do
and it's making me blue
that I ain't getting no more of you
it's making me blue
that I ain't getting no more of you

Thinking bout cha lately
seems you're always on my brain
I try to find some piece of mind
but it's driving me insane

So say it isn't over
even if it isn't true
cause there don't seem to be no way of getting over you
and it's making me blue
that I ain't getting no more of you

So tell me that you love me
even if it's not true
cause i just wanna hear it one more time
and I wanna hear it from you
it's making me blue
that I ain't getting no more of you
it's making me blue
that I ain't getting no more of you

it's making me blue
that I ain't getting
no more of
you

Creative Commons Attribution License

Jay Dedman was twittering about wanting people to spread the word about Political Video.org -- a cool new George W. mash-up site.

They have a raging, searchable archive of G.W. in action!

Go there and see...

archive of songs from this show.

Update! - New! MP3 of this song:

MP3 (4 MB)

Quicktime File (14 MB)

IPOD file - M4V (18 MB)

Last Digression
Words and Music by Lisa Rein
As Performed June 10, 2007

In my mind
In my head
I can't seem to find
the answers to my questions
I can see them
I can hear in their direction
through the darkness
and the madness
and the emptyness
getting closer to
a vacuum-filled unconsciousness
a false impression
of my very last digression

by my side
in your bed
you will never find
the secret to your laughter
and you don't seem to mind
that you cannot find an answer
to the darkness and the madness
ad the emptyness
getting closer to the memory
of your consciousness
a fool's procession towards your very last

digression
a confession in my mind
to your lighter side
that's hiding all the answers

second chances
heavy breathers breathing one last breath
surrounded
confounded by the sounding of a warning
a confession
vivisection of your memories
and they seduce me

Creative Commons Attribution License

archive of songs from this show.

This one's called "Futurama." I just wrote it a few weeks ago.
Update 07-02-07. New! MP3 available:

MP3 (4 MB)

I'm trying to figure out how to generate mp3s easily...Now that stupid Itunes generates mp4s instead of mp3's from my .mov clips (like it used to - quite conveniently).
Update: 7/02/07 - just decided to extract audio in iMovie and then use itunes...

I'll set up another blog post with the whole show in it too...

Quicktime File (16 MB)

IPOD file - M4V (21 MB)

Futurama
Words and Music by Lisa Rein
As performed at Ireland's 32, June 10, 2007

You, must think I'm a fool
I wanna reach over and tell you something

You I barely know you
and now you got me here sitting and staring at nothing

Well I don't know what's happening
But I know that something is
And I don't know what the future will bring
But it's bringing something for me

You, don't know about you
ya you're just over there working
making something from nothing

You, feels like I know you
Though it couldn't be true
I only know one thing

That I don't know what's happening
But I know that something is
And I may not know what the future may bring
But it's bringing something for me
Something for me

Creative Commons Attribution License

Ok so if I haven't mentioned it already - I'm going social networking happy.

There are a number of reasons for this sudden change in opinion of these thinggies. But I have become strangely caught up in it all as of late. Since I'm actually locating old friends etc., as a result of using these technologies, I think I'm starting to drink the koolaide a bit.

(And I was just being a crank earlier, badmouthing them all, let me tell you...As my friend Lilia can attest to :-)

But I digress...

I actually started this post with a question for you rather than a rant about my new attitude towards social networking technologies -- How do I configure this stuff?

For instance, in the post below, it only shows one of my twitters at a time, although there seems to be room for more.

Here's another flash app I've pasted below. I guess I need to twitter on my Facebook page now....so here I go...