Dani's World

Today is Ada Lovelace Day, celebrating women in technology in honor of Ada Lovelace, the world's first computer programmer. One of my favorite online games is called The Nethernet. For those of you who don't know what that is, it's a Passively Multiplayer Online Game (the original name of the game was PMOG) that you play simply by surfing the web. One of the major activities in the Nethernet is making missions. Missions are a linked series of webpages, with some commentary added by the player who creates the mission.

I was going to post a new tutorial today. Then I had a surreal moment, and I just have to share it. I'll post the tutorial tomorrow.

When I'm wanting to just pass a few minutes playing a mindless, casual game, I usually go to Kongregate and play Zilch. Zilch is a dice game almost identical to a dice game available in Second Life called Greedy Greedy. There is some strategy, but it's mostly the luck of the dice.

Sometimes those Google Ads result in a pretty funny combo ... or maybe not.
Nut Snacks

I turned forty years old today. I have not yet decided if I like that or not. I'm not complaining, don't get me wrong. Well, maybe I'm complaining a little. I am beginning my fifth decade on this planet, and if I focus on those numbers too much, I do start to get a little down. And I have been focusing on those numbers a lot today. Probably too much. Overall, my life is pretty good. It's not perfect, but it's good. And I can honestly say I am happier today than I was when I turned 30.

I wish I could put into words what I'm feeling right now, but I'm feeling so many different emotions, I just can't. I am elated. I am hopeful. I am scared. And I am proud of my country.

I am elated because this country elected a president I believe strongly in. We have had 8 years of Republican leadership in the White House, and in that time we have seen our freedoms eroded in the name of our safety. I dreaded another 4 years of that.

The first Presidential election in which I was eligible to vote was 1988. Election day that year was on my birthday. I was twenty years old, and a sophomore at Texas A&M University. George H.W. Bush won that election, of course, and his Presidential Library is now on the campus of my alma mater. Texas A&M is one of the most politically conservative universities in the nation. I voted for Dukakis. I'm not sure of the percentage Bush Sr. got in Texas that year, and I'm too lazy to go look it up, but I'm sure it was an overwhelming majority.

I started a blog over a year ago on Blogger. The focus of that one was Second Life, because that's what I was into at the time, and having a Second Life blog was the thing to do. I kept it up for awhile, then just stopped. I did have a couple of blog posts that have continued to garner the occasional visit, and those I have republished here, my new website and blog. So ... what will I be blogging about this time? I don't really know, but there will definitely be some GIMP for Second Life tutorials, and likely some other tutorials because I like doing them.

I was playing around with the Gimp the other day, and stumbled across a really simple way to make a fabric texture with vertical folds in it. This is really easy. When you finish, you should end up with something like this.

One of the first things I do when I meet someone new in Second Life is look at their profile. Why do I do this? Well, because it’s a lot faster than playing 20 questions. Unfortunately, a lot of people never fill in their profile, and I have to resort to asking them if they are an animal, vegetable, or mineral. In Second Life, that’s not necessarily an odd question . Looking a someone’s profile can be useful, though, even if they haven’t filled it in.