Musings

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What kind of D&D race am I

Take this quiz yourself. My race (see below) seems to fit.
http://www.quizilla.com/users/lurichan/quizzes/Which%20Standard%20Dungeons%20and%20Dragons%20Race%20Are%20You%3F/

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<center><img src="http://images.quizilla.com/L/lurichan/1069269208_HalfElfPic.jpg"><br/>Half-Elf: You are caught between two worlds andfeel like no one else can quite understand yoursituation. Youve tried many times to expressyour feelings in song or prose to covey justhow the situation makes you feel, but you canthelp but feel it is all for naught. You shalloutlive your human kin, but you are young yetby elven standards. You live between the twosocieties, never fully a part of either. Thoseyou trust and call friend you guard well fromharm. Sometimes they feel like the only familyyou truly possess.<br/>Take this <a target="quizilla" style="color:rgb(0,0,0)" href="http://quizilla.com/redirect.php?statsid=17&url=http://www.quizilla.com/users/lurichan/quizzes/Which+Standard+Dungeons+and+Dragons+Race+Are+You%3F">quiz</a>!<br/>

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My Dragon Pet

Click to visit my Haikoo^SM Zoo pet, Daphne, on Facebook!

HIPIHI

Was working in the Internet when I came across this today.
http://www.hipihi.com/index_english.html
This is China's answer to the Second Life phenomenon that has taken the Western world by storm.
It looks very like Second Life with the same sorts of features and functions.  They started beta testing in March and plan to release widely in the Autumn of 2007.

My favorite marketing line they have is "A world of high emotional bandwidth".

This image from HiPiHi intrigued me. Is it a grave? A landing pad? A gathering place?  Not sure but I would love to know.

The listed Phases of HiPiHi are also intriguing. Phase 1 is sundering the heavens and splitting the earth (tools for rendering and building terrain, etc.) Phase 2 is Nu Wa creates humankind (avatar creation tools), Phase 3 is phrased as "The Heavenly Duke creates the things" (object creation) and Phase 4 is Mirage, the economic and social transaction systems.

I wonder if I can find a place in this world and if anyone will understand me if I do. Or will I understand them? Or learn Chinese finally?  One thing is clear.  Between Second Life, There.com, Entropia and HiPiHi, the virtual planet is being built and populated.  We are fast moving to a two-phase reality.

It Comes Back (really, truly)

There are times in one's life that are so deeply imprinted that even decades later it takes no time to pop right back into a mindset and capabilties that one might have imagined long lost. This reality was brought home to me this weekend, when I decided to participate in a benefit concert being put on by a music group I traveled with when I was 16 years old. I only traveled with this group for a few short months, but what I learned there has influenced my entire life, so the time was momentous beyond its actual time span. Further evidence that time, importance and memory are not at all equally associated.

One of the lessons I learned from that time was how to be one with music: live, breath, write and sing it. What little I carry with me through life about music came from that group and that time. A man named Herbie Allen listened to my 16 year old voice and said I was an alto (or was it a contralto? The memory has dimmed somewhat...). I remember being so amazed that he could tell, that he could just hear that! I had sung in my Catholic school choir for 8 years and no one ever told me that, though we did indeed learn how to sing harmonies for Mass every morning. I guess I sang alto!

Rehearsals and email planning has been going on for the Benefit Concert (scheduled for June 17th) for weeks now, but only this Saturday was I free to attend. I knew none of the people there; they were all from later groups expect a very few, who did not travel with my cast. Twenty songs are on the program, and I knew exactly 4 of them! But far from being a total disaster, I found I could pick up the songs (it helps that they are from a pop music genre) and sing them after one hearing. Harmonies came easily. I was astonished by this. It came back after all the years, naturally. I am thinking that sometime in the future, I might like to really learn to sing and find out how to make my voice strong.

I have had many reservations about getting involved with this group again. For years they were a target for critics who thought their super happy and buoyant nature was excessive, and even laughable. I think the message that we started with so long ago had become obscured by the squeaky clean image the kids in the cast were trained to project. We had been serious ambassadors out to change a world. Later groups wanted to make it happy, and did this by drop-in performances akin to dropping sugar cubes on a hungry nation. But maybe I am too harsh as well. People meant well, both when I was in the group and afterwards. Several years ago, the organization that hosted these traveling singing groups went bankrupt. I was not unhappy about this because I felt the message had become so mainstreamed (and thus invisible and ineffective). So, why would I want to get re-involved with a group whose efforts I saw as saccharin at best and fruitless at worst? I think the turning point for me came when I read a review of a revival show that happened a week or so ago in Denver Colorado. I had heard that the group has retooled for another run, and a singing group was again going to be the focus of the outreach.

and I thought..Ouch... I did not believe that the past should be repositioned in the present. But the reviews had a different story to tell. The focus is not on sugar coated airlifts. It is on working within a community of need, with cast members staying a full week, working on some project and engaging the locals in the show itself, their talent, their community, their needs. This seems like a much more viable positioning for this group. Can they still "change the world"? Our eras felt that unspoken history contained the story of our impact on momentous events like the fall of the Berlin wall. Will these kids be able to do something as lasting? I think they may be able to. I am into giving them a chance, watching them open up a positive road for a new generation to take that may have effects, small and large. We will see. There is an infertle ground these days for such missions. We are greedy and selfish and too many hidden agendas overshadow the good of all. But where there is a spark, there is a chance. The moneies made from the Benifit Concert in June will allow some lucky young person to have the experience of his or her life. I will sing for that spark and that chance. This might be the kid who really will change the world for the better.

Tramping in New Zealand

Here we are on the other side of the equator and the future side of the international dateline.
We are in New Zealand for the Graphite 2005 Conference, for which I was priveleged to serve as the Art Show Co-Chair. You can see some of the artwork images here. (TBD)

New Zealand is a gorgeous country. We areactually far to the south of the south island, in Dunedin,where it is clean and green and very victorian in architecture. Dunedin is a college town; the first university of New Zealand, Otago University, is here and is where the conference is being held.

NZ has a very high GNC (gross national cool) factor. Talent and technology and an empahsis on education are its hallmarks.

More as time permits... See some of our pictures at: www.skydeas.smugmug.com/gallery/1007358/1

The Stonehenge Chronicles

Blogging, online albums, websites

Geesh... things are all over. I just realized that the photos from our trip to Stonehenge and Winchester Cathedral are on my SmugMug site. Here is the link:
http://skydeas.smugmug.com/gallery/944747

It was an amazing trip. It rained (poured) all day until we got to Stonehenge, when it (almost) cleared up. We were amazed that it was so much smaller than we had imagined. And there was a feeling that seemed to permeate the place that made us giddy. Many other people were laughing as they walked around too.

Earlier in the day we went to Winchester Cathedral, where we both heard songs playing in our heads. Robbie heard the 1966 "Winchester Cathedral" song by The New Vaudeville Band,
(http://www.jacquedee63.com/winlp.jpg) and I heard the Crosby, Stills and Nash version. It did strike me this time, more than ever before, how much these old churches are huge mausoleums... tons of dead people everywhere: in the floor, above ground, in the walls, everywhere. We did get to hear a sung service, which was lovely (and forced the other songs out of our heads for a bit). And then mad dashes through the rain through the streets of Winchester City. Engaging English experiences all, which wouldn't be complete without the picturesque pub.... So here ya go. Hope you can taste the pints of ale... mmmmm.

We arrive on Bonfire Night

We chanced to arrive in England on the day of Guy Fawkes Night (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes_Night) and so were treated to huge volleys of fireworks into the air throughout the night. Even the neighbors next to Litlle Shawlyn, Haslemere, had quite a stash of their own fireworks that shook the house and lit the sky for a couple of hours, while we sat in front of a cozy fireplace inside. If we had not been so tired from all our travel we might have tried to find a traditional bonfire to attend, but the fire called, and sleep (in Dave Furlow's heated water bed!)

This trip we rented a car for the week and took on driving on the other side of the road. Robbie is the designated driver and he is doing a great job. We almost rented a jaguar for him to drive... they offered us a super deal... but in the end we did not want to worry about the reverse side driving AND a fancy car. The biggest challenge is the narrowness of the roads here, especially when that other car is coming right at you down an almost, but not quite, single lane road!

It is blustery outside right now, at about 4 am on Sunday, November 6. We have the whole day to ourselves and the car. Who could ask for more? We are considering driving out to Stonehenge this morning, a place neither Robbie or I have ever been. More as we explore......

Dreams Come True, in which I get the DC-3 I always wanted

Tonight I bought an aeroplane in SecondLife... a DC-3, my absolute favorite.
Of course, flying it is the challenge. I never really got control of it at all tonight, and even managed to harass my friend JohnHenry's horse, however unwittingly. (Pictures included here)

The purchase of this plane made me more determined than ever to make some of the Memory Stairs environments in SecondLife. One environment we made in Maya was the old airfield, with a detailed DC-3!
I say "Stay Tuned" with the vision that it will come to pass, and that the creative muse will finally land as I learn again to fly her through the ethereal walls of creative possibilities!

Burning Life

We did not attend Burning Man this year. With the hopes of having an even more meaningful experience, we instead went to the Canyon De Chelly in Arizona for a week with a poetry workshop, and the opportunity to live with an amazing Navajo (Dine') family in the Canyon.

It is a measure of my missing time syndrome that I haven't even written about that here, even though it happened in May. And I really should, as it was so amazing.

But, what prompted me to write now (!) was the occasion of trying to clean up some gigabytes of files on my many computers. This is in anticipation of starting some new artwork, but that's yet another story.

Many of the image files were from my Second Life. Second Life had its own event stradling Labor Day that paralled Burning Man, called Burning Life. A few weeks before, in the SL forums an announcement was made that parcels of SL land would be available in a lottery for those who wanted to participate. Because it was easy to just hit reply to indicate a desire to participate, I did. Then promptly forgot about it. A few weeks later I got an email telling me if I didn't build on my BL land, I would forfeit it. I had never gone back to the forum to see my name had been selected!

Well, of course I wanted to participate, so I went and claimed my plot, and learned some rudimentary building skills. I made a game-based space of large proportions, and called it "The Game Write Large...".

Here's a snap of me starting to build.

It was just a fun game board, lots of pieces scattered about, no rules, made for fooling around. Here's my sign describing what to do:

The Lindens had reserved 6 full simulators for the BL event, which by-the-way would ONLY exist for a couple of weeks, and like Brigadoon then disappear forever. I wanted to see all the work people were doing, so made it a priority during the BL existance. The range of ideas was incredible. Some of my favs were the red house collective, with many people creating evocative and even funny things based on things that insiders would appreciate about SL living.

A special area was an interactive session. From avatar cannons to Rube Goldberg devices, this was an hands-down FUN area.

Many political statements were made.... more when Katrina hit and left its devastation...the SL community collected monies and did what they could to help. There were so many great "builds" that I challenged myself to record all of them, in as much detail as possible. This took a huge amount of time, and things kept changing throughout my documentation process.

To tackle this, I first took a snapshot of the whole 6-sim area. Since SL has a low res recreation of what is actually on the terrain, it made a quite nice map. Then I visited everything and wrote what I could on the map print out. And I took hundreds of snapshots. Hundreds..... When will I ever have the time to organize them into the MAP-BASED book I want to make?

I see it made, so I know I will. But for now these images here with their few accompanying words, will have to suffice.