But having this little mental outlet and extension of my second life back is not the only change. Not only that the blog was down I really had no will to write anything about second life. I guess that comes with the age. In two years of this blog, I covered most of the things I was interested in. And more than that. When the story of new adult continent broke up, I just had to shrug and ask myself why would I care. Another world-wide drama that will pass. Sure I owe you publishing some of the posts that are still saved as drafts, and there are questions that I’d like to explore more, but you get the idea, there are not many things left that really moves me in this world.

And not only that I had any motive to write, I rarely found the inspiration to log in. It’s not the first time that I got oversaturated with the metaverse, that my tolerance to bugs and lag got very low and that, in the world with so much things to do, I had nothing to do. Like Baudelaire, I had to ask my soul, poor chilled soul, where does she wants to teleport to:

No matter where! No matter where! Anywhere out of the world!

When those moments become regular, one have to ask if the time has come to leave the place, to retire an avatar and let the human do something else. To commit SLuicide. But before any silly and dangerous moves I enjoyed my solitude and did some thinking. It’s not the time to leave, but it’s time to rearrange and change things. Unfortunately, I can’t come out with a list of what I should and will do. I tried but it seems that it will take much more to rethink whole this adventure. And I have to do that on the grid. But I’ll keep you updated.

Now, when you kept reading this far, especially all of you who did your best to make me fix this PHP thing and get back to writing, I really need a bit of your help. As you see, I’m kinda lost in my second life and blogging, so feedback, any feedback would be much appreciated. What do you like to read here, what would you like me to write about… that sort of thing. Or anything. Please. Thanks.

Universal and "Pirates of the Caribbean" helmer Gore Verbinski have acquired a 2007 Wall Street Journal article they will use as the basis for a film about the online fantasy role-playing world and its detrimental impact on the real lives of players.

You already guess, story is about a guy who spend too much time on the grid, has a cool looking avatar but is completely different in the meatspace. Yes, he had a wife in the first life and a tall redhead in the second life. That's enough info to recreate the rest of the scenario. Lame, right?

I guess that some people like to see how pathetic are other people that are not so slim and young in meatspace as they are in virtual worlds. Which is pathetic as well. Will that make a good movie? Or even popular movie? I doubt it.

First, we have already seen that virtual worlds hardly translate on silver screen. For a reason. Point and the magic of the virtual world is one step beyond the movie. It's about open-endedness, taking control of the plot and first person experience. That's why virtual worlds were invented in the first place. Yes, we saw a couple of them that are really good, but those had a story much stronger than some-guy-maybe-cheating-his-wife. 

Then, who is targeted audience? I hope they don't count on the residents of second life. We all know they will analyze every second of the movie, count framerates and seek for every, even slightest, mistake. And they will be negatively opinionated even before the opening credits. On the other side are people who never touched the grid. They won't mind any leak in reality of the virtual world. But will they get it? Hardly so. I don't say it's impossible to present virtual reality on the big screen. Once again, those that do it well tell us different kind of stories.

But movie will be there, and we'll have another major flood of noobs seeking sex and adventure, trying to look extra-cool and have sex with ultra-sexy redheads before they know how to take their default pants off. We'll have more negative publicity and beseen as freaks from even more strangers. We'll survive it, as we did all the times before. After all, maybe they make a feasable movie. Wish them luck.

(02:24:14 AM) Dalien Talbot: hey, not sure if you have a couple of minutes to waste… :)
(02:24:20 AM) Dalien Talbot: but if you do, I have something for you :)
(02:24:59 AM) Dalien Talbot: try the SL viewer with a special -loginuri [private URL blurred] 
(02:26:48 AM) dandellion: how do I sign in here?

At first, I was a cloud on an empty sim hosted at Dalien's test server, or whatever other machine that has 128MB of RAM. And I was to remain the cloud. Thing I'm floating over is Cosimus – C Open SIMulator, aimed to be low-ram and fast. And in its very early stage it feels like the surface of the Moon. 

OK, I have no avatar. Does this thing have WindLight? It has. Nice. There are also some boxes in zero corner, bouncing around though there's no LSL or physics at all. And there is another cloud. Not much talkative.

We should bring the music and throw a party in this place. Lots of space and no lag at all. And, last but not the least, complete anonymity offered. Imagine what will happen when you have 35 SL'ers floating around as clouds and nobody knows who is who.

But I'm alone now and I have a fast sim. I'm going to race.Trick with running around like a crazy cloud on an empty sim is that only way you know how fast you go is to see how long the tail behind you is. It's also good to know that while you can't fly, you can still run out of the sim. Which is, trust me, more fun.

Dalien explained to me that ground under the sea level has nothing to do with Holland. Something is default that way. And adds to surreality of the place. 

Beside partying and racing, you can build at Cosim. I couldn't upload any textures but shine and bump-maps are the chellenge of minimalism. And LOLclouds, of course.

There is something unvisible at this place. It's clean server space. Bare esentials of our world. You can hear the hum of the flowing data under those pixels. Ancient Greeks had couple of centuries thinking about this. Empty space and essence of the world, not OpenSim.

Oh sometimes the road is rugged, and it's hard to travel on,

But holding to each other, we don't have to walk alone.

When everything is broken, we can mend it if we try.

We can make a world of difference; if we want to, we can fly.

– Lyrics from "Travelin' Thru" by Dolly Parton

To make sure we're all on the same page, I'll start this look at "paying it forward" in Second Life with a brief definition of the term itself. Pay it forward is a philosophy that simply relies on doing good for others and then each person passing on that kindness to others. It's another way of thinking about giving the gift of giving, and it can spread like wildfire between people.

Thinking about paying it forward in relation to Second Life, most of us probably have memories of at least a person or two who helped us out when we were first finding our way across the grid. Didn't it feel great when we were later in a position to use that information to help someone even newer than us? Paying it forward is one way for each of us to leave a positive impact in our wake as we travel through SL.

I guess that's one reason why I try to share whatever I'm learning in SL with those around me as I'm learning it. Even if it's just something relatively small like figuring out some of the best shops or finding new places to explore, I figure it can be useful to others if it's useful to me. My blog and my Flickr stream serve as that kind of documentation of my SL experiences, and through them, I also connect to other people I might not otherwise meet. We trade our knowledge and the things we make, and what we share gets thrown out a little farther with each connection.

Now some people might be concerned that it takes too much time to share what they know with people and maybe even worry that if they share all the little tips and tricks they've figured out, then they could hurt any business they might have. My experience, however, has often been that it's the very people who are the most creative and remarkable who realize how important it is for us to learn and grow together. They teach classes, reach out to newbies, take fledgling designers under their wings, and in general make the grid a better place for all of us. Rather than shining a light only on their own talents, they help others find their own lights.

Second Life can be a lonely place as we each sign in from our separate corners of the world. The world is so vast that we can wander by ourselves and not interact with anyone, but as Dolly sings in "Travelin' Thru", by "holding to each other, we don't have to walk alone". When we share what we know and allow others to add to our knowledge, we help each other see the world of possibilities around us. Knowledge isn't something to be hoarded away to make us feel important but something to be shared so that we can all be nudged forward in our pursuits. What can you pass on to someone else to make their life easier, more stimulating, or more enjoyable? It's time to pay it forward.

Imprudence is an open source metaverse viewer project based on the Second Life Viewer source. The goal of Imprudence is to greatly improve the usability of the Viewer through community involvement, thoughtful design, modern development methods, and a pro-change atmosphere.

So, instead of writing the wishlist here, I headed to the Imprudence forums and started typing like a spoiled kid.

Project is currently in the heavy brainstorming phase so I want you to let that spoiled kid in you to go there and say your wishes and ideas. You don't have to be a coder extraordinaire, designer or UI developer to contribute. If you are, and if you're willing to participat, welcome aboard. But you can do a great job if you just help shaping the new viewer to your needs. 

Second life is the world of its residents, completely built by the residents. So there's no reason not to live in that wolrd via the viewer made by the residents.

To read the comic you should go to ISSUU, somehow I cannot embed their player here.

While you applaud, I'd like to say a few thanks and one apology.

Thanks go to all those nice, patient and beautiful people you see on the previous pages, i.e. cast (in order of appearance):

• Peter Stindberg
• Eidur Kappler
• Laleeta Xue
• Raul Crimson

Special thanks go to Argent Bury, who is (still) behind the scenes but suffer all my doubts, script changes, weird thoughts and who waits to jump into action.

I want to publicly apologize to Antonyno Oh and citizens of Carpathia City for not asking for permission to shoot comics there and especially for behaving so childish when we got caught. If you are into RP-ing in grungy environments and surrounded by good looking vampires, you should go there and take a look. You're going to love it.

Few things about the comic itself. It's a rather crude chop-off of the larger project. That should explain its abrupt ending and maybe unsaid point. Consider it a pilot episode and my experiment with the technology and tools. I will gladly skip any promises about when the first regular episode will come out. But I'm working on it. Stay tuned.

Since I got many questions about the title… I was stuck for weeks with the title and one frame (the one on the last page with Raul talking about slight chance that one might win).All that time, while my human was staring into monitor a song was echoing inside the head. Provoked by the "give me a reason to live" and "what you have inside" (and probably by "I would kill for a good night sleep" in those insomniac nights) there was Therapy's "Die Laughing"…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWVqmH54kcM

Museo Tridentino di Scienze Naturali, in Trento, Italy is organizing the exhibit AVATAR. Society and culture of the new virtual worlds, which will be open from 11.11.2008 to 11.01.2009.

AVATAR will discuss the theme of the new virtual world developing over the Internet (Second Life, etc.) from different points of view: psychological,sociological and anthropological. The exhibition is entirely virtual and will guide the visitors on a captivating journey through 3D constructed ambient, where it will be possible to interact with the spaces of the exhibition and with other visitors as well.

Web part of the exhibition will handle the wider and in-depth discussions and offer the look behind the exhibition, both in Italian and English.

Virtual part will be happening on the platform Moondus, developed by Virtual Italian Parks. From what I saw exhibit space looks quite interesting and it's a pity it will be available only locally.Exhibition will consist of ten sections, each covering another topic: from the concept of the avatar and virtual self via politics, law and economy to us as social beings. 

Each of 25 concurrent visitors will have own console and will use the avatar to roam the virtual environment, interact with it, meet other visitors, communicate… Interesting part is that while virtual world users are welcome, exhibition is aimed to non-users as well, thus spreading the word out and showing virtual space to the people that have never experienced it before.

A bit more than a month ago (that is, I am completely lost in time so I actually have no idea when it was) I TP'ed to Nexus Prime and saw skyscrapers devastated all over the street of the corporate level, smoke of burning tires, broken TV sets thrown around and all kind of mess. It was like a morning after a riot or revolution. Though, through the smoke, one could see some distant buildings intact, like that one where that weird cult resides, cathedral and the oil rig. OK, I am not sure about the oil rig, maybe those were my hopes projected cause I am very fond of that place.

Those TV sets had a notecard to give and there was an explanation of WTF happened. Well, kind of explanation:

In short, devestation. A considerable portion of the nexus prime infrastructure is now gone. I will not go into specifics of how this happened I will only apologize that it did. We are working under the assumption that this was accidental however, all appearances would indicate that it was not. The city cannot function as it is. You are all free to visit as always but things are a mess to say the least. The damage is very significant I can offer no time frame on any solution.  -Spider

The gathered crowd had the expected amount of rumors and guesses. Yes, most of them included regular dose of second life drama but in this case even regular drama has mythic proportions. It's the one of the oldest places. It's the history. But even if I wanted to share those gossips, I hardly remember them. Speaking of me as a bad reporter and even more bad historian, last week I succeeded in permanent deletion of all of my second life photo documentation (and many other things as well), so I cannot offer you any of dozens images that documents that moment. If somebody have them, please share the links in comments.

Anyway, I never had a heart to delete Nexus Prime from my picks. Hell, that's the place one come in the early days, see it, roam a bit and leave. Or spend some days there. And then, that someone might find itself one year later stunned about the sim that still have hidden corners, more and more amazing as they are harder to find. Like that weird chaos game theory place up in the skies. The one that kills your sense of direction and orientation in the way that mini-map doesn't help at all. Seen that? It was just above that space station or whatever it is on 400 meters above the oil rig. Oil rig is outside the city walls, there is a hole on the ground level you can sneak through. You know that. Good.

Sorry for saying 'is' where I should say 'was'. Oil rig is not there. Nor I can get up in the sky to check chaos game theory place. Before and after all, I was running to find if the Black Sun is still there. Not that shiny club that attracts noobs and that just have the name of the legendary place. The one that was a sanctuary for so many cyberpunks and datafreaks proudly wearing their googles. Luckily, Black Sun is live and well. It just changed it's position a bit and there is no network console around to TP you in. But, cheats in the form of altcamming and dirty ways to get inside the closed object are OK in this case. I hope they are OK. 

No matter how bad it was to see Nexus Prime in flames and smoke it was much worse when fires went down, old prims been deleted and parts of sim cleared to the level of the ground texture. But still, that was, however weak, a promise that something will rise again. And occasional visitors could see that some things are showing up in the sky, parts of the buildings, models, plans. Usually, visitor would leave after a bit, but here and there there were groups or singles doing whichever biz they had in the half devastated, half under-construction sim. Like Nexus never had dirty deconstructed parts. Some things you just cannot destroy easily. 

Nexus Prime is being rebuilt and now you can see the first levels rising. Tons and tons of concrete blocks are being placed, first shapes start to appear. It is not the same place it was few months ago. And please, don't go all cheesy and romantic like "it will never be the same again". If you sneak into Tyrel Corporation's rooms, you can see some scatches and drawings. No, it won't be the same. But it will be Nexus Prime. There will be enough dirty corners to do your biz, places to explore and spaces to twist your mind and provoke your imagination. And you don't need to wait for it to be officially open. Just watch your step and who you are talking to.

Yes, sounds crazy, but do some math. At the end of the action you'll have more than thousand items less. Multiply that with the number of the residents we can get into this. Now we are speaking… millions! That will make a difference. And it is just ten minutes and a few words.

Benefits:  

• Making the grid doing better.
• Your inventory mess won't disappear but you'll find your way through it a bit easier.
• Your inventory will load faster. 

OK, let's see what we can do (don't empty trash before you're finished)

• Chances are that there is more than a thousand of freebie items in your inventory that you will never use again (if you ever did). Those are usually packed in some folders deep down the inventory. Crappy dances you would be embarassed to play, script examples though you never did scripting, texture bundles though you don't build, vehicles, lamps, prefab houses… Throw them away! Now! Don't even check what's inside. In the case that you might need some of those (why?) it will be easier to find them in the freebie store then in the inventory. Don't carry rubbish with yourself.
• Most of the landmarks older than three months are not working anymore. Things change fast in second life. Go to your landmarks folder, do a quick check and delete everything older than that. All of a sudden that folder makes sense, right?
• Same goes to the notecards. How many greeting bullshit you have collected in the past months? Manuals? Invitations? Rules of the sims that doesn't exist anymore? No, nobody will ever need that. Be careful not to trash love letters from your past. Though, if those are worth keeping, they are already safe in the separate folder.
• Do a search for "floating text". If you never did that before you have at least 500 of identical scripts with that name. Those are responsible for text over the boxes in which we pack things. Select them all and trash them. Don't select folders though.
• Dozens of versions of your builds. If you build you know what this means. Every time when you click Take copy another item shows up in your inventory. And you do that often while you build. Yes, you can just save them but sometimes different versions as project develops are good to have. But you don't need them when you finish it. You need final version. So… you know what to do.
• Take a peak in your Lost and Found folder. What a lovely collection of all the things you lost around the grid, vehicles you parked and forgot, toys with enabled physics that just went away on their own….
• Search for "demo". How many of those? Do you need them?

Ok, now check the number of items on the top of your inventory, empty trash, feel the grid breathing a bit easier under your feet, check the number again, subtract those two numbers… How many? Two thousands or more? Tell us in comments.

And spread the word! This works better if more of us do it. Let's multiply that number!

50L$ price, quality of work and the cause makes one come out of the shop with so many boxes. So many like more than 150. And for all of you that prefers choosing in own bedroom, there is a fatpack, both in shops and on OnRez for L$6000. Not only that my make-up collection suddenly became very large, you might see me unusually tanned these days.

As I have heard, this action raised over half of a million of lindens for a few days it lasts! 

Another fundraiser is an action based on Eloh Eliot's skin templates that are now running through the community and, as it seems, inspiring new skin creators. It lasts until February the 3rd so don't delay. Location you should jump to is Zada's place at Extropia Core. Or at the Masterpiece Island. So what are you waiting for? Go spend a lot of money!