...as she picked up her hammer and saw

Second Life is down. Oh, the horror! Patrice and I were lying in bed last night, just shooting the breeze, when suddenly I was summarily booted. It was so quick that I thought maybe there had been an incursion and that the grid needed to be shut down immediately. Later, I saw the dreaded words "asset server." I certainly hope that when SL returns, I and my stuff will still exist!

Especially my building project. I might have mentioned that I'm more a scripter than a builder, or would be if I learned enough LSL to be useful (I've learned enough to do a few useless things). But I think that's because, just as with scripting, it's a lot more stimulating when you're building an actual project than when you're just practising.

I own a parcel of first land on Bluenose, right on the edge of the sim, next to Kootenay. It's not much, just a 512m² (16m by 32m) grey slope facing south. Patrice gave me a free Archer house (there must be millions of them in SL by now), because for some reason I did not yet have one in my inventory, and I set the house up mainly with low-prim furniture that my friend tree had given me, plus some artwork (including a beautiful original from tree, which you can see in the photo). This became my counselling office, in theory.

Among the problems with first land, however, is the density of the neighbourhood. There can be many people within earshot of your building, and it seems that the feature of preventing sound from entering or exiting your parcel is no longer available. If I had a client, we would have to converse in IM, since chat is anything but private. So I decided that I want to take advantage of the weird and wonderful physics of SL and put a house in the sky. I could lift the Archer house—anything can be a skyhouse—but for some reason, I decided I wanted to build a whole new structure.

Building a house might be easy for some people. Not so much for me. Still, I'm having a blast. The layout is pretty much the same as the Archer house: landing pad, reception inside the front door, counselling room behind that. There isn't much flexibility when you have to fit something on a 512m² parcel. But I'm also building a loft over the counselling room under a peaked roof, whereas the Archer house is flat-roofed with one storey only. More to come soon on the trials and tribulations of learning by making mistakes.