A year in the (second) life

One year ago today, I joined Second Life. One year ago today, Veronique was born. Or rezzed. Today is Veronique's first rezday.

It's been an interesting year, sometimes even an amazing year. I never really thought of SL as a game, but I did think of it as entertainment when I first started. I didn't realize then just how much more it could be.

Through SL, I have acquired new skills. Some are only useful in world, such as building and scripting, but I'm sure they exercise the brain in good ways. Scripting is a lot like what I do for a living in first life, but building was a whole new thing. I haven't done a lot of it, but I've enjoyed building my various offices, and I'll probably build more in the future.

SL has allowed me to DJ, something I haven't done since back when I had a radio show at university. Even though I'm not young in first life, I've never been one to get stuck listening only to the music of my youth. I have always been interested in new music. Yet I wasn't really finding much I could connect with until I had to go looking for music in order to DJ. That process led to me discover several bands I had not previously known about, such as Bloc Party, the New Pornographers (from my own city), and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. DJing has also got me more excited about music in general. And it helped me realize something important: much as I love playing my own music, I can now be happy showing off the music of those more talented than I and artfully sliding from song to song. I much more at peace about being a failed musician than I've ever been.

I had the nerve to set up a counselling practice in SL and actually charge money for my services, while being up-front about the fact that I had no training at the start and only a little training later on. I've had a number of satisfied clients, and I found it very fulfilling to be able to help people in this way—mainly by being a non-judgmental listener. The fulfilment was such that I am now in pursuit of a new career in first life as a counsellor. I passed a prerequisite course in April, and I start on the certificate program in September. For the last 20 years, I have worked with software. If all goes according to plan, in about a year I will be working with people.

More than anything else, living a second life has taught me a huge amount about myself. I found things in myself that I didn't know where there, or had only a hint of. I have made personal changes as a result of interacting with other human beings in SL and learning from them, no one more than my SL wife and partner, Patrice. Because of my relationship with her, I gave up something in first life that I had previously been unable to admit was hurting me and holding me back. She is still teaching me about myself and about how I relate to other people. It's the same for the many others in SL who have been and are still my friends. I have shared genuine concerns with them, and they with me. And they have responded as true friends—sometimes with compassion, sometimes with a firm talking-to, and always with love.

SL is an experiment not only in technology but also in humanity. My goal in my second life is pretty much the same as in my first life—to learn every day, to grow, to reach out to others, and to become a better human being. Well, I like to have fun in both worlds as well. And if there's something in my second life that seems to be good in general, I can then incorporate it into my first life. What a privilege that is.

So on my first rezday, thanks to all my friends, and thanks to Linden Lab. Even though it just so happens that Second Life is in terrible shape today (or at least was last night and into this morning), and my DJ shift tonight might be a complete disaster as a result, it's still the best second life I know.

Deep space office

I wrote a few days ago that I had completed a new combined office and studio and set it around 500 metres above my first land. I can't believe how quickly it went compared to when I was just feeling my way through building. At one point, I realized, OMG, I'm done! It felt as though there should have been more to do.

As you can see, I did modify the original design of two linked cylinders. That just wasn't going work or look good. I ended up creating two half cylinders linked by straight walls, with roof overhangs. I think it still looks a bit space-station-ish, certainly more so than the old design, but it does give me some flat walls to work with—not to mention a few more square metres of space!

The entrance faces south now instead of north, and directly above that entrance is a tiny apartment. That's not what you see when you go in, though. The downstairs entrance leads into my photo studio, which is totally nothing to look at, but that's how photo studios are. I change the backdrop to various things, but the rest of the room is quite nondescript.

A rubber-covered ramp (possibly a bit steep for a wheelchair) leads from the studio to the office in back, which faces north. I finally sprang for some matching furniture. It's quite low-prim but looks decent, and it has pose balls so I and my clients can sit with more ease than before. I do need to make those lamps look better, though, or else buy some. The office-studio itself is made of only 18 prims, which is actually one less than my old office alone. I still have something like 38 prims remaining after doors and furniture and artwork and such.

I modified a sliding door script to fit my needs for both the front door and the door to the apartment. I figured that a space station needs sliding doors, like in Star Trek. I'm currently trying to upload the Star Trek door-opening sound (or maybe the Deep Space 9 sound), but Second Life is very fussy about the sampling rate. Every door sound I've found so far was done at too high a rate! I'll keep working on that, though, because it would be cool to have Trek doors. Doors that don't make any sound when opened and closed aren't nearly as much fun.

As you can see above, at 500 metres above sea level, there isn't really anything to view from the apartment. Great for seeing the sun and moon rise and set and for seeing the stars, though. I have finally managed to get some "elbow room," as Daniel Boone said. He liked it best when neighbours were several miles away.

[Addendum: Woot! I got the door sound working, thanks to software from a company called PolderbitS, which I use to convert analogue material (such as music on old cassette tapes) to MP3 files. Turns out it saves .wav files as 44.1Kbit/sec files, which is exactly what SL was looking for. So now my doors sound like the ones in the original Star Trek. I love it!]

Squeeze play

One hundred seventeen prims. That's how many prims—basic building units (primitives)—you get on 512m² of land. My original first land is all I own (Patrice and I have technical ownership of our beach land, but we really rent it from flopsie). I have considered buying more, something between 2,048m² and 4,096m². However, land is still pretty expensive, and I would have to pay monthly tier fees on any land that I owned after the first 512m².

I don't really need more land. I'm happy with Patrice at our beach house. I have my counselling office and my photo studio squeezed onto my first land, floating at two different heights in the sky. Anything more would be an indulgence. Now, there's nothing wrong with indulgence, but I think I'll stay cheap for now. It lets me waste money on clothes and give good tips.

So that means continuing to squeeze the most out of my ugly parcel. My office has only about 19 prims. My photo studio has even fewer. Yet when you start to put furniture out, even low prim furniture, it's not long before you're pushing your 117-prim limit.* On a parcel that size, there is barely room to turn around, in more ways than one. I can't even work on my Huddles EZ-Animator Plus at the office. So I decided to try to make an even lower-prim combined office and photo studio. When one person's ceiling is another person's floor, that's a couple of prims saved!

I hadn't been down to my "workshop" on the surface in quite a while. How things have changed! A lot of Bluenose, at least at my end, seems to have been cleared out, as you can (sort of) see in the photo above. I know there are quite a few buildings in the air, but it's odd to see how empty things look below. Next door, Seraph has removed his teahouse and has put the land up for sale. No, I don't want to buy it, because that spot on the high edge of the sim is not very nice. I wish I'd grabbed a parcel at least one row away from the sim edge, but at the time I had to move very quickly. If I'm going to buy land, it's going to be better land. Worst of all, the antique dealer in next-door Kootenay has built right up to the edge of that sim, right up against my "lot line" (second photo). The surface at the northern edge of Bluenose is no place to be.

For the new office-studio, I decided to try a cylindrical design, both to save prims and to make the building look a bit more futuristic. It's kind of odd having a little old-fashioned house flying in the air, but something that looks a bit like a space station seems to fit better. Round with all glass will cause difficulties for putting up artwork, but I'll deal with that somehow. Ultimately, I might find that I am more comfortable with corners, but I'm going to experiment with this and have fun while I do it. So if I'm in world and you can't find me, I might well be in the workshop, trying to make the pieces fit.

---

*A prim is a basic three-dimensional object: tetrahedron, cube, pyramid, sphere, cylinder, torus, and a few more, all of which can be manipulated in various ways (such as twisted). Even the simplest furniture takes a good three to five prims, and the more detailed something is, the more likely it is to be made of many prims. Textures—drawn or photographic images—help with the illusion of detail, but it's still hard to make anything nice with only a few prims. Even a crappy floor lamp I made has four: base (flattened cylinder), pole (skinny cylinder), bulb (light-emitting sphere), and shade (cone with its head trimmed off).

Tool making

Earlier in my Second Life, I started to become familiar with the Linden Scripting Language (LSL). In First Life, I am a software developer, so learning a new programming language is not a big deal. I didn't get very far at the time, though. The list of functions is right there on the LSL Wiki, and the language syntax is pretty much like C++ or Java, but the best way to learn how to apply such knowledge is by having specific tasks to accomplish. Since I didn't have that, I didn't get much past experimenting with individual functions.

As well, I must admit, since it's so much like my FL work, I kind of lost enthusiasm for yet more programming.

A short while ago, however, I noticed Patrice's notecard dispenser, which she has outside her terraforming office. Anyone who uses the posted landmark and drops by the office can click on the notecard dispenser and get information on the services Patrice offers. I have noticed that people also teleport to my office when I'm not there. I figured it was long past due to give them something more than a stained glass window to look at. I was missing potential business opportunities.

You can buy notecard dispensers, but I figured it couldn't be a very complicated thing to program. Turns out it's dead simple. I even added a feature. When someone touches the ball, not only does the person receive a notecard, but I receive a notice of who took the notecard. Cool and useful. Don't worry, I won't be tracking anyone down to badger them about setting up an appointment! For informational purposes only. I made my alt useful as well, as a tester. Sometimes a script will work for the owner but not for others, so alt-boy verified that he could receive notecards as well.

The other night, I was working at the Activ8 club as a dancer for the evening (yeah, I signed on to model, but there hasn't been any modelling work since the tattoo shoot). Not everything is yet set up at the club, and there are no tip jars for hosts and dancers. Yaeh pulled out her own tip jar. I didn't have one. Whine whine. Illya, sweetheart that she is, gave me one. This shamed me into realizing that I could probably build my own quite easily.

A tip jar isn't quite as simple as a notecard dispenser, but it's not much more difficult. It requires a couple more functions, and again I added some features. If you left click on (touch) the jar, it provides instructions on how to make a payment. Help for newbies, should any of them actually have any money to tip. And if anyone sits on the jar, it boots them off. Can't have someone obscuring my tip jar! I also put in a more effusive thank-you message for particularly large tips. Again, alt-boy did the testing.

My latest project was spurred by reading about Chey's trouble with intruders. It's a script that finds all agents within 96 metres (maximum distance) and asks whether the agent should be ejected from the land. It's designed to give the land owner more time to ban the griefer. I don't know if it's faster than going straight to banning, but I think it probably is. This project is still in development.

These are all tiny projects. It's more difficult to design and implement larger projects, and I haven't figured out one to work on yet. However, this is a start, and I've finally done something more useful than determine the height of an avatar.

I might get distracted from further scripting by something I want to use the tip jar for—DJing. My friend ComradeX showed me the ropes, so now I need to rip a bunch of music onto my computer, where it does not currently live. Then maybe someone will let Véronique's Vault come to life. If that happens, don't expect any between-song patter. :)