We're still doing really well...
Monday, May 25, 2009
Friday, January 16, 2009
Moving Along...
Well, we did it, we're married in RL, and it is suiting us very well. VERY WELL. It all feels so...normal!
The story continues. We got a mention on CNN.com recently and were also featured again in a magazine here with pictures of us and our baby!
With all of these fun and great outcomes, I feel like I'm ready to move on a bit...I've been enjoying my RL time, and as for online, I'm working on some new projects. For now, I'm putting this blog to bed---giving it a well needed rest.
If you are new to the site please look into the archives. There are tons of resources to help you with your SL 2 RL love!
To the rest of you, thank you! THANK YOU!
Friday, December 26, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Facebook killer jailed for life
Facebook killer jailed for life
A jealous husband was jailed for life after murdering his wife because she changed her status to "single" on Facebook, the social networking website.
Lorry driver Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he felt "humiliated and devastated" when Emma, his wife of 15 years, changed her online profile four days after he moved out of their home.
The day before the murder he rang his wife's parents and complained that the Facebook posting made him "look like a fool."
He then drove back to the marital home near Croydon, south London, in the early hours armed with a kitchen knife and a meat cleaver.
Fuelled by cocaine and alcohol he attacked his wife as she lay in bed, beating her, tearing out clumps of her hair, and stabbing her repeatedly in the head, neck and arms.
When police officers arrived they found Forrester walking out of the house with a carton of fruit juice in his hand.
He held out his bloodied hands and said: "My wife's in there, I've killed her."
His wife's relatives wept as Forrester was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 14 years at the Old Bailey. He had pleaded guilty to murder at a previous hearing.
Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, said: "You committed a terrible act. There is no possible excuse or justification. This is a tragic killing and what you have done has caused untold anguish."
In a statement to police after the murder, Forrester said: "Emma and I had just split up. She forced me out. She then posted messages on an internet website telling everyone she had left me and was looking to meet other men.
"I loved Emma and felt totally devastated and humiliated about what she had done to me."
Prosecutor Alex Lewis said the couple had a "volatile" marriage which deteriorated over Christmas and Mr Forrester moved out on Valentine's Day. He then began making telephone threats.
Forrester had previous convictions for theft and burglary dating back to the age of 15.
Mrs Forrester's sister, Liza Rothery, said it was a "brutal, callous attack on a defenceless woman."
A jealous husband was jailed for life after murdering his wife because she changed her status to "single" on Facebook, the social networking website.
Lorry driver Wayne Forrester, 34, told police he felt "humiliated and devastated" when Emma, his wife of 15 years, changed her online profile four days after he moved out of their home.
The day before the murder he rang his wife's parents and complained that the Facebook posting made him "look like a fool."
He then drove back to the marital home near Croydon, south London, in the early hours armed with a kitchen knife and a meat cleaver.
Fuelled by cocaine and alcohol he attacked his wife as she lay in bed, beating her, tearing out clumps of her hair, and stabbing her repeatedly in the head, neck and arms.
When police officers arrived they found Forrester walking out of the house with a carton of fruit juice in his hand.
He held out his bloodied hands and said: "My wife's in there, I've killed her."
His wife's relatives wept as Forrester was sentenced to life with a minimum term of 14 years at the Old Bailey. He had pleaded guilty to murder at a previous hearing.
Judge Brian Barker, the Common Serjeant of London, said: "You committed a terrible act. There is no possible excuse or justification. This is a tragic killing and what you have done has caused untold anguish."
In a statement to police after the murder, Forrester said: "Emma and I had just split up. She forced me out. She then posted messages on an internet website telling everyone she had left me and was looking to meet other men.
"I loved Emma and felt totally devastated and humiliated about what she had done to me."
Prosecutor Alex Lewis said the couple had a "volatile" marriage which deteriorated over Christmas and Mr Forrester moved out on Valentine's Day. He then began making telephone threats.
Forrester had previous convictions for theft and burglary dating back to the age of 15.
Mrs Forrester's sister, Liza Rothery, said it was a "brutal, callous attack on a defenceless woman."
Friday, December 19, 2008
Virtual Transgender Suit, avatar termination and other online world tales
Virtual Transgender Suit, avatar termination and other online world tales
See the pics and read more here: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/08/marc-owens-who-designed-the.php
...A study by psychologists at Nottingham Trent University has found that 54 percent of all males and 68 percent of all females "gender swap"--or create online personas of their opposite sex.
A real life manifestation of that practice, the Virtual Transgender Suit replicates the aesthetics of the typical virtual female form and catapults them within a real world context. The piece was specifically designed for men to wear in the real world, creating a bridge between real (where cross-dressing is not really socially accepted) and virtual...
See the pics and read more here: http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/2008/08/marc-owens-who-designed-the.php
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Virtual Vacation, of sorts...
Hi Friends!
Let me thank everyone who has been reading this blog faithfully (or otherwise)...when I look at the traffic reports I am amazed at how many of you stopped in to check us out.
Even so, I'm going to be slowing down the number of entries into this blog. It's a fairly simple reason why...I'm spending more and more time with my Real Life now, and to be honest, if I haven't convinced you by now that Second Life Love can go real, I probably never will. It doesn't work for everyone, but it certainly CAN work and did work in our case.
Our baby is doing so well, sleeps like a charm, is giggling and grabbing for things already (at 7 weeks yesterday)! I swear she's trying to form words already too, but that might be mommy wishful thinking. If we're lucky, we might get the chance to have another one sometime in the next year or two. I love being a mom.
We, as a couple, are also going great...in fact...it's better and better all the time. My transition to the AU feels more normal now after almost a year...as it should. The pregnancy hormones are also finally tapering off, too. I figure if we survived these two things running simultaneously as we initiated our Real Life together, we can probably handle just about anything. Sometimes I think that the real challenge was each of us as individuals believing that the other really was in love! I think that was the motivation for this blog, actually. Trying to be sure that my brain was satiated with information proving that this kind of love is possible and can be real!
The happy ending is here:
We're getting married January 14th, 2009. Today, in fact, we're going out again to look for rings.
I won't forget you all...as I run into useful things to post, I certainly will. Hope you'll stop in occasionally and check on us. We're still be here, just a little less than daily now.
Wishing you love!
Randoym and Matchsticks
Let me thank everyone who has been reading this blog faithfully (or otherwise)...when I look at the traffic reports I am amazed at how many of you stopped in to check us out.
Even so, I'm going to be slowing down the number of entries into this blog. It's a fairly simple reason why...I'm spending more and more time with my Real Life now, and to be honest, if I haven't convinced you by now that Second Life Love can go real, I probably never will. It doesn't work for everyone, but it certainly CAN work and did work in our case.
Our baby is doing so well, sleeps like a charm, is giggling and grabbing for things already (at 7 weeks yesterday)! I swear she's trying to form words already too, but that might be mommy wishful thinking. If we're lucky, we might get the chance to have another one sometime in the next year or two. I love being a mom.
We, as a couple, are also going great...in fact...it's better and better all the time. My transition to the AU feels more normal now after almost a year...as it should. The pregnancy hormones are also finally tapering off, too. I figure if we survived these two things running simultaneously as we initiated our Real Life together, we can probably handle just about anything. Sometimes I think that the real challenge was each of us as individuals believing that the other really was in love! I think that was the motivation for this blog, actually. Trying to be sure that my brain was satiated with information proving that this kind of love is possible and can be real!
The happy ending is here:
We're getting married January 14th, 2009. Today, in fact, we're going out again to look for rings.
I won't forget you all...as I run into useful things to post, I certainly will. Hope you'll stop in occasionally and check on us. We're still be here, just a little less than daily now.
Wishing you love!
Randoym and Matchsticks
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Monday, December 1, 2008
SL Metrics for October from Massively
Second Life October metrics: More falls
by Tateru Nino
by Tateru Nino
October metrics for Linden Lab's virtual environment, Second Life are not yet formally available, but Lab CFO John Zdanowski wound up giving out a link to the information in advance, so we have the figures to work with. September was not a good month by these metrics, and we were interested to see how October panned out.
Your key takeaways for October are a continuing plunge in premium accounts, and a reduction in overall economic activity. User hours, however were up. A more detailed summary follows after the jump.
The gains were:
User hours rose in October after their fall in September, rising 11% to 37 million user-hours for the month.
Private estates increased by only 3.6% in October, and Linden Mainland by 1.3%. The total at the end of the month was 2.013 billion square metres.
The losses:
PMLF (accounts with a positive monthly Linden Dollar flow) is down by 1.86% to 61,467, canceling out most of the gain this figure had in September. The figure is now on a par with July 2008.
User-to-user transactions are down 10.83%, more than wiping out the gains of September, but this figure does not appear to provide any useful measure of economic activity, and Linden Lab cautions us against inferring any such activity from it.
The amount of USD exchanged during October fell for the third month running, falling an additional 0.7% (US$66,000) to 9.05 million USD. Across the three months, that's a fall of 4.8% (US$459,000) from its peak in July 2008.
Premium accounts continue their accelerating decline. Another fall this month, this time 2.1% (1,751 accounts) bringing the new figure to 81,479. Linden Lab's new CEO, Mark Kingdon says that 'Premium subscriptions are immaterial in our overall business.'
October closed with the L$:USD exchange rate gaining fractionally from September's close, at L$266.3:US$1.
Basically while September was essentially a decline, October didn't seem to fare much better, except in user-hours.
Demographically there seems to be little change. Second Life is still firmly in the hands of Baby Boomers and Generation X as far as active users go, and younger users statistically remaining unengaged. The percentage of user-hours consumed by users under 25 fell during October to 14.96% (including Teen Second Life).
Friday, November 28, 2008
Is Romance in a virtual world real?
Is Romance in a virtual world real?
By alexanderkeenan
Romance in the virtual world, is it really that different than in the real world? I started this project to look at Transreality which is about goods and/or services that have aspects in the real world and the digital world. What I am finding is that romance itself has become transreal. Romance can now exist in both the real world and the new virtual worlds. I guess I should not be surprised because relationships have existed throughout history so long as both parties could communicate in some manner. The Internet has been all about communication. So it has become another means of allowing a romance.
What’s new to all of this is the 3-D virtual worlds and the use of Avatars. To understand why, you really have to go back in time to a period before the first PC. To a time when the first Role Playing games came out, such as Dungeons and Dragons. What people found back then was that for some people the roles they played in the game became their alter egos. Some people became depressed and emotionally impacted when their character died in the game.
Now jump to 2007 and current avatars used in 3-D virtual worlds and the book titled “Alter Ego, Avatars and their creators”. In the book Robbie Cooper, Julian Dibbell, and Tracy Spaight let people who use avatars in different virtual worlds explain a little about their avatars. As you read through the book you see how avatars can become an extension of the people who use them in a 3-D virtual world.
So what do avatars have to do with romance? Avatars and the whole 3-D virtual environment allow a much deeper emotional involvement then were ever possible before, using the Internet. You have personnel space in a 3-D world. You can choose to share it or prevent others from invading it. Many of our behaviors in real life are reflected when we use an avatar because the avatar becomes an extension of ourselves. In the virtual world call Second Life this has become very clear.
As I traveled through Second Life this week I attended a discussion on relationships in Second Life. The discussion verified a lot of what I had already observed. For those people seeking relationships, many of the guys seem to be looking for sex; many of the women seem to be seeking romance. This can be verified by the fact that you can find clubs where a guy can hire a female escort. Yet you find few clubs setup for a female to hire a male escort. People’s behavior in real life tends to carry over in their virtual life. Unfortunately, this is not really appreciated by the people who “play” the game of romance in the virtual world.
Second Life allows someone to create just that, a second life away from their real life. People meet new people. They make friends and even fall in love. What is interesting is that people have no trouble accepting that the friendships they make in Second Life are real friendships. They may never meet someone in real life but many of the friendships are as important as ones they may have in real life. Now here the interesting part, at the same time they believe that romance in Second Life can be treated as game. They meet someone, share a number of romantic experiences, in some cases they may even hold a virtual wedding. They tell themselves it is just for fun or it is just a game. In the end one of the two ends the relationship for one reason or another. It is when things end and they experience all the emotional pain that they really appreciate just how “Real” their emotional involvement was.
Over the last month or so I have been talking to people about this. I have heard people tell me about talking to their real life partners about their relationships in Second Life. Some have even gotten their partners blessing on their virtual weddings. After all, it is not real, it is just a game, what harm can it do. The trouble is that these romantic relationships in Second Life tend to be short for a number of reasons. I have heard several stories of the people who had the blessing of their partner for a virtual wedding, needing to be comforted emotionally by that same partner when the virtual relationship ended. They were surprised by how real the emotional pain of the breakup was.
At the same time there is another group of people that follow the “What happens in Second Life, stays in Second Life” philosophy. These are the ones who have real life partners who are unaware of their activities in the virtual world.
If you seek virtual sex, or find a romantic partner in a virtual world such as Second Life, are you really cheating on you real life partner? After all Second Life is just a game not real life. Do you really lessen your real life relationship by marrying someone in a virtual wedding that your partner does not know about? These are interesting moral questions for which I only have answers for myself. But as the popularity of virtual worlds and use of avatars grows these are questions that more and more real life couples will have to deal with. For it takes time and emotional energy to maintain any type of romantic relationship.
The Second Best Kind of Love on SL
http://aifriends.blogspot.com/
Best puppies to keep you company while you look 4 love(and might attract some attention for you as well) ~RR
Thursday, November 27, 2008
M.I.T. Futurists Focus on Next-Gen Multimedia
M.I.T. Futurists Focus on Next-Gen Multimedia
by Sindya Bhanoo
The M.I.T Media Lab has announced its latest endeavor -- the creation of a Center for Future Storytelling. The center will use new technologies to make stories more interactive, improvisational and social, according to an official statement.
The center is being funded by a seven-year, US$25 million commitment from Plymouth Rock Studios, a major motion picture and television studio scheduled to open in 2010 south of Boston.
Three researchers from MIT's Media Lab will co-direct the center. They are V. Michael Bove Jr., who studies object-based media and interative television, Cynthia Breazeal, who focuses on robotics, and Ramesh Rasker, who researches imaging, display and performance-capture technologies.
The goal is to create "a sort of living story that can continue to evolve and shape depending on who is listening to it and how they can derive meaning from it," Breazeal said in a taped interview.
The center already has more than a dozen research projects in the works. They include:
Everything Tells A Story: A project that will enable everyday objects to keep running "diaries," of what happened to them. The information could be used for "personal story creation" by individuals.
Tofu: A robot that uses cartoon-animation style movement to work with kids. The researchers describe it as "LEGO Mindstorms meets Muppets." Future versions of Tofu will allow children to design, program and remotely operate their own puppets to tell stories.
Nexi: A project to create a social robot, or a "synthetic performer." The project combines mobility, dexterity, and most remarkably, sociality. The robot's expressive face is capable of multiple human facial expressions. A video of Nexi can be viewed below.
Programmable Movies: A research project to turn movies into a customized experience based on certain parameters like emotions, place or time. The idea is to let users piece together different images using metadata encoded in the images.
MIT's Media Lab was started more than 20 years ago to develop innovative technologies for human expression and interactivity. To read about other projects at the Center for Storytelling, click here.
by Sindya Bhanoo
The M.I.T Media Lab has announced its latest endeavor -- the creation of a Center for Future Storytelling. The center will use new technologies to make stories more interactive, improvisational and social, according to an official statement.
The center is being funded by a seven-year, US$25 million commitment from Plymouth Rock Studios, a major motion picture and television studio scheduled to open in 2010 south of Boston.
Three researchers from MIT's Media Lab will co-direct the center. They are V. Michael Bove Jr., who studies object-based media and interative television, Cynthia Breazeal, who focuses on robotics, and Ramesh Rasker, who researches imaging, display and performance-capture technologies.
The goal is to create "a sort of living story that can continue to evolve and shape depending on who is listening to it and how they can derive meaning from it," Breazeal said in a taped interview.
The center already has more than a dozen research projects in the works. They include:
Everything Tells A Story: A project that will enable everyday objects to keep running "diaries," of what happened to them. The information could be used for "personal story creation" by individuals.
Tofu: A robot that uses cartoon-animation style movement to work with kids. The researchers describe it as "LEGO Mindstorms meets Muppets." Future versions of Tofu will allow children to design, program and remotely operate their own puppets to tell stories.
Nexi: A project to create a social robot, or a "synthetic performer." The project combines mobility, dexterity, and most remarkably, sociality. The robot's expressive face is capable of multiple human facial expressions. A video of Nexi can be viewed below.
Programmable Movies: A research project to turn movies into a customized experience based on certain parameters like emotions, place or time. The idea is to let users piece together different images using metadata encoded in the images.
MIT's Media Lab was started more than 20 years ago to develop innovative technologies for human expression and interactivity. To read about other projects at the Center for Storytelling, click here.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
SL vs RL Personality
Dissertation study - 3 minute completion, and any help is appreciated
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey everybody, I hope you're all smiles!
For my university dissertation, I’m comparing personality in the physical world (i.e. the 'real world') with personality in the virtual world (i.e. on SecondLife). Theory has suggested a link but little scientific research has actually investigated the link: it is interesting from the perspective of job interviews, online dating, etc.
My study takes around 3 minutes to complete; you basically fill in a completely-anonymous questionnaire about your personality in SecondLife and in the real world. You don't even have to provide your email address!
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm trying to get as large a sample as possible. If you could spare literally five minutes then you can complete my questionnaire here (I've tried to make it quick/easy to complete!)
Second Life Personality Type Study
Thanks everybody and if you do have a spare five minutes, then please do try to take the time to help!
James
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hey everybody, I hope you're all smiles!
For my university dissertation, I’m comparing personality in the physical world (i.e. the 'real world') with personality in the virtual world (i.e. on SecondLife). Theory has suggested a link but little scientific research has actually investigated the link: it is interesting from the perspective of job interviews, online dating, etc.
My study takes around 3 minutes to complete; you basically fill in a completely-anonymous questionnaire about your personality in SecondLife and in the real world. You don't even have to provide your email address!
Any help would be greatly appreciated as I'm trying to get as large a sample as possible. If you could spare literally five minutes then you can complete my questionnaire here (I've tried to make it quick/easy to complete!)
Second Life Personality Type Study
Thanks everybody and if you do have a spare five minutes, then please do try to take the time to help!
James
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