5 years ago — September 15, 2004 — I made the decision to start my Second Life. It was one of the best decisions I ever made, but at the time, I couldn't clearly see that: I recall spending at least 12 hours a day inworld for the 7-day trial, hoping to determine whether the US$10 Basic Account cost was worth it. I still remember holding my credit card, hand trembling, as I entered the digits. (Also of note: shortly before I joined, the website had some of the darker shades we've recently redesigned with.)
Now, all this was during a period in my first life when I felt despondent and hikkomori following an accident which caused me to lose my hearing (hyperacusis), which I still have to this day. It hasn't gotten any better, but I've gotten used to it. I haven't given up, and after a long period, got back into making music — now a hobby, not a fulltime career as I have an awesome job working for Linden Lab, the company behind Second Life. So much has happened.
Photo courtesy of Nakira Tennen. You guys are sweet, you even baked me a cake!
I've done so much in Second Life, and there's so much I haven't done. It'd be a travesty to try to summarize here and gosh knows how many personal thanks I give each day, appreciating each piece of wonder and beauty I come across from colleagues, Residents, and to-be-ex-strangers. But I did want to say thank you to Samantha Poindexter, Alchemy Epstein, Nakira Tennen, Kaklick Martin, Daniel Voyager, Riven Homewood, Chestnut Rau, and everyone who remembered and celebrated my rezday better than I did. Samantha has a severely fun press release (at last, one that isn't boring) and roundup here, and there are more photos here.
Whenever I see someone else sharing knowledge or helping another in Second Life, I mentally time-travel back to my very first days: as a noob with so many overwhelming questions, and the gracious patience of volunteer Mentors who helped me… so that in turn (and I didn't realize it at the time), I'd help others. Certainly fitting that I'd become LL's Resident Enlightenment Manager on the Doc Team. This wasn't a coincidence.
Maybe all this sounds like some crazy informercial mating with a storybook fantasy, but it's true: through Second Life, I rediscovered myself and found adventure, friends, a job with purpose, love.
And throughout it all, I found hope to keep living. While the pieces of my life's puzzle haven't entirely assembled yet, I can say with absolute confidence:
I've been beta-testing Picnik's Show and gave them a lot of feedback.
"Why do we need another Flash slideshow widget?" In true Picnik fashion, they have near-unparalleled ease-of-use and some smile-inducing goodies. What you see above is Documentary mode, which couldn't be named "Ken Burns" for legal reasons I suspect. I set my slide interval to 1 second so it moves along at a zippity pace. Lemme know if it causes bandwidth jam. Apparently, I take many more pictures of my Second Life than my first one.
Importing 100 pics (the max) from a Flickr set was easy to do. I wish like PictoBrowser (as described here), I could create a Show that keeps refreshing based on an auto-updated set. Such a feature is wonderful but overlooked, and would allow me to embed a Show always showing my latest SL adventures, based on my Second Life Exploring Flickr set.
Part of me is stuck in the early-to-mid-90s. This is when I discovered a number of technologies that would, through unfolding evolution in years to come, change my life. I didn't watch Wild Palms the first time it came around in 1993 (and it takes place in 2007), but I'm glad I spent several nights going through the miniseries with my wife, fixated on the experience of each scene. Esp. with such depth.
Wild Palms has occasionally been likened to Second Life, and this was part of the intrigue for me; I'm tracking down quality cyberpunk from the era, and while Wild Palms takes place in a much sunnier California than Blade Runner, the film noir influences are at the forefront. I smiled when there was one line to the effect of "You can be whatever you want to look like in this virtual world."
I felt disappointed there wasn't much in the way of cyberspace trips — aside from a ballroom that reminded me of the one on Tempura Island and a retrospectactularly-crude monster that ate a ballerina — and also found it odd how retro many of the cars were, despite contemporary fashions. (After watching Dark City, I'd expect more anachronistic amalgamation.) But despite a conspiracy of un-coincidences, I really got into it.
Wild Palms' soundtrack, by Ryuichi Sakamoto, is a pleasure. Besides the Baroque-esque theme that reminded me of Dynasty, "Harry To Hospital", with its repeated piano figures and airy choirs, sounds like what Moby would take on years later, sans the deep south influence. Not much in the way of beats on that track, but "Tully Hooked" has the same sampled breakbeat as Milli Vanilli's "Girl You Know It's True".
Naturally, after the last minutes aired with a beautiful yellow-white sunset, I went into Second Life and made a WindLight sky setting which I'll include in the forthcoming v3:
But I must say, before the calm, Wild Palms sure had a lot of messed-up people.
Purrhaps more explanation on this later. After what came before, this 360-degree view of Here island is next. Lovely if you don't have a Second Life but are curious what it, as a 3D world, looks like. Click 'n' explore!
![[TOR] SCIFI- Wild Palms](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2529/3791527506_7d0901c2e4.jpg)