I went back again last night and visited some more of the installations (there are really too many things there to see in the span of one evening.)
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This week is the seventh anniversary of the Second Life virtual world. To mark this anniversary, they are holding a seventh “birthday” party (SL7B) with a large collection of exhibits created by many of the Second Life “residents,” as they are called. The installations are like much of Second Life itself shrunk down to a small island: strange, whimsical, serious, deep, and banal… they run the gamut. I have an on-again/off-again interest in this world, but one of the things that draws me back is the creativity so many of its users show, and much of that is on showcase now.
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Despite the efforts of the universe, particularly in the form of school children at the California Academy of Sciences (at least one of whom was carrying a simply delightful cold virus), I am still alive.
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Ok. So, it would seem it has been a while since I last posted anything here… certainly nothing since Georgie died. It has been an eventful few months, but I will only mention a couple of things here.
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I don’t know how many of you reading this blog knew her, but my rabbit Georgie died this morning. Most of you for whom I am keeping this blog (my friends and family, really) will have met her at some point or other… although some of you have not. Also, I’m sure there are people reading this whom I’ve never actually met. Regardless, many of you will not know what she has been going through the past few months.
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Posted in Bunnies, Death, Life
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This has nothing to do with anything, but I just thought I would share:
One of my absolute favorite columns published on the web is Salon’s Ask the Pilot, written by Patrick Smith. The author is a professional airline pilot, and he answers reader mail about flying and the airline industry. I find the column to be a fascinating read. The airline industry is fairly opaque to the typical flying customer: we get caught in delays, and we don’t know why; we are told we can’t use our electronics, and we don’t know why (or don’t buy the explanation); we encounter many things that strike us as odd, and we just don’t understand. Flying is a complicated business for so many reasons (some good, some bad), and Mr. Smith’s column gives a well written glimpse into this business through the eyes of at least one insider. If you fly at all and have ever wondered why some crazy thing is the way it is, have a look at his column.
Oh… and he also posts links to really cool pictures of planes. Vrooooooooooom!
Earlier, I wrote a quick sketch to show how you can use Yahoo! Pipes to build a new RSS feed summarizing recent activity on some favorite websites (in this case, web comics). That is all very well, but how do you actually use the darned thing now that you have got it? Sure, you can look at the list in the Pipes application, but that is not very convenient. Well, this post is about how you can use that pipe you have created.
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I haven’t been blogging much about technology stuff, but lately I’ve been playing with some neat new technology that I think is worth writing about. There are a couple of pieces involved, so I’ll break this up over a couple of posts, but they all center around mashups, the blending of multiple data sources or services on the internet to make a new tool. There are a variety of new tools out there to make this sort of thing really easy to do. First up is Yahoo! Pipes.
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As you may have seen in the news, we had a bit of a rumble last night… a 5.6 magnitude earthquake. It was only a few miles from my house, so I really felt it. It was the strongest quake I have ever felt, and it lasted quite a while. I could hear the house flexing a bit during the main quake, and the chandelier was swinging madly afterwards. According to the news on the radio this morning, this was the strongest quake in the area since the Loma Prieta quake in 1989 that did so much damage up in San Francisco (before my time). That said, there was no damage that I could find to the house; and apart from a knocked-over web cam and some shifted papers at work, I saw no evidence anything had happened at all. Still, I take this as a warning I need to be a little more diligent about earthquake safety around the house… too many things can slide around the place for my comfort.
I just got back last night from a little trip back to Indiana to visit with the family. We didn’t really do anything terribly exciting, just visits with the family… although we did take a little hike in Spring Mill State Park in Mitchell. Spring Mill is a nice little park. There are a couple of caves you can visit as well as a virgin forest that was preserved back in the 1800s and is simply beautiful… especially since there are so few places now where you can see truly old tulip poplars, oaks, and beeches. Links to some photos are after the jump.
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