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Friday, June 24, 2005

What I love about being online, is the connections that I make. A few days ago, I took on the job of making an avatar for SecondLife of the main character in Cory Doctorow's "Someone comes to town, someone leaves town". In the course of the making, I visited the website of the author, and realised what a very interesting man he is :-).

http://www.craphound.com/
Not only that, he's releasing this novel on the internet for free at the same time as it is published in recycled trees...and there is a creative commons agreement that people in the developing world may take and use his work for free. You can see more in the link above.

I am also very impressed by the artist who made the cover of the book, and have been visiting webpages to see other examples of his work. Dave McKean is his name.
http://www.mckean-art.co.uk/

A couple of weeks ago, I made another avatar, for one of the people attending the Supernova conference...and in looking up photographs of the man, found information about his work into "The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places (Cambridge University Press). " Also fascinating.
http://communication.stanford.edu/faculty/reeves.html

Unfortunately, I am beginning to feel that my life is going to be too short tobe able to do justice to all the connections and links I am finding to things that fascinate me. I think it is my blessing and my curse, that I am interested in almost everything and can imagine myself working in many different environments. It is a blessing, because I am rarely - strike that - never bored. I always have things I want to do, read, visit in my head, and I am usually very excited by something I have been thinking or reading about.

It's been a huge asset when home educating the children, because there are very few subjects I don't feel interested in, very, very few. It was also an asset when I was working as a writer for Lloyd's Register, because I was able to throw myself into any story I was asked to write about, and find the contents fascinating.

On the other hand, it makes settling into one direction very hard indeed. I played the piano for a party at the meeting house a few weeks ago, and people are still coming up to me to tell me how impressed they were with my music. (I had composed the music which I played). Many of them have said that I ought to investigate publishing it. But I also make jewellery, and have often had people say to me that I ought to investigate having my necklaces made commercially. And I have written professionally. And I love family history research and would love to do that for a living. And I am very interested in health and especially a fusion between conventional and alternative forms of healing. And I am interested in education, and would like to write about alternatives to the current model of state-funded huge secondary school.

When I pick up a paper, to look at the jobs, there are very few I can't imagine myself doing. I am articulate, literate, numerate, have common sense, and I work loyally and hard for any company which employs me. I am intelligent and a good manager, and I love being responsible for a department when I was working full-time, before I had the children. I find that the huge variety of choices makes it hard for me to choose to go in one direction or another... it has lead to an almost total inertia.

Not quite, though. I have been commission to write a guide to Second Life. The company I found produces guides to a large number of games, and doesn't do one for SL at the moment, and so I pitched the idea to them, provided an outline table of contents, and they bit. So that's why I am writing that at the moment and not this blog....
Well...hmmm it has been a little while since I updated this web journal. I see that one of my friends from SecondLife has started a journal, made two entries and run away, and that seems to be par for the course for a lot of Blogs. I think part of the problem is that people realise that if they are identifiable, it becomes very difficult to avoid revealing other people's secrets in a blog. I think a few days down the line is usually when people start to realise things would be so much easier if only their blog was anonymous, or at least unfindable using a search on their name.

I don't have any excuses really...i just forgot. Things have been a might stressful around here, and so I haven't updated...and now there is a lot of catching up to do....

Perhaps I should just start where I am at the moment. OK...my son was due to have surgery at the beginning of July, but that has been postponed in favour of further tests. My husband, after not drinking for a year, has decided this means he isn't an alcoholic and he can drink again. I found the half empty bottle of gin, and we had a short conversation before he poured it down the bathroom sink. I told him I wasn't up to a full-on row while we are so worried about our son, and so he has agreed to stop drinking for three months so that we are past this difficult part.

Our financial situation hasn't improved in a year, and is exacerbated by the fact that along with the gin bottle, J has been concealing the post. I borrowed some money from my father which helped pay off the worst in the past couple of months, but our financial situation is not helped by the fact that the company that J does most of his work for tend to be rather backward in paying up the dosh. They have excelled themselves this month by not only not paying up on time, but by deducting costs which have been paid to barristers which ought not to have been and deducting a larger percentage than had been agreed.

It is really getting to the point where we might be better off on benefit. I have applied for some jobs, but the logistics of home educating, and being there for my son if he does have to go into hospital, have made it quite difficult to see how I can do it.

I also feel quite resentful that J has a profession and qualifications and yet seems content to sit around waiting for work to fall into his lap.

Got to go - I am being pushed off the computer. Will try to do this first thing in the morning in future, which should prevent interruptions :-).