The glowsticks made a great addition to our dance moves.

Paul makes his grand entrance to the party.

The music was great enough you could headbang to it.

The part I had to contribute was that I built the main section of the building. The walling and ceiling were all of 10X10 prims with glass texture. Then, I found a free script dance floor and put it down. Later I also added the chairs off to the side for resting. The music stream I found is Pulsradio. It's a French drance/trance station the streams over the internet. I found it using SHOUTcast, which searches for online streams. We picked a lot bitrate, MP3 format and put it in the "speaker" object in order to play it in the world.

It was fun. I hope this night shows that virtual worlds can serve some purpose. Though Second Life is a very primative of what is yet to come, I don't think we can push off the impending future of these types of virtual worlds. Something's bound to come along and make a huge buzz.

I'll begin with stuff that actually apply. First I've been spending time putting together stuff on Second Life, though right now I'm awaiting other classmates to take down old prims from the last assignment still. Garrett and I have been working to put music in Second Life, and we think we'll use this stream. It is a 32 bitrate AAC+ feed that we hope will be able to be played in the world the night of the dance party. It's much better than the 24 bitrate MP3 format in quality.

I should be studying for a German test, but I'm not the study-the-night-before type. If I don't go to class and know the material, I'm as good as done for the test. This means i usually don't flip before a test and a simple looking over the material.

Another accomplishment is getting all the way through Lost's first two seasons. Now I'm getting caught up on season 3. I was never one who watched the show until someone plopped me down to actaully watch it. Getting hooked, I have been watching all the episodes while the Writer's Guild keeps striking.

For one last uplifting thing for all those cramming for finals, here's a pretty funny thing to laugh at:

300 - PG Version

The freebie shop.

The tour chair

I then jumped over to Microsoft Island. This place was a bit more visitor unfriendly. It had some buildings, but it was pretty empty and had nothing of importance to give to visitors about what Microsoft really is. There were really neat structures, but mostly the only significant places were lounges and lecture halls for people to hold meetings in. Most likely, Microsoft gears second life more for employee use while Sun interests outsiders. Microsoft could improve by building things to interest general users.

A large lecture area inside a class sphere

A cool sphere shaped structure

Both islands had eloquent design in order to make it look neat and interesting. Though Microsoft reserved more space than Sun for it, each island also had places to sit and meet either with staff members or scouts from the company. Each has its purpose, but I think Sun’s Island is more important because it is outreaching instead of a more cliquish place. This means I would recommend someone else to visit Sun’s Island to learn about them and not Microsoft’s.

These are three video sharing sites that I have visited myself in the past.

First off is YouTube. It allows anyone to upload videos to the website with a simple username fill out or login. You can put whatever relevant tags you like onto your video in order for searchers to find your uploaded content. Then, all the videos your username uploads are put together on your user's personal page. With your login, you can favorite other videos you like on youtube and let them appear on your page. This is a way to network with other users that you like for their submitted videos. Like other social networking sites, you can "friend" other people you know. You can search the site and comment on what any youtube user uploads. Youtube has obviously been the most under fire with copyright infringements being the most popular and well known of video sharing websites. Viacom's scrub caused the most controversey, but mostly what needed to be removed was.

Putfile is also a video sharing site with a search engine. Compared to the other sites, this one had the most advertising. Putfile has been increasingly growing as a site. The layout has been changing to meet the growth. Putfile also requires a login to upload media. Also, both YouTube and Putfile let you sort videos not only in a search but by recently added, most popularly viewed and top rated both recently and all time. Unlike YouTube, Putfile also lets a user host photo albums through their site. If a user wants to host other types of files, the user is directed to use putstuff.com- a one-click webhosting site that does not require any kind of username.

Albino Blacksheep is a more selective video hosting site. There, members create all types of media for the website including flash animation, videos, games, and many other types of media. Once submitted, the moderators decide if they want to post the video by following their criteria. It has been named one of the top blog sites currently online. There also is a nice search engine to find media, but it is not as robust as the other search engines, as it is a simple google-powered search of the website.

In 2006 he came out with a video announcing the New Numa contest where he invited people to submit their own videos. Gary is now in a band called The Nowadays.