Geek Weekly Review
This week we kicked off the meetup by taking a look at some interesting news from the last several days.
- An earth like planet has been discovered in the habitable zone of a nearby star. Located in the Alpha Centauri system, orbiting Proxima Centauri, the planet known as Proxima b has a mass of 1.17 earth masses and orbits its star in 11.2 days. At only 4.2 light-years away, it is relatively close, and researchers plan on studying it further to try and determine if it has an atmosphere to protect it from X-rays.
- If you have a YouTube Premium, YouTube Music Premium, or Google Play Music subscription, you can nab a free nest mini:
- The US launched 2 astronauts into orbit on Saturday aboard SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft. They are now safely aboard the ISS:
- If you are into Trek, there are a handful of events going on you may be interested in:
We threw a few questions out there to get people talking.
- What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given? Discussions revolved around the following answers:
- Always buy the best that you can afford. This will save you from buying multiple iterations of cheaper products as they break/wear out and save money in the long run.
- Don’t waste time worrying about things that are beyond your control and you can do nothing about.
- Marry money, because you don’t want to work.
- Trust your instincts… sugar and salt look alike.
- When would you time-travel to, it if were possible? Discussions revolved around the following:
- “Early 1980’s to get the jump on Bill Gates and Google.”
- “I am thinking the 60s, but I would like to go back to the 1700s America.”
- “Back to medieval days.”
- “Sometimes I think about going back in time to tell myself everything I know now to get all the advantages that come with that…. but then I wonder if I would have listened to myself.”
- “There’s a theory you’d still end up where you are because you are who you are and mind set is where it is.”
- “But I’m an explorer at heart, and I always wished I could explore another planet untouched by mankind… so I’d love to go forward in time to be the first explorer of a new world.”
- “What things might change if we go messing with the timeline?”
In discussing future events, Artemis and I (Carsten) made a statement that we are putting our plans for on-boarding outside groups, as well as some other product development, on hold until the viewer bugs and basic functionality is sorted out. There has been virtually zero success in on-boarding with everyone we’ve worked with so far. 100% of potential new users have experienced show stopping issues in relation to the viewer. Issues with the 1b viewer are also causing a lot of problems with building usable items for in world. That said, we plan on continuing to host Geek Weekly until things are ironed out, and everyone is welcome to join us here as well as host their own events here. https://localhostconnection.com is up and running in basic form now, complete with an event calendar that anyone can submit an event for. We have a link to a discord server on the page as well. The website will be slowly expanded with more functionality.
There was some discussion surrounding Sinespace’s economics and how virtual worlds operate with real world currency. Some ideas were put out there for kick-starting the virtual world economy through a form of stimulus (ie free gold). It was brought up that this is probably the intention for the silver currency without causing a severe financial burden on Sinespace, but of course, items available in silver currency are limited. There is also the concern for builders and how they track their earnings in a way that helps with reporting to the IRS and operating as a legitimate business. The main point was figuring out how you bring more builders into Sinespace, so that end users actually have quality products they would actually be motivated to spend gold on.
We plan on hosting some form of builder conference or workshop, but need a little more time to get set up. It would also be good if the viewer was unified by then under a single branch so that we don’t need to go over so many work arounds. I also don’t want to be the only person hosting the event, but making it more of a community project where multiple people can pitch in to teach the things that they know. Artemis highlighted the efforts of Brisana and how she came in with zero experience, and has now figured out the full workflow of assembling items within Unity and uploading to Sinespace. She is now moving on to some more advanced topics like putting poses/animations into a seating component. She did state however, “The only reason I keep trying is because I’m stubborn. But it can bring you to the point of tears and want to throw up your hands and say I’m done, lol”. There is a general consensus that the existing tutorials and how things are done in Unity is fine for people that are familiar with those types of things, but for brand new creators, there needs to be a more basic level of tutorial/instruction either created or linked to, and this is something that we could cater to in our event(s)… basic/intermediate/advanced levels of instruction.
There was a bit of trivia, once again:
- 1980’s video game: When he first debut, what character was known as “Jumpman?” (Asked by Carsten Stark)
- Mario. First appearing in “Donkey Kong” (Answered by Chepsos)
- What character said: “I’m not stupid, I’m not expendabble, and I’m not going?” (Asked by Futurist)
- Kerr Avon from Blake’s 7 (We had to look it up, lol)
- Lord of the Rings: Before he was called Gollum, what was he known as? (Asked by Carsten Stark)
- Smeagol (Answered by Widget, Chevron7, and ArtemisBane)
- Star Trek: Dr. McCoy hails from what US State? (Asked by Carsten Stark)
- Georgia (Answered by ArtemisBane)
- Captain Marvel: Captain Marvel is played by who in the 2019 movie? (Asked by Carsten Stark)
- Brie Larson (Answered by Chevron7)
- Who were George and Gracy in Trek? (Asked by Futurist)
- Two humpback whales (Answered by Chevron7)
- Whedonverse: Who said, “Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!”? (Asked by Carsten Stark)
- Wash, as he plays with dinosaurs (Answered by Chevron7)
- What doe the Predators, Aliens, and Blade Runner franchises have in common? (Asked by Futurist)
- They are all set in the same continuity, it is the same Universe (Answered by Futurist… we all thought it was Ridley Scott)
So far, it sounds like no one has managed to break in to Adam’s office in Sudin. We may have to have a little presentation on that if no one figures it out in the next few weeks.
It was suggested that we hold a cyberpunk street party in which we discussed our idea for a dance battle system, much like a break dance face off from the 80s. We could hold it in the streets of localhost. Throw out some street barricades and face off in front of the bus stop!
We asked if anyone had any good jokes. Artemis pointed out that I was good at “Dad” jokes, to which I replied, “Why are pirates so mean? They just Arrrrrrrr”. Inquisitive Loon said, “My doctor told me I need to lose 10 pounds. Told this to a RL friend and she asked, “Are you looking for another Doctor?””.
Sitearm suggested we take a look at: Virtual Presence in Self Identity – Panel discussion – Avatar Psychology – /Science Circle/ gender identities and educational processes in virtual worlds. https://youtu.be/ZcgaN_dn2iE?t=422 . This spurred some discussion on experience of having an avatar of the opposite gender and how that shapes your experience interacting with other users. Also, how we explore other virtual worlds and games (and maybe we’d like to have field trips to other games as well… create a guild or something).
Thanks to everyone who made it on Monday, and for those who couldn’t make it, we hope to catch you next time!
One Response
nice!
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