And I should really make a special mention of  Eva at this point, I think all I need to say is “Thank you”

Not my normal topic of conversation here I know but it’s of relevance to this Website in particular.

Well to start with the “Good”. I personally have used Ad Blockers for many years. They are part of what I consider one of the essential plugin to any fresh browser install. For the most part Ads really are just an annoyance to me. They never seem to advertise anything that is of interest to me. For the most part they just seem to be wasted screen space. In this I doubt I am the only one given the number of Ad Blockers that are actually out there.

Now, The reason for my writing this post. Earlier I was sorting out some things of my site and I realised that I couldn’t see any of my Ads. Totally gone. Not even a hint of the fact that they were even there… Last time I checked into these was before I moved to Google Chrome, while I was still using FireFox. Maybe I didn’t have the best blocker but up until Chrome I could always see the Ads on my site.

I wasted about 2 hours looking for the reason as to why I couldn’t see those ads earlier. Just didn’t occur to me that Google Chrome’s Ad Blocker could be that efficient in it’s removal of what I considered to be none obtrusive ads.

This brings me onto the “Bad” of Ad blockers. I don’t sell stuff from my site. It’s purely a blog and a resource for guides and freebies. There is no revenue from it except for those ads. I don’t believe my tutorials are really a justification to put in a “Donate Via PayPal” button. I also don’t really think that people would be bothered to goto a 3rd party site, Login their account and then Donate a small amount of money for the time I put into writing those tutorials.

My solution to that was a little note asking for people to click the ads. Something that isn’t going to cost them anything more than a little time. They click the Ad, open the new page, close the new page, I make a few cents. So my only revenue stream that I have for my website is totally destroyed by ad blockers. I am also sure that there are many websites that don’t over use ads and at least partly rely on those ads to support them.

Now I am not going to add in a donate button. I am still of the opinion that it would be so under utilised that it would be more an eyesore than a practical income. I am going to put in some thought on other ideas for this. Given the theme of the site being Second Life maybe an inworld resource would be a way to go. Maybe having an item on XStreetSL available as a donation might also be an idea, it does suffer from the 3rd party site issue but then it’s a 3rd party site that anyone in SL would have access too.

I would love to hear peoples thoughts, opinions and suggestions on this subject.

So Burning Life is over and I find myself looking at what I need to catch up on again.

First off I have huge amounts of info to sort through from Burning Life itself. I think a liberal dosage of this over the next month or so would probably be the best thing here. Those that follow my Facebook, Digg, or Twitter accounts will notice I have been going through all the stories I have been able to find and posting to those. For the moment I will just post the one thing, my interview with Prim Perfect! (check pg 82).

Next! I am, as you can probably guess, making another effort with working on my web presence singularity.

I finally succumbed to getting a Facebook account. Mainly just as it fills a particular hole in my whole grand scheme. Personally I am not a huge fan. I have had to sort out too many peoples computers that have had viruses that use facebook or myspace as a delivery vector, not to mention the number of pointless game apps that I find myself wasting too much time on.

I have my Google Wave account Which in the 10 seconds after I first saw the email in my inbox I was more excited than for the entire time I have been on Facebook. I am still looking through what will be possible but I am very excited by some of the possibilities I foresee. I hope to Blog more on this and probably even blog from this in the near future as I work things out about it. From my initial explorations the aspect I am most excited by is what this will mean for project management. A Persistent conference IM could be invaluable to the organisation of larger international online events.

Lastly in terms of my web presence I saw a post on Digital Nomad about scheduling Blogging. I would highly recommend checking out the post for yourself and for that matter the Blog as a whole. As that particular post suggests a Schedule for dealing with social networking is a good idea, I have come up with a schedule that would seemingly be a good idea for me based on the rest of my schedule.

• Monday: Research Monday, This is already pretty much my usual monday. My job in RL usually ends up a with a quiet night where I am able to take my laptop in and catch up with my reading on Google Reader. Monday based on my reading statistics from Google Reader is consistently my most active day. This is not to say that I don’t read on other days, but as this is my most active day it’s getting assigned as “Research Monday”.
• Tuesday: Events Blogging. Well seeing I have the day off on Tuesday from RL work and I’ll have a fresh load of Starred items in my Google Reader. It would seem a good day to write up a Blog post based on my research of the night before.
• Wednessday: Updates Wednesday. I nod towards Wednesdays of old when Second Life would be down for updates. A day of updating plugins to my blog and doing routine maintenance to  my social networks. Maybe even a blog post related to that depending on if there was anything of note to post.
• Thursday: Tech Thurday. Now a major thing besides Blogging that I am trying to focus on with this site is Tutorials and Other Tips. I hope to focus Thursday on adding to this. Finishing proposed tutorials, Writing new ones and looking for other tips and tricks.
• Friday: Day off? Prospectively maybe a photo tour day. It’s been a long while since I been out specifically on a mission for getting Photos of a location.
• Saturday: Scripts Saturday. Just like Thursday, Saturday, I hope to focus on another aspect of this site. Scripts!
• Sunday: Another easy day. Possibly a weekly round up of blog posts.

So. I fail already! Well this Blog post is all fail. I have just updated both plugins and the blog itself. But this post should according to my schedule not be today… I guess this post is to be the last of the old regime.

Viva la revolution!

http://www.blip.tv/file/2579791/

This music video features Shakti from the band SpaceJunky at the piano. It is from her solo piano meditation CD called “7 Tears Of Tara” by Crystal Gypsy and features a cameo by Avenue CEO Rusch Raymaker, as well as other AlphaCrew members.

The CD was inspired by a spiritual journey to Tibet in RL. Whilst there Shakti visted the cave of Tara, the goddess of Compassion and Healing. While in the cave she saw something glisten on the roof of the cave. Thinking it might be crystal she reached up to touch it. To her surprise it was a single drop of water…a tear of Tara. She touched it to her third eye as the monk said a prayer in Tibetan.

When she returned home the CD was born, the “7 Tears of Tara”, being the 7 chakras of the body which correspond to 7 specific frequencies. Shakti does energy healing work in RL, and has studied various forms of energy healing including ancient Tibetan healing techniques which predate Reiki, and she uses this music in her healing work. Cosmic Vision is the piece for the 3rd eye chakra, and she hopes that this piece will bring you calmness and peace as you open to your intuition and own personal truth.

www.spacejunky.com
A Stretch Mayo & Moon Temple Productions Film

*smiles* Nice video here. I was invited to take part with this but due to my schedule and the timing of the shoot I was unable to help out. However in my own small way Shakti  allowed me to take part in a smaller way by wearing some of my jewellery Thank you

Space Junky image by deryckh

Loki Elliot’s Trailer.

So, what is this blog post about. Firstly my position within BL, little personal history stuff like that. Secondly, I wanted to try compile all the info I know of and has been officially released into one place. Kinda like a personal portal to things and stuff

I am Talia Tokugawa, I was Core and DPW lead for last years event and I have much a similar role this year. DPW stands for Deptartment of Public Works, and that basically covers getting all the community public builds built. Be that roads or main stages. Last year the main build I did was for the Burning Man Regional trailers, which will remain this year and I will also be working on the Center Camp build. Besides that my role means assigning builders to all the other builds, poke them into the right direction whilst trying my hardest to let them do what they want.

The Core role.. that is a little harder to define. That could involve anything really. Too much to really get into for this blog post. Suffice to say it involved good times and bad. The good far outweighed the bad luckily

Just one example of last year, (This one I still regularly rant about) not mentioning any names. But there was this one particular Burner I had the honour of talking to. She was relatively new to both Burning Life and Second Life. She got an esplanade plot fairly late in the build period, and on arriving at her plot and taking a look around what was already out there she was somewhat overwhelmed. She had a great idea on her application but did not think that she was capable of managing to complete it or whether it was even “worthy” of being there. I happened to fly by at this point and she called me over. Explained how she was feeling. At which point I took here to see the “What is Burning Man?” exhibit, walked her through, talked with her about the way she was feeling. I talked with her about the 10 principles and the various parts of it.. Community, radical inclusion.. explained how the community is not just “the elite”..

After a fairly long conversation I wandered off and left a newly enthused burner eager to start building, to put her original idea into action and not aim lower.

Did not really hear much from this girl, was half expecting to be IM’d for the help I had offered. However the next IM I recieved was just before the event actually started. I was called over to her plot to find a complete build. The other thing I found was the most exstatic avatar I have ever, in all my years in secondlife, ever seen. I got a complete tour of the entire plot, her avatar bouncing between her personal achievments like a pinball. She could hardly finish describing one aspect of the build before she moved to the next.

I won’t say which plot that was, but that plot was my favourite of last year. Not cause of build quality or concept but due to the journey that person had taken and I think that is what sums up Burning Life to me.. ever time I think of that little story I get the warm and fuzzies, even during the bad parts that one story alone could outweigh all of them

Which brings me onto BL09. Things are slowly kicking off there. I am spending long nights getting things parcelled, soon to be replaced with long nights of checking out applications, which I am sure will be replaced by long nights of something else.

One thing I know I will be doing a lot of is answering questions. So I am going to put together a Burning Life FAQ with answers to what I predict will be common questions all in one place

Today has been a day of updates to my blog as the next project I have on the horizon (Burning Life) will certainly be a little more public than recent activities and definitely will keep me busy. More info to follow soon.

One thing I noticed while I was doing my updates was this nifty little data mining gadget.

Check out Personas and see how the interwebs sees you. One thing I would certainly like to be able to see on this is where it derives it’s information on various categories. For example “Politics” and “Illegal”, I try avoid both these, so it would be nice to see where these come from. Quite nice to see that it does pick up well on the “Online”, “Eduction” and “Art” though. Keep in mind there are disclaimers to how far from infallible this system is.

Seems my absense has had one very positive effect, being less of a distraction to Wynd

Wynd and Cherry have been busy and have sorted themselves out with a blog for The Artdoor. A great little blog with the commings and goings of the various Artdoor members. It also features both events and class calendars. I should apologise to Wynd about getting so ranty on the whole calendar thing

The Art Door, if you havn’t heard of it, is a great little community of artisticy types run by Wynd and Cherry. They make their home in the sim Rendervisions Isle. Well worth going to check out if you have a chance

Without the gory details. I was burnt in many ways. I have spent my time away, played wow for the first time, got bored, spent a week in bed on lots of painkillers thanks to a toothache, still have the tooth ache but finally found a combination of drugs that allow me to not be in agonising pain 2 in every 4 hours.

So yeah… not really even sure how many people even pay attention to here but for me at least when I am getting back in the saddle so to speak, a blog post here is usually my first step. (well updates to website precede that but the blog post is the public “hey I am back!”).

And so, hopefully, this is me on my way to recovery…

I can’t speak too much of the good, one project I have been working on has pretty much drawn to a close so you maybe getting a sudden influx of posts, which I guess is good news.

Another thing I have been waiting on for a long time has come through and that thing is really good news.. more on that later…

And the bad… I guess it’s more a personal realisation more than news. It seems when it comes to friends I have a hard time sorting what is really important. For the second time in as many months I have found myself having to have a particular conversation. I don’t like having that conversation, but more so, I dislike that I let myself get to the state of having to have that conversation.

It all stems from not dealing with stuff. My parents when I was younger took me on courses about life and this is one of the things that was mentioned in it. The analogy used in that case was “shit under your carpet”. Imagine a room with a really nice carpet in it, you really like sitting on this carpet, chilling out on this carpet is a really good place to be. Then something happens. Someone comes into you room and takes a dump in the corner. Now at this point you have the choice of two things, you either deal with that properly, or you just sweep it under the corner of your nice carpet. Either choice, you go on about your life and then the same thing happens again, and again, and again. Now it would be nice to just stop the shit from happening, but thats not in human nature. So after a while you find yourself in one of two positions. Either you have been dealing with shit as it happens and you still have your nice rug to chill out on, or you find yourself sitting on a pile of shit with a scrubby carpet perched on the top.

So in terms of that analogy, I guess the “conversation” is the point where you realise that you are perched on that pile and to make things right you are going to have to shovel a load of shit and hope that those stains will come out of your abused carpet. Obviously I would rather not be shoveling right now and given the choice I would rather those stains weren’t there but as the saying goes, “shit happens”.

That is about as far as the original analogy goes. It does over simplify things and there are occasions in which dealing with the shits are harder or easier. For example, say you are in that room with someone you care about and worry about their opinion of you. Say it’s you that has that shit.. It’s definitely a lot easier to sweep that under the carpet and hope they don’t notice. As I am coming to realise, people are not that stupid, and your fooling yourself when you think that shit won’t smell. It is you that is stupid making that assumption.

As a further extension, there is a third option at that perched point of realisation. Find another room and another carpet. Again this is another sweeping action as there is still a room with a pile and a carpet even if you are in another room. However… in the case of the two recent conversations I came to realise that I could not just leave those carpets… I would rather shovel that shit and try scrub those stains rather than leave for other rooms and carpets. If it were possible to get back to that point of having a nice clean carpet I would work at it, even if the chance were small.

So, to the two recipients of “those conversations”..  if you ever happen to read this, I am truely sorry and I will try clean those carpets so we can maybe someday chill out on them together like when we first found those rooms and those nice clean carpets.

I know this is quite a random blog post and out the norm from what I would normally post, but the good, good news left me feeling up to trying to clean that carpet and the result of the particular conversation was justified but left me somewhat crestfallen. What was worse is that I didn’t even realise I had been “defriended” in SL. This led to another realisation (and probably a future post) having half the population of SecondLife does me no favours.

So as a first step on the road to a cleaner carpet, I am doing a little friends list cleaning. Last time I did this was just the removal of people that hadn’t logged in within 3 months of when I was tidying. This time I am being far more stringent in my selection. I am checking profiles of names I don’t recognise and if I can’t see a reason for their being there then they are being removed. I have been working on this whilst thinking about this post and for people of “A” alone thats over 40 people. I know this is only a small thing, but not having 20 people logging in and out every minute should allow me to concentrate on those that mean more to me.

I should really close this up as it has become more of an essay than I originally intended. Two things before I do… once more.. sorry.. and if anyone sees me sweeping shit, please please call me on it.

My main reason for the move is the neighbours I had in Portishead, Admittedly I never really took much time to get to know them, but the English speaking members of their group really were the exception. We pretty much kept to ourselves, I had my area at 700m altitude, they did their builds at ground level. However.. just recently they started placing build platforms every couple hundred meters which wasn’t something I appreciated or was willing to deal with.

This has been something I been looking todo for at least a couple months now but I wasn’t going to just jump into another sim without knowing who I was going to be moving in with. So when I was conferenced in on a “I have a 1/4 sim spare..” IM from a friend… and I knew that an old friend would be my neighbour.. I jumped… it’s a great sim to be in.. and I am already feeling much more inspired. I have already moved in and my build is commencing

My main inspiration on store design has come from an unusual source… a YouTube Video about a gadget.. This very cool looking robot is almost purely responsible for the design of my new store.

Here is a quick teaser image of what will be the new home to PrimCision and T3, and yeah.. lsl has built a large amount of that