Stone Semyorka bio
I've been a resident of Second Life since November 2006. In real life, I am a professor of mass communication at a major university system in the U.S. state of North Carolina teaching about virtual worlds, new and old media, internet and web, journalism, broadcasting, and public relations. I use SL every day for alternative instruction sites and laboratory simulations for teaching and research.
On the Internet, I edit a major website about space and astronomy and I also write the Second Edition blog, which describes the passing scene, tracing the society, culture, politics and economics of Second Life. I love to build in Second Life:
University campus
In the Dotoorak region of the SL mainland, I have built a large campus for the university. Its architecture is stacks of sky platforms side-by-side near the ocean. Together they compose twelve educational venues. There are classroom buildings, indoor and outdoor seminar areas, library, new media center and journalism newsroom, art gallery, computer lab and email center, outdoor environmental classroom, science annex with astronomy and botany labs, football field, rest areas with a pond and picnic tables, t-shirt shop, and a wheat field with barn. New students have access to a nearby Newbie Convenience Center where they transfer necessities to their inventory and change clothes in private.
Public park
I built, with the extraordinary help of master builder Lillyanne Lustre, the large public Stone's Point Park on land adjacent to the ocean in the Dotbyeul region of the mainland. It features a 100m tall lighthouse guarding the bay, a visitor center atop the highest point of land, a water slide water park, numerous gazebos, a restful English garden, boot hill, sky cabins, ponds, streams, waterfalls, paddleboats, animals including a popular llama ride, an humongous Borg Cube dreadnought overhead, and other attractions. Standing in the ocean is Stoneflower Gallery composed of two buildings displaying nature and scenic photography from SL and RL and portraits of SL residents.
A Space Place
What we know about Deep Space and how we know it is presented in a colorful and stimulating set of exhibitions high in the sky above Taerae and Dasom regions of the mainland. RL knowledge of space and astronomy is on exhibit along with some of their finest space and astronomy-related builds sent across the great divide to the adult main grid by residents of Teen Second Life.
Research academy
I started Stone's Point Academy to support the scholarly activities of the Second Life Center for Scholarly Research in Social, Political, Economic, Scientific and Literary History. The research center's best known work comes from its deep sea bathysphere research station operated by the SL Society of Oceanologists on the floor of Stone's Harbor in the ocean off Myungsimbogam and Taerae regions. In addition, the academy historians have compiled a history of pirates who pursued lawlessness off the coast of Dotbyeul, Taerae and Myungsimbogam during the Golden Age of Piracy.
Homes for the homeless
As a public service, I started the Home Sweet Home project to recover and repurpose those ugly bits of ad-farm land that litter the otherwise beautiful SL countryside. I remodel` them into homes for the homeless in Dasom, Myungsimbogam and Dotoorak. The Home Sweet Home group shelters homeless residents who have suffered prejudice, harassment, griefing and abuse. Unfortunately, because they are not land owners, their only retreat in troubled times has been to the newbie welcome areas where the cycle of harassment and abuse starts all over. The Home Sweet Home group provides an alternative escape.
A Better Place To Be
I also have recreated singer/songwriter Harry Chapin's A Better Place To Be in Dotoorak region as you can see from the photo above.
A different kind of cave
I founded Stone's Point Spelunkers, a caving enthusiasts club. Members work out in a large cave training center inside a mountain at Dasom region.
Dust Bowl 2013
No one's going to forget the year 2013 anytime soon. Unlike any other in tens of thousands of years, this time the temperatures at the surface of our home planet's oceans went way out of whack. It's reminiscent of the calamity of the 1930s.
On the teen grid
I volunteer as an adult mentor in Teen Second Life where I am Dreyfus Dryke.
Blog, Wiki, Mac
Second Edition is my descriptive blog.
I'm in the Second Life Wiki.
In RL, I am a Mac user.
Interests
Virtual worlds, Second Life, New Media, blogs, journalism, digital storytelling, photography, videos, machinima, social networks, wikis, podcasts, space, astronomy, nature, outdoors, the environment, politics, public affairs issues, modeling, railroads, ham radio, philately.
Books & Authors
- Science fiction of all sorts such as the works of Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, Douglas Adams, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Gene Roddenberry, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
- Science such as Carl Sagan, Patrick Moore
- Mysteries such as Agatha Christy, John D. Macdonald, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
- Books about my current immersion such as Neal Stephenson, Wagner James Au
- Classics such as Charles Dickens
- and on and on.
Star Trek, Star Wars, Indiana Jones, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Steve Jobs, Pixar, Industrial Light & Magic, chick flicks.
Music
Too many to list from the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, 1990s, 2000s.
This is excerpted from my Flickr bio
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