Niftiness and great bountious supplies of spiffage and so on.
I'm starting to get rather annoyed.
I finished up FRAGMENTATION's second song in the studio and got it mastered two weeks ago yesterday. Or was it one week? I don't remember. Either way, Chris has been in Reno, NV on business and can't approve the song to be posted until he gets back and has access. I don't get it. He trusts me to finish up the song on my own but doesn't trust enough to get it out to the people who are waiting for it? Ugh. Oh well. I guess I'd feel the same way in his position, but I want to get this song out there and hear reactions to it. I also want to get working on the third song again. It's been over a month since Chris and I worked on any music at all. We're supposed to get back together tomorrow, but who knows if that'll happen--I haven't heard from him at all since talking to him the night after I finished the song.
In other news, I've gotten myself addicted to into an online game/"life simulator" called Second Life. The concept is based off a book that I read when I was much younger, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which I received for free when I bought Spectre VR for my old Macintosh. In that book, the characters could tap into a virtual world called the Metaverse, where one had an "avatar" or online persona in the world that one could customize and accessorize, and then the Metaverse took shape based on what its occupants did with it. In the Metaverse, you might find clubs, bars, businesses and stores, homes, or other assorted places to hang out or socialize or do business. Second Life not only resembles that concept, it was based off of it, down to even using some of the terminology/names as possible names for your avatar in Second Life. In Second Life, you have the option of building and creating virtually anything imaginable from scratch, uploading textures to add detail to your creation, and even marketing and selling it for in-world currency, which is interchangable with US dollars. You can even get jobs and work in the simulator (my avatar is a security guard for a nightclub) or engage in combat with a myriad of weapons, raging from modern and futuristic guns to psionic powers, magic, or even bows and swords.
The Metaverse, when I read about it in Snow Crash, for one reason or another, was a concept that I loved right from the beginning and was able to easily imagine. Perhaps for that same reason I've always been drawn to roleplaying games and ones that exercise imagination. Back then, though, the idea of a whole other virtual world was purely science fiction, much like dreams of Man setting foot on the Moon in the '40s and '50s. Now that it is a reality, I've found a new love in exploring its worlds and content, the entirety of which is user-created... no pre-generated stuff by the creators outside of the engine itself. Somehow, though, I didn't make the connection between Second Life and Snow Crash until I actually read Wikipedia's article on Second Life a few days ago.
As far as my life goes, there's not much else that's going on. My computer is still broken and I'm still using the laptop for everything; I'm contemplating building a new one from the ground up that will actually work. *sigh* My iPod also died and so I ended up with an excuse to upgrade to a new one.
My insomnia's been coming back rather badly lately. Last night I didn't get to bed until 3am. I'm hoping that things will get better soon, because it's starting to affect my moods and my concentration, and my general wellbeing.
I can't think of anything else that's going on with me for now, so I'll sign off.
Ciao.
I finished up FRAGMENTATION's second song in the studio and got it mastered two weeks ago yesterday. Or was it one week? I don't remember. Either way, Chris has been in Reno, NV on business and can't approve the song to be posted until he gets back and has access. I don't get it. He trusts me to finish up the song on my own but doesn't trust enough to get it out to the people who are waiting for it? Ugh. Oh well. I guess I'd feel the same way in his position, but I want to get this song out there and hear reactions to it. I also want to get working on the third song again. It's been over a month since Chris and I worked on any music at all. We're supposed to get back together tomorrow, but who knows if that'll happen--I haven't heard from him at all since talking to him the night after I finished the song.
In other news, I've gotten myself addicted to into an online game/"life simulator" called Second Life. The concept is based off a book that I read when I was much younger, Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, which I received for free when I bought Spectre VR for my old Macintosh. In that book, the characters could tap into a virtual world called the Metaverse, where one had an "avatar" or online persona in the world that one could customize and accessorize, and then the Metaverse took shape based on what its occupants did with it. In the Metaverse, you might find clubs, bars, businesses and stores, homes, or other assorted places to hang out or socialize or do business. Second Life not only resembles that concept, it was based off of it, down to even using some of the terminology/names as possible names for your avatar in Second Life. In Second Life, you have the option of building and creating virtually anything imaginable from scratch, uploading textures to add detail to your creation, and even marketing and selling it for in-world currency, which is interchangable with US dollars. You can even get jobs and work in the simulator (my avatar is a security guard for a nightclub) or engage in combat with a myriad of weapons, raging from modern and futuristic guns to psionic powers, magic, or even bows and swords.
The Metaverse, when I read about it in Snow Crash, for one reason or another, was a concept that I loved right from the beginning and was able to easily imagine. Perhaps for that same reason I've always been drawn to roleplaying games and ones that exercise imagination. Back then, though, the idea of a whole other virtual world was purely science fiction, much like dreams of Man setting foot on the Moon in the '40s and '50s. Now that it is a reality, I've found a new love in exploring its worlds and content, the entirety of which is user-created... no pre-generated stuff by the creators outside of the engine itself. Somehow, though, I didn't make the connection between Second Life and Snow Crash until I actually read Wikipedia's article on Second Life a few days ago.
As far as my life goes, there's not much else that's going on. My computer is still broken and I'm still using the laptop for everything; I'm contemplating building a new one from the ground up that will actually work. *sigh* My iPod also died and so I ended up with an excuse to upgrade to a new one.
My insomnia's been coming back rather badly lately. Last night I didn't get to bed until 3am. I'm hoping that things will get better soon, because it's starting to affect my moods and my concentration, and my general wellbeing.
I can't think of anything else that's going on with me for now, so I'll sign off.
Ciao.