No office hours, Thursday 24 January

Sudden RL rush with only a few minutes notice. No office hours today, sorry.

Portal, you lost me

Sorry, Portal. For nearly a half hour, you asked for wit and ingenuity. Then right near the end you started asking for reflexes. Sorry, I don't actually have any of those.

Guess I won't be able to finish the story. A shame.

Album sales in 3rd year of decline

This is a bit tangential to my usual fare.

Total album sales in 2007 declined 15% — the third consecutive year in decline. The music industry cites piracy and the Internet for the declines. I'm surprised global terrorism didn't make the list, but I think that might be listed among the industry's assets.

However, just a wee thought, I haven't bought a music CD in years. Quite a long time. No, I'm not downloading them online and listening to them. There's just not really anything coming out that I want enough to spend the money on.

Dear Music Industry,

Please make some music that I'd actually enjoy listening to, and I'll actually spend money on it. If, on the other hand, I find out that your decline in sales is because you are restricting supply again then we shall have words, make no mistake. You have done this before in order to cry poor, and it wasn't right.

Thanks muchly,

Tat

PS: I'm not kidding. Make something I'd enjoy listening to. It's been a long time.

Statistics live

Statistics feeds just sputtered back to life. We're getting data again.

Statistics dead

Linden Lab's public statistical feeds stopped, well, feeding last night. As such, there's no good data to work with right now, so for those of you that keep track of the graphs (quite some hundreds of you, it seems) - I'm sorry, but there's no fresh data coming from the friendly folks at the Lab right now.

Hopefully it will be fixed soon.

Made it!

Well, I made it to the new year. 2008. Wow. For quite a while there, I was pretty sure I wasn't going to get through 2007.

My income comes, basically, from two essential sources. Inworld income (sales, consulting and so forth), and from writing. Essentially, Second Life puts food on the table, and keeps the bills and mortgage paid.

Sure - there's not exactly much of anything left over afterwards, but keeping a family of three is an accomplishment in and of itself.

It's not glamorous to pinch your pennies, or live on cheap foods, or walk instead of spending on public transport. Success, though, isn't measured in glamour. Nor is success a goal. You don't succeed and then suddenly stop, just coasting in the zone for the rest of your life.

Success is a journey, not a goal. I'm fairly poor, sure, but I have everything I have to have to make it to tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'll work on the day after. That's how it goes.

Do remember, that what you want is not the same as what you need. Your needs are what you have to have. Your wants are what you can do without - and you can be happy without the majority of your wants - just focus on the needs, and go from there.

Every day.