Facebook

I've decided Sciamachy Moran, my Second Life self, needs a separate Facebook account, as there are things that are true of him that aren't true of the meaty puppeteer that controls him. We're similar in many ways but sufficiently different that I'm coming to think of him as a different person. Not in a multiple personalities kind of way really but more in a sort of method actor vs character or superhero vs mild mannered janitor kind of way. We're the same person, but a different life. Different circumstances, different conditions.

I'm still going to update this blog mind - this has become my composite gaming blog that covers my SL, WoW & wii experiences. F'rinstance, I've started playing Shaun White Snowboarding on my Wii Fit balance board - it's pretty good. I'm almost wondering if I might do ok as a snowboarder - some of my RL mates do it in Switzerland & there's a dry slope near where I live in RL, so mebbe worth a go. The game has different courses with different themes - so there's races against the clock through slalom gates, or pistes with lots of jumps so you can try tricks, or another that has rails to grind on. I get distracted easily so tend to play when I'm alone in the house - saves getting cross with the sprogs when I miss a jump because someone's asked me a question at an inopportune point.

Bit of a hero-worship post

You know, when I was 26 I'd not done much. I'd been to France & largely hated it except for mountainbiking round Switzerland & the Vosges mountains, and on my return I did a Land's End to John O'Groats bike ride for the National Asthma Campaign, because I'd become a bit depressed at having reached 26 & never having done anything worth anything of note at all.

So, when I read that one of my friends, who's only 26, has been all over the world as an army medic nurse, and is now about to set off for a tour with Medecins Sans Fontières, I am kinda bowled over. MSF doctors & nurses go out all over the world to the shittiest holes of places, where nobody else would want to go, and they help people. Sometimes they get killed in the line of their service to people - many of MSF's operations are in some very lawless places & often in war zones. This is real & seriously worthwhile stuff. If you can, cough up a bit of dosh for MSF on their donation site. It's not often I'm begging on behalf of charities but wow, these guys deserve it - and I'm sure you'll agree, Chianatsu Kawanishi (her SL name) deserves total respect for what she's doing.

On censorship & promotion

Just a thought: A lot of places in SL threaten to ban you or eject you if you try to promote your own stuff. I guess that's fair enough if you liken an SL club to a shop like WH Smiths - if you went into WH Smiths waving an ad for Tesco's rival products that would be bad. But it's not - these places are pubs & clubs. While you would probably get banned for handing out fliers for a rival club inside a club, you certainly wouldn't get banned for mentioning it in conversation.

Imagine a club where (and here I'm imagining the barman as having a voice like Mr Krabs from Spongebob Squarepants) the following scene took place:
Customer 1 to Customer 2: "Ok, when this is done shall we head over to the ${otherBar}? Their DJ should be just about starting by the time we get there."
Customer 2 "Sure, that sounds goo-"
Barman (cutting in) "WHAT?! Yer promotin' a rival's operation in *my* pub?! Get out ye scum! Yer barred!"
Customer 1 & 2 leave, accompanied by a few who overheard the fracas. I don't think they'd have too much custom if that happened every time anyone mentioned another pub.

One thing I notice about the RL DJ scene is that they are quite happy to promote each other. If you go to Mark EG's (A RL DJ I knew at Huddersfield University) MySpace page & follow the link to his (own, run by himself) record label, Blackout Audio, you find there's space in his forum where he actively encourages people to promote & discuss different acts & events all over.

Why's this? Surely they're the competition?

Well, yes, maybe so, but they're also his peers & compadres in the old-skool rave & techno scene, a scene which he wishes to keep alive - because if he's the only person doing it, he'll soon be the only person even vaguely interested in it, and the culture that supports and sustains him & his business will die. Censorship & monopolies really help nobody in the long-run.

So. Want me to promote you & encourage my mates to come to your events? Of course I will. I'll encourage discussion of each other's styles & what so-and-so played last Friday at such and such a place - and then what people like will survive, and crap won't. Quality arises from culture, and culture arises from discussion. If you wish to censor that well, maybe your quality isn't up to a bit of competition?

Wiiiiiiiii Fit!

Wow, actually I feel pretty wii unfit at the mo, BUT I managed to unlock 3 new features in a week, so I'm doing something ok. My record for hula stands at 420 spins. Raa!

I'm making a resolution here: I'm going to try & live according to the principles of Tsunetomo's "Hagakure" in as much as you can in 21st century England (so, no summary decapitations of underlings). What I mean is, a lot of the time I'm suffering from a "Grass is always greener" thing. Well, it may well be greener elsewhere, but the grass I got is *MY* grass, so I'm going to cultivate it. Kezzy commented that I lay myself open to hurt because I commit too much too soon, but I think that's wrong - it you don't go all in, you don't live fully. If you apply Kezzy's advice to say taking a corner on a motorcycle at 60mph+, you'd die - you need to go all in, countersteer your bike into the lean, hang off the bike & get that knee slider to the ground, commit yourself to the corner all the way through to the exit before straightening up, putting your weight forward & whacking the throttle back open to roar out of it like Valentino Rossi. If you go in thinking "Hmm.. dunno if I want to do this..." you come off and hit the street furniture at 60 - most likely, dead.

I think my trouble has been that I commit my all to the wrong stuff. I don't do my intel before committing myself to the attack, so I go off half cocked. I'm never satisfied with the things I have so I go looking for better things instead of improving the things I already have. I've been suffering from affluenza, kind of - gotta have better, faster, stronger, prettier, geekier etc. I got a new phone a while back which on the face of it looks like a really good phone, and on face value it's a pretty good one, but the firm that makes it doesn't support it well, and no other bugger does either & I'm half wishing I'd got an iPhone or a Crackberry instead. Oh well. 18 months down the line I'll probably want a what, 4th gen iPhone or something. That's crap! I should commit myself to the phone I have (or maybe go back to my perfectly good N95) and use it till you can't get replacement batteries any more.

So, passion in all things, but the right things - and anything else is likely to get pruned. Second Life, I love to DJ. Had some great times doing that, and I'm going to develop further in that direction. I want to learn to do mashups & the like, so no more buying DRMed crap that doesn't allow for creativity. If I can get stuff under a CC license, that's the way forward. I'm not going to be online all bloody night any more - no more 3am jobs. I'm in bed by 11pm or.. or nothing - it's an absolute. I'm going to get up 7.5 hours later at 6:30AM despite not needing to be out till 09:30 - that gives me time to help with the kids, do some cleaning , get some exercise & a shower before hitting the road & getting to work on time. Work-wise, I'm going to stop bemoaning the fact that I want to be a Java developer, and try to be the best phoner-upper & general dogsbody... ok, well, maybe there I can still use a little change. I don't think anyone will ever be happy doing my current role in the way it's currently set up - I have no access to anything, am *practically* responsible for all fuckups (not because I fuck up, because the buck stops in my team), and am essentially doing incident management, but I'm not officially an incident manager! All the crap, none of the good stuff - that can't go on. But anyway, while I'm stuck in this hole of a role I'll try to be the best dogsbody I can be - maybe someday I'll get to do what I set out to do 12 years ago. Grr. Bah.
Study: I haven't done any proper study of anything for a while because if I'm not working, I'm driving, or on the net or exhausted asleep. Gonna make time for that too - between 8 & 9 if I'm not prepping a DJ set, I'll be studying Java & developing stuff on my Mac. I have a Rememberthe milk.com to-do list & I'm gonna use it.

So, new page. Now to get to work! Eeek! LATE AGAIN! :-(

*sigh* meh

I'm pulling out of KSF. No reason to bother with it really & with the way it's set up, it's going under soon anyway. Crappy night last night; don't think I'll be in unless it's for work, for a bit. Think I'll concentrate on doing wii fit, going for runs & practising Krav Maga. It's time I got fit again. Fuck this computer shit.

More DJing!

Last night was a bit of a bust DJing wise - I did an okay set I feel though it lacked consistency & direction. First night in a new place is always a bit iffy if the management haven't given a clear lead on what they want played, but I've done a bit of a survey & found what most people liked there so it should be better next week. Like Something Wicked Within, KSF's not really thought its business model out too well. I really want them to succeed because Lexx is trying really hard, but I suspect it'll go under quick - too many staff, not enough punters or promotion. I think anywhere with >2 staff on at any one time needs to pull in a LOT of punters to justify itself, and with a DJ, manager, security guy, 3 dancers & all that, wow, you need a lot.

So with that in mind, PLEASE - come to Kat Skratch Fever! It's good, really!