Dana in Geeksville

Developers in Second Life, a Virtual Community

I've written about virtual worlds in some of my previous blogs, and this morning I'm excited to announce I'll be working more with the developer community in Second Life for Sun.[Read More]

Posted at 10:25AM Aug 27, 2008 by dananourie in Virtual Worlds  |  Comments[1]

Have Gadgets, Will Travel

It's only Monday, yet I am scheming and looking forward to the upcoming long weekend. I have reservations in Fortuna, CA, a town just above the Avenue of the Giants, a forest I've been wanting to explore for years. I love forests, and this old growth one is extra special as it has some of the tallest, widest,  and oldest Redwoods in California. Some of these trees are thousands of years old! But photographing the forest has special challenges. [Read More]

Posted at 04:34PM Aug 25, 2008 by dananourie in Photography  |  Comments[0]

Virtual Classrooms in Geeksville

Over the last few years I've been spending a lot of time online learning a whole lot of stuff. There is no better tool to teach us about computing, programming languages, and software than the computer itself. Of course, I realize it's not the computer but the site or the program, but virtual learning is hugely successful and for good reasons. And it's not limited to computer topics, thank goodness.[Read More]

Posted at 02:04PM Aug 21, 2008 by dananourie in Virtual Worlds  |  Comments[1]

The Learning Curve Starts with Inspiration

In the last eight years that I've been involved in photography and programming, technology has shortened the learning curve in both areas by heaps and bounds. While software like Photoshop and Lightroom make it possible to crop, adjust white balance and exposure, bring out certain colors while down playing others, IDEs like NetBeans have made programming in Java and for web sites easier through the dragging and dropping of ready made components such as buttons, menus, HTML forms, and Ajax functionality.[Read More]

Posted at 10:02AM Aug 20, 2008 by dananourie in Learning  |  Comments[1]

Painting Exposure to Get the Lighting Right

To say I like the new Lightroom 2 (LR)  by Adobe is putting in mildly. I absolutely, positively love the upgrade from 1.4 to 2. Not only did they improve the tools we already had in LR, but they've added this cool adjustment tool that allows you to paint in exposure, clarity, sharpness, and a number of other things.[Read More]

Posted at 10:27PM Aug 17, 2008 by dananourie in Photography  |  Comments[0]

Buying Fake Money for a Virtual Life

You'd think telling people that you've purchased fake money for real hard cash might raise an eyebrow or two. It certainly would have in my mother's day. But not any longer.[Read More]

Posted at 03:27PM Aug 12, 2008 by dananourie in Virtual Worlds  |  Comments[0]

Engaging the Interest of Digital Natives

Last night I stood behind my 15 year old son, watching as he dragged and dropped blocks of textures and colors, shapes and patterns from Photoshop into an online game.  From there he created walls for a building, wallpaper for the rooms, secret doorways, and an assortment of other stuff. Later, he built roads, and within three hours other gamers traversed in his newly created world, battling it out.[Read More]

Posted at 04:14PM Aug 11, 2008 by dananourie in Digital Natives  |  Comments[2]

Digital Voices Worldwide

A friend of mine once exclaimed, "I hate email. It's too impersonal, too static, too dry. Computers are ruining our society, not helping. There is nothing like in-person communication." True there is nothing like in-person communication, but she's missing the point entirely.[Read More]

Posted at 01:33PM Aug 11, 2008 by dananourie in Communications  |  Comments[0]

Beginner's Mind in Geeksville

Suzuki Roshi, a Zen master, coined the phrase Beginner's Mind. A Beginner's Mind is a mind free of preconceptions, free of judgments. It is a mind of innocence and openness, a mind ready to awaken. With a Beginner's Mind we see what is that rather than what we expect to see.[Read More]

Posted at 11:01AM Aug 08, 2008 by dananourie in Learning  |  Comments[1]