The November issue of The Second Opinion is out! Jeska Linden sounded the clarion call on the OLB (that's Official Linden Blog in shortspeak), and already, I've received some really, really nice letters commenting on my Advanced Snapshot Magic tutorial video, and suggestions for the kind of things I should do next.

First, a paragraph about the newsletter in general: every month, those of us on the newly-christened Community Development Team — formerly just "Community", but then it was decided "Community Manager" didn't have the right air… so guess what? I'm "Community Developer of Communications" now, oy! — get together at a meeting (I attended remotely, or networked, as Pathfinder and I prefer to say). We hash out ideas for stories and what we should cover. It's a fun romp, aside from the fact we balance article-writing with other job duties, so sometimes it is a cram/jam.

It's a lovely team endeavor.

As important as The Second Opinion is to us, we hope it has significance amongst Resi(dent)s too. Our story ideas often come from within the community itself, and we do run letters to us as well. It's intriguing to me because we have a variety of communication tools; formally publishing an email may be the last thing some people expect to seer, but, there's charm in folksy message-deliverance. (Proof from Abe Lincoln himself.)

Noone wants to read a dull-as-dishwasher newsletter, and the purpose of this is really to connect, not some PR-speak robotcrap. Certainly, it wouldn't exist without Second Life itself. And SL, like soylent green, is about PEOPLE.

So some weeks ago, my head was in a stumper: I was sketching out notes to myself about taking better photos, knowing I'd blogged about bits 'n' pieces of them here and there. I said in my heart that I'd include them in future Knowledge Base articles, but then the pain came: the crushing tenseness of being verbose and trying to describe the inworld motions I was swooping to-and-fro at… in WORDS. WORDS WORDS WORDS. If a picture's 1,000 words, can a video be 1,000,000? That's what it came down to.

I believe in sharing what I know which is of use to my fellow peeps!

I did some prototypes; they were really formal and dry. Not like me, not funny. They sucked. I threw them all away and… I ran with the reel you ended up seeing, and which Master Penguin graciously featured in Second Life Insider. What's even kewler is he found the version I left on Google Video (this followed hours of video-encoding-fu… I'm still learning, promise!). (Another major PITA was encoding it small enough to be streamable, but large enough to be watchable… those menus are already so scrunch-ed.)

Even after that, I wasn't sure if I wanted to share it with you. Then, I ate some watermelon, and was convinced — this better be my Tips article for Nov. '06! (Plus, I was on a time crunch.)

In the future I'd like to learn how to do overlayed subtitles (better) to provide textual cues. I was adamant to include notes this time to summarize the tips, in any case.

Trivia: some've asked me, "Who did the music?" That'd be me too. The first track is "Rest In Peace", which I wrote for my Dad after he died. He had a funny habit of taking pictures without humans in them — he sure liked scenes of deer in nature. Naturally, you can download "Rest In Peace" for free, in MP3 (scroll down). The second track, which you can also get on the same page, is "FaderShaders" aka "Muay Thai with a touch of xylophones and 70s prog synths… and some totally kickass breakbeats… and MORE COWBELL!".

And if anyone ever makes love to this song, please let me know!

For next month Tips, you can expect to see another fave topic of mine. Hint: I've already written about it numerous times on this here blog(tm).

Soooo check out The Second Opinion for a brisk, rollicking time, from us @ Linden Lab with <3 2 U, and you can read the archives too.