Tonight at the Heron Performance Space we are enjoying the music of Frogg Marlowe. The virtual world adds so much to just listening to the music on the radio

posted by Misterblue Waves on Heron Island using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

It’s a quiet day on 21st Street, Portland Oregon in SecondLife. The instigator of the sim is traveling in Spain and us members are holding down the fort.

All the people involved in the 21st project are sending message from the traveling instegator to a friend of hers who had a stroke. She is traveling in Spain, she finds cyber cafes and records blog entries. We phone up the lady in the hospital and read the missive from Spain thus connecting the person in the hospital bed to the adventure of the world. This is all organized and done by people who met through SecondLife. How cool is that.

Posted by Misterblue Waves on Haetae using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Need a robot butler? Alphanumeric Shores has a collection of butlers who will transport you around your property as well as robot friends to follow you around. Great fun

Posted by Misterblue Waves on Alphanumeric Shores using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Some people have massive estates in SecondLife while the rest of us (actually most of us) have little plots surrounded by strange, ever changing constructions. Here I am in my little place in virtuality.

Posted by Misterblue Waves on Tipsico using a blogHUD : [blogHUD permalink]

Training us for the grass. Soil, originally uploaded by MisterBlue.

The car is in the shop and I am on the train. Portland spent a billion on this train and we would have had better transit if the money was spent on the bus system, but it is still fun to ride the train.

I wanted to blog every day this month but i have already failed at that. Now i will need to catch up.

Sometimes customer service actually works. I bought a new Samsung LCD monitor. Saddly, the screen glows red and it’s WAY TOO BRIGHT. So, I phone 1-800-SAMSUNG, go through the several levels of automated selections (”press ‘1′ if you’re calling about a consumer product”…) and, within one (!!) minute, a fellow answered. I told him my problem. He had me unplug cables and describe the problem. Then he said, “Sounds like it needs to be replaced”. A few minutes of reading the model and serial numbers and, viola!, a new monitor is on it’s way to me. Amazing. There are horror stories, but sometimes it just works.

This last Sunday, we went down to Beulahland pub and listened to the live music. The cool part was that it was simulcast to SecondLife to the dance floor at Pannies & Rosedrop Media’s Circus. A screen in the pub allowed us to watch the avatars dance while we all listened to the same music. What a connected world.

Last Friday I took my son to the airport at 5am. Now, here in Portland, we have a section of Interstate 5 (I5) that runs through the center of town and the speed limit is 55. Since it was 5 in the morning, I decided to move with the prevailing traffic. This meant zipping along at 70 to 75. Whoa!!!! I must say things move quickly in the morning before the cops get out of bed.

Last weekend we went to the Portland Yard, Garden and Patio Show. This was a convention center of displays and vendors that had anything to do with gardening (and some not — there was a booth selling just socks!!??). Some companies brought in a phenominal amount of plants and stones to create their display areas. But, in the end, it was a little disappointing. Everyone was selling something. Even the designers seems to want to build walls and stone walkways. In some sense, it wasn’t very gardeny. It seems artificial. The only real garden people (and they seemed happy about it) were the booths selling bulbs and plants — they were selling the beauty and fun of gardening. Most of the other companies were selling the details of gardening.

Because my job is changing, I’ve been spending some time learning some other languages since I’ve been focused on Java and XML tools for the last few years. So, I’m refreshing my skills in C++ and PERL and trying out JavaScript and LSL. All my Java programming has been done in Eclipse which does a wonderful job of flagging errors as you type. That is, the development cycle of “write, compile, fix compile errors, compile, …, run” because if Eclipse doesn’t show any errors while you’re typing, it’s sure to compile. So, what does this have to do with C++, JavaScript and most of the XML tools? After Java and Eclipse, I feel like I’m being thrown back 20 years to using Lint with my C programs. And this leads me to the topic of ’strongly typed’ languages. Continue Reading »

Valentine’s Day found us in DisneyWorld celebrating our wedding anniversary and enjoying the themed ambiance of Walt’s lands. One of the neat things, since it was our wedding anniversary, they gave us buttons and all the cast members said “Happy Anniversary” and the restaurants gave us special attention and desserts. Special and yummy.

Here is a spam I received today.

From: Tech@PayPal.com Subject: PayPal Message ID 79674 - PayPal Security Service Notification kind customer we inform it that for emergency issues it must renter its personal data and change password. It can make it this address http://paysecurity.servehttp.com sincerely yours the direction paypal

I wasn’t fooled

Woke up this morning to white stuff on the ground. It’s always iffy whether the weather report will be correct — too often they predict but the snow doesn’t come. The temperature is expected to get up to 40 this afternoon, so the snow will only stick around long enough to mess up the commute. This evening, though, it will get back down below freezing. I might have to work from home today.

Last night I went to a talk by Kilung Jigme Rinpoche on Meditation in the Tibetan Tradition. Kilung Jigme Rinpoche is essentually an abbot of a monestary that is being rebuilt after the Chinese destroyed it during their invasion. At 14,000 feet, there is now a monistary and a school. The talk was general (general techniques) and he described some of the main features of the Tibetan Buddist mediation method. About 30 people attended.

I went to Silver Falls State Park this weekend. The falls were tremendous but I misjudged the weather. I thought a forecast of “showers” meant the rain would eventually stop. But no. It kept pouring and pouring and pouring. I got soaked. I also only made it to the first two falls. They were tremendously full because of all the rain. There were even some other crazy Oregonians enjoying the rain with me. Pictures were taken.

Today I went to the mall to meet my brothers. The plan was to take a picture of us three for mom — I mean, what do you get an 80+ year old woman? The main problem was finding a Christmas tree. You’d think the mall would be covered with trees, but noooooo. The only tree we found was the one with Santa. Luckily we were there before Santa arrived, so pictures were taken and mom will be pleasently surprised. Then we all made a break because the place was filling up. It’s crazy the day before Christmas Eve day.

I’m experimenting with a new gallery system. The old collection of pictures was PHP code I wrote, but with all the worries about security and all the features that are typical today, I decided to try out a system that allows comments and rating and albums and other neat things. There are now random pictures in the sidebar and, over time, I will load all my pictures.

It’s been cold for the Willamette Valley. This morning it was in the upper 20s with freezing fog. But the ice can be pretty. But, burrrrrrr.