Category: Uncategorized

So here’s the plug. I like Second Life. You might like Second Life too; it’s a virtual world without goals but with a ton of freedom to create, chat, and do anything you want. You can skydive, fly, drive weird vehicles, snowboard, make buildings, design clothes, make friends, change gender, learn languages, discuss politics, explore sci-fi wonderlands, fight people, have sex, gamble and even, if you want to, look like the chef from The Muppet Show.

If you have a Mac or Windows box (Linux coming soon!) made in the last couple of years, you can check it out, and it’s free to join. Anyway, if you sign up through this link, they’ll send me L$1000 of the in-game currency, as a referral fee. (That’s about US$4 today.)

Then, I’ll give half of that L$1000 back to you. The other half I’ll waste on something stupid like a new jetpack or some clothes. Or on uploading textures for something fun I might build. See you in-world?

Happy 2006 everyone. Since you can read this, your system has updated itself to point at my new site, which has mucho space and bandwidth. There’ll be more multimedia stuff coming soon.

Just how could the body be improved, if we humans had actually been designed? New Scientist readers tell. And YAY for a US judge, kicking the latest ID twits back to where they came from. Great discussion here at Slashdot.

Oh, and here’s a moment of weirdness. Back in 1997, I took a trip around the world for 7 months. In San Francisco, I stumbled across Robot Wars, then new and unknown. I didn’t have the entry fee, so I volunteered to help put together the arena in exchange for entry. Helped to paint the arena black, etc. Then I got to watch the whole thing from the rafters.

There was a fantastic robot called Blendo which ripped the crap out of everything else. Instantly. It looked like an unturned wok with blades underneath, was started with an electric drill with a nut-head, and stayed upright with a built-in gyroscope. Genius. Also, too dangerous to compete. It sent flying metal across the arena to be caught by nets above the audience, and so was disqualified.

Just read on this Mythbusters question-answering-session from Slashdot that those guys made Blendo. That’s how they were found by the producer (from Beyond 2000!) who created the show. Freaky, huh?

Enjoy your Xmas and New Year, everyone!

Yes, I used to do retouching like this, but follow the link as it shows you the before/after step by step. Retouching is a dark art. Not dark because it’s especially hard, but dark because it screws people up, gives us unrealistic expectations.

None of us are perfect. We all have skin imperfections. We all have bumps where we’d rather not, or bumps that aren’t big enough, and the sooner we get over appearance and treat each other as humans, the better off we’ll be.

Everyone’s blogging. TMBG are blogging. Ricky Gervais is blogging.

Sorry I haven’t been blogging as much as I’d have liked.

On the plus side, my several jobs have meant several Xmas parties. Four in the last two days and at least three more to come. Easily the most social time of the year, I think I’ve drunk more beer in the last two days than in the last two months. Because it’s been good beer (St Arnou).

And what’s in store? Video editing over Xmas/New Year. A whole week I can’t work much, so I’m taking advantage. Planning to sit around at home with N and Bianca, my mother’s lovely cat.

Oh, if you’re short a Xmas present, please go to riananderson.com and take a quick look at my mother’s book, which I designed. It’s out and people like it, which is all I’d asked for other than breaking even. Let’s see how that goes over time.