Both of these are very interesting words indeed, because they lay down, together, at the rare crossroads between logic and spirituality: on the left, we have hard-coded fact, and on the right, what gets called magic.

I like how “Enlightenment” belongs rightfully to many people: the Age of Reason is commonly known as part of the Enlightenment era, and yet, there are many enlightening experiences tied to religion which might be considered quite unreasonable by scientific means.

Similarly, “Intuition”, as defined, speaks of the truth without a “reasoning process”; not necessarily sans “reason” per se, but a quicker way to get from A to B without explaining how. Enlightenment, of course, falls into that same camp many a time: metaphorically, if there’s a light shining on your face, I don’t need to repeatedly remind you how bright it is. It is.

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Remember when default loading avatars in Second Life resembled homely women with mullets? Even the guys got ‘em, and a couple of unexpected breasts to go with the horrorshow. It’s hard to believe, but as of version 1.20, those possessive terrors are fading away, the Sadako-esque spirit of Ruth able to rest at last, becoming the talk of urban legends on this Internet superhighway.

Ruth, suitably, has been replaced by an aqua-tinted cloud dubbed “Ruth 2.0” by her artistic daddy, UI design guru Brent Linden. Brent was gracious enough to take some time from his creative day and send me what essentially amounts to a “build your own Ruth” kit, mentioning the “toxic” nuance of said cloud.

Intrigued? Get it! And I’m looking forward to the parodies which arise… and I’m sure you’ll tell me all about those, right? Or else…

Wiki editing is kind of like a drug. I hesitate to say that, because “drug” is often used as a generalization for illicit chemicals, and I certainly don’t have a dependency. But it is addictive: it usually starts when I notice several bits (or more) of info that no one has yet compiled, and I mentally go, “Hey, I should start that on the Second Life Wiki!” Shortly thereafter, it happens.

“Shortly” being the operative term, because it just takes a few minutes to write an intro paragraph or two, put in some headers, maybe even bullet points. By then, the seeds of a new page have more than sprung. And then it’s onward to expansion.

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Here’s (ha ha, punny) where we’re at. This’ll change, but it’s nice to have such a grand view of my island and (w)here we’re at today:

If you’ve come over, thanx! Took pictures? We have a Flickr group for officially declaring “You Were Here!” I’ve got my office hour tomorrow so if you can make it, let’s chat. And if you haven’t been Here (it gets funnier each time I say it), learn more.

Coming up: the Here journals.

Out there on yonder intarwebs, a few voices have wondered whether the new Cuil search engine is a prank, hoax, or detached vestigial organ destined to be reabsorbed back into Mothership Google (I made that last part up). While “Cuil” looks more like “Cooyeel” than its intended “Cool” pronunciation, pages keep popping up as to some mighty LULarious search results.

For example, take “cobol”. Then “lolcats”. I gotta say, Cuil’s “Safe Search” is HORRENDOUSLY DISAPPOINTING. I tried it on and off with a number of bawdy 4-letter words, and got the same 1st pages of results.

On a positive note (because I love those), I’m using Cuil to find my name in unexpected pages and embarrassing old photos (you’ll have to search for them, muhahaha!); it can’t just be me — I’d actually value a parody search engine of venerable utility.

When I hear “usability” and “Second Life”, it’s usually applied to work Linden Lab needs to do in order to smooth out the inworld experience, whether it’s tweaks to the viewer user interface or changing the layout of registration pages on our website.

Usability consultants for products and services within Second Life are scarce; I’ve done various searches but found no one’s who’s really made a big splash improving a variety of Residents’ creations. Let’s use a simple example: say you’re a brilliant scripter who’s come up with a HUD gadget that fulfills many needs, but “how to work it” sucks — you know this because you ask some friends to try it, but they can’t figure it out. Even worse, you’re not much of a manual-writer either.

When you can’t do it yourself, trusted help and sage wisdom is the way to go, and so, you’d consult an expert — not a self-proclaimed blowhard but someone who knows doing this will build word of mouth and is passionate about making inworld creations more usefun (useful + fun). They’d give you actionable advice which you can apply, including a few simple steps to make your HUD much more user-friendly. They might be able to make hands-on changes too. The end result is a win for all: the usability consultant gets paid his/her/its worth, you’re more proud of your offering, and your customers can enjoy it more, too.

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The Droste effect is one of my favorite forms of visual trickery: an image made more striking by being repeated within itself. Often fractal-like, manifestations of the Droste Effect are sure to wonder and delight, provoking inquiries of “How did you do that?”

Curious, I searched Flickr the other day for Second Life Droste effect examples, and only came up with one person doing it so far. Congrats, Oracolo Janus, along with prolifically photographing your Second Life, I’m thrilled to see your Drosteness.

See more of Oracolo’s Droste experiments, and maybe you’d like to check out Josh Sommers’ tutorial; it’s fairly involved and I haven’t done it myself yet, but the knowledge is out there for the using.

And not an easy one to ask, but because I value your opinion, it must be done:

If I were to focus further on a specific subject so my personal blog is more useful + fun for you, what would it be?

Free answers in comments graciously appreciated; I know I didn’t set this up as a multiple-choice poll, but I’m curious to hear what you think all the same.

My workflow for these involved:

• Taking a raw snapshot in Second Life.
• Putting it through Picnik.
• Processing it through Photoshop.

… and voila! Yes, I know, odd to mix such a cheap image editor with a much more expensive one. But it worked wonders.

Blossom is my wife’s new themed avatar. She has an awesome animation overrider (alas, you won’t see her being bouncy in these still pics) with sideways flirtiness and sneezes, floral influences, and there’s a bit of Asianity to her dress, too. Kinda Poison Ivy meets one of those Wuxia warriors.

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