Wonderosity

Well, apart from dealing with family crises over the holidays, here’s some of my geek doings from this last week.

• I’ve continued playing and posting my various life adventures over at reality all starz. Check out my page if you haven’t yet. There’s no way I’ll win the prize by the end of the year, but looks like I’ll be in about 5th place.
• I’ve been goofing around with Stumble-Upon -a fun, dangerous (time suck and content) way to randomly trip through the net on the suggestions of others and, I just realized, a great way to promote your own sites. I’ve seen traffic increase here and at other wonderosity sites since adding them to StumbleUpon.
• I’ve been testing out various other social-networking sites, too many to note here and nothing super noteworthy.
• I’ve added a few videos to Revver.com, testing the remote possibility of making $ from video views. I guess I’d need to put something worthwhile up first, but I’ve heard you have to have a HUGE number (?) to get any kind of decent payback.
• I’ve been playing around with and adding a few things to the 43things (RobotCoop) suite of sites…I think there is a lot of potential there, and I’d even love to see if they have any employment opportunities.
• We gave into social pressures and got our first cell phone. Yup you heard me right, FIRST. We just haven’t needed one and haven’t wanted to add the ‘cons’ (being available and bugged all the time, relying on tech more than trust, the added financial cost, etc) for the ‘pros’ (convenience, safety for emergencies, etc.) But the recent advent of a few ‘close call’s, the rapid disappearance of payphones, combined with pressure and a Christmas gift offer from my mom to get us kick-started with the cost, means we now have one. We’ll see how it goes. I’ve secretly been wanting to join the club for a year or two now anyway. Partly because it now means I can have some extra (very needed) social time during drives, and I can also check my email here and there (since we’ve chosen to not be connected at home.) We went with Verizon because of coverage issues, and a Samsung sch-a930 because I was talked into it.

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Hi Bleeding Purple People,
I notice that around 75 of you have still not switched over to the new wonderosity feed.
While I will be keeping this site up, I will be deleting the feeds associated with it (ie feeds.feedburner.com/bleedingpurple, and the enteuxis.org one).
So please just click RIGHT HERE and itunes will add the new wonderosity feed, or just copy and paste this feed -http://feeds.feedburner.com/wonderosity -into your favorite podcatcher/player.

And don’t forget to get your butt over to the new wonderosity show site and the new wonderosity social site! Of course, if all of this is too complicated for you, you can keep it simple and go on over to the wonderosity.com site and all my feeds and other projects are there as well!

Thanks and I hope you’ve had an awesome new year!
In truth,
Leif

Tags: feed change, wonderosity, bleeding purple, wonderosityshow, feedburner

Check this out…

This episode continues the interview with Peter Davenport, director of of the National UFO Reporting Center. In this show we talk about:

• How does the NUFORC reporting process work?
• Why might be some reasons humanity has not had a more overt UFO/Alien encounter?
• Why does the traditional media seem to run from these kind of reports?
• How often does NUFORC receive direct ‘alien contact’ stories?
• If this really is happening, what might be the nature and purpose of non-terrestrial beings monitoring or visiting our planet?

Other Notes

• Here’s a link to the Phoenix, Arizona sighting –Davenport’s suggestion of the most recent credible UFO mass sighting.
• Again, I apologize for the audio quality –hope to clear that up with the help of some forthcoming Christmas presents…
• Wonderosity will probably be quiet until after the holidays, the 1st week of January.
• Head over to the people portal to discuss this subject and connect with other Wonderosity people.
• An interesting site I just found that might be of interest –check out his open minded scientist / skeptic at www.ufoskeptic.org

Tags: wonderosity, wonderosityshow, nuforc, peter davenport, interview, podcast, ufo, alien, media, extraterrestrial, exobiology, paranormal

I just realized that I’ve rarely been using this blog in two primary ways that I originally intended -to share my tech struggles (SkepTech entries) and to log my geeky explorations. As you might guess, the two of those topics are highly correlated. The net is mind-bogglingly massive and the new and frequently cool sites, services, mash-ups, free applications, etc seem to be growing at an exponential rate. Its a friggin black-hole for those of who are fascinated with information, ideas, and communication! My wife has helped me to see that its this ‘explore new stuff’ factor in my life that can really become a time suck. I most often find myself exploring, researching, testing, and playing with the following:

• new social media and social networking tools/services/sites. Lately reality all starz took a good 10 hours of my time…
• web 2.0 mash-ups (beware this dangerous feed http://feeds.feedburner.com/programmableweb/mashup)
• new virtual worlds (the emerging ‘multiverse’)
• serious games (though I don’t like this name, it has come to mean games that have some sort of real-life implications)
• blog tools and gizmos

I think what I need to do is to schedule a certain chunk of time a week for this kind of activity. Though I could barely skim the surface of all that is happening in this amount of time (until I decide that I’d want to take things in a professional direction (ie get paid for the time I am ‘wasting’)), it needs to be short -like 2-3 hours a week. As much as I seem to like this kind of geeking (I do, don’t I?), I just can’t justify spending more time. Spending more time means spending less time on my other main interest of late: social media / new media journalism (podcasting, etc). Or it means taking time away from specific learning goals I have, stealing time from family, from things I need to do, from being healthy, from healthy social relationships,etc…all those other dimensions of life that never quite seem to fit together.

So there. Anyone else struggle the same, or have any suggestions? I know I’m not alone in this struggle, how they hell do others find the time for it without it adversely affecting their lives?

Tags: screen addiction, skeptech, wonderosity, geekingoutloud, tech struggles, realityallstarz, multiverse, web 2.0, mash-ups

My first attempt at YouTube-exhibitionism. What do you think, should I do more in the future or no?
I don’t know why this isn’t embedding, but here is the revver video link or here is the YouTube link for now.

Tags: wonderosity show, death, close-call, youtube, vidcast, geeking out loud, GeekingOutLoud

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I think my favorite thing about doing wonderosity shows is that I get to literally follow my curiosity to any place that I might not have previously followed it without the excuse of recording the conversations and interviews for a podcast. Today’s show is an interview with Peter Davenport, the 12 year director of the National UFO Reporting Agency. He was a delight to talk to, honest and friendly, and I think you’ll enjoy this first part of our conversation. In this show we talk about:

• Peter’s involvement with NUFORC
• His 1st encounter with a UFO as a child and later first attempts/interests in reporting
• How NUFORC works, who calls, why? Anonyminity?
• Peter’s opinions about the 3 most dramatic, credible and fairly recent UFO reportings
• This thursday’s “Wonderosity Live” show will be following up on this subject, we’ll talk about UFOs and your thoughts on “Are we alone?”

Other Notes:

• Slightly skippy audio, having some problems with Gizmo Project
• Background music, trusting in the good nature of Sufjan Stevens ,was the song Concerning the UFO Sightings Near Highland, Illinois

Tags: wonderosity, wonderosityshow, nuforc, peterdavenport, ufo, aliens, interview, talkshoe, gizmoproject, sufjan, sufjanstevens

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I blogged a little about this over at my Geeking Out Loud blog (from my recently attended IgniteSeattle event), but for you wonderosity listeners who really want to LIVE out your goals, challenges and dreams (or want to be inspired to do so by others’ dreams) --you have just GOT to go check out this v. cool new site Reality All Starz. That link will take you to my profile page, but please start an account and start having fun there!

Below (from the site)

Challenge yourself and your friends to do interesting and unusual things.

It works like this: You peruse the Reality All Starz library of challenges — or you can write challenges of your own design. A challenge can be something simple like: ask out that girl you’ve avoided your entire life or something more difficult like get a town named after you. You rate the challenges, from 1 point for super easy to 100 points for damn near impossible.

You can then attempt any challenge you like. You upload video or photographic evidence that you’ve completed a challenge. Your friends can review this evidence and rate how well you’ve done. The more style or uniqueness you bring to solving each challenge, the more points you’ll get. Do more challenges, get more points.

We keep track of who are the top Reality All Starz. Are you?

Who made this?

RealityAllStarz was conceived and created by me, Peter T. Brown, and with ridiculous amounts of help from Dr. Shelly Farnham (she’s a world renowned expert in social technology). The stellar brand was developed by Jason Levine and his 3 year-old over at Perfect Pixels Design.

Tags: wonderosity, igniteseattle, realityallstarz, adventure, challenge, quest

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I attended Ignite Seattle last night and, overall, had a good time. The “pre-event” first hour was a social mixer, involving creating a a bridge with popsicle sticks and glue guns. We had1/2 an hour and it had to support the weight of one of your team members. Here was my team “troubled waters”…

Unfortunately, we were amongst the ~25% whose bridges didn’t hold our weight. Bummer, I’m sure we were cheated, somehow. (:
Here, in my opinion, was the heftiest bridge of the bunch…
.

The main part of the evening was hearing 5 minute presentations from Seattlites related to their various projects. You can see a list of all the projects at the Ignite Seattle site. Here are some of my favorites from the evening:

• The one I was most excited about was “Reality All Starz” –a site where you and others dream up challenges, vote on the # of points they’re worth, then if you or others complete the challenge –you provide evidence (writing, pictures, video, etc) and others vote on how many points you really deserve. Anyone who is familiar with my QuestCast podcast “Your dreams and goals gone public and challenged with a quest” will realize why this concept was exciting to me. I briefly talked with the presenter and founder, Peter Brown, and hope to talk with (perhaps collaborate somehow?) him more later.
• Buster Mcleod also talked about achieving goals and about the dilemma we often experience when our motivation doesn’t quite match our desires (thus we “want to want to” dosomething). His solution: go public. Again, this is similar to what I was thinking with the QuestCast –by having your goals and dreams ‘gone public’ –we have more accountability, support and we have also linked the specific want with our universal human want for respect, for ‘creds’ (remind me of the book “Magic Kingdom”.) Anyway, Buster is planning on starting a techy arts center in belltown -downtown Seattle.
• DorkBot –”doing cool things with electricty” -I liked the presenter’s fun, free spirit and it looks like past events reflected her spirit.
• Stuart Maxwell, thenewbig.com, a friend a fellow podcaster, always has fresh and inspiring things to say and challenged us to think differently in a number of ways.
• Thats all I feel like writing about here, and there is much more detailed info at the Ignite Seattle site.

Tags: wonderosity, geekingoutloud, igniteseattle, realityallstarz, dorkbot, secondlife, 19pings, bustermcleod

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Well, for a first experiment with Talkshoe, this turned out pretty good. Unfortunately, the combination of one caller’s background noise plus Kris Gauci’s somewhat soft voice made the first 5 minutes a bit tricky to hear. Also, while four other people connected to the show, only one had the capacity to talk and I had to mute his voice because of the aforementioned background noise. Oh well, next time will bet better (: As for the content though, Kris was a delight to talk with and the 30 minutes sped by all too quickly. We primarily talked about:

• Kris Gauci’s brief spiritual background -more about Kris and his teaching can be found here.
• Is God personal or impersonal?
• Honesty/Authenticity & Spirituality
• The paradox and need of both trust/hope and doubt/etc.

Let me know what you think about the concept of a live show like this, how the time slot was, etc. Tomorrow I have an interview with the director of the National UFO Reporting Center, currently based in Seattle, that should be interesting…hope to have the results of that out next week. Receive care, -Leif

Tags: wonderosity, talkshoe, wonderosityshow, Spirituality, Live Show, Experimental, Authenticity, Trust

In this last episode with Jim Palmer, we talk about:

• Shifting from a right/wrong (convince and convert) modality to simply wanting to know God more deeply.
• Thoughts on why many have trigger-issues with “Jesus stuff” and how we feel about this.
• Within on emphasis, in a sense, on ‘divine anybodies’, are there any special people, places or practices that Jim still holds as uniquely helpful?
• What does being church look like now, to those trying to meet God in each person?
• What does prayer look like now, for those whose perception of who and where God is is chaning?
• To learn more about Jim and his newest book “Divine Nobodies”, make sure you visit www.divinenobodies.com
• And more….new announcements about upcoming “Wonderosity Live” show as well….

Tags: Wonderosity Show, Interview, Jim Palmer, Divine Nobodies, Author, Spirituality, Emergent, being church, prayer

A BP/Wonderosity listener and kindrid spirit sent me an email a few days ago that contains a conversation with her two children that I just had to share with you as well.

On another note, get this: The kids and I were driving one afternoon and en route passed a new Christian high school. Here’s the exchange. Now mind you, DD is 7 and DS is 5. This blew my mind!

DD: Mom, is that a church? Or a school?
Me: It’s a school, but people who go to a religious high school also worship there. So in a sense, it is both.
DD: What is that sign on it?
Me: A cross. It is a symbol of Christians.
DD: What is a Christian.
Me: A Christian is a person who believes that Jesus Christ is the son of God.
DD: Who is Jesus Christ? (read this with the sassiest, most incredulous, 7 year old girl tone imaginable)
Me: A man who lived a long, long time ago who some people think is the son of God.
DD: <<silence>>
Me: Do you believe in God, Rachel?
DD: No, I don’t believe in God.
Me: Do you believe in God, Priam? (Priam is my son)
DS: Yes mom, I believe in God.
All: <<silence>>
DD: Do you believe in God, mom?
Me: Yes sweetheart, I believe in God. But I respect that you do not believe in God.
DD: And I respect that you do believe in God, mom.
Me: Thanks. You know, many of the world’s problems are created by people who refuse to respect the beliefs of others

Hope I can handle any similar future situation with my daughter as well as she did…

Cheers,
Leif

Tags: wonderosity, wonderosityshow, religious tolerance, parenting

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