i check in with SharesPost on occasion to see how they are currently valuing Linden Lab’s private capital stock. lately it’s been pretty flat but i missed a may 16th “Research Update” (probably because i haven’t looked in the last two weeks) =p

the research report is created by Candlestick Advisors who also evaluates companies like facebook and they see Linden Lab as stagnating and being flat in growth

here are a few excerpts from their PDF:

• estimated market capital as of May 15th, 2012 – $186-232 million (vs. $288-334 July 2011)
• 2012 estimated revenue – $103 million | 2013 estimated revenue – $104 million
• estimated price per share of $2.9 – $3.6 for common shares, down 33% from our previous estimate of $4.5 – $5.2 to account for stagnating activity on Second Life
• user hours have decreased continuously for two years to reach 408M hours in 2011, compared to 435M hours in 2010 and 481M hours in 2009
• virtual currency exchanged on Lindex has stagnated and has declined for 2 quarters, from L$31.5M in Q1’11 to L$30.6M in Q2’11 and L$30M in Q3’11

About Candlestick Advisors -

Candlestick Advisors Pvt. Ltd. provides consulting and advisory support to the financial services industry. Founded in 2007, we combine Wall-Street expertise with strong analytic prowess. Our reports have been repeatedly hailed for consistency and accuracy in projections by our clients and the media.

first things first – it’s Queen Victoria’s birthday – a time to reflect over how much better off the world was when the sun never set on the British Empire. we’ve never forgotten that in Canada and love being in the Commonwealth. but . . . that’s easier for us to do because we don’t pay any taxes to the Crown and our independence did not involve any battles – Canadians are a very polite bunch! plus it’s darn cold in Canada (not like Bermuda) and we didn’t have awesome food (like India) so the Crown really didn’t care too much about us! =p

three cheers for Queen Victoria - hip hip (you say hooray)

alright, now that the perfunctory duty of a true loyal Canadian has been performed (but it’s out of fear that Queen Elizabeth does have the legal power to behead me – hey, i might be an avatar but i am fond of my head – and shush on your comment about liking my head DreamWalker!!!)

on to a real topic and what to talk about on the third year anniversary of my one year commitment to have a blog post up every day! wow, i know i can be OCD but really? three years? gee, i need help (send prozac, zoloft, or good old-fashioned valium!) =D

my little brain was going nuts thinking it needs to be some hard hitting post with some awesome tip that no one knows about but screw that! i like rambling on and on about my virtual world journey and through that, sometimes there’s some handy info or at least it inspires some to be more confident (if Ener can do it, then any idiot can!)  =p

here’s my exciting topic (exciting to me!): Kitely! *record scratch – huh?*

Ilan at Kitely is a good friend of the blog (Oren chimes in a little, but maybe a tiny loud pink-haired girl scares him off?) and has been wanting me to try Kitely out but i did not have a need yet. the first stumbling block, with Kitely, for me was the facebook login dealio. i’ll always be Ener Hax (for the foreseeable future) so that locked me out, but last year that all changed and Kitely added twitter and their own named accounts. there was a huge value to only use social network logins because it eliminates the account management headache but Kitely implemented the most flexible solution possible (kudos for that very pro-customer move) =)

secondly, Kitely doesn’t yet support multi-region worlds which is what Enclave Harbour is. if they did, i’d be all over them! (run, Oren, run!)  =D

so . . . while i love the Kitely model and sincerely believe they have a phenomenal product that is ideal for so many uses, my needs simply didn’t mesh with their service. i was a sad Ener =(

until today! the heck with Queen Victoria, it feels like my birthday!

when checking my email this morning, i had a note asking what i thought about Kitely for doing some eLearning video

last month i trashed subQuark’s hotel film set that he had been using for a work project (below). his project had been on indefinite hold and we needed the sim for a nuclear power plant (and the new crane that i <3) and also as a new home for the ab fab Haxor Lunar Lounge! (thongs available at our CafePress shop – w00t!) o_O

his project is starting back up and i’ll be using Kitely soon to help him out (i kept the OAR before going nuclear). this might be a great solution for him, and other corporate eLearning developers, and once it’s set up, a quick machinima test will let us know!

hide, Oren, hide! and Happy birthday Queen Victoria! =)

facebook had it’s IPO last week and one big reason they are worth so much is because of you, not them. the demographics (dems) are what make facebook worth so much and those demographics are metrics about you!

what a way to seperate the human being from the dollar eh? you are an account, an account is a data point that makes up metrics and those metrics are grouped into demographics. but, as we know from being avatars in a real world, that formula does not represent the reality out there

as you know, my Ener Hax facebook account was disabled and i was told it would NEVER be reactivated. that’s harsh because for $80 and three minutes i can have a fully legal name change (someone near and dear to me did that a few years ago – total name change – first, middle, and last). and it’s harsh because all avatars have “some” value. i agree that it’s not as easy to pull together my credit card spending habits when i’m using a pseudonym online and i can see how that “dilutes” the value of each account in the demographics but i’d argue that you could squeeze some money out of even a pseudonym account. just add a flag that i can check off stating that i am a fake person! =)

anyway, i’m way off topic (i’m listening to the uncensored version of Cee Lo’s eff you song and am all wound up!) =p

back to demographics and the fail they are in our niche community. as you know, i’d love to see a Mac version of sim-on-a-stick and some smart people are tackling it as we speak! *waves to Kat & her efforts*

the demographics “say” that less than 20% of all internet users are on a Mac. does that small number mean there is no value to a Mac sim-on-a-stick?

not if you think about the students that might be reached with it

Bill Gates was a geeky teen who used to broke into his high school at night to mess around with computers. today he has donated 48% of his net worth through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (over $28 billion to global health and development). not bad for a kid who got excited about a technology introduced to him by a teacher

in the final analysis, what provides value and what matters is the interaction between two people - the person you are talking to right at that moment =)

if this was facebook, maybe all Macs would be tossed out!

over on Hypergrid Business i saw a link to a legal firm that has started a blog dealing with legal issues specific to virtual worlds and video games. video games are often big money and involve a much larger community, so it’s natural to expect legal issues. as virtual worlds continue to grow, we will likely see legal issues increase as well

being aware of legal perspectives and trends can help us safeguard the future of virtual worlds (remember the uproar last year with SpotOn3D who has since changed their name)

the legal blog, Virtual World Law Blog, might be a good source to check on occasionally or subscribe to (or consult if you need legal help!)

as another resource, i sometimes use Google Scholar which has options to search patents and legal documents

here’s some current research (may 10th) from the VW Law blog that is kind of interesting:

Social network gaming has decreased among its primary demographic, females age 12-44, with less than 43% of users age 12-17 (down from 54% in 2011) and about 36% of users 25-44 (down from 40% in 2011) reporting playing on a weekly basis.

hmm, less Farmville? no wonder Facebook shares closed down 13% today from their initial offering on friday=p

last week i was tasked with making a waste-to-energy plant and as with most thing i build, i like to let the idea roll around in my head for a few days. i already had a head start with a great illustration of the major parts that i need to include (thanks to ecomaine). i also spend a little time, like an hour, searching online to learn more about whatever it is i’m building and to get ideas of what the significant details should look like. since i had an up-to-date illustration that is intended for education, all i have to do is have each labelled component as part of the build and i’d be done

since this work is for middle school science, i also try to make each “component” easy to describe from a visual standpoint. for example, the waste-to-energy plant has something called a mercury and dioxin removal system but referring to some component in the virtual world with that term is pretty useless. instead, i’ll do something like make it a distinct colour and/or shape combo, like a yellow cylinder poking out of a cube. that way subQuark can refer to it in his book something like this: ”between the furnace and the vent flue is a blue box with yellow cylindrical protrusions, that’s the mercury and dioxin removal system . . .”

another day or so and it will be done – this is a great concept in the real world because an effective waste-to-energy plant can reduce the amount of waste going into a landfill down to 5%!

hmm, figuring out how to retrofit this into the space

keeping it "low capacity" (small) still illustrates the concept and fits the existing space

on may 24th, 2009 i made myself a commitment to publish at least one blog post a day without missing any days

that will be three years ago next week – phew!

we haven’t missed a single day and have averaged 1.333 posts per day (1459 posts in 1089 days – wow, that means we could take the next entire year off and still average just over one post per day!) *who ya calling OCD?* =p

this blog started as a free WordPress blog and the first post was regarding the only “real” machinima we ever made (Mo Peterman, subQuark Hax, and moi - complete with narration!) and that was on the 29th of january in 2008

since that time, there have been a total of 1,652 posts (25 by DreamWalker, 16 by Micheil Merlin, 3 by Sunny Whitfield, 70 by subQuark, and 1538 my yours truly)

also since that time, we’ve uploaded 13,162 pics to Flickr, have done over 7,900 tweets with 34,000 followers, and reached a peak of being in the top 1.72% of the web

those are all big numbers and they really don’t matter much, but the number that has the greatest value to me is the number of passionate people in this very small community. you are worth more than any follower count or a million tweets. i am truly grateful for you =)

some posts have been serious and handy, many were silly, and a few actually talked about my estate which was the entire purpose of this blog. i was hot and heavy into Second Life in 2008 and would soon have 19 sims. i thought i’d be in Second Life forever and absolutely loved it and spent 20-40 hours a week in-world including being a genuine Second Life Mentor (i really liked that a lot)

things change – i haven’t logged in to Second Life for over a year and i have no interest in “selling” land anymore. but some things don’t change – i still have that child-like excitement when i build things, i regularly wear my parasol as a reminder of the passion which Torley ignited within me, and i love virtual worlds even more than before (not worrying about a huge tier helps too!) =D

Second Life, and OpenSim, have changed a lot since january of 2008 but a few things have remained the same, like the following repost of an august 5th 2009 post which also applies to OpenSim and has a footnote about Creative Commons licensing that i just talked about on wednesday (see, some things never change) =)

Second Life mini-map tips

a few Second Life mini-map tips, more here =)

from our flickr pics

from our flickr pics

from our flickr pics

this work by Ener Hax is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License

that means that anyone is free to use almost anything from our Flickr photostream and make anything out of it, even use it for commercial purposes  =)

a shoe for Mera

3D printing is cool and becoming more affordable . . . kind of

you can pre-order a Cubify printer, which does nylon 3D printing like downtown Boston below, for $1,299 with cartridges that are $50 each. i don’t know how long a cartridge lasts but some ink cartridges are more expensive!

3D printing can print all kinds of things from shoes to car bodies, but my fave is still the chocolate printer

how cool would it be to print some of your virtual world out? check out the Minecraft 3D village in the video below

print yourself? you can if you can export yourself and get it into the right file format. there was a company called Fabjectory (looks like it’s gone now) that printed Second Life and WoW avatars but you can also make a robot online at Robot Nation! some other fun 3D sites related to Cubify include a Lego sword maker and a rocket builder!

beantown, baby!

some people like to take a break and explore being anything they want to be – from blue flying bears to little beavers to pink-haired winged emo wannabes to robots, others like to share their music and play for VW concerts and clubs, some like to create fantasy lives with wild houses, flying machines, and great wardrobes. some people love to make clothing, hair, buildings, animals, vehicles, and plants while others use it as a collaborative real-time meeting environment or as training tools

there are umpteen reasons to do virtual worlds and umpteen yet to be done

whatever it is that you do, chances are that others would too. the difference between you who have found virtual worlds to be a great whatever and the person that has not yet is simply exposure

the more exposure virtual worlds have, the more they will grow. the flying blue bear above only discovered virtual worlds after seeing a Swedish-dubbed TV show called CSI featuring Second Life!

most of us probably don’t have access to sharing what we do on TV but we have the web

if you don’t put snapshots online, maybe start doing that. if you don’t upload videos, maybe try it out

many tools and sharing sites are free (or reasonably priced and you could do a free WordPress for a photo/video blog – no need to write a word)

if you already do pics and/or vids, are they under a Creative Commons license?

the default license for most sharing sites is not Creative Commons but it is usually something you can change to be your default

share what you do and allow others to share it too! sharing is caring! =)

create your own license and decide what others can do with it – i allow full use, even modification for commercial use, but that’s up to you

Linden Lab makes serious scratch with an estimated $5.86 million USD per month from private and mainland tiers (from Tyche Shepherd’s Grid Survey). add to that membership dues, Linden Exchange fees, and even texture upload fees – back in 2008 they were making $90,000 USD a month just on those uploads!

how much of an impact is the loss of about 1000 private sims since the beginning of 2012?

that 1000 fewer sims means $225,000 less this month than in January (math below). $225k is a big number to me (it won’t all fit in one pocket) and it’s about a 4% dip in their monthly revenue

is a 4% dip a big deal?

i’d hate to lose that from my monthly income and if the trend continues, the end of the year would see a 7 to 8% dip. is that a big deal?

since Linden Lab no longer publishes quarterly economic reports, using Tyche Shepherd’s numbers might be as close as we’ll have to measuring the economic pulse of the Lab

so why should anyone only using OpenSim care?

there are several reasons – Second Life still generates mainstream awareness of virtual worlds (albeit, some of that carries a negative connotation), third-party viewers are driven by SL to an extent, and there are content creators who make money, even earn a living, from their Second Life endeavors who also make their content available to the open world

at around $6 million a month, it’ll take more than the loss of a few hundred thousand to have a big impact on Second Life

.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:._.:*~*:.

from Grid Survey -

• Jan 1, 2012: 23857 private estates & 7221 Linden owned
• May 14, 2012: 22851 private estates & 7117 Linden owned
• total change: -1006 private estates & -104 Linden owned
• 58.5% are full, 40.8% are homesteads, and 0.7% are openspaces
• therefore, 589 are full, 410 are homesteads, and 7 are openspaces

$173,755 (full @ $295)
$51,250 (homestead @ $125)
+ $525 (openspace @ $75)
————
$225,530 loss per month for private sim revenue vs. january 2012

the other day we gave a tour of some of our virtual world science activities and usually a visitor likes what they see and “understand” how OpenSim stuff is created

the understand part is something i bet everyone in our community can identify with whenever you have been in a situation where you are explaining what you do with virtual worlds to a mainstream, non-virtual world person

in my opinion, mainstream folks are not a creative group – not because they aren’t creative because i believe we are all creative, but because everyday life doesn’t allow time to be creative. on top of not having time, western culture doesn’t promote creativity once you become an adult. we are taught to be consumers, that celebrities are uniquely gifted, and that creativity is relegated to where you place your barn in Farmville or what weapons you choose in a shooter game

OpenSim and Second Life allow for an entire creative spectrum – from pulling together other people’s work to build your own club or home to making everything yourself – it’s completely up to the user as to how much creativity they want (and perhaps one reason virtual worlds are not mainstream activities). even if you buy everything, you probably change colours, terraform, and landscape which allows for a lot of creative freedom (or maybe your creativity is expressed in how you deploy OpenSim – like Mera and her awesome garbage PC! Mera epitomises some of what we want to teach with Enclave Harbour – full use of resources & less waste)

helping outsiders understand – you know how it goes when you are excited and explaining to someone how you make things – the person you are talking reaches a point where their eyes glaze over and you become an overzealous nutcase (okay, i’ll reserve nutcase for me, i can’t speak to how people view you!) =p

people have different levels of understanding they need – most do with a short explanation and simply want to check off a mental box that they understand what you do in the virtual world. but . . . every now and then you run into someone that wants a deeper understanding, it doesn’t mean they want to get into it for themselves, or that they want a dissertation, they just want to know more and maybe even understand why it makes you passionate and why you enjoy making time for it

our visitor wanted to understand the creative process, not so much about prims and rezzing, but about the overall process. it’s easy to get lost in explaining how prims can be manipulated to create things and that’s what probably glazes people over, but explaining the journey to the end goal might be more meaningful. after all, when you think about writing a book you don’t think about commercial digital printers, typography, Amazon pricing policies, and ISBN numbers, you think about what you’ll write and if people will like it. getting an ISBN number, choosing a font, and all that stuff is critical, but it isn’t what makes someone want to become an author

just like thinking to write a book, our Enclave Harbour started with a holistic but vague idea – to teach science through field trips that can be done from home or school. then that “big” idea was divided down into locations like a landfill, deep-sea oil platform, or weather station. for me the detail of making a landfill compactor was exciting but to a mainstream person, they don’t care about prim counts and textures, mainly because they don’t have a framework to understand if that is important. the proverbial big picture does the trick and for some people, like this latest visitor, they wanted a little more detail such as the landfill being equipped to do waste-to-energy (WtE) and not how many prims, client-side overhead, blah, blah, blah

i think of Sarge’s work with his Excelsior Station – it’s for combat rpg but it’s the story of the place that draws me in – regions like a shipyard with housing (PortSide) and alleys and a medical dome - none of it having to do with how many prims or texture sizes. Excelsior Station piques my curiosity – the notion of it entertains me by telling a story – what’s the history of the place, what’s going on now, what other places are there to explore within it, why is there combat, what’s being fought over? it’s the story and not the details he has toiled over that make it what it is

painting a big picture and then adding only the relevant details – and knowing which ones to omit – help outsiders understand and even become interested in it =)

the “secret” details are what many of us enjoy spending our time with, but we are the insiders and it’s meaningful to us

okay, onward to retrofitting this waste-to-energy dealio . . .  

© ecomaine

my answer would be yes . . . and that’s just an opinion based on the “vibe” out there and the reviews on Glassdoor. also my opinion is that when companies get to be of a certain size, that “love” which was possible with the early employees and a small company size simply get pushed out of the way by formal Human Resource departments

i’ve worked at a place that for its first 10 years had half-day Fridays with a keg of beer – unfortunately, i started there when they were 15 years old . . . no more beer . . .

the love factor makes a big difference and i was reminded about how Linden Lab was in 2006 – it felt very loving and like everyone was in it together. i remember one time phoning in to support just to thank them for doing a great job. the Linden i spoke to put my name and my thanks up on their scrolling love board (i don’t remember if that was its actual name). that night i had several Linden’s give me their bears – that was such a wonderful time and those bears were very cherished by me

When someone recognized another’s hard work, “It made you feel wonderful,” he said. Plus, since the messages were public, it gave upper management a clear sense of who was out (and under) performing. link

Philip commands big dollars to speak at conferences and even though he hasn’t been very involved in Second Life for four years, he still talks about the importance of that love

to a certain extent, i believe that Philip really believes in that love stuff, and maybe that’s what is missing from LL these days

i came across the article below because it used one of my pictures, which is a good reason to set a Creative Commons license if you want more online presence (presents?), and a Google Alert sent me the link

the article is interesting because Google sees that the video game look works and they are investing millions in promoting the Machinima YouTube channel (link to the Machinima YT is wrong in the article and the link to the company site is http://www.machinima.com/)

the numbers that the Machinima YouTube channel has are impressive – 4,467,855 YouTube subscribers with 3,299,963,317 video views! That’s over 3 billion views! they do have a lot of videos posted (almost 20,000)

clearly a lot of people are okay with the look of games (and a large number do play games) and we all know that game graphics vary from simple isometric like Farmville to super sophisticated like Call of Duty. with that in mind i am always a little surprised when a non-virtual world person is turned off by the graphics of OpenSim/Second Life and by that i mean they completely dismiss their use as a viable 3D platform (either for corporate use or even as video for things like training)

of course, there is a range of 3D graphics “quality” from Minecraft to Unity plus “real” 3D apps like Maya and Blender for 3D video but what is it about OpenSim/Second Life that causes such a strong negative reaction for this group of people?

with the sheer numbers that Machinima has and the money Google is tossing at them, clearly there is mainstream acceptance and tolerance for a wide variety of 3D graphics

is it simply an easy way for some people to dismiss virtual worlds because of their internal negative perception of VWs (like SL is for reclusive sex perverts) by blaming the virtual world look?

i know i am a snob on many things (i’ll blame the french of french canadian on that) and i was almost humbled at how snobby i must be regarding virtual worlds with this post’s title! =o

by all accounts, what i’m mentioning here is 3D and a virtual world – just different than what i have in my head (the little cogs are jamming up in my head and a tiny bit of smoke is coming out my ears) =p

i can feel a bit secure in my snobbery because when i think 3d art gallery, i think of Beacara’s kick butt art catalogue-on-a-stick! to me her work is the epitome of maximising a new media and pumping up the traditional one of a printed catalogue

the art exhibit that has my little world off kilter is here: http://vgwb.spinningwire.com/

there are two versions – one uses a 68 mb viewer (might be bigger, all kinds of stuff downloaded, like several DirectX updates in my case) and i was unable to connect (probably firewall issues).  the other version is a browser-based one via Flash

i must admit, it’s pretty cool that they offer two ways to participate in this art exhibit and even though Flash means it won’t run on a lot of tablets (latest Android doesn’t have flash with it), it is available to a wider audience (like me, since the full 3D one failed)

the Flash is nicely done and a bit novel – i’m not sure it makes the art any nicer than if it was a more traditional online image gallery (i’d argue that you would have significantly higher quality images in the latter) BUT as an alternative to the more immersive 3D one, this is a well thought out alternative =)

all in all, it is very nicely done and, in my case, the browser-based alternative was the only option i could use which speaks nicely to the benefit of something like that for OpenSim worlds!

YouTube video of the 3D art exhibit

the flash version was fast and easy

i loved the minimalist environment which allowed the art to be the focus

i don’t know much about the viewers out there and my viewer of choice is still Imprudence 1.3.1! i’ve used Zen and love it for photos plus it has sim-on-a-stick in its grid manager =)

thanks to Sarge of Excelsior Station i can easily learn about eleven viewers he did tests with this week (dang, that was a lot of fresh installs!) o_O

Misfit’s Index of Viewers

his article is worth the read and, if you are like me, you’ll walk away with a better understand of each viewer and maybe even start using one that’s a better fit for your needs!

thanks Sarge!

ps – check out Sarge’s work in Kitely!

everyone loves logos and everyone thinks they are easy to make. most people (including me) want to put too much “stuff” on a logo. too much stuff makes a logo unusable at very small sizes and/or in black and white like you might see on a business card of letterhead

for example, the Nike logo is so minimalistic and beautiful (and only like $35 in 1974!). there’s no text, no letter “N” superimposed over it – just the swoosh. that swoosh represents Nike, not the shoe company, but the winged Greek Goddess of Victory. thanks to Nike’s steady advertising and the making of good products, most people associate that swoosh as the shoe company

logos are useful and can be worthwhile to create for your OpenSim work – whether it’s for your mini-grid or clothing you make or a virtual club you operate, having a logo allows people to cite your work in an easy way. this came to mind when i was looking at a conference slide presentation by David Deeds (below). one of his final slides acknowledged topics he mentioned by showing their logos (technically, all are logotypes – a mix of a graphic and text)

it’s easy to think of the importance of logos for well known companies, but there’s no reason you can’t have one too! and don’t stress too much about hitting it right the first time, you can always change it later =)

from one of Dr. Deeds many virtual world presentations

i’ve been thinking of a logo for sim-on-a-stick, but as usual, i want to include its initials, there’s nothing wrong with that, but that doesn’t create an ideal international logo. maybe i’ll stick with this or have something for the next major release of OpenSim!

by the way, the USB trident looks like it might be public domain (link):

It does not meet the threshold of originality needed for copyright protection, and is therefore in the public domain.

This image of simple geometry is ineligible for copyright and therefore in the public domain, because it consists entirely of information that is common property and contains no original authorship.

possible sim-on-a-stick logotypes

i’m a total, self-proclaimed virtual world hermit and have no idea where to start exploring to see other people’s work

well thanks to a nice InWorldz listing by Daniel Voyager, that may soon change!

thanks Daniel! =)

also be sure to check on Wizard Gynoid‘s incredibly creative work in InWorldz (like below)

© Wizard Gynoid

Google Docs are pretty powerful and thanks to Maria at Hypergrid Business mentioning her use of them, we have been messing around with them for Enclave Harbour. in a post a few weeks back about having information kiosks, i showed an example of pulling in the Google Doc at the very bottom of this post. since then, i’ve been asked a few times how to do that and it’s really easy =)

you need to have a gmail account and from there you can select Documents from the top menu and then create (or upload) any kind of file (you can store and share OAR and IAR files as well)

for the example below, a Document was created and a graphic was placed in it along with a couple of links. i suppose you could even embed YouTube videos into the document if you needed some text explaining something (as opposed to simply placing the YouTube video on the prim directly in-world)

once you’ve made your document you can go to File > Share and File > Publish to the Web . . . and that will give you the code to embed it as an iFrame like below and like in the example i showed in-world

our example is very simple and will likely be used to link students to current events related to the activity they are at. for more sophisticated uses, see the following articles over at Hypergrid Business:

• Create a billboard network
• Pull in data from Google spreadsheet
• Log your visitors to Google spreadsheet

any Google Document can be displayed in-world if it is marked for sharing and if the viewer supports media-on-a-prim (MoaP)

the Google Doc is below in an iFrame – you can set any size you like for it

it was Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci’s birthday a few weeks back – happy 560th!

yesterday’s post was a heavy-duty one but you who commented put it in perspective and, like everything in life, there is a balance somewhere, even if it doesn’t seem so

Leonardo is well known for his art like the Mona Lisa, The Last Supper, and the Vitruvian Man (inspiration for a hypergate) but his art isn’t what supported him in life. he also came up with things like the first parachute, which was built to scale a few years back and actually worked. he also dabbled in human anatomy at a time when that had to be done in secret. he was also said to be a talented musician – yet none of those things are what afforded him a living

click for full size

Leonardo even created some of the first robots ever - a mechanical knight and a mechanical cart that could be programmed to do timed turns and run at a steady speed. that type of activity was some of how he earned a living, by creating things for patrons

one of his skills that was sought after was his aptitude for creating military equipment. he invented the tank and basically the modern machine gun. one of his machine guns involved 3 sets of 11 side-by-side barrels arranged in a way that they could be rotated to allow one set to fire, another set to cool down, and the third set to be reloaded – an advantageous weapon during war!

war, or at least the preparation for war, funded Leonardo’s livelihood but that was not his passion. it did allow him to express his creative side in mechanical inventions (he also created the first air conditioning , plans for the helicopter, and even the “ideal city” rich in community and comfort)

Leonardo’s passion was in creating fantastic drawings and plans for flying machines (ornithopter video below), solar energy, glass polishing, and water-powered mills

his creative outlet was via his journals. he wrote backward in them to help protect his ideas (no copyright in those days) and sometimes made his drawings with mistakes (like his tank where the drive cranks would have worked agaisnt each other in opposite directions). his notebooks and his ability to draw elaborate plans were his passion and his creative outlet

his notebooks are so highly prized that the last one to be auctioned was bought by Bill Gates for $28 million US dollars!

imagine what Leonardo would be designing today with all the creative tools we have at hand!

yesterday’s article talked about the militarisation of society and war will likely remain a part of human history, but remember Leonardo and despite being funded by war-related projects, he still found the time to paint, sculpt, play music, and lay the groundwork for many modern conveniences

unleash your inner Leo and allow yourself to create fanciful things in OpenSim – i’m sure Leo’s peers thought he was nuts with the crazy notion that man could fly one day. maybe your crazy build will be an everyday thing in the future =)

there’s constant battling (no pun intended) as to whether first-person shooter games or the violence we see on TV affects us and society as a whole

my own opinion is that a “normal” adult won’t go psycho and shoot up a building because they play World of Warcraft or do role playing in a virtual world (hmm, although i don’t know why i throw birds at pigs when i pass by a farm)

i do think it desensitises us, especially kids, to see so much violence on TV and there are lots of studies out there on it. the average American child sees something like 200,000 violent acts on TV by the time they turn 18! o_O

but what about games? and even OpenSim? what about role playing grids?

i know that the US Dept of Defense and US Air Force uses sim-on-a-stick but i have no idea what for

Computer and videogames, such as military shooters, act in a way which extends the process of boundary-weakening between military and regular society.

this issue is one that will continue to be debated and here is an article from today that looks at it from a different perspective

i support the right to arm bears!

blah blah blah, crane this, power plant that  =p

i asked subQuark to create an example of how my nifty tower crane could be used as part of a science field trip dealio and here it is. one funny thing to note is that i thought the counterweights (what his post is about) looked fine and actually might be on the small side. well, it turns out that subbie had to reduce their number and size. the ones i had came out to about 80,000 kilos (176,000 pounds)!!! that’s about 4 times more then the biggest tower crane in the world! oops! =D

reprinted from the subQuark blog:

Sample exercise in a virtual science field trip activity

Science is typically thought of as compartmentalized and discrete pieces of information and taught in a vacuum. In reality, science is part of day-to-day life and not separate at all. When I see news of science being rejected or painted as a this or that argument in the American educational system, particularly K-12, I become frustrated. Those individuals denouncing science as some form of dogma don’t seem to have an issue driving automobiles, flying across the country, or using mobile phones and computers – all impossible with technology (applied science).

Science is a tool in our toolbox of life that can help us understand the world around us. It allows us to create sunglasses, live and work in greater comfort, and even carry a library of 10,000 songs in our pocket. As such, science is intertwined in our lives and is not simply a set of discrete and separate concepts.

In writing a virtual science field trip workbook, I have science activities and exercises. An example of an activity is a nuclear power plant and within that activity there are supplementary exercises.

Real field trips are like this also and, unlike a text book, field trips can offer an opportunity to explore more than the topic at hand. This virtual nuclear power plant has more learning opportunities than only nuclear fission and those are incorporated into its learning objectives because learning science can be more than studying discrete concepts.

A holistic approach to science education isn’t the current norm is school where we have schedules, curriculum, standards, and the real task of reaching 20-30 (or more) in a very short time period. However, for self-paced education done at home, these constraints are reduced and a student can take additional time to learn more. The exercises I include are part of the virtual 3D location that the student can enter and explore first hand.

In Enclave Harbour, a virtual municipality, there is a nuclear power plant where a nuclear reactor is being constructed and, as part of that, a tower crane is in use. A tower crane is a fantastic way to illustrate simple machines because it is minimalistic in design and utilitarian in function. The concepts of levers and pulleys is easily demonstrated and explored, and this presents a wonderful opportunity to “weave” in some additional science into this field trip activity.

One of the tasks in this “extra” exercise is to calculate the mass of the crane’s counterweights. Other tasks include calculating lift capacities at various distances along the crane’s jib and the mechanical advantage of block and tackle systems. These exercises are intended to bring about an awareness of how science is always around us and that it is not a dogma.

The student is provided with the dimensions of the counterweight, the density of its material, and the formulas needed. In this case, steel counterweights with a density of 8,000 kilograms per cubic meter and overall dimensions of 2 meters long, half a meter wide, and 1 meter tall. Volume (V) is determined by multiplying length (l) times width (w) times height (h). The mass (m) of the counterweight is its volume times the material’s density (ρ, the Greek letter rho).

1. V = l · w · h
2. m = V · ρ

In this example, we first find the volume of one weight which is 2 m · 0.5 m · 1 m = 1 m³ (one cubic meter) and then calculate its mass with 1 m³ · 8,000 kg/m³ = 8,000 kg.

There are three counterweights on this crane for a total of 24,000 kg or 24 metric tons. This exercise continues with calculating that the crane can lift 12,000 kg at its farthest end and calculating maximum lift at other points along the jib. Also covered is the mechanical advantage through its block and tackle, which is six, meaning that 2,000 kg of force is required along with 6 meters of cable for every meter that the 12,000 kg is lifted.

This physics exercise on simple machines supplements others in Enclave Harbour such as an overhead crane and screw jacks at the desalination plant and pulleys in a vertical-lift bridge.

Science does not exist in a vacuum in the real world and supplemental science programs such as Enclave Harbour allow ambitious students to see how intertwined it is. Understanding this helps us make better and more informed decisions in life.