Coal's Notes

One of the feeds I'm now monitoring is Torley's. Torley is verbose and interesting, and her posts are SL-related (three very good reasons to read her blog). There are all sorts of neat places that I now want to visit in world that I've seen in the pics there. Especially, the version of Toronto's Union Station at the bottom of the page. It looks almost photorealistic, but I'm sure they won't have the accompanying muffled announcements that echo around the space. The pics made me very homesick (yes, I still get homesick for Toronto, despite having been in Boston for... 7 years!?! When did that happen? Geez!).
*** -> Edit: Okay, I re-read Torley's post, and it's not actually supposed to be Union, it just evokes that feeling (very effectively).

Stupid factoid of the second: the space was used in the movie Johnny Mnemonic. I only know this because it was completely inconvenient for me, not because I've seen the movie. Take it as a given that I've never seen "the movie", because even when I have, I often don't remember the plot, and I'll never remember the character's names.

Other feeds I'm reading: Terra Nova, is all virtual world social science fun. I think I may go back to reading this on the actual site, though, since the comments are often what make the postings so interesting. Life Hacker is a neat site with lots of interesting info. Wow. What a useless thing to write about any site! I've told you nothing about what's there, haven't I? It's just hard to describe. There's such a broad spectrum of useful suggestions, and "hey, did you see this?" sort of articles, apparently aimed at whatever target demographic(s) I'm part of (?).

I'm also reading O'Reilly Radar because there are very interesting perspectives represented there on the future of the technology industry. At least someone is making an effort to define what is and isn't "Web 2.0". That's one of those marketingish phrases like "synergy" (which in my mind is still the computer from the cartoon Jem), or "information superhighway".

Tangent: If we extend that metaphor, what would Second Life be? A rest stop? A caravan convoy? A trailer park? ;) (and the grid downtimes are actually tornados?) Maybe a vacation destination? Or maybe Second Life is the equivalent of what you get after you've driven down the information superhighway? What do you think?

Of course, I monitor the obligatory New World Notes for Hamlet's take on stuff, and a selection of Linden blogs. And various friends blogs. And then there are blogs like An Entirely Other Day which I found from this post (I can totally relate). I don't entirely remember how I found Creating passionate users, but I'm finding it to be a collection of interesting articles on making better product in general.

So that's what I'm doing when I should be working. At least that's what I'm doing today.