The Complete Web 2.0 Directory

Go2Web2.0.net. It's a sortable directory of "those" sites...RSS, Social Media, content aggregation, podcasting, and the like. Regardless of what you think about the marketing slogan known as "Web 2.0", this site is a neat little aggregation of sites with a nice, easy to use format.

Biking Through Chernobyl

An interesting photo journal of one woman's motorcycle trips through Chernobyl and surrounding area. Some very cool photos and an up close perspective of a forgotten land. Two different photo journeys, "Ghost Town" and "Land of the Wolves", as experienced by the site author, Elena. Check it out.

Guan Yin Park

Random wandering found me in Guan Yin Park. A nice little garden of oriental tone with the full ambience of garden sounds (gurgling fountain, singing birds), which I think was enhanced by the SL night. I took a minute to wander the small parcel and really enjoyed the garden. The overall scene was well done. Plethora of flowers and the usual fare. Additionally, there was a nice little sculpture installment called "Geisha Sisters". Very SL-minimal in its creation, it nonetheless conveys a certain feeling and message and was a solid piece in line with the overall parcel theme. You will also note a nice golden statue and a red barrel object.






An available notecard details...

The Oracle of Change is an SL version of the Yi Jing (often transliterated as I Ching).

Donations from this Oracle are currently being collected for Support for Healing here in Second Life, and Modest Needs, a small RL charity that gives loans to people who are in a crisis (http://www.modestneeds.org).

Donate 20 L or more to the Oracle of Changes and you will get a notecard containing your reading. Donate as much as you want. All the money goes to charity in RL and SL.

The card you receive may contain a simple positive or negative answer, for instance good fortune or misfortune, or it may give you advice or instructions. Some of the instructions are a spiritual or adventure quest. Follow it, and you may find unexpected spirit treasure.


This network of Oracle Orbs is maintained by the Avatars of Change, a monastic and charitable order within SL. We currently have three sites totalling more than 5000 M of temples, retreats and monasteries. Please contact one of our officers to be considered for membership in our Order.

After a list of all the locations, the notecard further added the following:

So what is an oracle? An oracle, like the famous Oracle of Delphi, or the ancient Chinese Yi Jing (also spelled I Ching), answers questions. This Oracle will give advice and instructions, but it does not predict the future. It is like a small flashlight that lets you see a little ahead of yourself on the path of life. Use it wisely, and you may avoid stepping in holes in the dark. This Oracle is intended for use here in SL. If you have RL questions on which you are seeking advice, please IM one of our Diviners, Taras Balderdash or Suzanne Logan.

This is a real Oracle, so not all the readings are positive. But all of them are advice, not prediction, so don't get overyly upset if you get a bad reading. It may be a warning or a way to improve your situation. Don't be surprised if the Oracle sometimes seems to speak harshly to you. It is your own subconscious, not some outside voice. You would do well to heed your own criticism, if it rings true.

I am constantly tuning and revising the Oracle. Please let me know if you find typos.

This work is dedicated to I Ching master Tsung Hwa Jou, whose work inspired many of the readings. Memory Eternal!

Blessings and Thanks!

Taras Balderdash, Avatarian Prelate

Obviously, I had to give it a whirl and popped in an appropriate donation. What's the read on yours truly? Well, I managed to get two from my single donation...

345

You lose a goat and don't chase after it.
No trouble.
Relax.


435

Weeding out.
Make the hard decisions.
Take the middle way.
Expect good deeds not to be rewarded.

Not bad. I think I'm living up to this. At least the part about the goat.

Life in a Dairy Barn

I spend roughly 40% of a given week at work. Thank god I never sleep so I can still screw around writing blahg entries.

The office is a weird place. Not just my office, most of them, though each has their own quirks. It is a family in the sense of people who spend so much time together, depend on one another and are forced together by circumstance rather than choice. Work, eat, forced recreation (if you think those after hours drinks are optional, you aren't a team player!), and what have you. All these wonders of the daily grind happen in very tight quarters.

Here is where it gets really fun. You get to learn stuff about people that you just don't need or want to know. Marital problems, ailments, party planning, job searches....the list is endless. These odd nuggets of information give you a little insight into people you think you know. Mostly, though, everyone has a little Hyde in them. Due to the proximity and the hours, the Hyde doesn't stay hidden. It naturally leaks out through overheard phone conversations, office gossips and outright speculation.

Here is where we gets truly bizarro in the way that only humans can. What do we do with these tidbits? Nothing. We politely go about our business. Save for some behind the back whispering, we pretend we do not know that our office mate is screwing around on his wife, the guy in accounting binges and purges, and the new girl has a gambling problem.

So, how was your weekend?

Fanaticism

The videos in the link are an amazing look into the behaviour of the righteous. Join Mark Bunker in his saga to educate people on some of the practices of Scientology. I don't have much to say about the beliefs of the religion. People can follow whatever beliefs that work for them. This is, however, an example of how fanaticism can play out in an ugly way. Check it out.

Welcome to Korea

Back in August, I took my yearly jaunt over to the Chicago Korean Festival (11th annual). Great food and beverages, interesting events and music. I love watching the Ssireum, a traditional form of Korean wrestling (What is Ssireum?-Korea Ssireum Research Institute). Grabbed a ton of food - some Kalbi (marinated, grilled short ribs), Kimbap ( a roll of varying ingredients that looks like a sushi roll), Sundae (a traditional sausage and street vendor fare), and jokbal (seasoned and steamed pork legs). More info here for the curious. Topped it off with some OB Lager and Jujimong (pomegranate wine) and a traditional drumming and dancing scene.

Take a gander at some random photos of the scene. Note the presence of the US Dept of Home Security.

Trailfire.com

I stubled upon (stumbleupon ) an interesting, free web tool called Trailfire. It looks pretty interesting. In essence, people create and publish web surfing trails with comments. A user can mark pages to create a condensed surfing session for anyone with similar interests. According to the site...

Trailfire is a hosted service that enables anyone to comment on any web page. Place a 'trail mark' on a page with your comments or notes. A trail mark can contain text, images, videos and other media types. When you give several marks the same 'trail name' you are forming your own navigation path on the web. We call this a 'Trail'.

Trailfire provides a useful "Guided Tour" of it's own page as a trail. A good way to see what it can do. I went for a test run by following a trail entitled "HTML helps" and it was a pretty informative run of sites related to HTML, including some WordPress help, RSS, adding various widgets to web pages, etc. Overall, pretty useful info regarding the stated trail topic. I followed that up with a trail called "Top Hacks everyone should know" which consisted of one lonely web page that I found to be only marginally related to the topic of Top Hacks.

Trailfire currently works with IE and Firefox, has a sidebar and a nice hidable widget for following the trail and reading comments. Additionally, there are subscriptions to other users trails and the ability to add HTML to "marks", which are the indicators that make up a trail and will have comments, etc per the specific page it is marking.

As with many of these new integrated browsing tools, it will get better as it is used. Certainly has intriguing possibilities for research, extension to blog entries, shopping, and sharing.