From Wikipedia:

The Winter Solstice occurs exactly when the earth’s axial tilt is farthest away from the sun at its maximum of 23° 26′. Though the Winter Solstice lasts only an instant in time, the term is also colloquially used as Midwinter or contrastingly the first day of winter to refer to the day on which it occurs. More evident to those in high latitudes, this is the shortest day, and longest night, and the sun’s daily maximum position in the sky is the lowest. The seasonal significance of the Winter Solstice is in the reversal of the gradual lengthening of nights and shortening of days. Depending on the shift of the calendar, the winter solstice occurs around December 21 each year in the Northern Hemisphere, and June 20 in the Southern Hemisphere.

Worldwide, interpretation of the event has varied from culture to culture, but most cultures have held a recognition of rebirth, involving holidays, festivals, gatherings, rituals or other celebrations around that time.

In the Aegean civilizations, the exclusively female midwinter ritual, Lenaea or Lenaia, was the Festival of the Wild Women. In the forest, a man or bull representing the god Dionysus was torn to pieces and eaten by Maenads. Later in the ritual a baby, representing Dionysus reborn, was presented. Lenaion, the first month of the Delian calendar, derived its name from the festival’s name. By classical times, the human sacrifice had been replaced by that of a goat, and the women’s role had changed to that of funeral mourners and observers of the birth. Wine miracles were performed by the priests, in which priests would seal water or juice in a room overnight and the next day they would have turned into wine. The miracle was said to have been performed by Dionysus and the Lenaians. By the 5th century BC the ritual had become a Gamelion festival for theatrical competitions, often held in Athens in the Lenaion theater. The festival influenced the ancient Roman Brumalia. [source: Wikipedia]

Anyway, whatever it is you are celebrating in your part of the world, we wish you a great time. Yvonne and I will do our usual escapist routine, explore the country side, hope to stumble upon a warm hearth fire here and there, find some honest good food and ditto drinks, and generally stay away from any flashing lights and loud commercials for 3-4 days. We plan to return to “civilization” around the 28th.

Enjoy!

The first free wireless access points that operated at central points in Athens (Syntagma from 1 June 2006, and Thissio, Kotzia Square from 1 September 2007) have so far attracted more than 40,000 users who have made a total of 167,630 connections to the internet. Each access point is connected to the backbone of OTEnet (the biggest telecom operator in Greece) via a 4Mbps line. You can monitor traffic for these access points at the site of AthensWifi.

Funding for the wireless networks is part of the Digital Strategy, through the “Information Society” Program, using national resources and funds of the European Regional Development Fund. The relative ease of implementation of these projects allows for the timely completion in 2009. The implementation of wireless networks is carried out by local contractors, based on the submitted proposals. The local authorities, etc. TEDK are responsible for integration of WiFi hotspots by Autumn 2009, and then for performing maintenance. Lets hope they do a better job on that than on the maintenance of the traffic lights.

Local authorities and agencies involved in the development of free wireless access points are (brace yourself, it’s a long list, but you might want to check your next holiday destination in Greece):

[The list is being worked on, it's a chore to translate all the names in English]

Her name is Petroula Kostidou and this is the real daily weather forecast, not some satire. This airs every evening at 20:57 on STAR, a popular commercial television channel here. Originally the weather forecast lasted 3 minutes. Due to popular demand it is going to be extended to 5 minutes, last I heard. I wonder why.

Btw “Deltio Kairou” means “weather forecast”, or more literally “weather bulletin”. The “-oula” in the name of Petroula and which also occurs throughout her commentaries is a feminine diminutive suffix, often used for the purpose of expressing affection. In the Greek language this can be augmented by following it with the possessive pronoun “μου” (mou= my, mine; compare with “my dear little boy” in English). She usually uses it with everything, from temperature to wind force, place names and weather itself.

[Edit] For those with an insatiable appetite for weather forecasts, and no direct access to STAR, you can enjoy Petroula’s take on the weather live every day on STAR TV.

Enjoy

The creation of the new airport will require new roads, water and sanitation projects, including the transfer of the settlements located within the proposed runway (Archangelos, Roussochoria). The construction of a 17 km road will connect the airport with the National Road along the north coast of Crete, in the neighbourhood of Chersonissos. When finished, the distance from the city of Iraklio to the new airport will be approximately 40 kilometers. Complaints have been filed for lack of a new road linking the new airport to the south coast of Crete. [Edit] I found a map with the planned road infrastructure on the site of the Greek Ministry of Transport and Communications. Click on it for a larger size map. The labels on the map are in Greek, but you’ll figure it out. The blue lines are existing roads, the red ones are new or planned. From what I can see there is a connection foreseen to link the airport to the south. Don’t know what the complaint is about then.

The new airport (red area in the map below) will be constructed over an area of 600 hectares (1482 acres), adjacent to the current military airport in Kastelli. It has a runway of 3800 meters to accommodate larger aircraft. An additional area of 22 hectares (54 acres) is reserved for commercial activity south-west of the new airport. This is a very large project with a budget of 1.2€ billion for construction costs alone, and together with purchase costs including loans and other expenses, will reach 1.5€ billion.

View Larger Map

I’d like to pick up instead on the clamors for change that are heard all over the political spectrum. Change of the police, change of the justice system, change of the government. The incompetence, corruption, political clientelism in those areas are all getting blamed for the current state of affairs. While I think change is long overdue and would be more than welcome, I have the highest reservations about where this change must be applied.

What an amazingly large proportion of the Greek population doesn’t seem to grasp is that the police, the lawyers, the bankers, the government, the public servants are not some foreign evil body imported from a far-away and hostile planet. It’s them. They are the government, the public servants, the police, the judges, etc. It’s their fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, cousins, nephews, nieces, friends. They are all Greek, with all the good — and the bad — traits that are ingrained in the Greek character. Swapping them for a cohort of other people raised in the same way is not going to bring any change. You’ll just get different names and faces. That’s it. That’s what the Greek people have been getting mostly lately. The same old wine in new bags.

The change — if there is going to be change — must come from within each individual person.

Here is what I have observed in the six years that I have been living in what I still consider one of the nicest places on earth: children, especially boys, are spoilt rotten from birth. They are led to believe that they are the center of the universe, they are rarely corrected when they misbehave, they never learn to reflect on the effect they have on others, occasional reprimands are distributed in such an inconsistent way that the child learns nothing at best, at worst it will learn that it will get away with anything. That it doesn’t have to care if others suffer by its actions. That whenever anything goes wrong, it’s not his fault, not her responsibility. Who can blame such a child when it grows up to be a totally egocentric individual? One who may one day head the government, become a judge, or a policeman of a civil servant?

The change, my dear, dear Greek friends, will have to come from the parents of today. They have the power to shape the change that Greece so badly wants now. If the parents of today want responsible government, a competent and incorruptible justice system, emotionally well-balanced police officers, civil servants that look out for the public interest instead of their own, all they have to do is day-after-day consistently grow, nurture and shape these qualities in their children.

It’s so simple — not easy, not easy at all — but so simple.

Then one day the Greeks will wake up, and apart from being noble, brave, sincere, warmhearted, intelligent, broadminded and generous, all that which they are today already, they will also no longer be mean, cunning, selfish, garrulous, conceited, slothful, envious and greedy (*), qualities that the Greek people seem to attribute uniquely to their representatives in public offices.

* Characterization courtesy of Alexandra Fiada in “Xenophobe’s Guide to the Greeks”, p.12.

You might have found the article a bit long winded to read to the end. That’s why I’m glad I now came across a video that explains the same thing in a cartoonish way, much easier on your already overstretched attention span.

The way I understand it is that the banks have been diluting our money with fake papers that ressemble real money. And they did so with approval of our governments. They engaged effectively in forgery and got the authority’s blessing for it. The money that I put in the bank has been a compensation for the work (labour, products, service) that I performed for someone else. It is worth that amount of work. The money that the banks bring into circulation is created out of thin air. It doesn’t represent anything. It is worth… what?

If you still think that “the bank is your friend”, that you’ll be okay financially, that the powers that be won’t let anything catastrophic happen, that this is all just doom saying, enjoy the last moments of the dream while it lasts. For if I understand this whole story correctly, that dream won’t last forever.

P.S. If you click on the Google logo in the bottom right of the video player, you will be redirected to Google Video, where you will find more videos with similar content.

Dear GOOGLE GODS,

We fall on our knees and plead to you (visualize Lively /plead animation here) for our impudence of writing to the President of the United States not realizing your omnipotence and might.

In an attempt to avoid your wrath and make peace, we commit to full disclosure of our communication with President Bush (forwarded below), the outgoing President of the United States.

What we fail to understand is why you would decide to destroy a world within 4 months of releasing a beta when you spent 2.5 years building it. We empathize deeply with all the wonderful elves and fairies (a.k.a your developers, testers and contractors) who created Lively one virtual brick at a time to give us this wonderful 3D world.

In all seriousness, we, the citizens of Lively, truly hope and pray that Google will reconsider its decision.

We support your product… Do you? Keep Lively Alive!

http://www.petitiononline.com/golively/petition.html

<<forwarded message >>

FILE CODE: RED | CLASSIFIED URGENT AND CONFIDENTIAL

A PLEA TO THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

To

George W Bush

The President of the United States

Dear Mr. President,

Our homeland security has information that our ruler, Google, has a weapon of mass deconstruction and intends to use it on December 31st 2008. Google will ruthlessly pull the plug on Lively.com, the home of our living, breathing and exciting community.

We are the citizens of Lively (Livelyzens) -– the on-line 3D community created by Google, Inc. We are stunned and saddened by this recent Google decision to shut down Lively. Our situation looks grim indeed.

We are appealing to you for your merciful interjection on our behalf. Knowing how dyspathetic you are to the thought of weapons of mass deconstruction, we appeal to you to interfere yet again, but this time for a real threat to our world. In return we can guarantee you that you can trust our intelligence service and surely your approval ratings will go sky high in the online virtual communities for your valiant war against destroyers of our world.

For that reason we are appealing to you for help in our dauntless struggle. We entreat you to consider these three potential life saving acts:

1. It is well known that one of your final acts as President will be to grant pardons (Article II, Section 2 of the United States Constitution) to those parties you see fit. Perhaps a pardon for Lively from its unwanted and unsought fate would be in order.

2. Inclusion of our plight in the proposed financial bailout that you and your successor President-elect Barack Obama are currently working on would also spare us from an untimely and unseemly departure from this world.

3. If the foregoing is not a possibility, a peace keeping force would be cheerfully and heartily accepted within the confines of Lively by all Livelyzens. We have plenty of rooms available to house your troops and you will find us to be wonderful and polite hosts. And in addition don’t worry about the Third Amendment, we’re happy to quarter troops!

In summary our world is at risk of total and utter annihilation. Without the intervention and help of fine countries like yours, our fate will be set to a cruel and ultimate demise.

We beseech your help.

Yours truly

THE CITIZENS OF LIVELY

http://livelyzens.com

The room was decorated as a more or less traditional Cretan kafeneion, minus the white-wash and the fluorescent lamps on the ceiling (which were not available as accessories in Lively), but with really loud music (pulled from YouTube videos and integrated live into a wide screen TV on one of the walls) to make up for that lack of couleur local.

My career as a kafeneion owner was short-lived however. The problem was that I could not run the kafeneion as a side job, while doing more “serious” work on my computer. The reason for that was the fact that I use a Macintosh computer for my daily work and Lively was not available to the Mac. It was “a high priority” according to then business manager for Lively, Niniane Wang, but a version for Mac never materialised to date. If the owner of a kafeneion is not present to entertain his guests, people are not going to linger long when they enter an empty place. If people don’t visit your place, your room does not figure high in the index of Lively and henceforth even fewer people will ever learn about your place and come to visit it. Circle closed.

So I came up with a different idea. Having been exposed to 6 years of tourist waves in Crete, I created a new room which would be more attractive to visitors, even if they would find themselves all alone when entering the “room”. The island of Crete was born in Lively, with some historically incorrect artefacts and semi-hidden or hard to find features (including a roaming Minotaur at the bottom of the sea) that would stimulate visitors to explore.

I took on the persona of a direct-blood-line-descendant of King Minos himself, having survived 3600 years of every kind of (un)civilization that existed in that corner of the world, with a strong background in Greek mythology and ancient Cretan history. Heck, if necessary to make a story even more entertaining I wouldn’t shy away from having a remote aunt or uncle in the Andes during the heydays of the Incas (which I kept mixing up with Mayas or Aztecs too). After all, when you’re a descendant of an illegitimate child of Zeus himself, the sky is the limit. Thanks to an early bug in Lively, I even managed to lay my hands on an avatar that was not publicly available, but which was perfect for the role of the old Minoan. Everything was well.

I still had to reboot my Macintosh into Bootcamp to be able to participate in Lively, but I could now do it whenever it fitted my schedule. As my current lifestyle is such that I don’t work continuously but only when I feel like it or need some extra money, this coincided perfectly with the first months of Lively’s existence. I also had time to visit other rooms now, and in each of them I played this role of an ancient Minoan, entertaining other visitors, mostly talking nonsense with a grain of historically more-or-less correct factoids. People liked it. I started to document myself more thoroughly on the subject of the Greek mythology and ancient Minoan history, my stories became better and people liked it even more. What was particularly rewarding was being able to tell those stories to people of other cultures that had little or no knowledge about those things.

And this brings us to one of the most misunderstood characteristic of Lively. It has been compared to Second Life and it has been compared to IMVU. Let me tell you in just a few words what my experiences with those virtual worlds were. By means of proper introduction I have to reveal that I only explored those 2 because of the constant comparisons that I kept reading in the press. Lively still is my first encounter with this phenomenon. In Second Life I couldn’t get past the introduction. As simple as that. Call me clumsy if you want, but I could not navigate that place even if my life depended on it. In Lively, my sense for navigation was instantaneous and intuitive. In the couple of hours that I tried Second Life I saw a number of avatars passing me by or crossing my path. No-one ever uttered a word to me. I’ll come back to that later. About IMVU I can be even more concise: if your idea of a virtual world is to be dragged into a bedroom at every encounter with an avatar of the opposite sexe, by all means go for it. Your mileage may vary. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

So, what is Lively (soon to have been)? With the risk of doing injustice to the work of many interesting people I have met on Lively which use the platform for artistic expression that surpasses my wildest imagination of what would be possible in such a limited world, for me Lively is a place of conversation. Because of — or maybe rather thanks to — its limitations in the realm of building blocks, animations, game scenarios, etc., Lively is a fantastic vehicle for having conversations with people you would otherwise never meet. There are of course many places where you can have an entertaining conversation, also “in real life”, but no place else where you meet such a diversity of cultures, of people that have interesting stories to tell with all the color of personal experience about worlds you only know through sterile documentation.

I hear you saying now “you can have that in traditional chat rooms or IRC channel too”. Yes, you’re right, and in a way Lively is a big collection of chat rooms. But there is one thing that sets Lively apart from a purely text-based chat room, and I feel this aspect has not been adequately exposed in everything I read about Lively. By providing a model of a physical world in three dimensions, with participants taking on a persona of their choosing, a conversation is augmented in a way that is absolutely impossible in text-based chat rooms.

Let me illustrate this with a few examples.

First of all you can freely move around a room by using the mouse. It’s very fast and intuitive. Secondly, a text balloon pointing to the participant speaking gives a clue who it is that says something in a way that feels so naturally you forget that this is just some text typed on a keyboard. Commenter “abitterdigit” on a rather gleeful article about Lively’s demise on Terra Nova puts it this way: “What virtual worlds bring to the table as a form of communication are a sense of place and person. Forums, text chat and email are entirely disconnected from that; they work much, much better for writing, but they’re very poor mediums for talking.”

How does that work in practice? For starters you can join a conversation by moving towards the originator of a text balloon even when (s)he is not in sight. The text balloons are always in sight and it’s easy to drag your own avatar towards the place where the speaker is located. This accomplishes 2 things: you express your interest towards the speaker in what (s)he just said; moving closer to the other speaker(s) also has the advantage — with the proper camera angle which you can as easily adjust as moving your own avatar — that you filter out the noise of other simultaneous conversations: the speech balloons of the group you just joined will be clustered together, making it much more easy to follow and participate. Inversely, you can move away from a conversation that you have no interest in. Don’t underestimate the significance of this, it can be a very strong visual clue that you don’t want to be part of this conversation. You speak through your body language.

After a while you learn where interesting people regularly meet or which rooms attract people with an interest in a specific topic. So you go there more often. You learn how your “body language” (if we can speak of that in the case of an avatar) has an effect on being accepted or not. You also learn which places to avoid as the plague. After Google opened the floodgates of Lively hell by flirting with the MySpace crowd (apparently a higher priority than attracting Mac or Linux users), Lively was for a while a real torment. Conversation was reduced to “waaaazzup?”, “where you from?”, “what ur hobbies?”, “u have msn?”, and I won’t mention here the numerous expletives that were the rule rather than the exception. Some of the more popular rooms were a real pain to be in. Then one day, there were 4 or 5 of us “veterans” (and somewhat older than the usual crowd) seated in a corner arrangement of sofas in what had become our regular hang-out, practicing our “art of conversation” (even if the content was nonsense, the rules of conversation were obeyed), an unknown male avatar joined us. He sat quietly in a corner of one of the sofas and said nothing for at least half an hour. When a natural pause crept into the conversation he spoke up and said “I’m only sixteen, can I say something on this subject?”. A properly formulated and grammatically correct sentence! And brought with a grace that I had long given up on expecting from that age group, in light of our initial experiences. I swear I had tears welling into my eyes. I could have kissed the guy were it not that animations are limited when seated in Lively and it would have been embarrassing for both him and me. My point is this: had it not been for the physical presence of his avatar, demonstrably just listening in to the conversation under way, without disrupting it, this whole experience would never even have existed.

Enough of my ramblings.

All that is in danger of being part of the past soon. Google has announced that they’re going to shut down Lively, as a matter of better aligning business priorities or some such sterile explanation. But some of us are not going to go under without a fight. A number of Lively users, called Livelizens, have come together to appeal to Google to stall the shutdown. Lively is a great platform for interaction as well as creativity. It is easy to use, browser based, embeddable on webpages to bring a 3D experience right on your website. While Lively has been in beta and has limited capability in terms of the objects and avatars available, the Livelyzens have been able to come up with very creative ways to create art from what is available. All this in a “clean” 3D world thanks to Google’s vigilance in getting rid of rooms with inappropriate content. More than anything, Lively has become a place to make friends for life – from all over the world with wonderful people.

Please visit the website http://livelyzens.com and participate in the Lively Machinima contest we are conducting to show the creative potential of Google Lively. Please also sign the online petition at http://livelyzens.com/petition.aspx. We kindly request netizens to support us in reviving a wonderful 3D world that is a kid friendly and a creative space for art and interaction amongst adults.

A petition signee hit the nail on the head with this comment “I love Lively, who loves GMail?”

Did I mention that I wouldn’t mind seeing a Mac version?