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San Francisco!!
San Francisco!!
      Well, I haven't been keeping a very detailed log of my recent activities. That's because I've been preparing for the CALICO conference, which actually just ended today. I went to one presentation this morning and then hit the road. I saw the twisting Lombard Street and then headed down to Pier 39, and finally hit up the Golden Gate Bridge, pictured left. I crossed the whole thing by foot. Twice. Total distance walking to all this stuff: approximately ten miles.

      The weather was beautiful all day, and pretty much all three days I've been here. The conference was incredibly productive for me, and I'm really glad I did it. Especially, the presentation I saw this morning. The last few days have been filled with stuff on Second Life. I was familiar with underlying concept of Second Life, but had never actually played it. After hearing the third (of five total) presentations on using the game for educational purposes, I decided to download the thing and try it myself. It was easily one of the most unexciting gaming experiences of my life. It lacks overt structure... scratch that. It lacks any structure. The teacher can create structure, but the if the teacher needs to do that, then why doesn't the teacher just create his or her own video game? And if you're going to do that, why not base your design on sound SLA principles instead of falling back on commercial software that wasn't designed with those principles in mind.

      Anywho, aside from the Second Life fanaticism, it was a very productive experience on the whole, especially in terms of networking and developing ideas.

      Early tomorrow I'm leaving for Seattle. It'll be my first time there too. Should be fun! Expect more pics soon.
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Margaret Cho - Beautiful
An Evening of Cho
      Last night, I saw a Margaret Cho performance live for the first time in my life. Her new tour, Beautiful, debuted in Australia, and her first stop on her way to the mainland was Hawaii. Beautiful, in my opinion, was Margaret Cho at her best since I'm the One that I Want, her first DVD. If you have a chance to go see it, I can highly recommend this show. Cho is awesome.

      In other news, I have a list of new stuff that's changed in The Online RPG 2. Here goes:
  • Users' names are clickable on Naj -- they link to that player's status page
  • Added a link to the status page so that you can message another player
  • Implemented item usage during battles
  • Made Naj a bit more graphical
  • Added the area "MedVendor" to Level One of Tachadine
      I'll probably have a new list of stuff soon. Anywho, I certainly enjoyed my weekend. Good stuff. Now it's time to get back to work.
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CPhon!  With monster graphics!  Hooray!
Ikimasho Games Episode III: The Return of the CPhon
      Once, on an island far, far away there lived a man named Matt Buscemi. Matt Buscemi, tormented by the emotional turmoil, relinquished his weekly musings upon the Chinese phonemes, and disappeared into seclusion where he would spend a month playing Guild Wars, reading science fiction novels like Postsingular, writing item analysis papers for his testing class and laughing his ass off upon discovering the book Our Dumb World.

      However, one day, all that changed. Matt was able to cast off his depression, and thus did CPhon arise anew from its month long dormancy, bearing new graphics and enemies and Chinese phonemes.

      Eat that, Lucas.

      Seriously, here's a specific list of some of the updates that I've achieved in the last twenty-four hours.
  • CPhon
    • Added a new store
    • Added a new battle area
    • Added new sounds
    • Added new monsters
    • Added new skills, but unfortunately, they don't work yet. I know I've been promising them for awhile. Next Saturday, that will happen.
  • The Online RPG 2
    • Messaging system implemented
    • You can now view player status
    • Implemented a quick link to take you back to the last place on Naj you visited
    • Added a new quest
    • Added the exploring system
    • Various bug fixes
      The thing I'm kicking myself most over is that today's CPhon update doesn't complete the section I started, the Shenme Plateau. This is because my work on The Online RPG 2 ran over into today. I'm happy with the progress I've made on it though. Next week I will get the Shenme Plateau fleshed out, for certain. I want to have it done before I leave for CALICO, which is coming up in less than two weeks now.

      And once again, kudos go to Burton Parker for the monster graphics. Excellent job, Burton!

      'Til next Friday then!
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