without regret for all the things that we have done

Can you endure 23,000 spoonfuls of terror? Or, y'know, at least spare ten minutes for a short film about an inexplicably slow murder?

I will say, past the first four minutes or so--the first three of which are really, really funny--the concept seems to drag on. And on. And on. And maybe that's the point, really.

I've been pondering how to bring up dio, but part of what trapped me in place was trying to figure out what it was, exactly. Nothing I read really answered the questions I had. But, now I don't have to! That last post contains all you really need to know!

Interested in making books by hand? There's a lot of resources, from simple online tutorials to paid classes, but this actually covers all the basics in a short series of photographs. Impressive.

In the world of gaming, there's a lot of parody videos. There are even entire parody games. So when I first saw the trailer for Blocksworld, I thought it was exactly that--something filmed just for the fun of it.

Apparently I was wrong. Blocksworld exists. It's not a parody, it's a really good game designed (mostly for kids) for the iPad. Who knew?

Ever find yourself curious about D&D? Or if you play D&D, and you don't know how to explain what you're doing to people that don't? There's an online tutorial just for you. (Personally, I find their description of sorcerers scarily apt. For several years, the battle cry of my human mage was "Sorry about that!")

The Prim Perfect blog brings us a story about the not-so-secret "secret" of Second Life--that many participants are older than they say they are. I'll go one better and say that the other "secret" population was just grazed over in this article--the deaf.

Well, I'd say handicapped in general, but for folks in SL who cannot hear RL, it's especially relevant. Though this particular population was severely unhappy when voice launched--because, before voice, everyone typed. Not every deaf person speaks, and for some of those that do, they don't speak in ways we're accustomed to. Sometimes, this is because of the inability to hear their own voice; sometimes simply because they don't think to speak before they think to sign. But there's more than a few deaf people in SL, just as there's more than a few who have retired from their First Lives.

Speaking of the disabled, we're in the land of medical breakthroughs--again. Brendan Marroco, a U.S. soldier who'd been on the ground in Iraq, lost all four limbs to a roadside bomb. The loss of his legs, he managed to accept fairly equably. He already has prosthetic limbs, and he says they work.

But what he really missed were his arms. In January, he got them back. It was a thirteen-hour surgery, and he will have months, if not years, of rehabilition in order to regain the function he can with them. But already he can push his own wheelchair, brush hair out of his eyes, and pick up light objects. It's nothing short of amazing.

The next chronicle of Riddick has released stills! It's coming. And it looks very dark and gritty, but really, did we expect anything else?

Finally, back in 2011, on on SLUniverse, Miss Wunderlich started posting images--and explaining the whys behind--her recreation of the Crystal Palace in Second Life. It's still up--you can visit it--because she's made it her store.

I realize I'm late to the party on this (and really, that should be my cue that I need to visit her store more often!), but this strikes me as especially significant not because it's the first recreation of this structure (hers would, in fact, be the third, though the thinking goes that one of the three is no longer up0. Rather, this is significant because for historical purposes, there's very little more accepted as a structure that represents the Victorian era. The thread she largely worked from is also one of the most amazingly detailed, a room by room examinations of the structure I've ever read.

Go see it if you can, and walk through recreated history.