Married couple playing checkers
This weekend I had the pleasure of meeting two friends in person who I’ve known for a few years in Second Life. We met in the Skeptical Buddhist Sangha, and they have been really supportive in the new island I’ve been creating, Secular Community. Read the rest of this entry »
Cruel Pig Pen
Food animals are on my mind a lot lately. I have viewed some intensely disturbing video of how farm animals are treated, from pigs that are kept in such tight areas they can not even roll over and never walk a single day in their life, to cows that are brutally beaten, have broken bones and backs, and are made to suffer cruel, agonizing deaths. Read the rest of this entry »
Care2.org Act on Banning Drilling
While I was busy raising a family, then starting a career, the world turned and churned even though I wasn’t paying attention. I filtered information that came to me so it only concerned science and technology. Now, that my kids are grown, my career is doing well, and I have the energy, I decided to poke my head out in the world to see what was going on. UGH! Mayhem, freedoms being violated, ignorance running rampant, and the loonies seem to be taking over. Read the rest of this entry »
Historically and by definition non-believers, such as Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, and Secular Buddhists stood for nothing. Non-believers just went about their lives as though religion didn’t exist, at least not much, and paid little attention to the topic. In recent years, however, that has changed. Read the rest of this entry »
Redwood Forest
I have been in Second Life for 3 years. I started there as a part of my job, leading talks for Java developers. But it didn’t take long before I developed a personal interest in that multiverse, started exploring the many places there, and the variety of communities. Pretty much, any interest you have will be of interest to others, and very likely there is at the least a group devoted to it, and at the most an entire SIM or several. Read the rest of this entry »
Transformed to Winter
Change is easy in Second Life. I just transformed my SIM from a lovely, sunny tropical paradise into a winter wonderland. All it took was swapping out a few textures, and the entire landscape morphed from the sandy beaches to fluffy white snow. With the installation of a few weather generators, I can create rain, snow, and even lightning. Virtual change is fun and easy. In-person, change is also on the horizon in all kinds of ways, but for many people it’s not so easy. Read the rest of this entry »
Working on Blog
Recently I purchased a SIM in Second Life, meaning a huge chuck of land I’ve called Dana’s Islands of Paradise. So, for the past few weeks I’ve been busy terraforming, shaping the place into a tropical paradise. It’s been a lot of fun raising and lowering plots of land, reshaping mountains, and smoothing out sandy beaches. Read the rest of this entry »
It’s not hard to understand why many people feel a overwhelmed, confused, and lost upon entering Second Life. It is a multiverse of many worlds, and it’s not apparent from doing the beginner’s tutorial just where a person might fit in, or where to start to find the right niche for oneself. But I encourage folks, especially the social types, not to give up. Read the rest of this entry »
Me by my pond
In Second Life people often refer to life outside SL as RL, for real life. But according to the dictionary, the word real has these definitions: Read the rest of this entry »
Twitter Searches in Seesmic
In The Usefulness of Twitter, I talked a bit about the useful of Twitter concerning finding great product reviews, getting product support, and finding communities of interest. All of this is done through saving Searches. Read the rest of this entry »
