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Party on the 10 island! Aftermath

Second Life | Community: Events - Party on the 10 island!  On the night after Northern Voice 2006 in Vancouver, BC, a group of us were standing outside of the restaurant for a final dinner while Eric and others raved about Second Life and the fun that Scoble could have there. 

{tags: Second Life on10 orcmid}

[update 2006–04–23: adjust for this being a new post made after the party.
update 2006-04-22: Added snaps from the event, with further commentary.]

Since then, Robert and son Patrick are decking out a place on Second Life.  The reformed Robert has closed down the evil Scobleizer Corporation headquarters and taken up philanthropy. 

Meanwhile the on10.net folk have featured Second Life and established their own little sparsely-visited world.  I have met only two people there since I started.  I’ve successfully made a little nook into my home base, living as a homeless student in the steam tunnels, so to speak.

On Thursday, April 20 at 7pm pdt (gmt-0700) the first 10 island block party was held.  Visit the event notice, download Second Life, and come play in a welcome area.  To visit the 10 island, look for it in “Find” and teleport on over.  Also, you can join GroupOn10 and see when others are around.  I’ll be around looking for people who want to practice their Italian with friendly native speakers found on Second Life.  You may find other interesting groups to your liking and that allow open registration.

Party Report

Here's Laura Foy's avatar, LauraThug Seattle.  The Heads-Up Display (HUD) in my field of view is from my avatar's JetPack and has nothing to do with LauraThug.  One of the first thing Laura wants to do is find some tattoos for her avatar.

I (that is, my avatar Orcmid Seattle) bumped into avatar Codi Ng (Erik) in the tree house and didn't chat long enough to figure out who the avatar's owner was.  The startling aspect in Erik's case is that he and I ended up with the same basic avatar body and were both wearing the on10 T-shirt.  Except for the shades and different pants, I thought I'd run into my avatar's twin.

I didn't see avatar JeffSand Dot (guess who).  We did notice later that avatar Scoble Seattle was online, but we failed to hail him or even find out where the avatar was hanging out.

One thing I noticed is that group chat is difficult for me to follow in Second Life, mainly because there is so much about visual attention and motion to handle at the same time.  I also see that it is important to learn how to hand objects to people, give them landmarks and notes that answer common questions.  I’ve just recently found a welcome area and a sandbox for building objects and experimenting with what they can be made to do.  I’d like to build a unique vehicle for Orcmid Seattle to scoot around in, be able to hover, and so on.  I have built the shape and am just learning that it is the ability of all objects to have a script that allows it to be a vehicle.  I found some sort of serious rocket vehicle in a Second Life junkyard, so I figured I’d see how it operated.   This may be a bit like putting a Corvette engine in a dune buggy, so we’ll see how it goes.  I also haven’t found any way to extract the script from an object yet.

And here's Adam Kinney's avatar, Adam Kivioq, relaxing at the end of the party (Adam claimed he was on the phone in real life).  You may safely conclude that wings of various form are popular in Second Life.  All avatars are able to fly, and it is an important form of travel, along with teleportation.

I had just learned to take snapshots in Second Life.  They are actually taken on my local machine, using the Snapshot tool of the Second Life client.  Not thinking about that, I would send them as postcards from Second Life to myself.  So they actually uploaded and were emailed from the Second Life system.  It works well enough, as you can see.  I forgot that I intended to take pictures, and finally remembered to take these, not taking more until I saw how well multiple postcards from Second Life to real (cyber-) life worked.  I now know to just go crazy and snap pictures as much as I want.

Although the first non-security software I ever install on a fresh computer is a screen-capture utility (for documentation and trouble-shooting reports), I haven’t tried screen captures of the Second Life interface.  Sometimes screen capture doesn’t work with animated interfaces.  That’s an experiment for me to try.  It would be cool, of course, to have my avatar be carrying a camera in Second Life, letting people know I’m capturing pictures.  These pictures are easier to share than the ones I take in real life, still using roll film, requiring more effort to put online the way I want.   (And even these have been cropped and edited onto my web site as a “proofing” mechanism used before I paste the image-linking HTML into my blog post.)

Reflections on Second Life

There are three things I’ve noticed about my experience in Second Life so far, and being at a party brought it home for me. 

First, I am reminded what a wall flower and voyeur I am.  It feels very awkward to introduce myself (that is, Orcmid Seattle), and find ways to become acquainted with others.  I have been to costume parties, in the past, as Simon Templar and as Indiana Jones, and either way, it was me at the party with all of my inhibitions and social traits.

Secondly, I am very uncomfortable adopting a persona that is very different from myself.  My Second Life profile provides an accurate portrayal of my “first life” identity and interests.  Even though orcmid himself is a long-standing fantasy character of mine, I don’t use it as a cover for my identity.  I also notice that Laura and Adam are recognizable in their avatars and their namings.  I don’t know how much that is a conscious effort on their part.  I’m not a thrill-seeker and I am not that keen on going completely into a different persona that allows some expression of a hidden or even avowed side of myself.  Some of the behaviors in Second Life would be violations of trust in my real life, and I will not engage in them in either place.  For some I think the lack of social restraints is part of the appeal.  I also think acceptance in these other aspects is important to people whose lifestyle is difficult for them in real life.  There is also the opportunity to find kindred spirits in Second Life. 

Third, I spend too much time wandering around Second Life and just looking and watching. This is a distraction from what I say I am interested in, so I must figure out how to avoid this becoming a great diversion from commitments I have set for myself.  At the same time, the technology is fascinating, as is the ability to construct structures that might be playful and valuable for exploration and communication.  Examples that come to mind, when I allow myself to be a little imaginative, is creating a simulation of the International Space Station and its orbital environs, where it could be visited, explored, and maybe tied into feeds from NASA and other sources.   I can go from there to thinking about setting up a Martian landscape and using it as a kind of science exploratorium.  (I would prefer that any Martians that show up be of the Heinlein ilk, since orcmid’s 12 appendages, and name, were partly inspired by the Red Planet’s Martian nymph, Willis.)  Then when I completely cut loose, I think of a transit jump station that allows and borrows from all manner of science fiction scenarios.  Coming back to to practicality, I’ll be happy if I can trick out my partly formed hover-disk, sort of a Silver Surfer concept, to operate under Orcmid Seattle’s control.  Then again, it would be cool if it behaved a little like Doris Dora, the Gay Deceiver (or is it Pretender).  After that, I could start on The Mother Ship.  heh.

The funny thing about this outpouring of imagination is that I had my last cup of coffee on Friday morning, a re-nuked cup from my daily pot of French Roast on Thursday.  Today, Saturday, I have been miserable and spent most of the day in bed.  It is difficult to distinguish the sinus headache from a mild flu and the prospective caffeine-withdrawal headache.  However, I just had a cup of Vicki’s finest brew, prepared for our visiting brother-in-law.  All I can say is that I don’t notice my headache any longer and I am completely unblocked about what to write.  Now I get to cure myself of the idea that I need a caffeine boost to be creative.  That would be a very bad idea and I will now work to get over it.  After I drink the last of this fresh coffee.

Party on the 10 island!

Second Life | Community: Events - Party on the 10 island!  On the night after Northern Voice 2006 in Vancouver, BC, a group of us were standing outside of the restaurant for a final dinner while Eric and others raved about Second Life and the fun that Scoble could have there. 

{tags: Second Life on10 orcmid}

Since then, Robert and son Patrick are decking out a place on Second Life.  The reformed Robert has closed down the evil Scobleizer Corporation headquarters and taken up philanthropy. 

Meanwhile the on10.net folk have featured Second Life and established their own little sparsely-visited world.  I have met only two people there since I started.  I’ve successfully made a little nook into my home base, living as a homeless student in the steam tunnels, so to speak.

This may all change Thursday, April 20 at 7pm pdt (gmt-0700) when the first 10 island block party will be held.  Visit the event notice, download Second Life, and come play.  I’ll be looking for people who want to practice their Italian with the friendly native speakers found on Second Life.

Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan Novels

A while back during a household reading binge, we worked our way through all of the Tom Clancy Jack Ryan novels.  I keep the list on scraps of paper and I need it somewhere that I can find it.

{tags: Tom Clancy Jack Ryan orcmid}

[update 2006-04-18: Added tagging and tidied-up a little.  Then gave up on Red October being first.]

I am not sure this is an accurate time sequence, but the progression seems to be as follows, with some doubts about the ones with * being possibly interchanged:

1. Patriot Games
   [The numbers and ages of children are convincing for the early sequences]
2. * Hunt for Red October
3. * Red Rabbit
4. * Cardinal in the Kremlin
5. Clear and Present Danger
6. Sum of All Fears
7. Debt of Honor
8. Executive Orders
9. * The Bear and the Dragon
10. * Rainbow Six
11. Teeth of the Tiger

I suppose I should check Wikipedia or some other authority and then update this material.  One concern that I have with Teeth of the Tiger is that it refers to events that happened earlier around the end of the Jack Ryan presidency, but we are not given anything more than Jack Junior’s skimpy reflections about it.  It’s also clear that Teeth of the Tiger is an incomplete story and we must wait for the rest of it.

Although the novel, Without Remorse, does not feature Jack Ryan, it does take place in the Jack Ryan world and provides an important back story to some of the characters.

Our interest stems from finding these characters as people we care about and we care about what happens to them.  So we await more about that.