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).