Torley Lives

No, not another metameta Title! This one directly relates to what I am going to write. I like to peruse the Classifieds inworld, and I surely do hope there's a better way to sort, like by DATE, because let's face it: humans without a sense of time go INSANE. (In the worst of ways.) This is not only why following instructions IN ORDER is important, but why time travel as a curiousity ov greate intereste goes past any small cult audience and has touched+felt the public at large many, many times.

Chrischun Fassbinder is a man with a plan. Or at least, ideas. One of his wonderfully-executed ideas happens to be this adrepresentation from a postcyberpunk classic. If you've clicked on the pic and still don't know what's up, no frets. Learn more about Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong, as featured in the award-winning novel Snow Crash. Which, incidentally, used to be cited more often as an inspiration for Second Life, but notsomuch nowadays.

Needless to say, this ad falls squarely into the category of, "WOWZA! I wish this was done earlier in SL, but I'm glad it has been."

In the comments for that pic on Snapzilla, Octal Khan sagely quipped:

This rocks! someone make a Rat-thing out prims quick

I can't agree more, and I think by the time we've got more living "NPCs" (what a cold term) and artificial life in SL, like There has dogs, someone or someones will be on it.

Until then, we continue to dream.

I am pleased as mango punch to have Nikolaii Uritsky is a friend. As I'm fond of saying, not only is she a nice Resi (short for "Resident of Second Life"), she's a nicely talented Resi! As you can see, to the right is Nik's store. It's called Space! Romantic, and it is indeed this. I came to acquire an Island Shanty! (exclamation mark included), which is another dream come true for me in SL. Howso?

Easy peasy! Many years ago, I played a game on the SNES called Legend of the Mystical Ninja. It had some, shall we say, rather deliciously debilitated wooden builds which were presumably a bastardized take of an Edo-period crosssection. They not only had the requisite (and cliched, I might add) character, but I reckoned they'd make good homes on the cheap. That memory never quite faded, and I had been wondering why there isn't more prefab housing in SL with rickety diagonal lines that not only suggest movement, but motion, which is the same thing, but different.

ENTER NIK THE SHANTYMASTER, WHO MADE MY DREAMS COME TRUE! Just as she advertised, I've converted my Island Shanty! into a melon stand, a loft of these large, particle-lactating fruits. At a low but not lowly price of L$25, it's only half of a Basic Account's weekly stipend (get your FREE Second Life account here if you haven't already!), and stands to logically reason that a dumpsterdweller such as myself would enjoy living here.

Nik also makes sweaters, shoes, and other things that don't begin with the letter "S".

The title of this entry comes from something Iumi Cline said to me. Yes, I have dancing seals flapping about in my head.

This is a profound revelation, one which I shared with Stella Costello upon awakening and realizing it. Its gravity's rainbow is quickly amplified when you deduce that fish with legs not only taste better ("Fitter Happier" like Radiohead sings), but are directly symbolic of evolution. This isn't some Darwinian shiznit, this is really how life came to be in Second Life. Along with polygonal snakes and birds, leading up to primitars and the modern-day avatar.

What is an avatar?

The usage of "Avatar" to mean "The graphical representation of yourself in a shared digital world" was first used in 1984-1988 in a product that was then called Lucasfilm's Habitat. Chip Morningstar coined the usage. I was with him at the time. Yes, it was derived from the Hindi usage. This significantly predates any other similar usage that I am aware of.

F. Randall Farmer said that in a great compile @ jill/txt. This also predates Second Life. I've mentioned Habitat before, and it'd be criminal if I didn't say the word again. While P@P ROX! (blandly called "point-to-point teleportation") fury runs rampant on the SL Forums, so does myopia, while more relevant issues "hide in plain sight" and are left for snipers such as myself to mine (and mind). Ooo check out Randy's Virtual Communities Reading List too.

Let's talk more about control.

CrystalShard Foo released The Rez-Foo! Programmatically, problem is as follows: big builds can't be linked as a single object due to technical limits. As a result, when rezzing a house, esp. for someone new to it all, bits get lost or misaligned and it's a really crappy experience. Rez-Foo!, which I ended up seeing in action courtesy of the scriptkitty herself, essentially allows YUGE constructs to act as if they are a single linkset. That's the simplest way I know to put it. No worries about selecting each part, and no manual object-shifting to be bogged down by.

Someday I'll have a crazy dream pertaining to this and do something about it.

Tides turn.

Second Life has a lot of fun schtuff to play with. Take Gabriel Spinnaker's phatBits, as a paragon example, something I should have been attuned to sooner. But now's the time. On my old Mac (Quadra 660AV), I used to bang out custom icons in ResEdit. After all, no Mac fanatic is complete without a study of the bitmapped masterpieces of Susan Kare. So with a spritely smile and at Gabe's gentle encouragement, I created this lil' appropriately-colored fella and pressed SUBMIT. Here's the compleat gallery.

No good art stands, or even sits in a vacuum. Zooming back shows quite a social context. And as we may fly off the shoulders of giants, credit is due where it's due, tracing the lineage of phatBits to Chromal Brodsky's SL Sprites, which I played with about a year ago. Beautiful to see even more colorful children live on. Only shame I can find currently in this pixelquilt is a lack of creator names. Would be nice to see who made each one.

In the crowd you can see Oz Spade. Oz has got his own blog now o yes! Besides being "blamed" for this, and like the cloistered joy of Eggo waffles with cheesecake icing, I look forward to what he has to write. You can also check out Oz's Second Life-related projects, like how he made the interface more translucent. It's not heard about a lot, but stands to be useful for the curious—who just haven't found it yet! For those familiar with not only Second Life but Active Worlds and There, Oz also has comparison charts which are relatively recent (save for perhaps the fact There now has free Basic Memberships).