Monroe College Country Western Hoedown on SL Campus… a success!!!

The top three are my favorite images from the hoe down hosted on the 22nd… and what a fabulous event it was!

We got press at both SLNN and SLCN. My job was to host the music… and it’s no easy task to come up with 8 hours of CONTINUALLY streaming country music. I also helped regulate the square dancing… and offered a custom script for dispensers dispersed at several locations near the Monroe College parcel. Everybody had a great time, and some renowned businesspeople, scripters, etc. were there.

Here’s a lowdown of every activity that happened:

• Square Dancing
• A Hay Ride tour of the Sim
• A Merry-go-round
• Live Country Music
• A barbecue

And for those of you who participated or attended as you read this… a major thanks to all of you!

Black desktop icons… RESOLVED

Well, I’m writing this post because I had this problem with my desktop icons appearing as black boxes (on Vista). I did find one solution online. It was just one hit though. So I shall put this up for anybody with a similar or same problem. All I had to do is start up Windows in Safe Mode, then reboot. A simple solution to a silly problem.

Fast forwarding… new problem: at the 2600 meeting, I couldn’t access the internet via a connection a peer set up on his cell phone… and I’m told my Broadcom Wireless card is terrible hardware. It was also probably the reason why Fedora Core 6 couldn’t locate my hardware drivers properly. I will look more into the issue…

Hoedown for Second Life: Everything is in place, except I cannot find the proper square dance music yet. Also, I’m looking for volunteers… so if anybody’s reading this that’s in Second Life, give me a holler–Exinor Balczo.

Club and project update. Mobile SEO.

Above you see some of the developments of Nocturnal Rush, a club my buddy Angelus and I have been working on. It’s pulled in a ton of traffic, and is pleasing us with the turnout. Currently we accommodate humans and dragons. I’m working on developments to accommodate tinies and aquatics in there… need the budget.

Tonight was the preview of the scheduled hoedown for the internship… and it’s shaping out quite nicely. We have the dances worked out, some of the music, some of the musicians, and most of the props. All I really see left is for everybody to get in proper costume… in which case I can show them where they can get a nice freebie one to start.

Mobile Monday, discussions of Mobile SEO (Search Engine Optimization). June 25th. Interesting, but I say… I’m not sure it’s so “feasible” to the mobile user. The only way I see this working is if a user can just say the search terms into the phone then send the request over. And DSP technology hasn’t evolved quite enough yet to even try to make that work. However, I know there are many technologies that “learns” your voice after a while so maybe there’s a way to program them to constantly try to understand your voice even when you’re talking to friends…? Just a thought.

Otherwise, mobile search is most likely to be used for silly things nowadays, as certain things were mentioned (sports, porn, etc.). But I still say… leave room for improvement. I doubt people will stay forever with their (large) laptops to look for important information… they may turn to mobile devices someday.

I also had the pleasure of talking with Sean Owen of Google and Andrea Mitchell of PodCastGO. Bright minds are sure shaping the future of mobile technology.

Hoedown review, and progress of virtual club.

Many would argue that clubs are the “virus” of Second Life, but no doubt, they’re supposed to be big moneymakers. My friend and I have spent a bunch of money on Nocturnal Rush, and got a whole bunch of regulars, including Marie, Nuku, and blueeyedguy. Other than that, though we’re in the middle of relocating. I plan to have a radio stream up from OCremix, since it’s a video game themed club.

Other than that, this hoedown project for Monroe College is proving complicated, ‘cuz NO animations of square dances exist in Second Life… therefore I’ll have to animate it myself, and script it. Here’s a sample of what a square dance looks like…

Methinks I’ll have to actually TRY it to get all the moves stuck in my head, and I’ve no clue how long this project can take.

Also, I’ve had a bunch of meetings with the Iota studios employer Cody, because the interns haven’t been on for his classes. He ended up canceling the internship altogether, but is interested in hiring yours truly as an intern next semester. I am very excited and am looking forward to see the things he can teach me, and the projects I’ll be able to do.

To accomplish the impossible…? Vista/UBUNTU Dual-Boot

Well, I was at the 2600 meeting in NYC, so I decided it was an opportune time to bring my laptop to see if I can get Vista dual-booted. As soon as I got there, many of the basic things were shown to me by a fellow hacker, but we had trouble burning the ISO image files. The boots went terrible, and I did meet another guy that was better at Linux/UNIX, but my battery was down to 10% by the time he got there… he said the trouble was with my ACPI, so I’m figuring out a safe way to uninstall it, so I can have Ubuntu as my second Operating System.

I also met some people from Monroe there, Jeffrey (whom I know already), and Vito from the New Rochelle campus. It was fun talking about Second Life things with them, as well as the “incident” in Michegan. Afterwards I took them to the Destroy Television exhibit, to see if they would like it. Sure enough, they did… we also had a little chat with Jerry, who said he’s interested in following what we’re doing with virtual internships.

Also, I’ve downloaded Blender, which is a tool I plan to use to learn about sculpting prims… and it seems I’ve got the basics. I just need help visualizing what it is I want in my head, and getting the tools to produce that exact output on the screen. Whether this is for me or not, it’ll still be a learning experience. Hopefully one I can carry with me. It would seem that it should have Python built-in, but doesn’t…

Anyways… I’m really looking for help with this dual-boot, all information is appreciated, for this is the first dual-boot I have attempted.

Grand Opening of Angex Corp.

Today’s currently the opening of Angex Corp., hoping it will go well. Thought a freelance consultants business was a good premise for one. I can strengthen my knowledge of many things, by doing projects. Not to mention the motivation by making the money.

Yesterday, I went to a NYCwireless meeting, and we got into an interesting talk about a guy in Michigan who got arrested over using a cafe’s Wi-Fi outside of the premises. He got charged $400, and had to do 40 hours of community service. The way I see it, if their network was (purposely) unsecured, it’s not his problem. Could anything like this have any implications for the wireless community…?

Also, we talked of a release of a new wireless router called FON, which lets you separate a piece of your bandwidth to give free wireless access. This portion is totally modifiable by the owner, and it’s segregated into it’s own public LAN. It puts priority on the private LAN though. This may be a tremendous leap for free wi-fi, but I want to see how ISPs will react to it. If you think about it, if you use a local resident’s wi-fi, you have no real incentive to buy high speed of your own, unless they just give you tremendously low bandwidth. May cut off on their profits, but then yet, p2p networking always seems to knock off big business.

New advances in a potential new business

Angelus Daviau and I (Exinor Balczo) have established a base in SL, though I give Angelus credit for finding the sim and paying for it. From what I hear, it’s also historically marked as one of the first built sims in SL. We’re establishing a consultant business for any need, and calling it “Angex Corp.” Ang built most of the home while I tweaked some neat features, for example, you can see into the home from the outside, but you can’t see the outside world from the inside. Gives it a sci-fi feel. Our SLurl.

Also, as promised, I had Destroy Television over at my event, and it was pure mayhem. If you go to flickr, and search up “Exinor,” “SLC,” or “spank,” you’ll see most of the action at SLC.

I’ve finished downloaded Maya today, so I hope to be working with sculpted prims soon. Also, I may not tackle that position as promotions manager after all… I have too many other things to work out.

Not to mention… I think the Dean and I have the wagon and horse we’ll need for the hoedown for sure. I’ll have some more pics up later!

My Internship activities on Second Life

For those who don’t know… I’m working with my school (Monroe College) for an internship on Second Life. I was explicitly asked by Professor Kmir to keep a working log of everything I accomplish, so I shall use this blog space to document all of my achievements, whether intern related or not.

1. Helped to establish the home base for Monroe College on Second Life
2. Created a sensor which tells all visitors of the Dean is online or not
3. Created the sign in front of the campus, as well as the granite walkway
4. Furnish the Interns’ Lounge area
5. Created an object which gives visitors information about Monroe as well as a free T-shirt
6. Created an object that links to the Interns’ or Employers’ forms if needed
7. Helped fellow internship members with their respective projects
8. Created a tip jar which says one of four random phrases
9. Learned to use group abilities and permissions signing
10. Scripted a greeter that welcomes visitors into the campus
11. Created the welcoming sign right outside the door

Also… watch out for my StarCity Video Game outfit event tomorrow… because my special guest there is Destroy Television! I will bring as much mayhem and chaos as I can to make this an interesting event for DTV’s upcoming movie. Also… I need to brush up on my promotions/sponsorship skills if I wish to get that promotion in Second Life Casinos. Also, my project to host a hoedown is falling through the floor… all I really have is a horse and cart to pick up people around the SIM, but haven’t found such a thing as squaredance poseballs.

Eco-terrorism meetup in Second Life

Though I don’t have the specs of it, there was a meetup last night in Second Life from one of the creators of the Sundance channel about eco-terrorism irl. I got my invite from my buddy and fellow software developer, California Condor. I had to miss part of it because my brother had messed up my monitor on the living room, and partially because I forgot to turn my audio on (lol). But from what I’ve heard, there are many interesting theories regarding the environment, and what’s being done to protect it. One of the things that had me particularly interested was the subject of “Solar Powered Cars,” which I’ve heard of multiple times in my life, but apparently the speaker at the conference had never heard of such a thing…

It’s great that Second Life can be used as a tool to hold these gatherings, especially with people that would otherwise be busy. California even gave me a tour of his dokimos.org base in Second Life, which gave me a basic outlook on how even religious groups gather in Second Life. I’ve already happened across a SL Monastery, and it’s all interesting stuff.

Later on, I met up with Christian Prior, co-creator of Destroy Television, at my Monroe College campus on Second Life. I happened to be there with RG Cortes, who’s one of our most dedicated interns. Christian showed me a bunch of fantastic models/animations including, but not limited to- at statue of King Kong and a Spartan, a raining animation, a tsunami animation (which flooded the sim…. lol), a HELL animation, and a bunch of other things. Angelus Daviau and Marie McMillan even dropped in to see what all the fuss is about… so they were dragged into the wide plethora of animations that Christian was using (or showing off with). Destroy Television has a SPECIAL invite to my Video Game event at StarCity in SLC. Interaction there should be interesting.

Also, I’m saving up big time to own land via Linden Lab’s land auctions. Already Marie and Angelus has donated a generous amount of money to me for the cause, and we’re planning to split the 512 three-way. The first floor will be used for business purposes, and the second/top floor of the house will be used for personal purposes. I’m thinking of becoming an SL freelancer… but there’s still much to learn (animations, poseballs, designing, etc.).

Destroy Television art exhibit

I was there (on May 23), and found it a pretty interesting venue… what I’ve gotten from it was an interesting experiment to lifelog a SL avatar. I’m not entirely sure if they wanted to turn this into a utility, or show what lifelogging in real life will be like eventually. Every experience the avatar goes through in SL is searchable on Flickr, via tags. This may also lead to some interesting ideas regarding the intersection of virtual space and reality.

I met several people there I already met at Mobile Camp the previous Saturday: Marshall and Tish, each of whom does interesting workings in virtual space of SL. I also met Eric, whom I’ve already seen at a previous 2600 meeting. Also met some new faces… Theodore Wright is the only one I can think up from the top of my head.

The gathering allowed me to collect feedback on my idea to write a book about digital/metaverse culture, and it’s effect on reality. I spoke to Christian in particular about my five concepts on online relationships and their adverse effects.

I’ve already interacted with Destroy Television herself on SL… and I’m really looking forward to the turnout. Maybe it’ll become as big as justin.tv. Or maybe not, because videoblogging can raise up a bunch of serious issues.

Today, I settled some issues with GreenDot… I’m using a prepaid credit card to have a premium account on Second Life. It’s working out fine, except I got overcharged two bucks.