Both the macro and micro are essential to my way of living. Being able to see the trees and recognize that yes, they are a forest is a comforting stronghold in how I mentally structure and interact with the world. Oftentimes, I have a hodgepodge of ideas that initially appears chaotic and unrelated, but zooming back, there are so many connections, both blatantly relevant and the more — ah! — lateral, as I like to say, joinages that require great observation.

^ The above paragraph is really an un-preface for what follows, so let's roll…
 

WITHER ART THOU, LOCAL LIGHTS?
@ the inworld LindenWorld offices (for internal use only, but you can see what it looks like on the map) today, I ran into Kelly Linden. We were both flying around and both stopped at the Studio Blacklight HQ. I remembered a brilliant-in-its-simplicity creation of his from an earlier Beta Test Grid (back when they were called "Preview Grids", I think): it was a moving sphere that casts light upon a wall. And not static light, but light scripted to cycle through the color spectrum.

I remarked (as I often do) about how lights are underused. Even with so many clubs in Second Life, where are all the eye-opening usages of lights? Crude and/or scarce. It's shocking to me that both they and flexiprims are under the same Features tab, yet in some respects, lights, with fewer settings, are harder to apply effectively. Perhaps part of this is because you have to have Preferences > Graphics Detail tab's "Lighting Detail" set to "Nearby local lights". So on an unsupported graphics card, it won't work. But when it does… BEAUTIFUL!

(My passion always has context.)

Anyhoo, Kelly graciously took 10 min. to recreate the lights in an updated form, and gave me a copy. I plan to be sharing it, fully-permissive, to anyone who wants one, so look for a followup blog post in the future.
 

ON BEING PRODUCTIVE
Often while working, I like to light a candle — my wife <3 gifted me with a great holiday spices votive set — and put on some subtle ambient music to complete the mood. In recent times, Tangerine Dream's Phaedra, Brian Eno's Music for Airports, and Ryuichi Sakamoto + Alva Noto's Vrioon have all been favorites, lending a dreamlight air to my mechanized mass-opening of web browser tabs. I find within the maelstrom of issues that I need to triage, there's inner calm that arises. I like to call it "diving into data", perhaps as an extension to a previous post I made on the Official Linden Blog. So you can imagine me, like monk, so busy within Second Life, with my first life moving in tranquil wisps.

And like forest and trees, I like to see lists, summaries of smaller items. A big-picture view almost always helps me magnify and focus in on one thing at a time, process it, and then move on. Whether it's JIRA issues or parsing through the Second Life Flickr group, it feels to me… like swimming.

This is great, because I've long felt awkward in my first life. I am absurdly clunky, compared to my liquid movements online. So let me say again (and again and again, as I have), how happy I am to be in Second Life. I really wish sometimes I could understate it, but the joy just comes jumping out, and… it's no good if it ends with me. This is one of many reasons why I choose to share.
 

VIRAL STICKINESS
I'm also a Nine Inch Nails fan, and (pardon tangent, you'll see how it connects soon enough!) I didn't hear about Mr. Reznor's newest album until I crept in via the ARG = Alternate Reality Game (you know how fond I am of AVRG = Alternate Virtual Reality Game) which is accompanying the work. The album, Year Zero, is apparently a concept album, and while I don't think any NIN tune will ever surpass my sheer adulation of "The Perfect Drug", having this game, in all its glory with clues and USB drives — wait, USB drives?

Yes, apparently at some NIN concerts, USB keys were found containing pre-release mixes of Year Zero's songs. And clues.

So let me ask you: with Second Life Open Source blossoming outwards, what about putting specially modded versions of the viewer and leaving them at trade shows? For example, a viewer with enhanced graphics and better foot shadows (it could happen!), or one with a radically redesigned UI. These would likely be Resident-created but LL-used, to show off some of the fruits that've arisen since 2007-01-08.
 

ACCELERATED SCROLLING
Switch gears with me, and let's talk about accelerated scrolling on a mouse. If you're using Second Life without a scroll wheel, first of all, you're in a harsh place. It's soooo useful for zooming in and out, which is an integral component of camera scanning, called camscanning for short. And furthermore, if you don't have accelerated scrolling, you're set further back: long lists in windows, like Inventory or Friends (if you're madly social), are significantly less time-consuming to traverse if you can flick the wheel once, and move from one end to the other.

I don't have a comprehensive list of mice which support accelerated scrolling, but I can tell you that my Microsoft Intellimouse Explorer 3.0 — which my wife <3 also gave to me, yes she really rocks — does. As do most Microsoft mice; sadly, beware, the "Microsoft" Habu has guts made by Razer, and while I do like it, the stupidly-hard-to-install-drivers and lack of accelerated scrolling tarnished it for me, and some months later, I'm on this Intellimouse. Also be wary that Microsoft wireless keyboards and wired mice don't appear to mix well: the Intellimouse's scroll wheel doesn't work when I have a wireless Laser Keyboard 6000 + receiver plugged in, so another reversion, to my "classic" Comfort Curve Keyboard 2000. I miss the leather wrist rest, and I'm still getting used to it, but ahhhh, I hope future googlers will come across this, should they be wondering. And some Logitech mice, like the Revolution series, also support accelerated scrolling. Curiously, they propose it as a "revolutionary" feature, but anyone who's done their research knows it ain't new. But yes, it is nice. Don't be without accelerated scrolling if you want to save yourself many finger strokes down the line!

 
PRETTY PICTURES?!
Sorry, none here. I was tempted to blot them in between blocks of text, but instead of gratuitously adding visualizations, I'll give 'em forefront focus in my next post, along with the most unscathing commentary you could possibly imagine. And then some.