How to Love Yourself, Even if No One Else Does (19)
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Photo by Toronja Azul First, the second part of that title isn’t true. You either forgot who loves you, or need to find more people who do. But there may be times where you feel alone and depressed — just about everyone has spells like that, or is strong enough to admit it. It’s not easy to talk about, but loneliness, feeling unwanted, and even self-hate from time to time is extremely common. If your ...
How to Be Awesome at Followup (4)
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Photo by Marloes Most people are unexceptional at following up: it sounds obvious, but it shouldn’t be this way, because followup (I spell it as a single word) is key to combining smaller achievements into bigger ones. Actively following up on conversation is also a trait of people who’re successful, focused, and relentless about living their dreams. Lofty yet elegant — and if you excel at followup, you can be sure to incite delight wherever ...
Communication mmmm followup! (1)
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Push it to the limit awwww yeah! Time to go for a ride… Like I promised earlier, more details on what's been happening with my communications at Linden Lab, specifically concerning Resident aka Community Enlightenment and Video Tutorials. Robin Linden posted "Linden Lab Blog Changes to Give Residents More Choices", and Katt's been pointing people that way too. Read it, and particularly give your attention to this: The new blog will have multiple categories to ...
Photosynth + Second Life yields beautiful but awkward results (1)
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I was impressed by the earlier Photosynth demos, which showed how 100s, even 1,000s of 2D pictures could be mapped for 3D navigation, with the process of doing so resembling wandering through an electronic dream: shards of imagery appearing all around, points of light denoting matches between pictures. After Chaos Mohr let me know about his experiment following Photosynth's public unveiling, I gave it a go for myself with the same pictures used for the ...
How to Be Awesome at Followup - Stepcase Lifehack (18)
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Photo by Marloes Most people are unexceptional at following up: it sounds obvious, but it shouldn’t be this way, because followup (I spell it as a single word) is key to combining smaller achievements into bigger ones. Actively following up on conversation is also a trait of people who’re successful, focused, and relentless about living their dreams. Lofty yet elegant — and if you excel at followup, you can be sure to incite delight wherever ...
Custom collision sounds - Video Tip of the Week #48 (1)
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Hey, what’s that sound? The answer here is a little-known fact that needs to be spread more: you can customize the collision sound an object makes. That’s right, you can make a falling anvil sound like its cartoon counterpart, a glass can emit a startling “crash!”, or you can do something completely different to confound and astound bystanders. You can even silence an object (like thunky stairs). Even if you’ve never scripted before, you can ...
SLight flight (1)
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It happens to so many of us: when we’re new to Second Life, we’re wowed by being able to fly. The more we do it, the more we get used to it. And soon enough, we do it without thinking so much. I found myself reawakened to flight when I used the SpaceNavigator — albeit not fully, because I had messed with the controls and didn’t set them back properly — and went for a ...
Buzzwords Are Disposable, Human Beings Are Not (4)
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2 weeks, 3 days
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Photo by autan Every month, there are new business books on the market promising “secrets & insights” into “exciting change” which is happening… right now! They often use curiosity-baiting phrases like “Learn how [BUZZWORD] is transforming the way we communicate” or “Use the power of [ANOTHER BUZZWORD] to engage your customers”. Buzzwords include but aren’t limited to “Web 2.0″, “virtual worlds”, and just about anything with “social” and “media” in them — “social media”, “social ...
Buzzwords Are Disposable, Human Beings Are Not (1)
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Photo by autan Every month, there are new business books on the market promising “secrets & insights” into “exciting change” which is happening… right now! They often use curiosity-baiting phrases like “Learn how [BUZZWORD] is transforming the way we communicate” or “Use the power of [ANOTHER BUZZWORD] to engage your customers”. Buzzwords include but aren’t limited to “Web 2.0″, “virtual worlds”, and just about anything with “social” and “media” in them — “social media”, “social ...
Buzzwords Are Disposable, Human Beings Are Not (2)
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Photo by autan Every month, there are new business books on the market promising “secrets & insights” into “exciting change” which is happening… right now! They often use curiosity-baiting phrases like “Learn how [BUZZWORD] is transforming the way we communicate” or “Use the power of [ANOTHER BUZZWORD] to engage your customers”. Buzzwords include but aren’t limited to “Web 2.0″, “virtual worlds”, and just about anything with “social” and “media” in them — “social media”, “social ...
Very nice, clean Flickr embed tool: PictoBrowser (1)
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I’m not a fan of bloated chrome on widgets intended for embedding in your own webpages: they carry too much of a parasitic personality, looking out of place, and often, taking longer to load. Why bother? Thankfully, amidst all the ruffle comes PictoBrowser for embedding Flickr sets and such. I originally heard of it from Aleister Kronos, who uses it to great effect on his Second Life explorations blog, and I’ve mentioned PictoBrowser before, but ...
Zorba the gesture (1)
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4 weeks
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It’s tragic how prejudice can tarnish our lives and block us from valuable experiences. Case in point: years ago, I was reading the National Enquirer and paid attention to one headline which screamed: “ZORBA THE CREEP”, commenting on Anthony Quinn’s alleged infidelity. As a result, when I was offered to watch his landmark film Zorba the Greek some years later, I firmly said, “No! He’s a creep!” Keeping in mind that was when I was ...
Selective Apathy Frees You to Care More - Stepcase Lifehack (4)
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Photo courtesy of Libby What do you think of this phrase: “The Joy of Apathy”? It sounds like such a clashing contradiction: how can joy, which is associated with happiness and passion, be found in the opposite stoicism of apathy? While joy and apathy certainly aren’t the same, they often work together and are complementary, as we’ll see. Every one of us has a capacity to care and be happy. That’s good, and is a ...
Selective Apathy Frees You to Care More (1)
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Photo courtesy of Libby What do you think of this phrase: “The Joy of Apathy”? It sounds like such a clashing contradiction: how can joy, which is associated with happiness and passion, be found in the opposite stoicism of apathy? While joy and apathy certainly aren’t the same, they often work together and are complementary, as we’ll see. Every one of us has a capacity to care and be happy. That’s good, and is a ...
YouTube dynamic compression/audio distortion problem pains many (2)
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In recent weeks, an increasing number of people have noticed YouTube squashing the heck out of volumes, distorting louder passages, and quite frankly, buggering their videos to heck. While thought to be a new problem, my avid reader, you've noticed that I observed this back in April 2008! And let’s not forget the sucky customer service, either. My bug report was clear and concise, and YouTube ignored me. Fast forward to the present, where they've ...
BYOR (Build Your Own Ruth) (1)
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Remember when default loading avatars in Second Life resembled homely women with mullets? Even the guys got ‘em, and a couple of unexpected breasts to go with the horrorshow. It’s hard to believe, but as of version 1.20, those possessive terrors are fading away, the Sadako-esque spirit of Ruth able to rest at last, becoming the talk of urban legends on this Internet superhighway. Ruth, suitably, has been replaced by an aqua-tinted cloud dubbed “Ruth ...
“Intuition” and “Enlightenment” are bedfellows (1)
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Both of these are very interesting words indeed, because they lay down, together, at the rare crossroads between logic and spirituality: on the left, we have hard-coded fact, and on the right, what gets called magic. I like how “Enlightenment” belongs rightfully to many people: the Age of Reason is commonly known as part of the Enlightenment era, and yet, there are many enlightening experiences tied to religion which might be considered quite unreasonable by ...
Life Lessons You Can Learn From The Joker (15)
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Batman’s most infamous nemesis, the Joker, has been a longstanding archetype for prankish mayhem, and the late Heath Ledger’s masterful performance in The Dark Knight has only elevated the character to new heights. Despite the Joker’s unforgettable acts as a sociopathic murderer, many people are intrigued by him, and even find this Clown Prince of Crime to be maddeningly charismatic. So what’s there to love? A lot, and here’s why: Storytelling matters! In “ye olde ...
Here panorama, island o’ enlightenment in Second Life (1)
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Here’s (ha ha, punny) where we’re at. This’ll change, but it’s nice to have such a grand view of my island and (w)here we’re at today: If you’ve come over, thanx! Took pictures? We have a Flickr group for officially declaring “You Were Here!” I’ve got my office hour tomorrow so if you can make it, let’s chat. And if you haven’t been Here (it gets funnier each time I say it), learn more. Coming ...
Search can be startling — the Cuil conspiracy? (1)
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Out there on yonder intarwebs, a few voices have wondered whether the new Cuil search engine is a prank, hoax, or detached vestigial organ destined to be reabsorbed back into Mothership Google (I made that last part up). While “Cuil” looks more like “Cooyeel” than its intended “Cool” pronunciation, pages keep popping up as to some mighty LULarious search results. For example, take “cobol”. Then “lolcats”. I gotta say, Cuil’s “Safe Search” is HORRENDOUSLY DISAPPOINTING. ...
