Beatbox Chef Cooks up a Storm

This is another posting that may or may not relate to media or technology. Regardless, the chef boxes a succulent beat to titillate your hip-hauditory taste buds.

Valentars Day

Okay, it's a stupid subject, but since feb 14 is my bday I have poetic license.

Anyway, I was recently talking with a fellow rider about how some stuff, like my motorcycle, is real and other stuff, like my Second Life motorcycle, is virtual. Not hard to grasp, right? But what about feelings? The exhilarating feeling of accelerating past a line of cars at an intersection and then tucking deep into a turn is real. The feeling induced by watching my avatar do it in Second Life is less real - or at least less exhilarating. Not hard to grasp either. But what about my feeling of love for my real motorcycle and virtual motorcycle? Can the two be equal? Can the latter be greater? Are virtual emotions different than real ones in any way?

I'm not sure, but I want to think about this more. Maybe I'll design a study or write a dissertation. ;) In the meantime, I am happy to connect this thought to a recent portion of an article in the New York Times about Vday.

Online communities like SecondLife allow members to create animated versions of themselves called avatars that can go on dates, fly, carouse, even engage in prostitution. Theodora Stites wrote vividly in this space about how she conducts much of her romantic life this way and confessed to enlarging her avatar’s chest and perfecting its features to attract suitable male avatars.

You might assume that on SecondLife you are protected from the emotional upheaval of real relationships because the animated couplings tend to be, well, fake. But here’s the catch: They’re not fake. It’s still you behind the screen and you who is being accepted or rejected, with all the attendant joy and pain. As Theodora explained, “I’ve found that I act much as I do in real life, and my SecondLife relationships tend to fail the same way my real-life relationships do.”

The question of whether I would love a virtual girlfriend or virtual motorcycle more is still open as well.

Extreme Pogo

In addition to communication, I am big fan of transportation. In many ways the two are intrinsically linked - communication is virtual transportation. Hmm, maybe I should write a dissertation about that.

Anyway, this video has nothing to do with media except that it's on youtube. I came across it when my roommate's friend stopped by and remarked that my motorized scooter (it's a Bladez Elite 250 - a little electric lazy mobile which haven't used it in awhile) looked like a pogo stick. Next thing we were exploring the vurtego website and watching people do crazy things with powerful sticks on youtube.



It's fun to watch, but I still prefer wheels. Speaking of lil' boyz pushing big wheels, check out a silly cartoon video of my newest favorite pop-hop song, "The way I live", by Baby Boy Da Prince.

From SL pic sharing - to - I want to work at LL!!

Snapzilla, a website for sharing photos from Second Life, is one of the many cool things I learned about during my interview at Linden Lab this Monday. Why would they give an internship to someone as clearly ignorant about SL as I am? Well, I'm an overworked PhD student with a passion for the metaverse. Although I don't spend much time in it, I have faith that metaverse will make the real world a better place. But doesn't that mean I have blind faith? Well, I would argue that faith must be blind in some regard in order to be faith at all. Anyway, I promised I'd read some blogs and spend more time in-world before my start date - if I am fortunate enough to have a start date.

Nicktropolis is coming - tomorrow

Virtual worlds seem to be springing up all over the place. Can Second Life handle the competition? I hope so. And then I hope they all merge into one beautiful unified mega-virtual universe.

Here's an article about Nicktropolis, a virtual world for kids and predators.

And in a completely unrelated story, click here to make a mii on your PC (I played the wii today. Thanks Anna for the link!)

2.5 weeks till my birthday

Friends, parents, countrymen,

The time has come yet again to pool your wealth and give me stuff. The Scientific American article "20 Hottest Gadgets From the Consumer Electronics Show" is a great place to start for ideas.

Scientific American: 20 Hottest Gadgets From the Consumer Electronics Show
New ideas and fresh takes on old favorites--
Click here to launch the gallery

Or, you could just get me a ticket to space on Virgin Galactic.
http://www.virgingalactic.com/htmlsite/index.htm

Or how about a sexy android to give me back massages while I procrastinate writing my papers by posting on this blog?

http://www.idsnews.com/news/story.php?id=40329&adid=news

I WANT A PONY!!!

ENV, the Hy-Bike

Britain’s Intelligent Energy recently unleashed the world's first fuel cell motorcycle. Yes, it's pretty - but it's also pretty slow, though apparently it can still pop wheelies.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.01/play.html?pg=5