Hiatus

A friend of mine has been commenting on her lack of time in SL lately. She’s logging in, but not staying long. At one level she is concerned – she has loved SL and it has been a major part of her life and she has been a major part of SL for many. Of course she’s getting many responses to her comments, ranging from “well of course, you’ve been there a long time, your time is done” to “get back in there and find all the joy and creativity that exists”. Like many, or maybe most things, I don’t think it’s black or white – it’s a spectrum of grays. There are many reasons why someone with an active, healthy SL experience might be scaling back the time spent there. It may presage “the end”, but I think “the end” simply happens, without comment.

I have been on a slight hiatus as well. I still love SL, love my friends, have a list of places I plan to visit when I get back. But my physical manifestation is undergoing a severe energy depletion. There is only so much energy available, whether I want to do fun things or attend to obligations. When it’s gone, it’s gone. So I have cut back my time in SL in the interest of self-preservation.

So, my dear friend, try not to fret too much. There is a lot going on in YOUR life. Everything and everyone for whom you care is still here, caring for you. You will be back when you are back. To paraphrase Aragorn: A day may come when the interest in avatars fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. *grin*

There Goes the Neighborhood

SL has a new CEO and interviews with Mr. Humble are showing up in many, many blogs. This will not be one of those places. 🙂 I’ve read many of the interviews (Dusan Writer had a very good write-up), listened to Phaylen’s interview, read other people’s feedback and comments on the interviews (I really like Lalo Telling’s summary). I’ve read Mr. Humble’s post on the SL site and the multitude of responses. It is not surprising that in most of these places, people fall back to pushing their own agenda. Daniel Voyager posted a list of and links for the various interviews. I don’t know where SL should go. I know that I hoped my company would continue to do business there and that I would have a part in that work. That does not appear to be likely, but I’d still like to believe that corporations could find a profitable, secure home in SL. I want interoperability – I want to take my customized avatar and my inventory and hop from grid to grid. I don’t want to figure out the details – I just want to do it. I want more prims, less lag, simpler controls for new users. I want to be able to build and create if I feel like it, and to go buy content when I’m not interested in creating it myself. I want live music. I want to socialize and meet people from all over the world. I want to live in my home and enjoy my land and live my life here.

One of the most interesting comments that I saw (and it appeared in the comments on Tateru Nino’s article in the Metaverse Journal) was by Winter V:

In two years time, I’d like things to change. I’d like the ability to hide my land from my neighbors.. creating a sort of “you can only see it when you’re on my parcel” system. This would open up a world of privacy, removing petty annoyances like “security orbs”. At the same time, I’d like a companion setting to allow me to hide my neighbors objects from my own view, when I’m on my land. THIS one option would remove the need for all these “privacy walls” that people put up constantly, to block out their neighbors ugly builds.

Wow. Yes. This one strikes home IMMEDIATELY. Because my home has become blocked in on 2 sides by a ton of houses, sky boxes and even a landing strip. On one side – I own the land and I put trees. On the fourth side – it’s Linden road. That has been fine until recently. But the last few weeks there has been a steady stream of vehicles down the road. When I say “steady”, I mean approximately every 60 seconds some unavatar’d scripted vehicle is creeping its vacillating way down the road, in full view from my living room. I gather from reading blogs that other people have experienced these vehicles as well.

I enjoy people coming by and stopping to say hello. I don’t mind newbies who appear, as long as they answer when I try to chat with them. One lovely woman was embarrassed when I logged in and found her on my bed. 🙂 I assured her it was fine, I didn’t mind, but I don’t think she believed me. You see – I LIKE that other people can see my art work, see what I think is attractive and fun. Yes, I’ve found people in my pool. It’s okay as long as they are polite. I’ve made several new friends this way. I like the idea of land where others can see the things in which I take pride and delight. I have scripting and rezzing turned off, so there is a minimum of damage that can occur.

A few weeks ago when I was checking my prim count, it seemed a bit high. When I checked to see who had prims on my land, there was indeed a new, non-group member, in the list. The prims were a wrecked truck. A few days later, she had a wrecked car. I returned them and didn’t think much about it, as I was spending most of my time in my sky box. But lately I’ve been in my house and the steady stream of traffic is distracting. I wouldn’t mind avatars – somehow that would feel like community. I am not sure how I feel about this stream of automated vehicles, but I think for the most part I don’t enjoy it. They’ve stopped wrecking and remaining on my land, but they aren’t especially attractive or interesting. The shapes repeat. They don’t do anything visually stimulating. It reminds me a lot of the advertising circulars that get tossed on my RL walk every week – someone else’s garbage.

I’ve tried to hire a detective to look into the situation. *grin* I’m hoping for a full report: who? why? why here? I don’t hold out much hope because you know how difficult it is to get good help these days. In the meantime, I’m contemplating putting up a BIG wall to block the view of the road. A PHYSICAL wall to ensure that the vehicles don’t meander onto my land again. And if one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor, I’m wondering if one woman’s advertising delight is another woman’s annoying trash.

Victorian Ladies’ Night Out

I had the pleasure of being invited to join the ladies for a night out at Carriage Trade. *grin* I did have to hunt around a bit to find appropriate attire. And SL was having one of its uncooperative evenings, so it did take awhile for my clothes to rez. But it was a lovely evening. We had dinner, followed by a piano recital courtesy of the multi-talented Tiffy.

Insanity

I found myself thinking of Albert Einstein’s definition of Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. I wondered if indeed it was Einstein who had said that and how it was phrased. So of course I googled it. *grin* Isn’t that what everyone does now for questions? According to Google it was Einstein. He had many very pithy sayings I discovered.

I rather liked: Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.

And I have always loved: If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.

Go wander through what Albert has to say. In closing I leave you with this one, perfect for SL: Logic will get you from A to B. Imagination will take you everywhere.

I’m a Gamer!

On numerous occasions here I’ve stated that I don’t play games. (Okay – I played Angry Birds on my iPad for several days straight. But now I’m stuck so I’m not enjoying it anymore.) I’m not good at games. I don’t have the patience, the hand-eye coordination, the “kill instinct”, nor whatever else that seems to be required to enjoy and succeed at electronic games. But in the immortal words of James Bond, never say never. 🙂 I found a game that is fun! It’s called Plutonium Project.

My SL script teacher Ben Candlin (who many of you know as an SL Therion) is studying for a degree in Computer Games Programming. Many of us follow his Plurks (or Tweets and Facebook posts) but he also has a blog. A few weeks ago he posted one of his assignments in which the students were asked to create a 2-Dimensional game in one of a variety of genres. Ben choose the top down space game (I have no idea what that means, actually, except he says that it’s much like the game Asteroids).

When I saw the post, I sent the link to my son and a friend but did nothing with it myself. In the back of my mind I thought that maybe I would nag my son to play it and write a guest post for me. *grin* Oh, is THAT why he went AWAY to school???? The other night I was bored with my usual entertainments and decided to give Plutonium Project a try.

Lucky for me there are 4 levels of play: Easy, Medium, Hard and Insane. I chose Easy. *grin* The mouse controls most of the action: thrusters, direction, plasma cannon. The space bar activates the shield. There are gauges at the bottom of the screen monitoring the resources. The grid in the upper right shows you the incoming enemy (except for the ships that are invisible on radar. 🙂 ) Playing the easy level I made it to the 3rd fuel stop. It took me a game or two first, however, to figure out how to coordinate my left and right mouse clicks. *grin* I really am BAD at this kind of coordination. My reflexes are slow, too. I tried to take some pictures while I was playing, but if I’m bad at playing, I’m totally incompetent at playing AND recording simultaneously.

I turned my coworkers loose on the game also. *grin* Yes, of course there could be improvements. EVERY game could use improvements. But it’s fun and easy to learn. And as one coworker discovered – a great way to spend time when the moderator is late to the meeting.

Horseshoe Hunt

I have been trying to avoid hunts in SL. From my very first days I was lackadaisical about keeping my inventory neat and orderly. I had it somewhat organized. Then I took part in a hunt one Easter and blew the whole system right out of control. I STILL have boxes from that hunt that I’ve never opened. Every now and then I start off on a hunt and then realize I don’t have the patience, time or inventory skills to follow through collecting all the wonderful prizes. But I may have to bend a bit.

Carriage Trade is running a hunt from January 29th to February 28th. That’s a short time period. Even better (from my pov), there are only 24 prizes. Hunters are seeking 24 commemorative bronze horse shoes, each containing something special for horses or humans. There are 12 horse items and 12 human items. *grin* That works for me.

I wandered over there this evening to check it out, see if I could get any “insider” information for you all. You know you can rely on me. 🙂 I learned that there is a notecard of Hidden Hints. How do YOU get the Hidden Hints? Ask the horses. Straight from the horse’s mouth, as they say. All of the CT horses (residents of CT) have the notecard. The horses are friendly, good-natured and love to help.

So head on over sometime this month, and wander about, meet the horses, and find some horseshoes for good luck and good fun and good prizes!