Embracing your Weirdness

From my calendar:

“Warning: consumption of alcohol may obstruct the space-time continuum. Small, and sometimes large gaps of time may disappear from your memory bank.”

Now, who has never experienced this phenomenon?

Meet LJ (not her SL name).She is me. At least, in Second Life she is me. She is my avatar; she represents me in the online world known as Second Life. She looks a little like me – except for the weird sideburns and the fact she looks a little Russian. It’s pretty close. But the joy is, she doesn’t have to be. She doesn’t have to be female, in Second Life (SL) she could be a man, woman, alien, animal – it doesn’t matter.

LJ had a pretty uneventful start. She walked into a lot of trees, waded in a few rivers, and walked into a lot of walls during her orientation. Actually, she still walks into a lot of walls. She spent two days on the help island before she took her first brave steps onto the main grid (where most SL residents are). And then she took them again. And again. And again before she realised her graphics card couldn’t cope with very high resolution and she managed to make it into the bustling help area. Which she left again as soon as humanly possible. In her first ten minutes, she was propositioned for sex, saw a big red ball bouncing around the welcome area, hid from a monster, and got totally obscured by an array of bubbles.

Needless to say the whole experience was a little overwhelming. At this point LJ was beginning to wonder what she had gotten herself into with this SL malarkey. Luckily, she remembered a notecard that advertised a place called ‘Spaceport Alpha’ – the International Spaceflight Museum (ISM), and she embarked upon her first adventure.

If anything was going to make or break the experience, this would have been it. LJ is a self confessed nerd, and this is almost as nerdy as it comes. Put it this way, LJ doesn’t have a home in SL, but she does keep going back to the ISM. (A side note from the biographer – if this place existed in RL (Real Life) you wouldn’t need SL). Still struggling to stick to paths, and rambling through many trees, LJ began her exploration – by talking to another SL resident about all the weird things in SL. IT might be an interesting side not to mention that this resident had the appearance of a 2ft black cat.

LJ was very impressed with the museum. Especially the ‘Low Earth Orbit’ exhibit where you can tour the solar system close up, view the International Space Station, and the Hubble Space Telescope. (Biographers side note – Likelihood is I’ll never see these in RL, so SL will have to do) Geeky fact that LJ noticed was that the description of Earth reads ‘mostly harmless’ (a wonderful reference to Douglas Adams). Back on the ground, the Saturn V rocket and the Space Shuttle were most interesting to see, it was even possible to walk all the way up the launch tower alongside the Saturn V – although one wrong step at the top meant a rather fast plummet to the ground. LJ (unhurt) decided that in the future it would be much simpler to fly.

The museum was relatively quiet, but LJ did meet some people – even someone who seemed quite ‘normal’ by SL standards. And this was how the next adventure occurred. LJ was taken on a magic carpet tour of Nantucket (a region in SL) which is a New England-esqe Sim and saw the un-tackiest and most normal place in SL. It was pretty, quiet, and she also picked up some of the jargon and saw a bit of the main grid.

So far LJ has met people from America, Belgium, Ireland, Israel, and the UK. Of course no one in Second Life is who they appear (with the exception of the few big names who have kept their identity in SL). And that is perhaps the charm of SL; anyone can go and be someone completely different. There is no ‘face’ to maintain. No image to live up to. You can be a geeky or as extrovert as you want. There is something for everyone. The only proviso is – if it’s not so mainstream, it may be a more difficult to find (so just like RL).

So with one or two new friends, LJ signed off for a while (it was 2am), happy in the knowledge that she had survived the experience to log back in another day. After all, one of the things she noted before she logged out was the existence of a number of Star Trek museums in SL. And those are definitely worth a return visit.

SL is getting bigger. The big corporations are taking notice. Reuters has an office in SL, major clothing brands are creating virtual stores. SL even has its first millionaire in Anshe Chung, the property tycoon with an online empire. Second Life keeps hitting the press, sometimes for good things, sometimes not so good things. But it’s all publicity. It’s a big machine with a lot to gain (and a lot to lose). As the hype grows, the residents increase. When I came online about a month ago there were usually about 16,000 people online at peak times. As I write there are 26141 residents online. Maybe it’s a fad, maybe its not. It may be the next logical progression in communication. From the days of IRC chat, to message boards and live chatrooms, now it is interactive in a way we could never imagine. One conversation LJ had in SL was about how the SL world is akin to the Holodeck in Star Trek. The Holodeck is a virtual world, an interactive form of entertainment – so is SL – aside from the lack of actual holograms, the SL environment has only one main difference – instead of interacting with virtual characters, you interact with real people.

I think Second Life may stay around for quite a while if its current popularity is anything to go by.

peanuts, originally uploaded by moonshine037.

I found this lurking on the ‘net earlier on. Other than saying sometimes this is how I feel, I don’t think any comment is needed at the moment. (except all credit to Charles M. Schulz of course)

Google has become a synonym for success. It had grown exponentially from a garage to a googleplex in very little time. It has become a monolith, a monopoly and even a verb! Add to that it there are ever more graduates of Google labs every day. There are tools for every occasion –Maps, Calendars, E-mail (Gmail), Spreadsheets, Photo Editing tools (Picasa), Academic Service (Google Scholar) and the acclaimed Google Earth (even though it is by no means the best free map service on the Internet), and of course, Blogger. Blogger is a fairly recent acquisition, as to is YouTube . Youtube is the most likely to cause a dent in Google – it is currently subject to hundred of copyright issues over the use of protected content. But there are plenty of things that Google doesn’t own – yet – Flickr (Yahoo), Second Life (Linden Labs), and Skype to name but a high profile few.

Google has become almost all encompassing. But why are so many people opposed. Some of the best services have been those which are not subject to the forces of competition. The problem is that until there is something worse, people don’t realize what they’ve got. Think of nationalized railways – they were seen as unfair and not allowing business to flourish – and now they’re gone we are left with expensive and relatively poor services. If there was no Google, we would be at the mercy of all the small companies – think of all the flotsam and jetsam on the ‘net. Pretty good thing then that Google can be relied upon. There is an argument that the ever expanding presence of Google is taking away the ‘independence’ of the Internet. But I think that actually the Internet is plenty big enough for everyone to have say and stand a chance.

Google has made the Internet easy for people. Blogging is now easier than ever before, there is no need to buy expensive software to make things like spreadsheets and website design easy. The Picasa tool provides everything that the home user really needs from a photo suite. For the more technically minded there is now a 3D sketch tool (linked to Google maps). Google isn’t doing a bad thing by making the web more accessible to people who otherwise never would venture far online. The Internet has long been the preserve of the ‘Uber –geek’, and to be honest it’s been a bit elitist. I would consider myself a bit of a nerd, but why would I want to spend hours coding my Blog, when with Blogger’s tools, I can tweak it a little and get on with the business of writing like this. For some people it’s about all process of creating a site, but for others it’s more of a matter of what they put on it. At the end of the day for some it’s about the journey and some it’s about the destination. Google is just working to make it a little less difficult for those who are interested in the destination.

No matter all the argument and debate over the nature and purpose of Google, we are pretty much guaranteed that it is here to stay. And it’s just going to get bigger.

Package holidays have gained a reputation over the years. They are seen as the haven of the family, visions of harassed mothers. ballroom dancing, karaoke, and kids clubs all spring to mind at the very thought. I imagine in the summer the package holiday would be something reminiscent of a nightmare – at least for me.

But in the winter, it turns out its actually quite a pleasant experience. Four of us travelled to Tunisia (yes, I went with people this time!) for one weeks full-board at the Hotel Tour Khalef in Sousse courtesy of Thomson.

Now I’m not going to go into the details – that would be boring. But I’m going to pass on a few tips to make the most of the package holiday.

We were lucky – our hotel had two great Dance Leaders (for the ‘young at heart’ travellers) who did a number of walking tours of local sights (for free no less) – and very helpfully around the hotel complex itself (so on our first day we found the cheapest water, the local Internet cafe, and had an idea about what to expect from the local area).

As on all package tours you have the trips and tour organised by the operator. We did a couple of these – well – one day trip and a couple of activities. The best activity we did (well it was so good we did it twice) was a quad biking trip. If you imagine quad biking here – usually a ‘dirt track with a couple of bumps’ to quote James. In Tunisia, to borrow an Americanism – it was Awesome! We were riding for a good hour, down dirt tracks off-road, with huge holes and steep hills, even a bit of riding on actual roads!

Some of the trip was decidedly tacky – the Reps gave a ‘welcome’ sales pitch – of the more expensive excursions, there was Karaoke and Kids Clubs, and all that malarkey going on. To be honest though, all these things are what you make of them – we went Ballroom dancing and Line dancing and thoroughly enjoyed it even if it did prove that I had two left feet!

All in all it was a good holiday. We did a lot and saw a lot. It was a quiet time of year with it being the week before Christmas. I would never try it in the summer, and a week was the right length of time. If I was there for longer I think I’d need to go off and do some proper travelling and not stick to the tour operator plans.

Oh yeah – and one other note – go swimming in the sea the week before Christmas, even in Tunisia, it doesn’t half look odd!

Since the early philosophers, we have been seeking out the answer to life (the universe and everything). There have been a great many answers, and much discourse. In giving the answer ‘42‘ Douglas Adams had it right. We don’t even know the question. But we are no closer to the ‘big’ answers. As humans we are all unique, and we are all different. History has demonstrated that there can never be ‘one’ answer to anything. So why try? Maybe, just maybe, its not all about the big answers. Perhaps it was never supposed to be.

I think the meaning of life is down to each individual. We are all searching for our own purpose, our own meaning of life. We make choices and decisions every day in our own personal quest for ‘the’ answer. Our unique answer. Its the decisions we make every day – big and small. And its all ours.

The answer may have been there all along. We just didn’t ask the right question.

I was reminded earlier today that I have neglected this Blog a little over the last month or so. I’ve still been writing – just struggling to finish anything. A minor tendency to get distracted, a holiday, Christmas, a new job – all the sort of stuff you should be reading about but I haven’t had the opportunity to inspiration to finish writing about.

Plus, I spend all day at work staring at computer screens – the last thing I want to do is spend more time staring at them when I get home. I know – not very nerdish of me. So, I’ve got stuff on paper everywhere with not an ending in sight.

I’m sure it will be good when I’m done.

In the meantime, I’ll try and post a little more regularly.

Over and out.

Stocktake, originally uploaded by moonshine037.

This tickeld me when I saw it in the paper on Friday.