Blob
>the blog of david n wallace [aka Lifekludger]

For someone special I know.

Following an old meme Laurel dredged up and tagged me, here’s eight random facts about me.

The rules:

1- Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2 - People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3 - At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4 - Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

My 8 Facts:

1. I like and collect elephants (no, not real ones)
2. When I was 18 I’d never broken a bone - so I broke my neck,
3. I love eating lamb anything (well within reason)
4. I never really liked school except for Tech Studies and Art
5. I love peace but like to think I would kill or die for my family and close friends
6. I once sang in school choir at Adelaide Festival Centre (where later on saw Skyhooks in concert)
7. Favourite musician is Bruce Cockburn
8. Second life saved my sanity

Now, the 8 I get to tag. And if you’ve already done it before, just let me know?

Nathanael Boehm
Gary barber
Eshi Otawara
Naked Biff
Nick Hodge
Tracey Crisp
Roy Blumenthal
Rick Clise

Dave

Some of you may have been wondering why I’ve been a bit quiet on here of late.I’ve been flat out in Second Life (SL) helping get a base for The Podcast Network up and established.

It’s been a heady couple weeks which started innocently enough with Cameron Reilly asking me about getting a little place in SL that TPN supporters could meet up. I found a good priced parcel that within a few days proved too small. I think the first time Cam dragged a building across the ground got him hooked and from there I’ve been running after him since. We then found an island cheap and started setting that up. Soon however Cam’s love of geodesic domes had us hitting the limits of our island and so we had to scale back our aspirations and adjust to what was possible with where we currently are at.

Having a presence for people to connect on SL has been great. Many who drop by are sharing and helping each other in all sorts of areas, both in and off world as well as socialising. Certainly I’ve connected with a lot of the TPN followers and using voice has helped in strengthening that connection. Twitter as a way of notifying that there’s actually people in SL has helped and Duncan Riley has written on TechCrunch about this aspect.

I’ve been pleased that there has been a strong Australian contingent in those visiting which has made quite a difference in my experience seeing how SL population online seems to fluctuate to the West Coast US time zone. However there have been visitors from listeners around the world. too.

I find it interesting that community is actually being lived out in many places and aided by the myriad of online services each adding their particular specialty to the mix. So people connected on blogs or flickr or twiter or skype also connect on SL, sometimes even on many at one (like Twitter from within SL).

Just like communities, friends don’t have to live in silos.

Break out - Join in!

Dave

TechCrunch : Twitter + Second Life =Spontaneous Web Meetspace

SLURL : The Podcast Network HQ in SL

Nick Hodge blog : @dnwallace, SecondLife Engineer

Saw UncleNick had a post with a flickr photo taged “iworkontheweb” … here’s mine.

Not only do I work on the web, I wouldn’t be able to work too well without it. Even though I have tele-worked since before the web was open, it’s made it so much easier. If you want to know a bit more you can start here, here, here, or here.

If you work on the web and feel so inclined, do a post of your own, with a photo on flickr and tag it iworkontheweb for the group on flickr.

Dave

Technorati Tags: flickr, iworkontheweb

The other day I read a post titled “Shared Cultures” on the Naked yak blog, the the ending part of which read…

….We should use the potential openness of social networks to make a difference, to shape the future into a much more intimate place - a world of ‘we’.

This comment about ‘we’ resonated with what I read Father Bob talk a lot about - like is typified in the post quoted below. It’s even more pertinent because of the sentence about the blogging ‘we’.

I still believe that a culture (people) creates the technology it needs to bring about what it desires - and in it’s simplest form that is summed up as ‘we’.

No longer us and them, just WE!

6:45pm Wednesday August 8, all the lights go out at my place in South Melbourne. 6:50pm all the lights are back on. Lucky me.

The only torch at hand had flat batteries. The only cigarette lighter had no fuel. It’s a two storey house - dark as the tomb. What would I have done? I wasn’t prepared. Someone was. The electricity grid was prepared. Thanks to lots of fellow citizens who work all hours that the rest of us in a big city may live in comfort.

No longer us and them, just WE. Yet another example of how we depend on each other to do our duty. Ok, a computer put the lights back on but someone programmed that computer. Thank you, that someone.

Hospitals function because some people look after others, put others before themselves.

Traffic flows according to the same principle, whether on earth, sea or in the sky.

When a disaster strikes, natural or manmade, police and other essential service providers swing into action. Duty calls, some go even beyond the call of duty.

Churches do their duty when they behave as centres of hope in their neighbourhoods.

Bloggers do their duty when they act as “social” reporters. The mainstream media is jealous of this emerging information sharing phenomenon.

Pictures are taken by phone cameras and downloaded (or is it uploaded) onto MySpace or YouTube. Is this done from a sense of duty or a desire to become known?

……….

(emphasis added)

Dave

Technorati Tags: we, naked, bloggers, culture, signal, openness, sharing, giving, father bod, naked yak

Over on her blog, Laurel does as brilliant job of expanding on a very important penny that was dropped and jelled at the Connecting Up Conference earlier in the week.

It’s reflected in the comment I jotted down here while liveblogging. During his keynote, Daniel Ben-Horin from Compumentor made reference to the emergence of a fourth platform. Mike Twittered it at the time as this : “May 14, 2007 Mike Seyfang: Now it gets interesting - Daniel Ben-Horin: the fourth platform (the terrain has shifted)”

This whole “Social Sector”, as Laurel terms it, encompasses all the elements of ‘Free as in Freedom’ and is an economy of sharing that builds with relationship and thrives on openness and connection. All the things that amplify an individual’s life ’signal’.

Here’s a snippet from Laurel’s post “dotSub and the fourth Social Sector”

Social Sector is destroying companies and doesn’t even notice. Government - watch out, Social Sector is only about activism, without even realising it.

Get over there and read it all. Go on…you know you want to.

Dave

(Photo by 4MAX, via flickr)

Technorati Tags: cu07, social sector, activism, fourth platform, openness, freedom, signal

The other day one of the feeds in my reader came alive and I notice radio baily is back on the air.

Gday UnclePaul.

Stickyness of connection only works if you don’t kill the signal (feed).

Dave

In the light of what Nick and I talked about on this podcast I posted last night, this video presentation is a brilliant synopsis. A must look.

From Park Paradigm, via JP

Just wish I had a clearer view…persevere, it’s worth it.

Edglings - some previous thoughts about life on the edge

Dave

I like Kent Newsome. Besides the fact he has good taste in the blogs he reads (mine!), he seems to carve out his own way amongst the goat tracks on paddock blogosphere and stick to it.

Recently he developed another of his own guides to direct his twitter use and is only going to follow twitter conversations of people who follow his own. A fair idea I reckon. He calls it his ‘Pink Floyd Policy‘.

I love Pink Floyd. As it turns out, Kent has hit on a theme song I’ve aquired since my accident, albeit in a different context. But I digress.

Twitter. I’m not signing up for twitter - yet. You may’ve seen I wrote that I’m watching my friends twitter away, including Kent, and that it’s a shame that I cannot see what one of my real, not-twitter friends is saying simply because according to twitter I’m not her friend!

So, in a sense, I’ve created my own twitter policy and it revolves around not fragmenting my life any further than it already is. You could call in my ‘Brain Damage‘ policy. I’d rather think of it as ‘Breathe‘.

You see, I realised something today. It became clear when typing in google chat to one of my very good real-life friends who, although living nearby, we can’t seem to syncronise calendars to meet up. She made the comment something about having no life yet still can’t get to see me. I returned that my time is so fragmented currently that my life’s not a life. I recorded in my google notebook :

fragmentation=existence

signal=life

So, for now, I’m resolved not to sign up for twitter, even though I see it has potential - even as a ’signal filter’ too. But let it be known, I’m the one making the policy and hereby reserve the right to re-make it later. But this is not easy for me, being the alpha-geek I am. This is no easy line in the sand I’m drawing.

So Kent, here’s my Nod. I can hear you. If you can’t hear what I’m saying, it’s because my lips are not moving. I am still home. We all don’t have to live in the same home (silo) to communicate effectively.

Peace

Dave