Second Life Stuff

[rolanni]

...you have been warned.

When last we saw Our Heroine, she had purchased a parcel of land and was assiduously making trees. I make good trees. Nothing else, mind you. Just trees. In any case, the fellow next door, who apparently aspires to be known as the Biggest Prick in SL (I'm serious; he has bent all his efforts to producing phalluses, very large; in cammo, black, &c), bought me out for five times what I paid, which was fine by me.

I relocated to Boreal, bought a nice patch of snow, and a house. I took the house back to my land and tried to unpack it.

No go.

I read the instructions (several times), but what I was getting wasn't what was described. After some time of banging my head against this, I IM'd the creator, who teleported over to show me how it was done.

And she tried to get things working -- and they didn't. And again. And again. She finally "gave" me a replacement house, which rezzed -- but without doors, and with a wonky code for the interior teleport tubes.

She worked at trying to make things right for about an hour, appearing things, disappearing things, turning my house on its axis, building several sets of doors from scratch and hanging them -- only to find that they either wouldn't open, or jumped over onto my neighbor's property, or inside the house, or -- just vanished.

And after doing all this impressive, ghoddesslike manipulation, she says to me, "I've got to go do housework." Which was a lovely SFnal moment.

We made a date to get back together later in the evening, and after much more striving -- including me managing to disappear my own house after everything was set (aaaarrrrgh!) -- I am decently housed and very happy with my location.

Which is good, because I am never moving again.

Comments

[moon-happy.livejournal.com]

Sounds just like real life! I'm dying in THIS house, and it's not even virtual, because moving takes tooooo big a chunk out of writing and other important stuff. BTW, did you know the term "housekeeping" to mean routine maintenance of ultra slick rocket stuff did, indeed, get its start from the women engineers and technicians in early NASA days who, no surprise, got stuck with doing it? Apparently it was not used dispariagingly but to improve communication/training. "Yes, I know you just did it yesterday, but now you must do it again. It's just like housekeeping..."

[jennifer-dunne.livejournal.com]

Sounds like they've managed to replicate the pain of moving in the real world just fine. :-)

I did look it over, and even create an avatar, which promptly drowned. (That's the problem with appearing on a tiny island, and trying to use a mouse to navigate -- you overshoot and splash right off the cliffs.) Trying to teleport out of the ocean hung my system. Never did have a chance to see what my avatar looked like...

I'm guessing you need a stable high-bandwidth connection for this. :-)

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

did you know the term "housekeeping" to mean routine maintenance of ultra slick rocket stuff did, indeed, get its start from the women engineers and technicians in early NASA days who, no surprise, got stuck with doing it?

I didn't know that -- but now I do. Thank you!

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

Falling into the ocean is recoverable, but not if teleporting crashes your computer.

I'm guessing you need a stable high-bandwidth connection for this.

We're networked and on a cable modem (no DSL out here in the country *pout*), and sometimes the connection gets sticky inside the game. Indeed, both kinzel and I were in the same SL location for a whiie -- until my machine spontaneously went off-line. And it calls itself a Media Center!

Whaaaa?

[orlacarey.livejournal.com]

Not to be silly or anything, but what is second life?

Re: Whaaaa?

[rolanni.livejournal.com]

what is second life?

Um. A game. Sorta. Info here (http://secondlife.com/)

Re: Whaaaa?

[mbarker.livejournal.com]

When you mentioned it the other day, I went over and looked. It reminded me of the muds, moos (and related games) that were popular - a little virtual world, where people can make first themselves, then objects, and set up a place. One major difference is that most of the mud addicts used a client to handle the conversations and actions (helped, because the raw interface interlaced conversations where the client sorted out the threads). But SL appears to have done it graphically where MUDs were text based, and they've done a nice web interface? Is that a fair summation, or is there something else special about SL?

Do you have to pay monthly? It looked as if there is real money involved?

Re: Whaaaa?

[kinzel.livejournal.com]

Second Life is in the long line of projects using VRML or VRML like languages to create a 3D worldscape; in Second Life you can do or be whoever you want -- consider it an on-going chatworld rather than a chatroom. Some people create original art, some just want a place to chat with other folks. If we had enough interest we could hold an online Friends of Liad meeting -- a Come As You Want To Be Party, even, because members can customize their avatars.

Is real money involved? Can be. When you get the free account their are limitations on what you can do -- consider them bandwidth limitations in part. A paid account let's you customize just about everything; if you want to be a pink toad you can be...

Real money happens becasue if you create something in SL you can sell it to others, or share it; and you can access more land and build bigger places. There is a market for Linden$ (SL currency) and people will pay US$ for it. I've seen articles about and even talked to people who claim a steady income from Second Life.

Within SL there are a lot of PG and Mature places -- it's mostly not for kids -- but the project builds techniques that can be used for all sorts of things -- I gather that some people with learning disabilities and phobias can use it to help learn and desensitize.

Meanwhile, there are all kinds of communities that exist in cyberspace that have a hard time exisitng in small towns...
so there are X-rated clubs for furries (if you've been to conventions you may know what I mean), there are GLBT clubs, and there are a lot of virtual sex tools/toys/clubs/ ... along with people making virtual blimps and airplanes and better/bigger dollhouses than they could in first life. I think with a bit of thought a Second Life member could do a good job at testing house designs... and creative people can design their own, from floor to furniture to jewelry. Some folks want to blow things up, and there's even places for them...

I know of a number of groups that meet in Second Life -- as I said, if someone started a Friends of Liad group we could informally meet at Second Life or even buy land as a group (this thing *is* complex)...

A think the latest total I saw was 151,111 or so members; I was on earlier and there supposed to be mor than 4500 people using the "grid" at once.

Inside Second Life you can talk to the room/area you are in, you can private message through IM, you can teleport where you can need to go, you can walk or fly locally....

I think what I like about it is, for the most part, you're not getting your head blown off at all times, and if you want you can just mooch about and be a tourist. In some cases you can walk into people's virtual houses and gawk.... and some of the places are *really* gawkable.

Right now I, from another window, Ican hear the fireplace in my house in Second Life, as well as the fountain from the place next door. I put the cardinal away for the night but I'll let hom out again tomorrow, I think... he looks neat flying through the trees I put up, and he lazily orbits the deck...