no text, just that subject line. I thought everyone should know.

So, it turns out that Japan has public ice making machines at supermarkets. You can go up to a large (and rather imposing) box, and open the door and press something and generally have it dispense ice into a bag, for you to use and presumably store in your freezer or something. It's handy, and seems like a good idea.

But that's not all. Not only do they have normal ice machines, they also have DRY ice machines, which is a very different thing (frozen carbon dioxide, I think). This even scarier box has a sliding vertical hatch, and you put a bag inside, close it up, and there's a whoosh like a fire extinguisher, and your bag is filled or covered with powdery white stuff. I thought it was actually fire-extinguisher foam at first, the sound and appearance were so similar, but then as it was taken out it started smoking and trailing the distinctive dry-ice vapor trail. It's also covered in warnings about being -73 degrees C (don't get it on your hands) and a little sign saying dry ice dispenser, which did admittedly help with my comprehension. I think it's for keeping your shopping cool as you're going home or somesuch, but it's awfully cool to just have a dispenser for it.

I wonder if somewhere they have liquid nitrogen dispensers too?

In other news, I have a cold, and it sucks.

Just a little post to mention that one of the things I find really cool here are the lightswitches. You don't often think about light switches, but here they're almost always larger, and have a light on them. It's turned on when the light is -off- though, so you can find them in the dark! It's a wonderful idea, a little simple change that I really appreciate. (If your country is also sensible enough to put lights on your switches, then good for you, but mine doesn't. We're a bit silly sometimes.)

A few nights ago, I felt my first earthquake. In case you weren't otherwise aware, I moved to japan recently. (I used to live in the UK.)
( I favor cutting early nowadays, as you may have noticed. There's lots and lots of other text under here. )

There's no text, just the subject line.

I think it's enough. How about you? ^_^

So, I had just finished shopping for something to eat, and got some assorted other groceries at the same time, when half way out of Saty, I heard a strange noise behind me, a discordant cacophony, starting softly but rapidly building, intertwining dozens of threads of instruments all playing what sounded like the backing track to a psychological horror film.

I did wonder if I just imagined it, but I looked around and followed it to what I thought was the source, dismissing an ice-cream stand and a cake stall as possibilities on the way. It turns out that Saty also sold musical clocks, and it had just reached the hour, causing them all to play simultaneously.

( Teacher, teacher, what IS a Saty? )

Etymology, you might ask? Of course, you might already know, in which case, this paragraph has indeed been written entirely to condescend to you and make you feel worthless. Okay, so that's also false. I should shut up with the waffle (I like salad cream on waffles, by the way) and actually write stuff.

Etymology - Basically, it means from where a name originated or was derived, and that is the meaning I am using it for in this post.

So, the Etymology of Darloth? I've no idea where the word came from, I've found a couple of other people who call themselves Darloth around places (one russian, one dragon, and apparently one asshole, but I didn't talk to that one) but it seems to be pretty rare. I'm not sure if it even has a meaning or if it's just a set of nonsense characters, with any vague feelings it generates just turning up because of phonic stereotypes, which I won't explain here, but google it if you want to know it's quite interesting.

What I am actually going to explain in this post is the when, where, and WHY I picked Darloth as an internet pseudonym that I am possibly more well-known by than my real name, depending on which group of friends you ask.

---

( Go on... )

No, really, I am.

Havn't been busy recently, but a good chance I'll be horrifically so over the next few weeks. Visiting my parents, trying to arrange things, rescheduling all sorts of regular games. It's all go.

If everything works out I may post more specific details later, since it'd be interesting to keep a record and that's what this thing is supposed to do, right? ^_^

Also, it is WAY too late. I need to go to bed earlier, damnit.

First, thanks those couple of people I know on LJ for friending me, always nice to be noticed.

Now, onto the post itself - I've been thinking about second life and interactive environments in general, and why they're still not very good compared to actually seeing and talking to someone.
There's just not enough subtext - at least when you're using voice chat, you can hear how someone is saying something. With only text, you're relying on the cues the person at the other end is providing (or failing to provide.) For sure, someone used to it will usually emote a fair bit (/me does something) and/or provide hints and smilies to show how they're 'saying' a line, but it's all intentional, and needs thought. Ideally, there would be something that automatically picked up on non-typed cues and provided them to whoever was reading the chat. It applies in second life as well - if you want to wave at someone or point at something or anything like that, you need to remember the command then actually type it in, and less active things such as posture, yawning, or smiling are really quite difficult - it even looks a bit odd if you fill them in yourself. SL certainly tries, for example the way your head turns to look where your mouse is pointing, which is good, I just don't think it does it enough, and most other online games are terrible for it. I believe I saw some other blog that said: "If someone is looking at the map, have their avatar take out a map and look at it. If someone is rooting through their inventory then have their avatar rummage inside the backpack" or words to that extent, and I agree. There's nowhere near enough feedback on what a person is actually doing, and not enough ways of setting that. Some sort of quick and easy posture system and better gestures would be a good start, but I haven't really seen them anywhere.

The other problem with second life is that its much vaunted collaborative nature is stymied by lots of niggly problems - actually building something WITH someone is nearly impossible, as even if you can modify each other's objects, you can't add scripts, change permissions, etc. It's very inconvenient and setting an object to group owned is only a partial solution, plus it's not possible without having a paying resident, as far as I know. If they really want collaboration, then stuff like this needs to be improved and streamlined.

Now I'm off to wait for parcelforce to arrive and pick up boxes, and maybe write up some concepts for a strange little Exalted game I can run after I fail all my modules or what have you.

Sleepy. I can't remember exactly what we were supposed to post about now, but I really wasn't in the mood to do it in the lab. Wasn't in the mood to do anything much originally - more sleep and breakfast would surely help. Even so, I hope I somehow manage to pass. Eh, the curse of LJ strikes, emo, emo, and thrice emo.

Now... what was I supposed to put here again? Something about SL or the lecture, most likely, so doing both would cover most ground... SL is interesting. Weird, but interesting. I like the ideas and building is quite fun (although irritating when you need to do something and can't figure out how - it's like tricking your way past the interface or something), but I'm not sure about the whole thing in general. Then again, I havn't really left the campus except on sightseeing tours. On the whole, I think it's interesting to look at though, not quite what I expected but not too far off either.

As for the lecture... It was possibly the best remote lecture I've seen/heard/been at. The presentation software just worked (not on a mac though it seems. Hah!) and the sound was good, obviously technology has got to the point where all this realtime video/voice networkfromhomeoconferencising is possible and even effective now. ... It would be neat if I hadn't been in such a bad mood.

In a completely unrelated topic, I have -so- many random people on my ICQ list now. Heck, it's not as bad as my long-b0rken MSN, but it's still surprising. I must have like 60-120 people on it and really not know even where I got a fair few of them. I just collect contacts like a squirrel or something. My MSN is even worse, especially with all the random teenagers who seemed to love adding me/emailing me or something, then forgetting who I was so that months later they freaked out when they asked me who the heck I was. An endless amount of strange people on the internet...

Now, I could try and get commander anti-missile defenses working, but it looks complicated and I really don't want to bother just yet. Maybe I'll ask about the specifics some time later.

Ah well. First respectable length posting here, guess it's something. I should get on with adding other people's to some sort of streamreader - if you lot(by which I mean my CVE class) are reading this as you supposedly should (hey, I know I'm not often enough!), please leave comments with your findings and suggestions! Get some use out of this whole social internetworking shinola.

This last week has been rather strange. Things have been unbalanced and times have been peculiar. I hope next week goes better!

I ought to remember to post here more often and put actual stuff here, but as many people have said on theirs, it's hard to get into the habit...

Hmm, what else, what else? Nope. No idea what else to write at the moment, and the annoying thing is that yesterday before I went to sleep, I had some good ideas. Ah well. Hopefully they shall return later.

At last, I remember to update this thing. It's quite hard getting into the habit, and I certainly havn't got around to finding an aggregator I want to use yet, more's the pity. I should get around to that.

Hmm, wonder how to change the emoticon... if I even can. I think I might want the cat ones everyone else around here seems to have.

Anyway, finally got the wiki set up, http://www.pixelheaven.net/wiki/ ,seems to be working nicely now, I'll have to work on a skin for it. It was quite a pain, directory rewrites and stuff, but now I know more about php, apache and web applications in general, which is always handy.

Finally, I shall use this space to complain about the font and voice acting in the english version of final fantasy 12 - I really don't think they picked the 'right' people for the roles... the font is slightly annoying and the voices are all a little off, which is sad, it's a good game.

Alas, for I have a blog. The end is nigh. Before long I'm sure I'll be crosslinking everything in a lain-like hunger for raw data.