Monthly Update

Well, It’s been a busy one, that’s for sure.

The last few weeks have been full of work, fun, school and sick. Before I get into that, I need to share a few bits of awesome.

First - “Domino, Muthfucka!”

Second -  Zombies!

So, after all the usual pre-convergence drama, C13 turned out to be a wonderful time. We met a lot of new people and stayed away from any of the drama successfully. I traded a few club nights for sleep, and it was definitely worth it. I had a lot more fun that way. I know diane doesn’t like too miss stuff, but she went to a couple things without me and had a good time from the sound of things. Interesting thing about Portland, the people there are *really* nice. Like, Stepford nice. Like “we have a secret, but so long as we act nice, no one will look” nice (as in Hot Fuzz :). I’m pretty sure they put drugs in their tasty tap water as well because after we got back I got pretty sick. It had to have been withdrawal.

Going on two full weeks of sinus infection now, and I’d like to state, for the record, that I don’t like it.

The weekend after we got back I did the last two classes of my weekend intensive Asia/Pacific Rim Society and Culture class. I have a man-crush on Dr Werther’s brain. I took my European/Russian Soc. & Cult. from him as well. I’m quite sure I will never get to speak with him again, but he was a damn good teacher. With that class ending I now have 4 1/2 classes left.

July and August classes will be interesting since the last week of August we’ll be in San Diego and the first week of August I’ll be in Las Vegas. Looks like Diane won’t be going to Defcon with me, but he will be going to Batsday without me instead :) Good for her - I think that will be a lot more fun for her anyway!

Kaneva has faded in my mind, much like MySpace - a neat toy, but not very engaging. Ourtbeat came into beta. A few issues with tab-indexing, but over all it works - not a whole lot of features are enabled yet, so it’s hard to say how cool or useful it will end up being. There are currently few enough users to not require any searching, but at some point I expect that will be enabled. As well as the 3D interface.

I was off sick for a few days last week and during that time I tried out the Lord of the Rings Online game. All in all, it is fun if a little to linear. I’ve started a few characters and it’s frustrating to only play the goody goody characters - until you hit level 10. At that point you can enter the only PVP area as a level 50 (max) evil character. Regular players can enter this area at level 40 and above. Instead of earning XP you get points towards better armor/spells and abilities. So, it’s a fun diversion from WoW, but I can’t see me playing it for years. The graphics are incredible but it just doesn’t suck me in like WoW and EQ1 did. Now Warhammer Online, OTOH, looks quite bad-ass. I hope they don’t mess it up as was done with D&D online.

Well, I need to get back to work - figured I’d better post something before I forgot how ;)

Have a good week!

June 12, 2007 | Filed Under Life in general, School

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Connections

It would appear, much to my own dismay, that my thoughts of writing more regularly were just that… thoughts.

Oddly enough, within 2 days of making my last post I got contacted by someone to check out the site ourtbeat.com. The premise is similar to kaneva, in that it should be a social networking site with a 3d interface where users can interact with each other. The optimist in me thinks that this could be cool. The main difference between this and kaneva is the more focused user base. It should be a place for artists to interacts. Where they can display their wares and make contacts - be they musician, video producer, painter, graphic designer or any other type of artist. By having a focus, the site hopes to be able to avoid the vast wasteland of garbage that are myspace and kaneva profiles.

The pessimist in me wonders, with every persone who ever touched pencil to paper, or anyone with a cracked version of photoshop and frontpage, or any tweaker with a copy of fruity loops thinking they are an artist, what’s the difference? If there’s one thing an amateur artist knows not to do, it’s crush other people work. I think the big fear is that focus then being turned on their own work. Another fear is, since this is a very small development team making this, that it will be a virtual world similar in look and feel to Sociolotron, which is basically a 3d scrolling map with some paperdolls. Sociolotron looks like a reskinned 1987 video game. I hope the more modern engines available will mean that, even though the team is creating it from scratch, they have a decent library base to start from and can just skin it and create interaction.

I’ll wait and reserve judgement long enough to check out the beta, and at least see it go live.

As for Kaneva, four people signed up after my last post, but none of them stayed active long enough to do more than make a profile. Not a big deal really, there are a lot of different sites around to checkout and update. That I have received exactly one(1) message from someone that I didn’t already know that wasn’t a solicitation for raves and friending tells me a lot about the user base. People aren’t cruising around the site, looking for people to talk to, or even viewing the multimedia other users upload. Instead it is a great popularity race. I can hope that when they go live they reset everyone’s raves to 0, or perhaps rework that system altogether. For now, I’ll check it out every few weeks to see how they are coming along in development, but I’m not terribly hopeful.

Happy Hump Day!

April 25, 2007 | Filed Under Web 2.0

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Strange new world…

If you haven’t done so yet, check out Kaneva, and while you’re there add me as a friend if you like (As with most places online, I use the nick ‘Stypica’).
Please.

You may be wondering what the hell it is, or why you should join, yet another vanity based social networking site. I beg of you, do it for me.

The concept is rather cool actually. Like MySpace, you can create a profile, upload content, message each other, leave notes, find friends etc. etc. Unlike MySpace, there is a 3D world that goes along with it. A rather interesting concept that is similar (but better in execution) to Second Life. What makes that cool? Any of your content you upload is viewable from within the 3D environment. You get an apartment, for which you can purchase a TV or stereo. Then you can watch and listen in your room. You can also invite other members into your home. If you create a community in the Web interface you can also treat this like a bar, nightclub, meeting room or whatever within the game.

All in all, a nifty Web 2.0 application that may or may not gather a huge following.

So why the call for help?

I am hoping that anyone I know who reads this is much more literate and intelligible than the people on there. I have found all of two people who could spell worth a damn. It also is a spamfest of “rave me” and “friend me” to boost personal popularity.

So come, join me - perhaps we can start a community that one has to take a simple grammar test to get in to… please?

March 28, 2007 | Filed Under Web 2.0

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