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ruv me tender, Gnomedex 6.0, 96 degrees in the shade, liv on her way home, shuttle tries again today

Listening to:	Third World, in my head
Reading:	GEB
Weather:	83! sunny

Dude, it's just after 9a and it's already 83, gonna be a scorcher. Maybe today's the day for the swimming hole. Probably be absolutely crowded as hell, but that's cuz it's such an outstanding idea on a day like this.

On my way home from work the other evening the news on NPR told me about Japanese Prime Minister Koizumi and Cowboy George visiting Graceland, complete with Lisa Marie as escort. They even played the soundbite of Koizumi singing a few choice Elvis ballads. Apparently he's a huge fan of the King. Then George was like, come on, dude, how about ripping out some Blue Suede Shoes for us? It was all a bit surreal. Infotainment, mos def.

Gnomedex 6.0 happened in Seattle this weekend, Fri and Sat, without me, sadly. One of these days. . .I kept searching for podcasts of the workshops, no luck, but there was a live stream that was really good quality. So I listened to some yesterday afternoon, just the last few bits. Very interesting.

Gnomedex is Chris Perillo's (Lockergnome) blogger/user's web/geeky kinda tech conference. He's such an ubergeek of the web, if you merely type "chris" in Google, his website pops up first. No joke. Anyhoo, lots of webcelebs go this thing, but lots of average webjoes do, too, and it sounds like so much fun. There's abundant free wifi and even an electrical outlet for each conf participant in the seats. And it's in Seattle, the motherland of geek manna (coffee, Starbucks in partic).

In the few chunks of the one-track conf I heard, I caught a few references to intriguing stuff, so here they are:

OGLE, the OpenGLExtractor. No, it's not goggles that let you see through Second Life avatars' clothing. It is software that lets you take objects made in 3d games like Second Life or World of Warcraft out of the game. In other words it translates the vector data so you can use it elsewhere, such as in a 3d printer. You know, you've probably heard about those fabricators that are like 3d fax machines, you put in an object (ie. a machine part), the geometry is sent to some kind of fabricating machine which reproduces it in epoxy or some molded substance. This lets you do that stuff with objects you created using the CAD type building tools in SL or WOW. You can also plug this stuff into Google Earth. So build a house in SL, translate it with OGLE into Google Earth and move the orientation around so you get the perfect views, then interface it with Lowe's to assemble your materials list. Yeah, holy shit, metaverse crosses into meatverse. Here's a post from someone's blog about it with example.

Groovy little bit #2, not nearly so mindblowing, but sounds like fun, is ispott. it's a mobile scavenger hunt where you compete online. To start a game, they put up a list of items. Players have to go get photos on their mobile phones of the items, upload them to the site, and points are awarded for the first to get each shot, the harder shots get higher points, with time bonuses. The winner (who gets the most points in a game) gets a prize! Dang, they gave out a sexy black ipod for the Gnomedex game. And opening an account is free, ahooga.

I just got email that at 5:26 my time, I think, liv and mom were sitting at Charles de Gaulle airport waiting for their plane home. Mom will drive her back here tomorrow. I'm looking forward to seeing them, and hopefully a plethora of cool photos.

I almost missed getting in to the Second Life live shuttle launch viewing area yesterday, I was shooting the shit with Maagnus Opus at some club, buying funky eyeballs. When I realized the time, I tried to quickly teleport over there, but it rejected me, area full. Dangit! And I had planned to get there early blablabla, so I just kept trying, and after about 8 rejections it let me in. So I threw a teleport to Maagnus, and it let him in, too. No seats, oh wait, there's one, grabbed it and hit play on the player. The two giant screens on the stage began streaming the launch coverage, same stuff you saw on TV. After it became clear the launch would not happen folks milled around a bit and said, see ya tomorrow, same bat channel. So I might try again, although it's going to be bloody hot in here this afternoon, and my video card gets toasty running SL. Might be too much. Or maybe my ass will be in Three Forks Creek anyway.

permalink posted by cat 9:24 AM

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