The House of Words - The Official Site #2

Hi!

I'd like to inform you that The House of Words is now working at a 99% capacity: there, you can find article samples, the blog, description of services, links to other blogs, contact information and more stuff.

We just need to finish the general link section and to post on the "work in progress" section.

As with any website in the Internet planet, The House of Words will never be finished. I want to add new content every day, and not just blog wise:it's important for me that people go and participate in the experience, and that they know that there is always something new to check on.

So, I'm giving this blog another week, and then I'm moving into my new House permanently. You all are welcome to come and stay for as long as you want, as this house's doors are always open.

Tired of your first life? Get a Second Life!

I confess: I’m a Sims addict. Thank the Gods that my computer has a lousy graphics card, and I can’t play The Sims 2, because if I did, I’d have to be connected into an IV and I wouldn’t move from the computer for days.

It’s the Barbie doll lover in me, plus the whole wanting-to-play-God-complex that drive me insane with these Virtual Reality games. Some people get addicted to shoot’em up games online: I get my kicks off shopping for my avatars and building punk and Goth neighborhoods.

I discovered Second Life reading an article a year ago about a guy who was sued by a big fashion brand, because he was creating items for sale in Second Life, using the brand’s name and selling them. The concept of Second Life intrigued me, and as someone who is into the idea of the Internet, one day, becoming a VR vehicle (Web 3.0?), I thought I’d check it out.

Again, my graphics card let me down: my avatar moved slowly, the scenarios took hours to load, and I couldn’t make much of the experience. But I got the taste, and now, even with poor graphics, I can’t help but to visit this alternate world every now and then. And when I do, hours seems to fly by in the real world, and I forget about everything: I don’t eat, I don’t talk, I don’t walk the dogs, and I’m oblivious to what is happening outside this bubble.

What is Second Life?

Second Life is an alternative world, created by a mysterious organization called Linden Labs. It was born as a platform for graphic designers to create digital art. There, people represent themselves by creating alter egos called avatars. Later on, Internet users began using Second Life as a game, and as a means to meet other people. Actually, there are people who use Second Life as a business, creating clothes and items, and selling them to other users, using the Second Life currency, the Linden Dollar.

In Second Life, you can find all sorts of worlds (called “islands”), where people meet and do things, much the same way they do in real life: you can chat; shop and dance; you can also fly. For someone with a good Internet connection, and a great graphics card, it’s the perfect excuse to get away without leaving your house.

It’s a bit difficult to explain what Second Life is, and the best thing I can say is that if you’re reading this, perhaps you should give it a try. I’m a newbie in it, so there are surely things you can do in Second Life that I haven’t figured out yet. Actually, I’m trying to steer clear of the icon in my desktop, or I’m sure I’ll just disappear into the realms of it. By the way, my avatar’s name is Sinead Helendale. Cool, right?

Imagine a world without real estate

This Saturday, I was dragged out of bed at 9.00 a.m. to go to the beach and go canoeing in the Mar Menor. I was, indeed, dragged out of bed at that immoral time I've just written, but canoeing?! No, not really. The canoe guy was expecting us at 10.30 h, not at 13.00 h, which was the time we arrived at the beach.

Plan B: since we were by the beach, we decided to run from the August rush of people sunbathing, and go to another beach by the Mediterranean. We hopped on the car, and there we went. Needless to say, I was sleeping drunk and wishing I was in bed, instead of out in the sun with 40 degrees...

Richie - the designated driver, and creator of healthy, early morning plans on weekends, likes to listen to really corny Spanish music. At least he does when he's driving... so, we were up and down the motorway, listening to such musical pearls as Isabel Pantoja and other crying-singers-cause-my-man-dumped-me-for-another-woman sort of performers, and to such international hit singers as the Bee Gees and whatnot, when this singular moment in time happened.

We were stuck in traffic, in the middle of Lo Pagán, when John Lennon's Imagine hit the radio waves. This song must be on the Top 5 of the Sing Alonglable Songs of All Times, because the four of us - Richie, Maria, Fran and myself - all started singing and muttering when the words failed us.

I got into this contemplating state of mind - brought to you by staying till 2 a.m. playing in Second Life the night before - and while the chords of the song echoed in the car, and the heat killed us softly, I looked around and noticed that every shop in town was a real estate agency.
And then John Lennon says, in one of those instants full of timing: Imagine no posessions...

...while the sequence of real estate agencies, screaming "We speak English" and "Your house in a golf resort for just xxxx€" and "Front-line beach villas for an incredible price!" kept on moving.

The House of Words is down

Hi!

The House of Words - The Official Website is currently down. We are adjusting some details concerning the template, so if you visit the webpage, it won't show the blog. Moreover, I'm not sure if you can access anything more than the "home" page.

I hope we can fix these things as soon as possible, so we can move on building the "house".

Thank you for your patience and for visiting this blog.

My Baby!

Hi all!

I've been busy lately with a bunch of projects, which I will now number:

• Computer upgrade: a must for someone who is working online. I needed more speed, a better monitor and, obviously, better sound. It's a work in progress, as most things in life are, but it's going the good way. Hurrah!
• Website management: The House of Words is still under construction, but it is accessible, and I'm doing my best to add new content and to build a decent platform. Turns out Joomla! is quite easy...
• Freelance work: apart from d/visible, I've also landed a couple of projects and I've been quite busy. See, this is what persevering brings - hope and results.
• Networking: I've joined Twentysomethingjournalists, for fun and to meet more people who are into this whole freelance, journalist and writing online sort of gimmick. It needs a bit of animation, so let's see what happens there.

I'll be posting here, as well as in the website's blog, to make a soft transition from one blog to the other. I hope you are updating your links, as I will mine. Plus, think that THOW isn't just for me: it's for all of you who come here and bother to read my words. Hopefully, it will be also a meeting point for many others to come.

And, if you are looking for a literature blog - chick lit, actually - just wait and see...

The House of Words - The Official Site

Hey!

The House of Words is opening its doors to the world.
In a near future, I'll migrate all the posts from this blog to the official site, so go do your bookmarks and similar stuff with the new address. Have a look and send me your ideas, suggestions and opinions.

The THOW Official Site will be a showcase for my writings, a business card for clients, and the home of this blog, which will maintain its original name and premise: to be a place to post texts, ideas, thoughts, rants, and to promote discussion about things we stumble upon, as writers and creative people on the Internet.

Go on, have a look and let me know what you think!

Spanish Columnist Rants Against American Dad

A note for the readers: I've changed the title of this post, because the author of said rant is not a Murcia native. But he's Spanish, so, hence the correction.

While I was having breakfast this morning, around 12.00 (Spanish morning!), I bumped into this beautiful piece of journalistic literature in the local newspaper La Verdad.

I believe that most visitors of this blog can more or less manage the Spanish language, but for those who don’t, here’s a recap of the article:

The columnist/journalist/writer begins by saying that if the reader wants his or her children to hate them forever, than make them watch American Dad, with the aid of (insert name of television channel broadcasting the series).

Then, he goes on to give the reader a short description of American Dad: an animation series created by Seth Macfarlane, focusing on “throwing crap into the average Republican voter, and therefore, any kind of traditional values’ lifestyle”.

This inspired and witty author then takes the opportunity to badmouth certain sectors of the Spanish press and society that he names as being “politically progressive”. He explains that he doesn’t understand why these sectors consider American Dad to be “politically incorrect”: in his opinion, the “politically incorrect” would be to create an animation series which would teach children the values of family, religion and fatherhood.

The punch line, obviously, comes in the end, when he insults the author of American Dad and Family Guy by writing the following (direct quote): “In other terms, I’d like to know what is going on inside Seth Macfarlane’s mind (…) for him to have so much accumulated hatred. I suppose his parents named him Seth after Set, the third son of Adam and Eve; however, with this final stroke, Seth, his name resembles the one of a sinister Egyptian god, lord of evil and darkness, god of the drought and the deserts. These sorts of things make one’s character.”

Ok, so my first reaction was a simple and round WTF?????

Even if La Verdad is a local newspaper highly connected with the region’s government, known to be very much into the right wing values, the fact is that the newspaper’s mission is to inform and educate its readers. La Verdad is supposed to cater for all the people who live in the Region of Murcia, and most of these people – unlike this columnist may think – are way over the whole “Nation, Family, Flamenco and Values” motto that lead the most common of dictatorships.

Second, although I agree that American Dad and Family Guy are not children animation series, the responsibility of the airing schedules lies with the television station that broadcasts them at improper times. Such responsibility does not lie with the creator of the series.

Third, I believe it is of extremely bad taste to use a third-party creativity work to criticize groups in society that offend the writer. True, it’s the press, and it’s free press. However, this is an abuse of that right. If this writer wants to rant against the “more progressive sectors of society”, then perhaps it’s more intelligent to do so with facts, not with a TV show those sectors haven’t created.

Fourth, the writer has forgotten that his column has been published not only in paper, but also on the Internet. As a global medium of information, it means that even if his text is in Spanish, a lot of people will read it and, if necessary, even the author of the show. That’s right, his words have a higher reach than he considered. This has two consequences: first, he gets to be undeservedly read by more people than he should; second, he gets to pass off as an idiot for his uninspired rant.

Fifth, and this is a personal one: who do I have to get it on with to get paid for writing garbage in the most read newspaper in the Region? Because if he can do it, so can I.