voyeurism

launch of the Citroën C6 in Singapore

w00t :-)

here are pics from the launch of the Citroën C6 in Singapore :-)

the event was held at the private residence of His Excellency the Ambassador to Singapore, Monsieur Pierre Buhler :-)

M. Buhler entertaining the assembled audience with his reminiscences of his 2CV :-)

the world is flat?

no, this is not another one of my critiques of Friedman's Flat Earth (at least, not directly, it isn't :-) )

yes, i know there's a plethora of stuff on sale with world-map textures on them, not the least among which are skidz Tweak's World Map Buddy, BadWolf Bracken's World View Multi Time Zone Clock, and Cald Stine's Planetarium :-)

nevertheless, i believe this one merits a blog entry because it is the first i've seen which has great potential for use in geography education. i'm not saying it's going to revolutionize the way the discipline is taught, but i am saying it's the most helpful tool among what's on the market today.

that it's built and scripted by my friend - Meroth Junge - is a bonus. i trust his workmanship, his attention to detail, and the efficiency of his scripts.

here's a description of Meroth's Day / night globe, in his own words. you can buy it here, or in-world at Scriptography.

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See the actual position of the Earth at this moment, or any other date/time. Globe shows the portion of the Earth where it is day, and where it is night. You can control the date/time shown, or just leave it to show the actual time and the actual position of Earth. You can set the timezone you're in, so the clock has more meaning to you; you can speed up the rotation of the globe to see how day/night or even seasons cycle. At high rotation speed you can see how the Sun moves more-and-more to the North (or South). Current date/time (according to your timezone) is shown with hovertext, that you can disable if you wish. You may also lock access to only the owner to prevent others from changing the setup.

contentment

here i am, sitting in the grounds of my home at Skye, waiting for the grid to go down for maintenance.

if i look happy, it's because i am.

:-)

the Raymaker Learning Space at Etopia Island

i am very happy to share with you that my latest learning facility is open!

i dropped a hint about it in episode 132 of ventriloquy three days' ago :-) i deliberately didn't want to announce it then, because i did not wish to steal the thunder away from Leslie Jarmon's grad students' terrific work. instead, i've chosen to time the opening nearer Congressman Markey's address to the UN Climate Change conference.

i've named the facility the Raymaker Learning Space at Etopia Island. Etopia Island is actually not a new sim - it's been open to the public at least since April (as evidenced by this entry by Soso Gao in the French blog SLObserver.com, this early photo album from Magus Opus (RL: Michael Gaio), and this very early map (dated 19 March) taken from Maggie Nagy's (RL: Maggie Dutton) Sociocracy in Action site).

one reason it's taken me so long to become a part of the community there is because i was waiting for two particular units to become available - an apartment, and a shophouse. it's been worth the wait.

you can see the two units in the picture below, which is a shot of the southern coastline of Etopia Island. my apartment is on the leftmost edge of the photograph, and is separated from the Raymaker Learning Space at Etopia Island (the dark brick glass-roofed building immediately adjacent to the solar panels in the foreground) by the Community Garden. i like this shot because it gives a good idea of the well-planned mix of land-uses at Etopia Island, as well as an example of the transport infrastructure there, as evidenced by the tram just about to pass by the Raymaker Learning Space.

the island is the brainchild of WilliamThewise Goodman (RL: Zev Paiss). it's a member of the Green Islands Project, which means that the electricity used to power its particular server at Linden Lab, is generated by Real Life wind turbines. i would like to thank WilliamThewise for his very warm welcome to me yesterday, and for making sure i had everything i needed to settle in comfortably :-)

the Downtown area is compact enough to easily explore, and retail outlets neighbouring the Raymaker Learning Space at Etopia Island include the Ecoutee organic clothing store (which seems to been set up as part of a entrepreneurship course of some kind), and Maxi's Place Organic Coffee House.

in fact, here's a pic of Maxi's taken from Etopia's main square, and you can see how the Raymaker Learning Space is right next door :-)

what does the Raymaker Learning Space at Etopia Island look like from the inside? well, i welcome you to visit for yourself :-) i've tried to create a resource which would serve as a suitable starting point for anyone wishing to learn more about sustainable development and environmental education initiatives within Second Life. please do drop by when you have the time :-)

[update: the Raymaker Learning Space at Etopia Island was closed on 10 December 2009]

Addressing Bali

here's another date to mark in your calendar :-)

the Chairman of the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming - Congressman Edward Markey - will be addressing the United Nations Climate Change conference presently underway in Bali, at 5:30 pm SLT on 11 December (1:30 am GMT and 9:30 am Singapore 12 December).

you can attend in-world at OneWorld Meetings.

Additional reading:
- OneClimate Virtual Bali event
- Wagner James Au's Are Virtual World Conferences a Cost-effective Eco-alternative?

Technorati Tags: geography, globalization, Globalization 4.0, quantum classroom®, Second Life

SPSS 16 on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

i'm posting this for the benefit of those of you who might be wondering if the touted claims of compatibility of SPSS 16 with Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard are true.

i've installed SPSS 16.0.1 on my MacBook Pro, and it works...

... but only to the extent that it cannot properly open the old '.spo' output files generated by earlier versions of SPSS. i might be wrong (and if i am, please correct me), but it appears that the new format of output files have the '.spv' ('v' for 'viewer') suffix.

hope this helps some of you :-)

ludo ergo sum

i took this picture of my mother interacting with my niece through Lego, while sitting on this lovely rug.

thirty-six years separate my niece and i.

nevertheless, it occurred to me that there's not a whole lot of difference between the way she's learning through play, and mine :-)

"Communicating Across Disciplinary Cultures in Second Life" Final Project, University of Texas at Austin

the one-hundred-and-thirty-second episode of ventriloquy is inspired by the sustainable development models - known as the Alley Flat Initiative - showcased by the graduate students of Dr Leslie Jarmon's "Communicating Across Disciplinary Cultures in Second Life". the students were Kim Belcik, Amanda Chadee, Sean McCarthy, Krzys Piekarski, and Daniel Quick. Leslie (SL: Bluewave Ogee) chairs the Graduate School, Professional Development and Community Engagement, at the University of Texas at Austin. in some ways, this 1.7 MB download is a follow-up to episode 126, which was a recording of the first time i interacted with the class.

in other ways, this episode goes beyond that first meeting, because it also brings news of other ecological initiatives within Second Life, such as Ecologia Island (accompanying blog entry (in French) here), Zev Paiss's Etopia, and the Ekoroji house from AI Design Studios.

Show notes:
- the Alley Flat Initiative
- Cohousing (wikipedia entry)
- the second life island etopia on the GreenerBusiness podcast (parts 1 and 2)

ribbon-cutting for the Alley Flat Initiative

adieu, Pasha Club

i've been scoping out mainland parcels lately.

not for any reason in particular, but more to give me some comfortable overhead for future growth and projects. and it was because i wanted maximum overhead that i decided to consider only the Linden continents, rather than private estates.

having missed out (by minutes, thanks to a crashy MacBook Pro) on Lillie Yifu's ridge plot at Cecil, i started looking at waterfront instead (again, for reasons of maximum overhead). i thought i found the perfect parcel at Mirinae, until i saw that it shared a long border with a well-patronised and rather noisy bordello.

my search ended yesterday, when i discovered that the Pasha Club was ready to move out. this parcel at Unzen had everything i was looking for: regularly shaped borders, west-facing, a good mix of land and water, and (don't laugh) a decent-sounding sim name (Unzen is actually a complex of stratovolcanoes in Nagasaki). Unzen is on the Linden continent of Corsica, which not only is the newest mainland continent - having just been open to the public in July - but was also specifically designed to have great navigable waters.

what more could i ask for :-)

i snapped it up.

[update 27 June 2009: i sold the land at Unzen, to consolidate my parcels at Lily. i would like to thank all who visited at Unzen, and my fantastic neighbours there :-) ]

the Linden continent of Corsica

Unzen and its neighbouring sims