02.25.07

Second Life Resources and Documentation

Posted in tech at 11:02 pm by mridley

I’ve been trying to get back into Second Life recently (my username is Mike Faulkland, feel free to say hi). I signed up for an account a while back, and was a casual user of the system. But I was never that proficient in Second Life and I lost interest at some point. The system has clearly taken off and become quite popular (within its niche, at least) and I see real potential for interesting applications to occur within it.

The problem I’m running into is a general lack of documentation. The Linden Labs knowledge base is not particularly comprehensive. I’m looking for basics about the world, but also information on avatar customization (in Poser and other tools), building information, some discussion of the Second Life economy, etc.

While I am aware there are a lot of blogs and various web pages available with tutorials and docs available by extensive googling, I haven’t been able to find a cohesive coherent resource site that ties it all together. Does such a thing exist? Considering the buzz around this virtual reality, I’d imagine someone must be running a Second Life knowledge portal. I’d love suggestions.

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02.07.07

Very Cool Camera - Olympus Stylus 1000

Posted in life, media, tech at 5:19 pm by mridley

As a sort of Christmas gift for myself, I purchased a Olympus Stylus 1000 10MP Digital Camera with Digital Image Stabilized 3x Optical Zoom. I decided on this model after playing with one that a friend of mine received for Christmas. So far it has turned out to be a great toy. The image quality is very decent (hint: turn off the electronic image stabilizer for much better pictures), and the price is right. While the images won’t compare to 8 megapixel digital SLRs, they look great for a $280 10 megapixel pocket camera.

Once I find something interesting to take pictures of I will post some samples. I bought mine in a bundle with a 2 GB XD memory card, which I highly recommend. You can fit an insane number of pictures on there (about 400 at the highest quality, 800 at the second highest quality, and thousands at lower quality settings).

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wp-amazon: Amazon Wordpress Plugin

Posted in business, tech at 8:38 am by mridley

I saw the wp-amazon WordPress plugin on the wordpress plugins blog and had to mention it here. The idea is fairly self explanatory, but I do link to a lot of stuff on Amazon from here and the process of doing that has been fairly cumbersome. Having the ability to search for and include Amazon associate links from within the WordPress authoring workflow is a big win.

If you have a WordPress blog and use Amazon Associates, I highly suggest you check out the wp-amazon plugin.

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The Death of Projects

Posted in life, tech at 8:15 am by mridley

In the past few months that I have been swamped with personal stuff and my day job, I’m sad to report that all of the side projects I had been working on sort of fell apart. I accidently let the shownotes.info domain lapse which I feel bad about as I didn’t give any notice to those folks who had their show notes on the wiki. The data is still there and if you would like to get your show notes back, please contact me directly.

I also let my showbiznewsonline.com domain lapse, not that my podcast ever got off the ground. Although, on that subject, I did buy a Logitech Premium Stereo Headset with Noise-Canceling Microphone. I purchased it for use with my software VOIP client for work, but I”m thinking it may work well as a podcasting/mobile podcasting solution if I ever get off my ass and make that happen.

I also have completely gotten behind on my bloglines blog reading, not to mention my thousands of unread messages in my gmail inbox.

Oh well. I’ll catch up eventually.

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Of Memoirs and Discretion

Posted in life at 2:44 am by mridley

Over the years people have suggestion that I write an autobiography of some sort or another. While my story may not be the most interesting ever, I have lived a life and I might be able to sell a few books. I lived in Silicon Valley during the dot com boom. I worked for Napster. I used to hang out in LA a lot and was somewhat heavily into the independent music scene. I’ve met a bunch of people.

I have always resisted the idea of documenting all that because in order to make it interesting I’d have to include the more…indiscreet moments of my friends and mine. But since I still consider a lot of these people friends, and would like to continue to do so, a tell-all is not in anyone’s best interest.

I think I have come upon a format that will work, though. I’m tempted to write a self improvement book - “How to Achieve the Success and Happiness I Have Found”. The cover photo would be of me in a t-shirt and ripped jeans sitting on a curb with a cup full of change. I think you can imagine the rest from there. The nice thing about putting my story in that format would be that I could mix the real events with a bit of fictional literary license and not need to indict anyone’s bad behavior in the process.

We’ll see if I find time in my schedule to actually write this book, but I think it would be fun. And probably sell a few copies as well.

Still Alive

Posted in life at 2:23 am by mridley

I haven’t updated this site in quite a while, but I am in fact still alive. I’ve had a very very busy personal and professional life over the past few months which have precluded me from having any time to update here. But I am going to try to be better about that going forward, so hopefully more updates will be forthcoming in the near future.