Site Update: Old Second Life Posts Imported

After some debate, I decided to import the old posts from my Second Life blog that I brought down in a few years ago.   There are still some links out there coming back to http://sladventures.sougent.com and/or to http://www.sougent.com so I thought it would be appropriate to do so.

I've created a page tab to bring up only the Second Life related posts and linked it to http://sladventures.sougent.com so that the back links go to only the Second Life tagged posts.

Good Article: Car Etiquette–How to Be a Gentleman Behind the Wheel

Having been transplanted from Georgia to California, one of the things that struck me the most about how different it is from other parts of the country is the traffic and the way other drivers act and react.  

The Art of Manliness blog has once again come up with an excellent article, this time on car etiquette, a must read for anyone concerned about being a gentleman or gentlewoman and living in a metropolitan area with loads of traffic.   A good read for anyone who drives, for that matter.

http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/04/25/car-etiquette/

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving

by Fr. Brian Joyce

I am thankful for the mess to clean up after a party  because it means I have been surrounded by friends.

I am thankful for the taxes I have to pay because it means I have a job and I am employed.

I am thankful for the clothes that fit a little too snug because it means I have had enough to eat.

I am thankful for the lawn that needs mowing, windows that need cleaning, gutters that need fixing because it means I have a home.

I am thankful for all the complaining I do about the government because it means we have freedom of speech.

I am thankful for the parking spot I find at the far end of the lot because it means I am capable of walking.

I am thankful for my big heating bill because it means I am warm.

(I love this one. Don’t look around. Don’t turn. Just listen.)
I am thankful for the lady behind me in Church who sings off-key because it means I can hear.

I am thankful for the piles of laundry and ironing because it means my loved ones are nearby.

I am thankful for weariness and aching muscles at the end of the day because it means I have been productive.

And finally, I am thankful for the alarm that goes off early in the morning because it means that I am still alive.

Cool Site: kenrockwell.com – How to Afford Anything

Great article with some common sense advice on living within your means.   I wish I’d read this when I was 18-19 years old.

How to Afford Anything

The sites main focus is on cameras and photography, but this article is an amusing and though provoking treatise on the benefits of frugality.

Cool Site: Library of Congress on Youtube

Discovered this through the Lifehacker RSS feed….

The Library of Congress has it’s own Youtube channel.   Doesn’t appear to be much there yet, but if it’s anything like the Library of Congress Flickr photo feed then eventually there will be some pretty incredible stuff available.

Movie Review: Letters to Juliet (spoilers)

Yesterday, as is my practice, I took my daughter out for the day to celebrate her birthday and she chose to see the movie Letters to Juliet.

Released: 2010


Go to IMDb page

Information © IMDb.com

Normally, this is not the type of movie I’d choose to spend money at the theater to see myself, but having seen it I must admit to enjoying it.   It is a fairly typical romantic comedy, unlikely couple thrown together by events which lead to their falling in love.
While one could certainly make parallels to elements of other movies, I found that story and plot, while fairly obvious, to be engaging enough to make the movie entertaining.   It wasn’t overly mushy and romantic, nor was it overly comedic and absurd.   For everyone who’s ever loved and lost, or laments missed opportunities for love, this will tug at your heartstrings and make you think about the “what ifs”.
From the official movie website…

STORY

Letters To Juliet is an enchanting love story --  a tale of encountering new sparks and rekindling old flames.  When Sophie (Amanda Seyfried), a young American, travels to Verona, Italy -- the romantic city where Romeo first met Juliet -- she meets a group of volunteers who respond to letters written to Juliet seeking romantic advice.  Sophie finds and answers a letter that has been lost for 50 years, and is stunned when its author Claire (Vanessa Redgrave) arrives in Italy with her handsome but overprotective grandson (Christopher Egan) to find the fiancé she left decades before.  Fascinated by Claire's quest, Sophie joins them on an adventure through the beautiful hills of Tuscany searching for Claire's long lost Lorenzo. The journey will change their lives forever, as they discover it's never too late to find true love.

Cool Site: AfriGadget

I’ve always been interested in gadgets, taking things apart, that sort of thing.   It’s always been a dream of mine to have a work area where I could fiddle around with stuff.  

Hence, I have an interest in web sites that have to do with what is commonly known as “makers”, the most well known of these is the website of Make Magazine.   I’ve amassed quite a collection of these sites having to do with hardware hacking and making stuff.

Recently, I came across a very interesting site called AfriGadget which documents some of the ingenious solutions that folks in Africa have come up with to deal with every day problems, things that we in the “developed” world take for granted because we can easily go to a store and buy something.

I have a great deal of respect for these people who, despite living in conditions that most of us so called modern folk would piss and moan about, come up with creative solutions and ways to re-use what we’d consider junk.

Check out AfriGadget at http://www.afrigadget.com/

Interesting: "The only perfect reference work" Nelson's Perpetual Loose-Leaf Encyclopaedia

Ran across this brief article on Boing Boing about the Nelson’s Perpetual Loose-Leaf Encyclopaedia and was struck by the fact that I not only own a complete set of the regular encyclopedia but a set of the medical encyclopedia as well, plus several updates.

I happen to love encyclopedias, especially old ones, and these are my favorites (though I would love to get my hands on a set of Encyclopedia Britannica from the late 1800’s).

Check out the article here…

http://www.boingboing.net/2010/01/30/nelsons-loose-leaf-encyclopaedia.html

Good Information: Preserving Memories

A word of warning for those of us that have physical photos taken before the widespread use of digital cameras.   I was looking through an album of photos taken in the late 90’s and discovered that a couple of ultrasound photos for one of my children had degraded quite a bit, which is no wonder since they were printed on thermal paper.   I promptly scanned them in order to preserve a digital copy of them, though much of the original detail was lost.

This incident prompted me to consider the relative longevity of certain types of photos such as those printed on thermal paper like the ultrasounds or those little Chuck E Cheese photos, or the Polaroids from the 70’s and 80’s.   While I don’t have many of these types, the ones that I do have are showing signs of fading.   Even normal color photos run the risk of damage by heat, water or fire.  

How many photos do you have stuck away in boxes that you haven’t looked at in years?   Have you lost any precious memories without even knowing? 

I plan on taking stock of these old photos and scanning them to create a digital backup.   I have a scanner, so I will probably do it myself, but there are also services out there that will for a modest fee scan them for you.

We tend to forget that digital cameras haven’t been around for that long, though it seems like it’s been forever.   While digital photos are hopefully backed up many times on hard drives, CDs, DVDs, Flickr and other places, those hard copy photos and negatives aren’t.  

Take steps to preserve those memories.

Cool Site: Library Thing

Booklovers should check out a website called Library Thing.   It’s intended for people to share the contents of their personal libraries and allows for reviews, recommendations, discussion and even links in to book trading sites.   You can enter your books in one at a time, or upload a list of books for it to process.   It offers some built in collection types such as Your Library, Wishlist, Currently Reading, To Read, Read but unowned, Favorites, plus the ability to add your own custom types.

Though my personal library is at the moment boxed up for the most part, I plan on adding my modest collection of books and sharing that link on this site.

For now it only has a few books listed, but you can find my library listing at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Sougent

Good Article - Our Innate Desire to Quit When the Going Gets Tough

 

A thought provoking article on quitting…

 

I have seen a pattern amongst many people in life; the pattern of quitting when times get tough. Quitting is perhaps one of the easiest things to do because it requires no effort at all. Quitting on your business, quitting school, quitting relationships, quitting on goals that you are pursuing.

Our Innate Desire to Quit When the Going Gets Tough

Good Information: Simple Color Theory

From the Tutorial9 website…

"The mastery of color theory, relations and harmonies is one of the primary steps to uncovering the full beauty and potential of your images (in the realms of art, design and/or photography). Find out more in this simple, practical, colorful guide."

http://www.tutorial9.net/resources/simple-practical-color-theory/

VisiPics – an Excellent Duplicate Photo Finder

My digital photos are a mess, disorganized and full of duplicates.   Fortunately, there’s a really nice utility that is helping to rectify the situation.

VisiPics will scan your photos, finding and displaying duplicates.   It scans the photos themselves, so it will find actual duplicates regardless of how they are named or where they are located.

It allows you to adjust the sensitivity so that you can do a strict scan finding near exact duplicates only to loose which will find photos that might be edited versions of the same photo.

Once finished scanning, it presents you with groups of duplicates which you can mark and then batch delete or copy.

It’s a must have utility for anyone with a digital photo collection.    It is a Windows only utility.

Movie Review: Sherlock Holmes

 

Go to IMDb page

Information © IMDb.com

I watched the Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. last night with my daughter.  Having been a great fan of Sherlock Holmes ever since discovering the stories when I was a teenager, I watched with a bit of trepidation since lately modern moviemakers have been taking liberties with interpreting old established characters from some of my favorite books.    But, I have to say that in this instance they did a good job.   Holmes is portrayed as a brilliant but  eccentric character which is exactly how he’s portrayed in the books.   The little mental vignettes showing how he analyzed and deduced things were spot on.   The plot of “magic” ending up being a put on using science was in keeping with Holmes stories like Hound of the Baskervilles where what appeared to be a ghost dog turned out to just be a manipulation of the legend.

If I have any beefs with this movie it would be that Holmes seemed too modern, especially in his clothing.   I would have liked to see him in a few scenes dressed more appropriately to the era as Watson was.

All in all, a good movie.

If you liked the movie and haven’t read them, I’d strongly recommend reading the original Conan Doyle stories.

The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Short Stories (2 Vol. Set) (9780393059168): Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Leslie S. Klinger, John Lecarre: Books ISBN: 0393059162 ISBN-13: 9780393059168

 

Time to Get Started

It’s been a while since I worked on my “web presence”, I have for some time been interested in the whole social media thing that started with blogging, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter and the like but haven’t really jumped in with both feet.   

Having plenty of time due to being unemployed for about 11 months now, I’ve been pondering the thought again and I believe I’ve decided how I want to set things up.

This, the main site, will have links to my stuff, such that it is, on the web at large.   Twitter, Flickr, Youtube, Delicious, etc.     On this page I will also post relatively short daily updates, perhaps even multiple posts per day on a variety of subjects, sharing information and things I find interesting.

For longer, more involved posts dedicated to a specific subject, I will post on my personal blog which is Musings of a Southern Gentleman and include a short post here pointing to the longer post.

I may at some point create subject specific blogs like my now defunct Second Life blog (defunct because I’m not spending time in Second Life at the moment due largely to the horrible performance I get when I try, plus some personal reasons).   I play World of Warcraft quite a bit and have been toying with the idea of blogging on the subject.

My goal is to get into the habit of posting things and expressing myself, even if it’s only for my own benefit, though I do hope that someday someone other than myself will read the babblings that I’ve put out here.

I’ve always liked the idea of a Renaissance Man or Polymath, like to think of myself as one even if it’s to a lesser degree of those famous men such as Di Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Teddy Roosevelt.  I’d like to think that if they were alive today and had grown up in these times that they’d have a very active presence on the web.

Site Changes

In my ongoing efforts to have a presentable web presence without spending money on hosting, I have moved the main site to point to Blogger where I hope to over time create a coherent portal to my blog, youtube, flickr, twitter and other online services that I am using.

Fare thee well! and if for ever, Still for ever, fare thee well.

 

Fare thee well! and if for ever,
Still for ever, fare thee well.
~Lord Byron

 

This blog post has been a while in coming.   No, I didn’t disappear off the face of the earth or rather Second Life, but life has been unkind the past year and my priorities have changed.   And frankly, the draw to go into Second Life hasn’t been there with everything going on in 2009 and continuing now into this new year.  

To my SL friends, I miss you and do think about you often, but even when I work up the desire to log into Second Life the performance issues I have had just make it an unpleasant experience so I haven’t been on other than for a few minutes at a time.

I don’t think this is going to change any time soon, so I guess I’m saying goodbye.   Oh, the account will remain and I may try logging in every once in a while, maybe catch a Drama Libre every so often, go see what Crap’s done with his little corner of SL (I miss the tower), see if Stuart’s destroyed anything of interest and that sort of thing.   Not gone forever, I suspect.

As for this blog, I think that this shall be the last post in it.   I can’t say that anything of any worth was said in it, but I had fun doing it.  

Keep in touch, I’m on the web as Sougent so I’m not hard to find.

My twitter is as always http://twitter.com/sougent

E-mail – sougent@gmail.com

 

I’ll leave you with the following blessing and my well wishes…

 

A sunbeam to warm you,
A moonbeam to charm you,
A sheltering angel, so nothing can harm you.
-- Irish Blessing

ChemGenosis/Shadow Things

When I first came into Second Life, I spent a lot of my time hanging around the Infohub at the Wengen Chalet.   I met quite a few people there who I still call friends, two of those are Aza Zymurgy and Lacey Mertel.  

 

I haven’t seen them in a while, though I occasionally see their names pop up.

 

Some time ago they teamed up to start a  couple little shops called ChemGenosis and Shadow Things, which I’ve revisited recently and thought I’d share them.

 

I like the ambiance, a little surrealistically dark and creepy.

 

Aza has created some really creepy skins, I especially like the zombie skin.   I actually won a costume contest with that one last Halloween.   The scarecrow skin is also a good one.

 

Shadow Things has skins, shapes, eyes and such geared toward creating a “Broken Doll”  look.

 

 

The ChemGenosis Gallery shows off representations of some of the real life and SL artwork that Aza and Lacey have done.  

 

Even if you’re not interested in shopping, it’s worth the visit to see the setup they’ve done for the shops.

 

 

Click to Teleport  ChemGenosis/Shadow Things

 

Technorati Tags: Second Life,ChemGenosis,metaverse,virtual worlds

Cylindrian Rutabaga, Second Life Singer and Performer featured on CNN

A lot of the news coverage about Second Life tends more toward reporting on the negative aspects of SL, sensationalizing and trying to go for the “shock value”, so when a positive news report comes out it tends to stand out.

Recently, one such report came out via CNN and I wanted to highlight it.

In the almost 2 years that I’ve been in Second Life, I’ve met a variety of people from around the globe from various backgrounds.   One of those people has been Cylindrian Rutabaga, a.k.a. Grace Buford.

Cylindrian is a singer and musician who performs live in Second Life, playing in various venues around the grid.   I’ve been able to make it to a couple of her concerts in Second Life which prompted me to buy her album River on Amazon.com (and will probably buy her other two albums Living Stories and Virtually Live eventually).  Her music genre is folk music, so if you like that kind of music, then you should definitely check out Cylindrian’s stuff on Amazon or iTunes.

 

Here is the text article that goes with the video.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/04/07/second.life.singer/index.html

 

Here is an imbed of the CNN video.

 

A direct link to the video is here…. http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/tech/2009/04/06/second.life.singer.cnn

 

To find out more about Cylindrian Rutabaga/Grace Buford check out these links.

Cylindrian's Grace Notes

Twitter – Cylindrian

Grace Buford on Myspace

Cylindrian/Grace Buford Fan Club on Facebook

Grace Buford - Soulful Folk Music – Website

Cylindrian Photo Group on Flickr

Cylindrian on Reverb Nation

Grace Buford on Amazon.com

 

You can find links to other great Second Life Musicians at the Tunes inSL website.

 

Technorati Tags: Second Life,music,Live Music,Cylindrian,Grace Buford,folk music,CNN,video

How Linden Labs ought to handle the Adult Content Policy Change...

In my previous blog post I've given my take on what the Adult Content policy change is going to entail and I've read a number of articles and comments giving opinions and suggestions on what Linden Labs ought to do. All of this has given me a few thoughts on how I think Linden Labs could/should approach this policy change to minimize the impact of it.

My contention has been that this is no difference than the current sim types of PG and Mature, it's just adding another type into the mix. My thought is that a new Adult type sim will work the same way as a Mature sim does now, you have some PG stuff, some Mature stuff and some Adult stuff all mixed on the sim, the difference will be that the Mature sim won't have the Adult stuff on it any longer just as a PG sim isn't supposed to have Mature stuff on it now. Part of the Adult Content policy change also entails something called "Age Verification" which quite simply that you have to follow a process to "prove" that you're an adult, at least to the point where Linden Labs is legally protected. Many have pointed out that this isn't foolproof, and indeed it isn't, but that's not an argument for not doing it. So in the near future, age verification will likely be part of the sign up process and it'll be old hat, if you're an adult in Second Life you'll have access to all 3 types of sim and the content therein, with options for warnings if you're concerned about wandering into an area that you aren't interested in seeing. If, like many suspect, this is a prelude to merging the teen grid in then a teen account would likely be the only type that has an actual physical restriction to access.

If I'm right, then ultimately there's no real issue as far as the private estates are concerned, if you have Adult content somewhere on the island or just don't care about teens having access, then you just set it to Adult and be done with it. There will be some pains involved since I'm sure the vast majority of active Second Life users are not age verified, but I suspect it's not going to take long for them to do so, it's just a matter of education which Linden Labs could handle by putting up a blurb on the login screen explaining the why and hows of doing age verification.

So, how can Linden Labs deal with removing Adult Content from the existing Mature mainland sims? Well, for one there's an option to just switch certain mainland sims from Mature to Adult if there is a predominance of adult content on the sim. The existing residents that don't have any adult content on their land are only affected by this in that they would have to be age verified. So far I know of no rule that says every meter of land on an Adult sim has to be XXX content. This might be the only thing Linden Linden labs really has to do if they aren't concerned about mixing PG, Mature and Adult sims on the same continent.

But there might be some mainland sims that have adult content on them but it's not desirable to change the sim's rating to Adult, perhaps a sim with Linden owned land such as Wengen or one of the other infohubs. So the adult content has to move, how do we do that without too much disruption? As pointed out in a comment to my last post, the issue with moving an establishment is twofold, it takes quite some time to set up and tweak a place so it's just right. It can be involved and complicated to take a store or club and move it lock, stock and barrel. Then there is the issue of existing landmarks and the customer base expecting the establishment to be where it's always been. Now certainly, dead landmarks is a normal issue with Second Life, we all have clicked a landmark and ended up at an empty lot or some place totally different from what we expected. But in this case, the move is forced, we have to deal with informing the customers of the change.

Both of these issues can be solved by time. So here's what I think that Linden Labs should do. Apparently there's already a new landmass with Adult sims on it. Work with the individuals that you need to move, give them a plot of land on a new Adult sim that is equal to the area of the plot they currently own and with the same dimensions if so desired. Give them 2-3 months where they own both the old and new plots of land while they establish their new build, then leave a sign and landmark giver on the old site to redirect traffic to the new place. After the time is up, the old piece of land automatically reverts to Linden Labs and is auctioned off as any abandoned piece of land would be. Perhaps even a stipend of a several thousand L$ could be given to offset costs incurred by moving, or at least for the bother.

Is any solution perfect? No, but there are certainly ways to lessen the impact that wouldn't entail much effort from Linden Labs.