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Category: interwebs

Wil

Wil

Did You know that Wil Wheaton keeps a blog?
This guy kills me. Get this:
You know what I did at the beach? I peed in the ocean. I just wanted to get that out of the way, because it’s something that everyone does, and I just HATE it when people act like they don’t. Like girls who insist that they don’t fart. Give me a break.

*lists, again

*lists, again

Still thinking about this one. I realize that on the surface the personal *list seems a bit redundant. It will mean a lot of @nn for the teacher when %s logs on. Wouldn’t it be more efficient to have them post to, say, a list entitled *OurClass? Yes, I think it would be, if the point of the *list for the class is to communicate with each other and to communicate with the teacher. But I think the idea of having an inMOO blog, or, for the moment, an *list, isn’t necessarily for the purpose of simply communicating with the teacher. I think it has that upside, but there’s more to it than that.

In the case of the MOO…I think one way to think about their *list is as a notebook. And this would work even better if copy and paste worked better in the GUI (why are the toolbar copy and paste functions disabled?) What did you learn to do today? What do you need to remember for the next time? Copy down the code of what you learned (hee, now you know how I remember all the code I learn..I @send it to myself. Better than writing it down, I lose paper). This might be enough for some students, but possibly thinking of it as a kind of reflection paper might work better for others….just a sum up of what you did today, and what you plan to do in the future. This would be a great way to reiterate or change goals midstream. It would also be an easy way for the instructor or tech help (like me) to quickly give help to a student. ie, someone’s trying to do something with a bot that would work much more easily with a simple object and a few good room noises. We could prevent a lot of frustration by being right on top of student goals from the start. And, if we are @subscribe to *Emily with n, we know right away when she’s come up with a new idea, or having a problem with something, or whatever, even if she’s not keen on jumping to and asking about it first. It’s a bit like spying, but my experience thus far tells me that while one of the problems with students not understanding the space is that they tend to act out in inappropriate ways, another one is that some tend to turn inward and not communicate their frustration or problems as much as they might otherwise….if you see someone sink into their chair and look nervous whenever a test comes up in a certain subject, you’re getting the cues you might need to help someone out…but silence can mean many things online. Too many things to make any assumptions….the more lines of communication the better.

Again, what’s the point of the personal *list? As I’ve said over and over, a place for reflection that’s not private but is YOURS, where the topic is YOU and what you’re trying to wrestle with. Where it’s okay to post and say, geez, this stupid bot won’t stop talking. It’s driving me up the wall. or I can’t believe it! I made a chair in my room and it WORKS! or, if you’re me, It compiled! It really, really compiled! I mean, a shy student might be unwilling to post that kind of thing to a class-wide list, but notes are helpful to everyone. And watching classes operate with a BB at one location and inMOO in another…hmmm…there’s something to be said for consistency.

And now for something completely different…
Is it unethical for me to screw around with the say verb in my rooms, having people either be unable to talk, or to have their speech come out utterly differently than it started out? EvaB mentioned that that sort of thing is profoundly ‘unAmerican’ and would get lots of 1st amendment types’ panties in a bunch. Jason always says that these questions can only be answered in context, and I think I deal with the context in each instance that I disable the say verb. And you can always walk out. Right? Is there not enough warning beforehand? Does something like that make people feel somehow violated?

And now to bed!
I

Kaycee Nicole

Kaycee Nicole

Well, so there’s this Kaycee Nicole thing going on. I know one tough day not long ago Soshi had told me that she had stumbled on the Living Colours blog, and we talked about what was in it…she was really moved by it, and I had to admit that being 19 and dying from leukemia is a lot worse than what I was being self-pitying about….I think Soshi found the sight right when she ‘died’. So it’s a huge hoax, which is interesting…

I’m interested in these apologies that aren’t actually apologies at all. The woman who wrote all the Kaycee stuff says that Kaycee was a composite of 3 different cancer sufferers she knows, and that she regrets nothing. A lot of people are feeling hurt and used by the whole thing. I don’t believe in the composite story. I don’t think she had any real goals, other than to play with this character and enjoy the attention she got.

I don’t have a problem with fiction, nor even with ficiton that’s not obvious at first….but you’ve got to have a p urpose at least, and not mess with people’s minds….

Misheard Lyrics

Misheard Lyrics

From a site full of misheard lyrics:

Madonna’s, “Dress You Up”
Misheard Lyrics:
Dress you up in nylon
Correct Lyrics:
Dress you up in my love

R.E.M’s, “Losing My Religion”
Misheard Lyrics:
Lets pee in the corner
Correct Lyrics:
That’s me in the corner

U2’s, “Mysterious Ways”
Misheard Lyrics:
If you want to kiss this guy, you better learn how to kneel
Correct Lyrics:
If you want to kiss the sky, you better learn how to kneel

Queen’s, “Bohemian Rhapsody”
Misheard Lyrics:
Bill the bug has a demo of a swine for me
Correct Lyrics:
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me

Queen’s, “We Will Rock You”
Misheard Lyrics:
Kickin’ your cat all over the place
Correct Lyrics:
Kickin’ your can all over the place

Sarah McLachlan’s, “I Will Remember You”
Misheard Lyrics:
We can’t afford the many fees
Correct Lyrics:
Weep not for the memories

Coding

Coding

I don’t think I fell asleep before 5am. In fact, I think it was closer to 6am or 7am, because I remember seeing the sun coming up. I was working on the moo until 4am, building new spots that I needed and programming some verbs that I wanted. I should have kept going, I couldn’t sleep when I decided to try anyway. My productivity seems to have returned in spades. I build a shrine, and made a verb to light a candle in front of it. Then I wrote a slap verb for my innkeeper, because he’s cheeky and needs to be slapped pretty often. I made my physician tell you what your character should be like based on what month you were born. And then I took a break and tweaked the blog some more…more vegetables. (Scroll down and see the cute little bok choy at the bottom as a ‘home’ link.) At some point there I decided that I should just do a random search for nice icons to be used later. God knows why. But I do like the vegetables. Vegetables are beautiful.

And then this morning I fixed up my scavenger hunt, and made a series of objects for the triangle kids. salmon had some nice things to say about my work, and I’m terribly pleased. I do so enjoy working with her. I’m really looking forward to this triangle thing. I can’t wait to see how the kids respond to the work I’ve done, too.

Off to wash some dishes for a change. I’m scared to eat anything from my kitchen at this point. I must tidy up.

First MOO verb

First MOO verb

I wrote my first MOO verb today! Many thanks to Brin for telling me how to do this. Then after that I promptly broke my first verb. Welcome to my productive day. More detail once it’s working.

Napster

Napster

Wow, another mention on another blog. This one is the amazing and intensely thoughtful blog kept by my dear friend salmon with the pink shoes. She’s really the reason I’ve even heard of blogging….what a star she is. 🙂 And she bears a spooky resemblance to PJ Harvey.

Well, I spent the morning downloading strange music. A friend’s computer needs a reformat (oh, the horror!) so I get to be the guardian of the mp3s. So in spite of the lawsuit against napster, we the users don’t seem to be suffering too much. I would just like to point out that I have been far more likely to actually buy music since I discovered napster…now I actually hear stuff and discover that I want it. 🙂 (Us talk radio junkies don’t realize this often.)

I’m also glad to say that both me and my wonderful touch-base friend Janine, who had bad days yesterday, are having good days today. Yay! (touch-base friend: the person you call when you just have to tell someone about your day and it seems to inane to tell most people. These are my favourite kinds of friends.)

Thank god(tm) for blog(tm)!

Creating a Monster

Creating a Monster

Big thanks to Heidi, the last the greatest of all the Vikings, for teaching me just enough html to make me a danger to myself and others. (And for walking me through it and testing my attempts.) You can thank/blame her, as well as Jason, who gave me the code to put pictures and links up. This is called ‘creating a monster’, folks. Think hard before you try anything like that again.

My very first Blog Post

My very first Blog Post

Well, here I am writing my first blog entry. Of my first blog. Maybe I should take this time to point out that I think I’m becoming a bit of a tech head in spite of my best intentions. When my old powerbook 1400 died in September, I didn’t know all that much about the internet, really. I knew enough to get around without making a complete fool of myself, but there was only so much I could find out about with a 1 gig hard disk. Once I hooked up with the ibook, everything changed….now I find myself wanting to learn to (ahem) program stuff. Strange. You know whose fault this is (salmon, jason, heidi, you know who you are.) And after oscar night, I’d like to thank….