5 posts tagged “square”
So I'm trying to get serious about Fabb, basically, and finally get my first starter prefab homes finished and boxed and actually for sale, so that I can start collecting actual revenue, and get me that much closer to finally getting a decent graphics computer in my home, and the software again that will let me open up CCLaP's new programs. So, I've given myself a goal this week -- to get at least enough done in Second Life each day to justify a new entry over at the Fabb blog, with the goal of having the company's very first commercial home actually finished and ready to start selling by next week. That's it you're seeing in the above screenshots, the tiniest and and most inexpensive one I plan on selling, called the "Ion;" a tiny footprint, only half the size of a 512-square-meter beginner's plot, so that as many resources as possible can be devoted instead to landscaping, rezzing a vehicle, owning a boat, etc. Only 6 dollars/3 pounds/4 euros! How can you beat it!
You can read a lot more over at the Fabb blog if you want; basically, you're just seeing the first steps above, with a finished home basically coming (hopefully) in just another couple of days. Here's hoping I can finally kick my own ass into gear with it all, and finally see once and for all if there is any money to be made selling virtual goods in Second Life or not. We'll see!
Are you wondering, by the way, why none of my recent bike videos have shown up on my maps yet, or why no new maps have been posted since early July? Well, that's because I'm too busy actually bicycling these days, while the weather is still warm, plus running my arts organization, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which wasn't open yet earlier this summer when I got the first three maps finished and posted. But in just another two months or so, it's suddenly going to be too cold and nasty again to go bicycling on a regular basis, and will stay that way for another six months or so; I figure better to just go ahead and run around and collect up all the raw data for these maps now, while the weather is still good, then spend the winter slowly getting the rest of the maps done at home while hiding from the cold and snow. That way I'll have a good seven or eight maps ready by next spring, when it'll be time to start bicycling again every day, and with all those map placemarks fully integrated by then into Google Local Search.
Did you know that, by the way? That whenever you create a customized Google map, whenever you add a placemark for a specific situation that contains either text or a photo or audio or video, it gets added to the overall Google Maps database? That way, whenever someone does a search on, say, "Wrigley Field," they'll not only get the official Google search result, but the option to view user-created content as well; and any person on the planet who chooses that option, then, will see your placemark right next to the official Google one. Pretty cool, I have to admit, and pretty smart of Google to add all this precious original content to their overall database.
The obvious goal, then, is that people will also combine Google's SketchUp to this all, a free and easy-to-use CAD/CAM program that allows people to create 3D buildings, then automatically load THEM into Google Earth and the Google database as well. If a chamber of commerce could get their stuff together, for example, they could get all the businesses in their organization to fill out a detailed placemark about themselves, plus get someone to make a fully textured 3D version of the business (or maybe the chamber of commerce hiring some computer geek to do all the buildings at once, hint hint, hint hint). The chamber of commerce, then, could create a customized Google map with all these businesses within it, which could be used in all the following ways...
--Adding to the Google online database, for people to stumble across randomly or while searching on a specific topic;
--As a downloadable Google Earth file, at the chamber of commerce's website;
--As a cool standalone demo for visitors at the chamber of commerce offices, or even city hall;
--As a source of press for those businesses; it's not that often, after all (or yet, anyway), that chambers of commerce band together and create a media-rich 3D customized map of all their businesses at Google.
This is what I'm trying to do with my bike maps, after all; not only add a little to the overall Google database, to increase the overall value of the info there, but also to drive traffic to my website "long tail" style, ergo the arts center as well, not to mention do a little boosterism for the city of Chicago, not to mention explain a little about my theories concerning city planning and urban renewal. Oh, plus give smart tourists an idea of other things they can do while visiting here besides going down to Navy Fucking Pier, plus give locals ideas for cool day trips they can make right within the city itself, on a boring Sunday where not much of all is going on, without having to worry about hotels or train rides back and the like. See how many different benefits you get from investing once in a technology like this?
Okay, got done earlier today with episode 2 of the CCLaP Podcast, produced for my arts organization, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography; so thought I'd go ahead and post a sneak preview of it again for those of you who follow along with this personal account of mine on the weekends. Below, the text that will run with the "official" entry on Monday at the CCLaP site itself.
In this second episode of the CCLaP Podcast: a four-minute video interview with Andrew Huff, editor-in-chief of Chicago arts-and-entertainment guide GapersBlock.com. Sorry for the crappy sound! This will all change when my new digital audio recorder finally arrives in the mail, which I'm expecting any day now. Recorded at Gapers Block's June social get-together, at Xippo in the Lincoln Square neighborhood (Damen and Grace).
Links to the things mentioned in this podcast:
GapersBlock main page
Transmission (music)
Drive-Thru (food)
Book Club
Fuel (question of the week)
RSS feeds
Oh, and that point near the end where we both broke into laughter? That's because there was a fire station across the street from Xippo, and Andrew had joked beforehand how it would probably be our luck to have a firetruck blaze through in the middle of the interview...which is exactly what happened.
A reader wrote in to ask why I'm always hanging out at the uberstores to read books, when I have access to one of the best big-city library systems in the nation. Oh yeah, that's right, I do, don't I? And I've used the library on occasion over the years, but have never really made a habit of it, but here's what's now changed:
--It's now my job to get through just an enormous amount of books and post reviews of them as quickly as possible; a book a day if I could manage it, but at least two or three a week minimum.
--Because of its insanely larger budget, the Chicago library system carries many more brand-new literary and hipster books than the average city library system here in America, the exact kinds of books I want to be reviewing at CCLaP (cclapcenter.com), and I'd be kind of an idiot not to take advantage of it.
--The library system now has a web portal to their entire database, meaning you can sit at home in your leisure and/or underwear and look up all the books you want, what brach they're located at, whether they're checked out, etc.
--Now that I'm pursuing this new healthy bicycle-every-day lifestyle, I'm just a short trip from the Lincoln Square, Lakeview, Uptown and Edgewater branches, where the vast majority of the system's edgy and/or small-press novels are shelved.
--And of course for any that aren't, there's always the library's excellent reserve system, by which I can request that any book in the system be sent to my neighborhood branch (Uptown), which believe it or not is literally half a block from my apartment. Vive le Cite.
So yeah, that's good; that's all going to mostly keep me out of the uberstores this year, thank God, because I really just dislike patronizing those placesm even if it to just sit around reading their books for free in their cafes. Actually having the books I'm reviewing on hand all the time will let me get through them a lot faster, in locations of my choosing, allowing me to at least shoot for the five or six books a week I'd love to be reading and reviewing. We'll see, anyway. Thanks for reminding me how easy it is to do this in Chicago!
I don't think I've mentioned this yet, so just wanted to let everyone know that I recently finished my third customized bike map of the summer, for use in both the 2D Google Maps and 3D Google Earth; this one covers over 40 small neighborhood parks on the north side of Chicago, using a route that covers roughly 25 miles (40 km) of city streets. As regular readers remember, this map took quite a bit longer to put together than the others I've made, since it contains just so much more information; over 150 photo placemarks, in fact, along with all that online research I had to do about each park's history. Anyway, you can click here to check it out online, and then once there you can click on the "KML" link in the upper-right corner for the Google Earth file; those who are interested can see all of my bike maps by clicking here.
Don't forget, I actually have the photos taken as well for my fourth and fifth maps, which I'll hopefully be getting to this week; the fourth will cover the trip from Uptown to the Loop, using only inner-city paved bike paths (i.e. ones that run along the edges of vehicular streets), and the fifth of course will cover the entire 18-mile lakefront bike path, the trip I made just a few days ago and from which I'm still recovering. (Seriously, I really overdid it on Monday. Remind me of this the next time I try to ride 25 miles in a single day.) Anyway, like I said, you can look forward to those maps as well hopefully soon.
