Another Day Down

AnUsher Beta Test

2009-12-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

I was recently told by my professor to beta test the Second Life version of the House of Usher. This scenario is based on the Edgar Allen Poe story. My specific task within the house was to search the crypt under the house that someone in town was supposed to have told me about. On top of that, my beta test task was to figure out what more clues are needed to make the role play of the house and actors have a more fluid motion. Overall I think that the house is very well built and what is built is impressive. Unfortunately it is still in the beta testing and still has a lot of work to make it ready for the public.

The crypt under the house was very eerie. Kudos to whoever it was that made the walls so old and worn looking. The paths and hallways give off an unsettling vibe that took me a few hours to shake off. The crypt was huge and for the most part empty. This is one of the downsides to the basement crypt. There were so many rooms off the hallways and other corridors and areas that were almost completely empty. One of the rooms I went in had a picture of some old guy who looked important. When I clicked on the picture I got a note card saying something like the picture was put in the basement and don’t bother bringing it back upstairs. This is obviously significant, but for what? I could not find a real use for this painting. If this along with other clues were an actual clue to something that people exploring are trying to figure out, it would make a more enjoyable experience.

I feel as though more clues are needed. However, as to what the clues should be is completely up to what is being figured out. As of right now, we are supposed to try and figure out what is ailing Madeline. In the future I imagine multiple plot lines running through the house. Each plot could have a set of clues, some of which could overlap, or be red herrings. Plot lines could include the doctor that Roderick does not trust, people from the town who have heard stories, and other random objects found in the house. One object that stood out to me was the rocking horse on the top floor. A new back-story could be created for it and it may serve as one of the final clues to a plot line.

Overall I think the house is much too empty. This may be because the house itself is immense. There is a ground floor, upstairs, and three levels of basement. Like much of Second Life, there needs to be more people at once in the house. Schools could come in and break up into groups of three or so and ask the actors questions and search for clues. During my visit, I was constantly looking for the actors as well as the person I came to the house with. At one point I was lost in a maze of walls. Something like this, which is clearly unfinished, should be blocked off by temporary walls or something to prevent people from thinking it could be important when in truth it is just unfinished.

I feel the actors did an amazing job staying in character and keeping the charade up. It was an enjoyable experience as well as an eye-opening test. The house has a lot of potential and I am excited to see what it becomes in the months to come. I may even want to indulge myself and design some objects for the house seeing as it is something that interests me.

I don't get it…

2009-11-30T12:50:00.000-08:00

For one of my classes I have written three papers. I really do not understand the grades I got on them given the amount of work I put into them.

On the first paper, I wrote about four drafts and revisions. I met with a writing tutor to get even more feedback and ideas to make it better. After I had most of it written, I even sent it to my professor to revise and give me even more feedback. I handed in the paper and when I got it back I got a C+. I thought maybe this was just a fluke and the next one will be better.

On my second paper, I still wrote about three or four revisions. Again I met with a writing tutor as well. This one I did not email to my professor prior to handing it in. I felt pretty good about my writing for this paper. I have been writing consistently in my other English class and had been doing pretty well. When I got my paper back, I got a C. I actually went down in grade.

My final paper I put off till the very last minute. I was in the library the night before it was due typing it. I only spent about an hour and a half on the first draft. I barely made any revisions to it, and thought the paper was total crap. I did not write more than one draft, I did not get tutored on it, and I did not send it to my professor before handing it in, nothing. I handed it in hoping to at least get a passing grade on the paper. Much to my surprise, when I got back my paper, I got a B+. This is the best grade I have gotten in this class on a paper by ten points!

It seems like the grade I get on those papers is inversely proportionate to the amount of effort I put into them. It can’t be that all three of my grades were flukes, could it? Maybe for the first two papers I should have merely spark noted the books and done them the day before they were due.

The House of Get Me Out of Here!

2009-11-20T01:54:00.001-08:00

Edgar Allen Poe was never known for his cheerful stories with happy endings. His short story "The Fall of the House of Usher" is no exception. If I could change anything within the story instead of just reading it, there are a few things I would change.

The narrator does not ask enough questions! If I were the narrator I would ask about the scenery around the house. I find it a little strange that everything is either dead or dying and how even the lake is a murky color. The weather also aids this strangeness. Why does it have to be bad weather all the time? These are important things that should serve as red flags in the narrators mind. But no, he just brushes them off like they are a coincidence.

I would also liked to have made sure that Madeline was really dead. A corpse should not have rosy cheeks for very long after death. This kind of thing should be a sign as in ‘Hey maybe I should wait a few days and see if she is really alive’. If I was ever burying someone, the last thing I would want to do is burry someone who is alive. That is basically the primary job of the person who is burying them; to make sure they are actually dead.

If I was a part of the story, I feel I could help turn the Usher’s luck around. If Madeline were not buried alive, perhaps Roderick would not have gone into such a deep depression. The house itself may not also get so mad at the inhabitants. Even though I feel I would make the story a better, happier place, I would not want to be anywhere near it. The depressing nature of the weather and scenery is just not my style.

Linden Lab, You Fail at Advertising

2009-11-16T19:59:00.000-08:00

Second Life is not yet a successful communications technology. There are many flaws, but I feel the biggest flaw it has is its current reputation. Before I knew I was going to have to use Second Life in this class I had seen it in a few different places. Both of which were on different television shows.

The first place I saw it was in an episode of CSI. The writers of CSI made it seem like some cool type of technology, but the role it had was in a slightly lesser light. The basis of the episode was that a serial killer was hunting down her different targets through Second Life. She then stalked them, and found their profile for personal information. This is how she found them in real life, and how she ended up killing her targets. Any game that you could be stalked through and killed would be unappealing, no matter how cool it looks.

The other place I saw Second Life was on an episode of The Office. One of the characters, Dwight, explains Second Life as “not a game. It is a multi-user virtual environment. It doesn’t have points or scores. It doesn’t have winners or losers.” To which the character Jim responds “Oh it has losers.” Later in the episode, Dwight creates a a game called Second Second Life within Second Life. This is for people who while playing their avatars, want to play avatars. This representation makes Second Life look like a dorky game that only losers play.

Just recently I was talking to one of my friends across the hall. I was talking about how we use Second Life in class to help us with our writing. My friend said something along the lines of “isn’t that one of those games that 30 year old losers play in their mom’s basement?” It is this image that is hindering Second Life’s advancement in the communication technology front. To someone who doesn’t know anything about Second Life, he had the “creepy” vibe. Linden Lab needs to fix this, and use their money to better promote Second Life, not as a serial killers paradise or loser hot spot.

Alpha Test

2009-11-01T19:00:00.000-08:00

After my visit to Heritage Key, I have a lot of thoughts. First off, I like the innovation with the Valley of the Kings, and how it is an open sim client. I don’t know much about what that really means, but from what I’ve heard, it makes it better than other online worlds, because they are all able to work with each other.

Even though I like the idea, the world itself still needs much more work. Everything so far is very gray. I was flying and took this picture of the surrounding. The setting is going to be the first thing people see when they go to the valley, therefore it needs to be impressive. I understand that I am apart of an Alpha Test, but most of these issues need to be fixed.

It was very hard to navigate from place to place. There needs to be more of a mini-map. The one mini-map that they do have only tells what direction you are facing. It needs to have features showing where exhibits are, and more importantly where teleports are. It was very hard for me to get back and forth from the valley to the initial visiting center.

Many of the other problems I encountered were more glitches than problems. As you can see in this picture (above), it looks like I am falling, except I was never flying. I was walking down the path to the tomb of King Tut, and then I was falling. I kept falling, but was not actually going anywhere. Another glitch was the painting on the wall. At one angle, the picture flattens out (below). I don’t really understand how this happens or why it does, or even it is a problem at all. It may be to just make your avatar more visible.

Overall this proved to be an Alpha Test. This has not even gone into Beta and these flaws prove it. It is still being build and things are changing every week. It is a work in progress, but it is all in the right direction. I am anxious to see the final product and how it will all work together with other open sim clients.

It Started with a Picture

2009-10-21T13:20:00.000-07:00

This past weekend, I attended Burning Life for an assignment for my English class. I took a bunch of pictures to add into my blog as well as my Koinup account. I was just snapping away and uploaded them all to Koinup. About a day later I got an email that someone had added me as a friend me on Koinup. This confused me for a few reasons. I did not even know that you could friend someone on Koinup. I had no idea that people even looked at my works. Finally I did not think any of it was any good.

I have not yet asked this person to write about him, so for now lets call him Jean-Pierre. Apparently Jean-Pierre thinks that this picture is “favorite” worthy. His world is also Second Life, and by looking at his pictures, I can tell he is no noob. He has more than 1,600 pieces of work, and nearly 1,000 comments. From looking at his pictures, I can tell he has been all over the Second Life world.

My work pales in comparison to some of his photographs. This is a picture he had on his home page under the title “Last Month Coolest Work”. To me, this title does not do the picture justice. The way he was able to frame the sky, sea, and cottage amazed me. I find it almost humorous how the same person who took this picture, favorited one of mine.

Personally I like this picture much better than the one he liked. It is almost of the same scene. You can see the same Ferris wheel looking carnival ride in both pictures of my pictures. The main reason I like this one over the other is because of the time of day. I took this picture at night and the dark sky in the background along with electricity pattern on the supports make the picture much more interesting. The balloons also give this picture more vibrant colors.

Where I Went…

2009-10-21T12:37:00.000-07:00

My friend Sarah and I decided arbitrarily chose to go to an event called NlightN Nootan. It was basically a huge techno dance party in a venue that resembled a scorpion. It looked like a lot of fun, but I could not get many aspects of Second Life to work all at once.

Once the setting rezzed, I was very impressed. I had no idea how much detail was involved in Second Life. I had seen some parts very detailed, but never so much so detailed.

No matter how good the setting looked, it still does not change the face that it was so slow. Even though I was plugged into an Ethernet cable, my connection was still very slow. I even closed all of my Safari windows and iChat, but this only made a slight difference. Rezzing took forever as well. After nearly twenty minutes, half of the people dancing were still colorless outlines of their avatar.

When I tried to actually join the party and dance, my avatar would only dance for about ten seconds at a time, and then he would stop. At one point, me trying to dance crashed my Second Life window. It just froze and I Mac’s color wheel of death. When I forced quit Second Life and tried to reboot it, it told me “Second Life has seemed to crash last time”. I felt like this was adding insult to injury. No duh it crashed. It then also would not let me re-log in until a few minutes had passed.

Although I was very impressed by the aesthetic values of the dance party, and the rest of Burning Life, I was thoroughly unimpressed by the stability of the connection. In total I crashed twice, and even flying was difficult. I would try to go in one direction, and nothing would happen. Then I would randomly fly very far without touching any keys on my keyboard. I got lost a few times this way.

I don’t know if this lack of stability was due to the mass of people logged in to Burning Life, or what, but more stability is needed for a better experience. I still plan on furthering my Second Life experience by attending more events and parties.

Where to go...

2009-10-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

For this assignment, we have to pick an event to go to. This was planned very well because Burning Life is this week as well. Burning Life is a Second Life representation of the real Burning Man festival. My friend Sarah and I are planning to go to one of the events this Saturday, seeing as that was the only day either of us have time to do anything.

My professor told our class about how the real Burning Man festival just kind of happens. He described it as a huge festival that just appears does its thing and goes away. In Second Life, the links to the areas are also only open for a short period of time. After that time, Burning Life gets destroyed.

In the prompt for this assignment, it said that last year students had to go out of their “comfort zone” to travel to burning life. To me I do not feel as though this is the case. I feel as though I am this brave. My Second Life avatar is just that, an avatar. It is not really myself. Anything that he does will be seen as him doing it, not me even though it is me who is controlling him.

I don’t really know what to expect from my first real life Second Life party. I am excited mainly because of all the hype I have heard about Second Life events. I have heard about hackers trying to crash servers and cause chaos. My professor told us that there could possibly be hundreds of avatars at any one event. He also said they would probably come to these events more so than others because of the sense of urgency. Burning Life is only around for a few weeks, and then it is gone. On top of that, these events may only last for a few hours or so.

Overall I cannot wait to attend this, or any event in Second Life. I am a little bit anxious to actually travel to a place in Second Life where regular users will be. I want to see how that act and what they do in something they actually know how to use. I am unfortunately still a noob, and have a hard enough time getting from place to place. Maybe I can learn something at this event.

Photo Hunt Part Deux!

2009-10-18T18:10:00.000-07:00

My professor told me about a place where it simulated schizophrenia and the mental effects caused by it. The place was full of representations of different symptoms. These symptoms were animated to move like how a schizophrenic would see them.

This is a picture of the first area. It is showing an office setting, and at first glance is only looks like the computers are opening and shutting by themselves, but the group of binders is also spinning. It seems like something that would just be annoying and something someone could just ignore, but to a schizophrenic I can see how it would be more than just a nuisance. They could possibly have to deal with this every day for the rest of their lives.

The next part really caught me off guard. The floor was originally there, but after I passed some sort of trigger position, it vanished to what it looks like in the picture. The caption said that some people would see the floor this way and try to only walk on the stones. In the picture I tried to time it so that my avatar would be looking down at the floor as I took the picture.

This final room was by far the scariest. There is a meaningless TV, which seems to do nothing… until you turn your sound on. This whisper of a voice is just saying things to you. My professor said that one of his colleagues had nightmares from this place, and until this room, I could not see how that was possible. I did not let the sound play long enough to hear what the voice was actually trying to say to me, but one of the captions said that voices try to tell people to take officers’ guns.

Overall I thought the exhibit was very enlightening. Before I visited here, I did not know anything about schizophrenics or schizophrenia. I do not know how I would deal with most of these symptoms.

Dragons & Aliens & Monsters, Oh My!

2009-10-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

I keep hearing about how people are able to become things like dragons and aliens and other nonhuman beings, but I have yet to see any of this. I have also heard about some major companies are forced to set a dress code for their employees to prevent looking unprofessional. It would give a bad image of a company is half of their employees came to a serious meeting as something other than human.

I feel the reason I have yet to see any of this behavior is because of where I have been so far in Second Life. I have really yet to explore the majority of the world. I have only really been in the educational places and other places in the scavenger hunt. Something tells me that it is doubtful I am going to see someone dressed very eccentric on the Second Life campus of Vassar.

I am really anxious for my first real person encounter in Second Life. I have really yet to see ANYONE in Second Life other than a few of my classmates and my teacher the first time we met. I really need to spend more time in Second Life if I am ever going to get the full experience Second Life has to offer. I still have to visit places that I have heard about in class. My teacher told me about a schizophrenic mind re-creation that has been known to give people nightmares. Things like that excite me.

One more thing I would like to put out there. I feel like Second Life is so vast, there are not enough residents to completely populate the world. I don’t know any of the real numbers, player or places to be, but I would think that there is a lot more places to be than people to be there. If anyone has any comments about this, let me know.

"That's what she said"

2009-09-22T09:38:00.000-07:00

Writing with quotations in college is much different than in high school. In high school I usually looked for a quote that kind of related to what I was talking about and just wrote it in my paper. This is much different in college. In college the quote should help enforce what you are writing.

In high school quotations were mainly used to fill a quota. Our teachers said that we were required to use at least three quotes per paragraph. We never really understood what we were supposed to be using them for. I would just write a sentence, then the quote, and then another sentence linking it to my thesis. Looking back on papers I wrote in high school, I see how poorly I used quotations.

In college, the usage is much more beneficial to your writing. When you use a quote, you should make sure it enforces your point. Quotes should be used to help your paper, not just prove that you read the book. In college I also learned that you should analyze the quote as well. After you write the quote, don't just say how it relates to a thesis, but explain the quote in your own words. What is Plato trying to say? Why did Darwin use those words?

I have only written one paper for core, and I hope I have used these things. I have not yet handed it in, and I am going to fix all the quotes I used. I need to make sure I analyzed the quotes and not just summarize them. I will know how well I did next week when I get it back.

Photo Hunt!

2009-09-16T18:43:00.000-07:00

I was given an assignment to go on a scavenger hunt in Second Life. Everyone was given a list and we had to go and take pictures of the different places. This taught us more about SL, the SL camera tool as well as basic photography.

The first place I went to visit was Ireland. I was very impressed about a lot of things there. The streets and signs and buildings were so detailed. I have never been to Ireland, but i would assume that it looks much like this. I want to travel to the real places and do a side by side comparison to see how realistic Second Life really is. I would like to see if the "Uncanny Valley" actually exists. The picture I uploaded was taken when I was in the bottom of a river of some sort. I was at first in the middle of the sidewalk, and I wanted a picture of that as a glitch. The bottom of the boat I thought was very interesting so this is the one I picked.

The next place I was very impressed with was the Sistine Chapel. I have been to the real Sistine Chapel, and this was a very good representation of that place. I did not see a sort of "Uncanny Valley" though. It felt as though I was looking at a picture of the Sistine Chapel. It did not have the three dimension feel as many of the other places in SL had. It was also really hard to line up a good shot of this place because it was in the middle of a small building. Every time I tried to fly to a better spot I would find myself in a wall or completely outside of the building.

Finally one of my favorite pictures was taken in Harlem. I was walking around and i found this really cool looking old car. So I hopped in the drivers seat and took a picture of it. Shortly after I posted this picture on Koinup, I got a comment by some random person saying how he liked the car. Knowing that I got a comment by someone not in my class was a good feeling.

Who Am I?

2009-09-15T08:35:00.000-07:00

Who is Eliot Ellisson? Right now he is my Second Life avatar. Eventually she will become my Second Life avatar. We were required to pick a gender neutral name, and Eliot from Scrubs was in my head at the time. In a later post I will change sexes and see how the world is different in a new pair of shoes. I also chose the last name because I like double letter initials. EE

When I first made my avatar, I did not really customize him as much as I could have. I changed a few things about him, but I won't forget the first comment i got from one of my friends. She took one look at Eliot and said "Wow, you're tall!" In life I am about 5' 10" but in SL I guess I am about 6' 2". I need to walk around more and compare my height and other characteristics to non-noobs.

As for how I feel about having a virtual self in another world, I am still undecided. It is not so much unsettling that a somewhat realistic me in pixel form, but it is some kind of uneasy feeling. I will have to explore more of the world and then pass a judgement whether I like it or not.

Death to one draft

2009-09-02T18:27:00.001-07:00

As a high school student, I grew accustomed to writing a paper in only one draft. I was able to sit down in a night or two and simply churn out an essay start to finish without much problem. Given the topics we had to write about, this was always possible. The topics were very straight forward and did not have much depth to them. This is why the "sit down and write" approach worked.

In college I know that this will no longer work. The topics, and the works they are on, are much more in depth. They were crafted with some degree of skill that takes at least some thought to create a decent thesis statement.

So far I have had two opportunities to write papers for my core class, the material too was Plato. The topic on top of that was very in depth, as Plato would deserve. I am going to have to start refining a writing process to pass these papers and my classes from here on out.