Its my birthday right now. Where is Terry? At the essex with his friends. Where is Mattew, in a bad mood in his room.

This is going to be fun. Time for homework.

This is an excerpt from my Second Life journal that I thought some of you might find interesting. You can continue to read my Second Life journal in the future by clicking on the "My 2nd Life Journal" link in the link list.

I developed the temp:real journal site using the code I wrote for this (e:strip) site. It is nice to re-purpose your projects.



The most important discovery of the evening was that with the new 1.2.8 version of Second Life, the female sitting position has changed to something that looks more submissive and "feminine." This has outraged some female characters to the point of protest, as you can see in the picture above. Her sign says, "support animation choice." She is also wearing a shirt that says, "I don't sit like that."

I think this is fantastic, however, this is not the first protest I have witnessed in Second Life. Previously, avatars got together to protest the taxation system, which subsequently changed for the better to include things such as group land, and public good projects which spread tax liability throughout a group instead of just on the modeler.

Along the same lines as the new female sitting position, I have heard people starting to complain about the fact that male avatars cannot do female animations and vice-versa. This is a serious point of contention for some people. While, I can completely support the fact that some people want to be a male avatar doing female animations, I have to give Second Life credit for at least making a Gender Change operation so simple. Simple click on the gender of your choice in the appearance update page.

This is radically different from There.com where you are stuck with the gender you picked at the onset of your sign up and where a male avatar cannot even wear a female model's cowboy hat. I know this because I tried to buy a cowboy hat which looked completely genderless to me only to find out that the system would not let me purchase it due to the fact that I had a male avatar and that it was a female cowboy hat.

Also Second Life gives you the choice to have a gender neutral existence. For example, my new happy face or the the ice-cream cone I once was.

But anyways, I still uphold the idea that animation choice is important. At the end of the evening I could not help but feel that I was in a weird place, even for Second Life. It became exceptionally obvious when Jesus showed up selling Soviet sickle and hammer staffs for a dollar. Read whatever you want into that.

So I go to the bookstore in order to buy the one book I need, "Seeing is forgetting, The Name of the Thing One Sees," a life of contemporary artist Robert Irwin. When I get a the way there walking from the CFA, I find out you can't bring a bag in the store. Can't they get some hightech system. I hat being punished for not stealing. It made me want to steal.

So now I am going to buy a lock at the drugstore. Wait same policy, I can't even go inside.

Back to the CFA give someone my bag to watch and go back.

Got the book $18 and two trips later. Now its time to read.

Today Terry wrote this in his journal -

"They say that a child who is abused at an early age has a greater chance of becoming an abuser later in life. I think Israel needs to learn that lesson and start acting like an adult country."

I agree 100%, I am so sick of hearing about the plight of the downtrodden (reality: rich, powerful, hateful, weapons of mass destruction wielding) Israelis, who in turn are creating such turmoil and hardship for the people of Palestine.

You would think that a people with a collective memory of such horrific experiences in the hands of the Nazis would have compassion and understanding for other displaced people.

Perhaps they have always behaved this way and that is why people traditionally acted so hateful toward them. I hope Sharon gets treated the same way the Sadam Hussein was although I know he never will. Down with Israel.

Here are some images that explain why I think the Israelis are hated so fiercly that people are willing to lose their lives in suicide bombing to stick it to them. Just rememebr, each one of these palestinian children will have these image in their minds as they grow up.

Today is the last day to get everything ready before I am thrown into two school schedules.

I agree with Nick about the iPods. Why on earth would apple realease something that was only slightly smaller and cost almost the same? At this point if I was going to buy, I would buy the larger one and stick with white. They even sell color faces for the old iPods anyways.

There are some other issues.

1. Where is the voice recording feature that just about every other MP3 player has?

2. What about a linux version of iTunes. It seems like it should be easier to port than the windows version was?

3. What is going to happen when Microsoft comes out with their new digital device and it has video?

I think they will go the way of the "Flower Power" iMac, if they don't drop the prices. The person who designed this iMac should have been fired. Maybe they were.

For thos eof you that are not sure what OS/2 or Beos are or are just wanting a historical rundown of the operating systems. Check this out. It is current to 2003.

Canisius starts on Tuesday after Martin Luther King Day. I am so excited about teaching again. It is definately more fun than being a student for me. I have had it with the more than 20 years of education I have endured. Enough hoops already.

I had this idea yesterday that it would be much more rewarding if I taught old people how to use computers than college students. I think I could see a carreer developing.

It seems like older people have so much informtaion that is on the brink of extinction. By combining technology teaching and older individuals, we would be able to give them a sense of purpose and a source of communication, as well as, prevent a huge amount of information from being lost.

It retrieval will be my goal.

I got really mad at someone trying to break into my house and it made me sent threats to the wrong place. Sorry, if I angered anyone.

I do not think that you are an alcoholic, but you should be careful just in case you have that tendency.

The tempreal class went ok. We were missing a bunch of students for the first meeting, but apparantly Jesse told them it was optional (er ist verrueckt). It really annoys me because then I will end up having to explain stuff to them individually, as he is not really sure how to do anything in Second Life.

On another note, I met one of the students inside the Second Life world itself and he was quite sucessful in terms of designing his avatar and clothing it.

Another student tried but was having trouble with his graphics card (~32MB) and decided to buy a new one. I hope that it works out well for him. He is a 3D modeler, as well, so it should save him time with Maya too. I find that having a new, fast graphics card, pays for itself in time.

As Jesse likes to point out, there are an extreme number of barriers for the students to get in the world. It is really true, here are some skill based, socially based, and economically based barriers in no particular order.

1. Hear about the class.
2. Own a computer with a fast enough processor.
3. Speak English
4. Own a high speed, full of RAM graphics card (my personal suggestion is NVidia)
5. Have a broadband internet connection.
6. Understand the instructions.
7. Understand modeling.
8. Understand Texturing.
9. Possess social skills.
10. Own a credit card.
11. Can type.
12. Have an email address.

Its really quite extreme. I hope that it works out.