"Getting it"

I've often felt a bit of an outcast in the real world for my Second Life usage. I explain Second Life to non-residents and I get a variety of reactions, but they all center around "I wonder why anyone would do this". Gwyneth Llewelyn wrote a great article in her blog that really helped me understand the different types of views that people have of SL. I still feel like and outcast, but now understand it better!

--DrawDweeb Latte-

Speed Build at Dreams

Yesterday I went to the Speed Build hosted by the Dream Travelers' group. I don't think of myself as building "fast" so I went in "shy" mode, thinking I would just watch the building. But as soon as I got there I couldn't help myself and hopped on on of the building platforms.

The rules are:

You may use up to 60 prims. All builds must be made from your own NEW prims. You may use scripts and textures. Builds must stay within the edges of your 10X10 platform, but you may go as high as you desire. You have 50 minutes to build. A 5 minute warning will be given. When the host says "STOP" , everything stops. The builders in the contest will then vote for 3 of the best builds. Builders cannot vote for their own build. TIes will be determined by the host. Cash prizes to the 3 top builds.

So there I am, expecting the theme to be like "car", "airplane", "office building". Instead it was "purple"! So I spend the first five minutes thinking "maybe I can just slink away quietly". But I finally thought "grapes" and decided to build a bowl of grapes.

I'm so glad I hopped in. It was great fun. And while competitive, it was extremely friendly competition, with people walking around at the end complimenting each other and giving suggestions.

This is my bowl of grapes.



And this is the winner, Sunn Thunders.



--DrawDweeb Latte-

Start or Dweebtitechture II

If you've been reading this blog, you've heard I've recently become a fan of megaprims. I've redone the free houses display in a new location. This original was 60 by 60 and the floor took 36 prims. The new one is twice the size, 120 by 60. But the floor of this one only takes two megaprims. I love this stuff!



--DrawDweeb Latte-

For the love of slopes

In Second Life, flat land draws a premium But somehow I find it lacking. maybe it comes from living in Florida where flat is the norm. But I find repeatedly that when I'm turned on by a piece if SL land it tends to be (a) by water and (b) steep.

I know, I know. It so much more difficult to build on sloped land. Those flat lots are so nice to throw those blocks on. And to have a nice even lawn.

And then there is the reality of most of the buildings on slopes. Oh my God. Do people really think a flat floor jutting out of a mountain looks good? Many of these look like a piece of wood that was driven into the mountain by a hurricane. But then there are the beautiful slope builds. Looking like some of the best architecture in California and Oregon. Builds that don't fight the mountain, but take advantage of it. Builds that look like the have support for the weight. That add to the scenery like a Frank Lloyd Wright house.

My first piece of big land was selected on a slope. I spent a large amount of time searching and narrowed it down to four lots i liked. I picked the one I bought precisely because it was on a slope. They were all good, but the slope added a certain something to this one. It made it stick out and set it apart from the others. All four had water. The slope made this one special.

My builds may not be the greatest. But in both buildings I tried to make them part of the slope.

My first building tried to hug the slope while giving good views of the water. I wanted to make sure it didn't look just glommed on to the mountain. I wanted the people behind me to be able to keep their view....to enjoy my building rather than resent it.





The second building was all about the slope. It was at the top of the mountain (yes, Mt Dweeb!). It had to have great view and really fit in.







I think there'll be more on this subject. Why shy away from slopes? They can be put to great use and the results can really stick out.

--DrawDweeb Latte-

The start of the rental houses

Most of the stuff I've built for myself has been at the top of Mt. Dweeb. But I have all this land below it kind of wasted. I want to keep it to guarantee my ocean view. But why not do rentals? Under my control, so hopefully no view problems.



I put some placeholder blocks where I thought I might be able to place houses. I was able to fit six houses comfortably. This was keeping with what I wanted from layout.

1. That my view would not be blocked.
   
2. That each house also have a decent view.

This is the view from the house farthest form the water.



Will now replace the blocks with hopefully gorgeous houses. ;-)

--DrawDweeb Latte-

The speedboats

I've been playing a bit at Second Life with some of the family kids. Naturally I try to show them the cerebral aspects. But one of them could not help but notice my neighbor's Offshore Tornado speedboat.

I'm not much of a buyer, but I do have to admit it looked like a pretty nice build. And kids have those big brown eyes that say "Oh, I understand. No problem at all". So naturally I broke down and bought two of them.

They really are nicely put together. The shape is super. You can change the color. The scripting is pretty good (though the boat tends to capsize if pushed into a turn too hard). And details like the motors turning and the throaty sound really add a nice touch.





Highly recommended. http://www.apolon-online.com

--DrawDweeb Latte-

Next Monday, May 18th, MacArthur Foundation opens MacArthur Island

Jonathan Fanton, MacArthur Foundation President, and Cory Ondrejka, co-creator of Second Life, officially launch MacArthur Island and discuss the future of virtual worlds and philanthropy, Worth a look.



--DrawDweeb Latte-

SLCC 2009

Have finally decided I WILL be attending SLCC 2009 in San Fran! I finally decided I enjoyed the last one too much and life is too short. Hope to see many of you there!

--DrawDweeb Latte-

Megaprims

For a long time I avoided using megaprims. These are the large (huge) prims from the past that came to be due to a loophole in Second Life. Used to be that the client was the one that enforced the prim limits of 10 meters. So that means that if a modified client allowed the user to go beyond those limits, the server would happily accept them.

Linden Labs corrected this eventually by putting the checks in the server. So no new megaprims could be created. But there was still the problem of the existing ones. Should Linden make them disappear? Many people had used them in builds. And people hate when the walls of their hard worked builds disappear. Or the floors! So Linden came to a compromise. No new megaprims could be built. But existing ones could stay.

Now megaprims could also be a nuisance. If I didn't like you as a neighbor I could put a huge prim on my land that blocked your path around your house in the next lot. Maybe even in the next sim. Or blocked your view of your own beach. Or they could be a wonderful tool for the griefer, sending huge wheels to run down everyone at your event. In addition, there were cases where really huge prims could cause problems for the rendering or physics engines.

So Linden made a set of rules that went with the prims. The main ones are:

1. You can't change the size of a megaprim. If you do, the regular rules apply again and it's truncated to 10 meters max per side.
   
   
2. Any part that's off your land becomes phantom.
   
   
3. You can't link them with other prims.
   

Some others, but those were the biggies The rules made me kind of uncomfortable using the megas. In addition, I felt that Linden merely tolerated them rather than supported them. What if policy changed in the future?

But one day I was browing through Xstreet and came accross a free set of megaprims. I figured no cost and it might be fun to try. This was the Huge Prims set from Paola Delpaso.

I was so impressed! I immediatly chided myself for not trying them before. What a great building tool. I had specnt so much time in the past lining up many, many (,many!) prims in a row to create areas that were really in my mind one object, just broken into 10 meter sections. I was hooked in no time.

I went back to and picked up 329 Megaprims from Ceera Murakami and Parcel-Sized Prims Collection 0.5 from Day Oh, both also free.

If you haven't played with megaprims, give them a try. You'll be glad you did. And stay awake for any plans to remove them so you can put in your $0.02.

I erected a single very tall prim on my dock. here's some shots to try to give a sense of scale. I start standing by it on the dock. Then go and stand on the top in the clouds. One prim!









--Drawdweeb Latte-

So I'm really pissed that I haven't been blogging. It's not that I haven't been doing Second Life work. I've been sitting down almost every night as a wind-down before heading to bed. But I've been miserably bad about documenting it. One of the fun things I've done is finally set up a place to preview my houses. I've wanted that for a while, but had not gotten around to it. I hated giving up part of my land for commercial purposes. And I picked my land for my own purposes. I loved the mountainous slope to the water. Great for me. Not so great for showing off "normal" houses which kind of call for flat land.

So I finally joined the many other merchants in the sky. That really worked well for me. I had the section of land that was in water. I wanted to keep it so that I kept the view. But I certainly didn't want to build in the water. And I had as many prims over the water as I had on dry land. But I could use those prims up in the sky. I keep my water view on the ground. I use my water prims effectively. And I get my "flat land" for house displays.



I started with 36 10x10 slabs of grass. Boring, but a good base to work around.



Added some walls, a path, some trees, and started adding the houses. I had some fun with the house and bought some inexpensive furniture to put in the houses. They really made a big difference in the presentation. I need to work on that more and keep it up.



And at the end the Dweeb rested and viewed his work!



--Drawdweeb Latte-

The meeting table

I made my first serious try at building furniture, This was a meeting table with chairs. I made the carpet afterwords because the table looked lost on al that wood. Still needs some tweaking, I think



I really need to start working more on animations. I liked that the bean bag chairs had a casual pose for the sit. Now the default animations are really looking lame to me.



-- Drawdweeb Latte-

No integrated video!

I finally decide to do my first video. So I find the SL client no longer supports capture video to disk. Arggghh! All the reasoning is cool (much better third party software). Just hate that as soon as I decide to use a feature, that's exactly when it''s removed!

--Drawdweeb Latte --

New Building

I finally got tired enough of the fish-tank building to get rid of it. Finally realized how much I didn't like it.

Once I got rid of it I felt the same way I do when I clean out a closet (a rare experience). It was good to have the mountainside clear again. I got all turned on and started building a new one right away.

This is the first "sketch" with blocks. I wanted to get a something modern yet open and light. I didn't take pictures, but this was actually like the third iteration of moving the blocks around. But it felt good and I went with it.

When the first set of windows went in the views started looking good. The overall scale of this building is smaller than the previous, but this seemed to have much more usable spaces. Large areas rather than several little ones.

The view of the ocean was great from here. It's almost 100 meters up so a lot of structure kind of tend to fade away leaving the feeling of being out in the country.

I went a bit crazy with the trees. I looked at my prim count and I had lots and lots left. I was being too stingy. I figured the best way to use those wonderful prims was in trees. At one prim each they're really one of great deals from Linden Labs. I don't think I'm done. There may be more coming!

And finally a well deserved rest looking out at the ocean. I go these bean bag chair form Sara Designs Furniture . They have a single animation and an ad if you click instead of right-click, but you can't beat them at L$1 each! She has much nicer stuff at very reasonable prices. I think I'll be back there when I seriously get into decoration such as that is.

--Drawdweeb Latte--

Technology convention for non-profit organizations

I attended a technology convention for non-profit organizations and they had a session about non-profits on Second Life so naturally I attended. The session was good, but the presentation was awesome. There was one presenter on site, but both she and the other two presenters we in Second Life form across the US. In addition, the presentation was geared both to the real audience sitting in our room and the virtual audience sitting around the presenting avatars. It was a situation which would take more guts than I would have to do a presentation myself.









But I think it was very worth it. This presentation was to a group of people that were mostly not Second Life literate. Probably more than half the audience had not been on to SL at all, and many of the others were at the “I signed on once” stage. The fact that the presentation was on SL communicated a feel for the world that I don’t think would have reached the same lever even with a “demo” of Second Life (“Here’s how you walk”, “here’s how you chat”, …)

It was great fun at the end where all the audience questions had been answered and the in-room presenter asked if there was anything the audience would like to see. One guy immediately asked if we could go see dancing since he couldn’t picture avatar dancing. Instead of taking us, the presenter asked the in-world audience if they’d indulge us in dancing and several of the onscreen avatars gave a great show and a great close to the presentation.

--DrawDweeb Latte-

New friend on Second Life

Had a wonderful experience today getting a good friend onto Second Life. We had talked a lot about Second Life in the past few month and he'd expressed a great interest in it. He's even joined the South Florida Second Life Group. But he was battling that ever so common syndrome of "I signed up once, but didn't do much since then". I guess now I've been in Second Life long enough that I forget how hard it is to take the first steps. After logging a few hours I think people do well. But those first few hours are oh so painful.

But it was a wonderful experience because it showed me what a difference even a casual tutor makes for this process. This was not a formal class. We just carted the laptop over to lunch. Over some great (and I'm sure fattening) Nicaraguan treats, we were able to create the account and go through several of the basic stuff like Inventory, walking, buying (freebies), and creating landmarks. Was really awesome to have him finally visit my place and see my art rather than just seeing picture of it.

I've been thinking of giving beginner classes to people as a way to make contact with future SLers. This has really made me feel even more like doing it. I look forward to the first building class!

--DrawDweeb Latte-

So I look behind my building one day and notice that the big weird roller coaster amusement park thingee is gone. Now there's just a huge expanse of land behind me and I can see the original mountain.



I fly over for a look. An I find the land is actually quite cheap. Of course it is. It's not waterfront. Anyone can build something in front of it.

BUT....

I own the two waterfront lots in front of it. So that means that for my purposes it IS waterfront. I have a good shot at keeping this view. Took some thinking, but not much, to make me buy the two lots behind the two I already own.

One of the first things I did was to climb up to the top of the mountain and sit to take a good look. Its a wonderful view!




I quickly started a project to replace the building I already had. It was a fun build, but in many way shows my inexperience. I loved the idea of having a shot from scratch.

My first attempt pretty much looked like a large fish tank...






Ah...but a fish tank with great views. I really like how the inside took advantage of the view down the mountain and out to the sea.



So the layout was cool with me. But I stated working on giving the building just a bit more character. Slope part of the roof down. Add some color on the walls. Stairs inside. A veranda leading to an outside deck.

May still be somewhat boxy, but feels much better to me now.







Can't wait to do more. My wish for my birthday is unlimited time!

-- Drawdweeb-

Virtual business very much alive

Every once in a while it seems like some of the initial buzz on Second Life has quieted. It’s great to see new interest, even in the middle of the economic downturn facing both the real and virtual worlds.

http://www.technewsworld.com/story/64504.html?wlc=1221910819

--dd-

Thanks to Myrilla Vixen....

Our Lindens, who art in the Labs,
Hallowed be thy prims.
Thy Grid-dom come, thy will be done,
On sims, as it is in The Preview.

Give us this day our daily crash,
And forgive us our Spammery,
As we forgive those, who grief against us.
And lead us not, into private parcels.

Amen.

Back from Second Life Community Convention

And so I'm back from Second Life Community Convention 2008. This was one of the best geekfests I've been to in years! I'm finding of really hard to get all my impressions together and coherent.

My initial impression was just plain awe at finally meeting some of the real people on Second Life. Up to now my only contact with anyone on Second Life has been their avatar version. This was interesting, but made me feel even more isolated in the Great South Florida Tech Wasteland, without any real friends to chat with about the subject. I did campaign a lot for contacts, telling just about everyone I met to turn over any South Floridians they encouraged over to me, posting bulletins on the board, and making a general nuisance of myself. I hope it pays off at Some level.

One really great discovery was that the Second Life community was a much wider age group than I expected. Yes, many of the participants were in their early 20s. But about the same number or more appeared to be in their 40s and 50s or more. Very different from some of the other tech conventions where people all seemed very old or very young. I’m thinking this may be an outcome of the very richness of Second Life. Many different "jobs" require many different talents and personalities, and SLCC includes them all with open arms.



One of the highlights was meeting Sarah “Intellagirl” Robbins, co-author of ”Second Life For Dummies” . She looks exactly like her avatar with the trademark red streak in her hair. But she impressed me by bring eminently approachable and I found out she is the recent mother of triplets. This has astronomically raised my respect for all the work she does for the SL community now that I know they no mortal could handle her load.

--dd-

SLCC: Saturday Morning: Keynote: Philip Rosedale (Philip Linden) and Mark Kingdon (M Linden)

==Philip==

In going over the progress of Second Life from the beginning, Philip made an interesting statement that while there was much work to do in the virtual worlds, we had reached a point at which the process was really “unstoppable”, that it was here to stay even if the exact direction was still fuzzy.

The general populace looks at virtual worlds as somewhat poor representations of the real world. The graphics are not perfect, the motions are clunky. The view is that virtual worlds are getting better and better at representing real life. That they are approaching the asymptote of reality and will never quite reach it.

Philip had a differing viewpoint, that virtual worlds were headed to surpass reality, not mimic it. Second Life is already replete with examples of people doing things they simply could not do in real life. Hollywood already uses virtual reality techniques in many spots in movies because it is actually a better way to make the images. So the virtual world started with real life as the model but will go beyond it.

Another differing view is that against the general idea that virtual worlds anonomize their users. But that view is one created by a shallow experience with Second Life, where people “just try it out”. The experience of most Second Life user is the opposite, where strong bonds can be formed between virtual people.

One special area in which this shows are with language barriers. The web in fact segregates by language. The example of the Olympics in Beijing was used. Even if the main site is cross language, you’re not going to learn about China by following the Chinese links. In Second Life, by contrast, you can drop someone in virtual China and they’ll go off exploring. They understand what a road is. They can go inside an interesting building.

One of the challenges with Second Life use now is plainly the interface. 3D cams offer some interesting promise for this in the future, a gestural interface. In the meantime, Linden Labs is committed to improving the user experience.

==Mark==

Mark was very simple: He has the coolest job in the world, and Second Life was all about hair!

On more mundane matters, he stressed his obsession with improving the new user experience. The three elements Linden Labs is focused on are relevance, usability, and reliability.

Marc stressed that as far as virtual world interoperability is concerned, we are at the very earliest days. Right now there are really only baby steps of allowing avatars to move from environment to environment, The problem of transferring assets between world is a much tougher nut to crack. One of the core features of Second Life is that designers count on the fact that their creations are protected by Second Life rules. But how would other worlds honor that? Even if the rights were correctly communicated, how can you be sure other worlds will enforce them correctly. Mark made a great analogy to the real world where moving within a country is pretty free, but moving between countries requires much more control.

Other interesting things in the directions pipeline are social features like Facebook for the younger people, and more media function to allow bringing in more of the web into Second Life.