Machinimoo

Ages ago, I made a post titled State of the Moonion! The gist of that post was that I felt that my lives were converging and I wanted to separate them. I started my blog as a personal one, but peppered it with machinima tips, thoughts, and videos. It started to turn into a place people would go as a resource for machinima info. At that point, I felt paranoid about posting any thoughts on anything else.

I attempted to head this off by creating a portfolio site with the thought of doing more personal blogging on moomoney.net. It didn’t quite turn out that way, though. I ended up tapering off completely as I wrote for Massively and WoW Insider, then later for machinima.com. What I found was that after all that, I still had quite a bit to say.

I’ve decided that I’m going to merge my two lives again. Otherwise, I simply won’t do it. I’ve never pretended to be something else on the internet, so when you speak with me online, you’re getting me. I feel that you should also get all of me on my blog. This doesn’t mean I’ll be posting info on what’s in my purse or telling you random factoids about me. I know that many things should be kept personal. There’s a lot of social commentary I’d like to make, though, and I invite you to read that, or I’ll find a way for you to RSS by tag only if it’s really that big of a deal.

The point is, I miss writing. I miss having a place to share my thoughts on the downturn of Second Life, the upswing of machinima and the AMAZING trends I see with it, and social media in general. I’d love for you to join me in this journey of self discovery!

When I saw the number of people that had RSVPd for the Conjunctured launch party, I couldn’t believe it! 113 people said they were attending, and I’m willing to bet that at least 100 people showed. While that’s a nice sized group, it was quite cramped in the house. In addition, someone apparently bumped the air conditioner controls and turned it off, so it was hotter inside than out!

For those not in the know, Conjunctured is the first coworking space to open in Austin. They’re also supposedly the first coworking house in the world! The venture is run by four hip, enterprising young gentlemen. If there’s a geek meet, you can find them there, which is nice to run into the same people everywhere. It kind of makes me feel like Austin is home.

For more pictures, check out the Conjunctured Flickr photo pool.

www.flickr.com More in Conjunctured pool

(Update: I didn’t end up doing this. I moved to Austin instead!)

Who lives in England or within a train ride of it?  I’m planning and budgeting now.  Let me know!

So I’ve been holed up, not in SL much, angry at TMo, and obsessed with Redbull. Let’s set that all aside and focus on the awesomeness that is Web 2.0. I found some exciting tools for all you geek boys and girls out there.

We all covet our precious beta invites and share them on Twitter, but say you’re still not able to get an invite. Join the queue with InviteShare. I gave out my useless Pownce and ImInLikeWithYou invites and perused the list of sites in beta. I finally settled on Stixy, which I will get to in a minute. I added my name to the list of people seeking invites. Within an hour, I had an email announcing that I had been invited! Oh happy, joyous day!

With that, I cruised over to Stixy, which is an online collaboration site. Sure, that’s what Pownce is, but not in the way that Stixy is. Only one person technically needs to make an account in order for everyone to participate, should they choose to make their whiteboard public. For the project-minded, you can create notes, add photos, add movies and documents, like Word, Excel, and PDF files, and even make a to-do list that reminds you! I tested it out with my Twitter buddies and it works pretty well.

Yeah, you could use a site like Basecamp, but is it as cool as this? Nope! It’s so visual and really lends to creativity. I see myself using it to create storyboards for machinima, adding pictures, ideas, and notes about what works and what doesn’t in a scene. There’s plenty of space to do this as well. I’m not even going to speculate on the size of the stixyboard, as they call it, but it’s huge. If you’d like to test out this site, head on over to my public board and try it out. I’m sure you’ll love it. As for an invite to it, please sign up for InviteShare as mentioned in the first paragraph. That’s how I did it!

<3 moo

P.S. My username on both sites is moomoney. Friend me!

*UPDATE: Thanks to panthar, it’s now a Digg link.  Digg it!*

Having been a previous Sidekick customer, I can tell you that I loved the functionality of their data plan. I dropped my phone and ended up switching to a different kind, but I still never forgot about how awesome it was. I’ve been eyeing the Sidekick 3 for a while now, but I didn’t want to be locked into a contract when I barely make phone calls. That’s why when the SK3 became available in the Prepaid section, I was thrilled. I could pay about the same every month for data only, but have the freedom to make phone calls if I needed to.

On their website, it states:

Sidekick^® rates

Get unlimited e-mail, Web browsing, domestic instant messaging, and domestic text messaging for $1 per day, and spend only $0.15 per minute for nationwide calls.

Wow! That’s so cool! So I dropped *450* USD to buy the phone outright and stuck it on the prepaid plan. SLCC was coming up the following week, so I was eager to set everything up and stay connected. I don’t have a laptop, so it was my only means of communication.

I first encountered a problem when I tried to sign up for Twitter alerts (40404). I got a text back saying that the text was denied because it’s not in my service plan. I called in and was told that they block it because of spam, like joke a day websites. I didn’t buy this excuse, but I had a trip to go on, so I left it at that for a while. Now I’ve discovered these awesome t-shirts called Reactees that allow people to get messages when they text 41411 and your keyword. Again, I got the service denied text. Not about to stop there, I also tried Google SMS. Yep. I was denied.

This had me fuming. I have unlimited data. Why can’t I text to short code? I called up T-Mobile and explained my problem. They sent me over to the Sidekick department. I talked to this guy for a good 20 minutes where he told me that it was indeed a covered service on the Prepaid plan. He also told me that on his backend website, it was showing that my sim card wasn’t connected for texting. He seemed really sincere about wanting to help me, but when nothing worked, he elevated me higher in the ticketing system.

As soon as I got on the phone with this girl, I was told that no, this was not a covered service. She said that she only recently found out about this and that the other guy was misinformed. She didn’t seem that sympathetic that I just wasted 450 USD on a phone that does not do what I want it to do. She said that Prepaid plans do not cover it because there are third party charges associated with those short code numbers. I pointed out that there is nowhere on the website that it says they don’t allow those services. She claimed that it was not their fault and I could take no recourse. She also said that the sim card connection thing was a glitch on their side and I should disregard what he said. Wonderful!

Not wanting to be on a contract, I asked if the Flexpay option allowed text messaging with short code. She was able to give me no definite answer. So basically, I can’t even guarantee that I’ll be allowed that service unless I go under contract with them for 1-2 years of my life. It took them 35 minutes to tell me all of this. Thank you, T-Mobile. You suck.

In other news, does anyone want to buy my expensive paperweight?

So Redbull distribution called me back yesterday and said that since I wasn’t a company that resells, I’m not qualified to get product from them.  This has left me so brokenhearted.  Redbull, if you’re out there and you see this blog, please reconsider.  I’m not asking to be your spokesperson or anything.  I just want your sugarfree goodness!

I think it went well, though I had to leave a message.

“Redbull USA how can we help you?”

“I’d like to know about distribution.”

“Are you a company?”

“Well, no, but I drink like 5-9 Redbulls a day and I’m tired of paying convenience store pricing.”

“Ohhhhhkayyyyyy please hold.”

I hope they call me back tomorrow. I’m excited.

I leave at 5:35am tomorrow for Chicago.  I’ll be at the Hilton sipping foofoo drinks by noon.  With that said, I know a lot of you are coming to SLCC and I’d hate to miss a call from one of you.  I have recently purchased a T-Mobile Sidekick 3 to use for the conf.  I will have access to email, instant messaging, texting, etc.

My contact info is as follows:

• AIM = sashab00ty
• YIM = sasharudie
• MSN = mooofnapa@hotmail.com
• Twitter = moomoney
• Email = machinimoo [at] gmail.com
• Phone # = 254-214-1299

My real name is Sasha, but I also answer to moo.  I am very approachable!  Just look for the blonde midget.

So it’s been a while since I’ve actually updated this blog, other than to talk about my eternal quest for caffeine. Here is a run down:

• I’m moving to Temecula, CA soon.
• I’m now blonde.
• I’m taking on more machinima projects to help me afford to live in Socal!
• SLRFL is coming up soon!
• The Machinima part of SLCC is going to rock your socks.
• I’m going to try to go to the machimima fest in Europe.
• I just finished this machinima for Manpower:

Wow!  I can’t believe how many people are searching for “Blow energy drink mix” and arriving at my little machinima blog.  I’m somehow the top search result for it, so the traffic has been pouring in.  I guess I should post my review of it now that I finally got it.

I ordered it at like 4am one day and was so tired that I read the instructions like 20 times, yet still misunderstood them.  Realizing that I may not get my free t-shirt with the 24 pack, I sent an email out minutes later requesting the specific t-shirt and size.  By the time I woke up, I had an email stating that they would add the t-shirt in no problem, and that it had shipped!  I received it on Tuesday afternoon and couldn’t wait to tear open the box.  Actually, there were two boxes.  One for the tee and one for the Blow.

The Blow box was not discreet.  It has the logo and the white powder emblazoned all over it.  Inside, there was a display case with 24 vials that are packaged, and then there were some stickers also.  They sent out a nice amount of stickers with the order, although I’m not sure where to put them.  It does say that if you stick them somewhere interesting, to take a picture and email it to them for a chance to win free Blow.

On to the product!  I took the vial out of the packaging, only to discover that the vial was ALSO sealed with more packaging.  I guess this is so you can put it in your purse or pocket and not be accused of carrying illicit drugs.  I carefully sniffed the vial before opening it.  It had a bit of a berry smell to it.  After that, I dumped the vial into my unsweetened tea.  It took a bit of mixing, but it was soon ready.

When I took a sip, I couldn’t believe how good it was!  I passed out some vials to the adult energy drinkers of the house, including my dad.  He stuck it in his coffee and declared that his berry coffee was good!  I look forward to seeing what else I can combine this with.  One of the positive things about this mix is that I can control how much caffeine I put into my drink.  That will make this go a long way.

Have you tried Blow Energy Drink Mix?  What were your thoughts on it?  What have you put it in?