{"id":637,"date":"2006-09-03T12:04:58","date_gmt":"2006-09-03T12:04:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jasonbassford.com\/?p=637"},"modified":"2021-11-12T20:11:30","modified_gmt":"2021-11-13T01:11:30","slug":"parallel_lives","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/2006\/09\/03\/parallel_lives\/","title":{"rendered":"Parallel lives."},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A little while ago, I signed up for two magazine subscriptions.  One for the wine magazine <a href=\"http:\/\/www.decanter.com\">Decanter<\/a> for Skip, the other for <a href=\"http:\/\/www.popsci.com\/popsci\/\">Popular Science<\/a> for Michelle and myself.  We&#8217;d borrowing Popular Science from Walt a couple of times and enjoyed reading through it.<\/p>\n<p>In this months edition of Popular Science, I learned about the 3D virtual world <a href=\"http:\/\/www.secondlife.com\">Second Life<\/a> and I thought it was quite intriguing.  Apparently, in addition to a &#8220;next generation&#8221; online community, you&#8217;re also able to actually make real-world money from virtual endeavours.  I signed myself up just now, although I haven&#8217;t had a chance to actually run the interface and take a look at things.<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re not able to use your own name.  You pick a first name of your own, then have to pick a last name from a list of those currently available.  This put a bit of a damper on what I might have chosen, but I muddled through.  (Actually, I quite like the end result.)  I ended up going with &#8220;Syzygy Sin&#8221;.  Syzygy is a word I&#8217;ve liked since reading a science fiction book by Michael C. Coney of that title.  (A quick look on Amazon shows me that he&#8217;s not the only one to have written a book with that title.)  I&#8217;ve always liked the way it sounds (&#8220;sizz-i-gee&#8221;), and its meaning is an astronomical term for 3 or more planetary objects coming into alignment &#8211; which I&#8217;ve always thought, in &#8220;real life&#8221;, was a good analogy for things coming together or working out as you&#8217;d like.  When we first investigated getting a vanity license plate for our car I was disappointed to discover that this word was already taken by somebody in Ontario.  (Michelle and I ended up just going with our last name instead.)  As for &#8220;Sin&#8221;, I picked it because it&#8217;s a one syllable word (I have an ear for verbal cadence), also started with &#8220;s&#8221;, and because of the unusual pairing of the two.<\/p>\n<p>I have no idea if I&#8217;ll really get into Second Life, or make money from it, but it&#8217;s going to be interesting to find out.  It certainly sounds like one of those technological things that would make for good party conversation&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A little while ago, I signed up for two magazine subscriptions. One for the wine magazine Decanter for Skip, the other for Popular Science for Michelle and myself. We&#8217;d borrowing Popular Science from Walt a couple of times and enjoyed reading through it. In this months edition of Popular Science, I learned about the 3D &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/2006\/09\/03\/parallel_lives\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading &lsquo;Parallel lives.&rsquo; &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/637\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbassford.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}