Librarian Avengers

With the recent news of Yahoo’s potential acquisition by vile Microsoft and its prior layoff of 1000 hardworking geeks, there was a bit of an air of piracy in the office last week.

Linden Lab is going into another round of recruitment, focusing on web developers, QA folk, and other nerdy types. If any web developers out there (you, yes, YOU Joy!) want to work in a more stable, hilarious, and weird environment, you might want to fill out an application to work at Second Life. Free beer, the Love Machine, and a frightening amount of RockBand can all be yours!

Linden seems to be where the socially-developed nerds go to work. There’s a much larger % of women, extroverts, parents, and charmers working at Linden than is considered industry standard. Which means you tend to not find yourself in conversations with dudes who can’t make eye contact with a girl, or folks who get REALLY EMOTIONAL about their code.

It’s good to be a god, too, even if it’s only in-world. You can read more about our wickedcool office culture in the Tao of Linden.

us, housemate, and Erica, me, were having a discussion on the airplane to Michigan.

Gus is getting her PhD in something nifty, like Education and Video Gaming, or MMORPG Search Behavior. Or something. I dunno. I kinda tune out a bit. Ever asked a social scientist about her thesis? Don’t. At least not before 10am on a Sunday.

Gus was bewailing the lack of Practical Research available in her chosen field of SomethingorOther, and how the interdisciplinary nature of the subject made finding Solid Evidence difficult…something something…did I mention it was early?

I tuned back in once I put together what she was talking about.

“Wait a minute…” I said, blearily. “A PhD in something Practical?”

“Isn’t that called a job?”

uditions are rough. They test the courage of an actor. They test the patience of directors. They inevitably yield surprises.

Here, for the first time, we can watch the dramatic casting process for one of my generation’s favorite games…

 Super Mario Bros. Villain Auditions

NYC game developers Large Animal Games have created a downloadable PC video game based on bird sounds and expertise provided by the Macaulay Library at Cornell’s Lab of Ornithology.

Which is where I work.

The game is called Snapshot Adventures. It was recently was acquired by Yahoo! games, which is a great for both the Lab and for environmental education, since part of the money it earns will directly fund our ecology work.

You can play it for free here.