Not too long after I staked my land claim in Second Life and started building, I was approached by a very scary wolf by the name of Joshua Culdesac. The absentee landlord of the parcel adjacent to mine had agreed to let Joshua build and experiment on the land. Since then, two great things have happened:

• Joshua and I have become good friends and take the time to chat almost every day.
• Every time I log in Joshua shows me his latest and greatest creations.

In real life, Joshua is a maritime transport consultant with a really interesting resume. In Second Life, Joshua is a very talented builder with a good eye for proportion and detail, and an excellent sense of style.

Joshua has taken the time to develop a real philosophy of Second Life building, which he has documented here. He has also set up shop at Culdesac Building in the parcel next to me.

Earlier this month he showed he his modular building concept and his crystal building, both of which can be seen on his projects page.

His newest project is the Building Lab, an inhabitable sphere of immense proportions.

• Wina on the Web: One Small Step for a Man – “Armstrong came out of the craft. He turned on the cameras attached to the ship, and they showed his careful foot searching for the rungs of the ladder. He kept one foot on the ladder while his other foot went down and dabbed at the moon’s surface.“
• Using the Linden Script Language – “This page is a short tutorial on using the Linden Script Language (LSL). It includes a collection of examples that illustrate basic LSL capabilities in graphics, “physics,” communication between users and scripts, and object creation.“
• For the Super-Rich, It’s Time to Upgrade the Old Jumbo Jet – “These are specially equipped, privately owned jumbo jets — the kind that normally carry as many 300 to 400 passengers — but reconfigured with interiors designed for the enjoyment of, at most, a couple of dozen.” As Pink Floyd once said, “Think I need a Lear Jet!”

Yesterday I was interviewed by Hunter Glass and Deeeep Witte of the Second Life Business Magazine. Given the subject of the magazine, it was only fitting that I would be interviewed in-world, in my Second Life persona. I had already equipped my build for the interview, adding dynamic, scripted controls to allow me to switch it from a presentation space into an interview space at the touch of a button.

The entire interview was done in text form; there was no audio. Given that Hunter is in Afghanistan and Deeeep is in Belgium, this was by far better than a phone call.

Hunter and Deeeep showed up as scheduled and we started with some small talk:

We then took our seats and started the actual interview:

Hunter has a very official-looking press pass:

Without warning, a new resident materialized in my space. Fortunately she was fully clothed and moved along when I politely told her that I was in the middle of an interview. This actually happened twice — I wonder if people are searching for Amazon and finding the space?

We wrapped up with a short demo of my rooftop projects:

Overall, fun and (more importantly) very effective.

• New York Times: A Virtual World but Real Money – “The sudden rush of real companies into so-called virtual worlds mirrors the evolution of the Internet itself, which moved beyond an educational and research network in the 1990’s to become a commercial proposition — but not without complaints from some quarters that the medium’s purity would be lost.“
• 6502.org – The 6502 Microprocessor Resource – “We continually strive to remain the largest and most complete source for 6502-related information in the world. This includes everything from articles and project descriptions to schematics and source code.” I need to tell the story of my 6502 Macro Assembler sometime soon. I’ve still got the listing in my closet.
• Alek Komar: Snow in Colorado – “Closeup of Alligator having breakfast at sunrise.“

• The Stalwart: Amazon in Second Life – “Did anyone realize that Amazon pitched its new web services within the virtual gaming world of Second Life?“
• Life and Incredible Adventures of Optimus Keyboards – “Upravlator is a completely new kind of input device. We’re going to annouce it next week. It will be plugged into your second monitor port. It will be as fast as LCD display may be. It will be a single best friend of any music engineer or video editor. Graphic designers should be happy as well.“

There’s a cool little online application at the HTML Kit site. It accepts an uploaded CSS file and produces a poster of the styles, classes, and so forth found within. Here’s a snippet of the poster that I generated for the Syndic8 CSS file:

You can see the entire poster here.

Woke up and found an email from Reuters journalist Adam Pasick in my Inbox. Returers now has a news bureau in Second Life and Adam will be keeping regular office hours, as shown on his calendar.

Adam will be known in-world as Adam Reuters; I guess Linden Lab is now offering custom last names, as rumored.

The bureau features live video feeds and a Reuters HUD (Heads-Up Display) that I’ve not yet had a chance to try out. Here’s a photo from the lobby:

There’s also a web page full of Second Life news (with an RSS feed), a blog roll of some great Second Life blogs (and mine too , and currency conversion. More info on the island and a shot of the HUD can be found on The Daily Graze.

They are taking this virtual world pretty seriously, and you should too.

This coming Wednesday, I will be interviewed for an article in a Second Life magazine!

The interviewer asked to come by my place (the AWS Developer Relations Outpost), so I spent some time reconfiguring it into a form more suitable for an interview. Here’s the before picture:

I pushed the benches out of the way, hid the projection screen, and created a very simple table and three stool-like entities (I must have forgotten to pack my artistic skills for this trip). I also closed the front door for privacy:

Of course, this is all scripted and I can hide and show elements using the controls (those little colored cubes) in the podium. The controls are keyed to respond only to me, so don’t bother trying to change the room yourself!

• Search Status: A Search Extension for Firefox and Mozilla – “SearchStatus is a toolbar extension for Firefox and Mozilla that allows you to see how any and every website in the world is performing. Designed for the highly specialised needs of search engine marketers, this toolbar provides extensive search-related information about a site, all conveniently displayed in one discreet and compact toolbar.“
• Steve Rubel: how to Get The Most Out of Technorati’s Search Feeds – “Technorati has integrated RSS feeds throughout the system. I can’t underscore how invaluable this is. It’s making me smarter about the topics I care about. Here’s a bunch of tips that you might find helpful.“
• CNET: Second Life to Begin Selling Real Names – “Now, according to an internal source, Linden Lab has finally settled on its plan for real names. And if you’re a single mother on a budget, you probably won’t be benefiting.“

The physics and scripting facets of Second Life are of sufficient flexibility to allow for the construction and more or less realistic operation of vehicles of all types. Planes and cars are very common.

A couple of months ago I bought (for 350 Lindens, a bit more than one US dollar) a very cool vehicle — an Argolas-brand hovercraft — from a place called Phase 5. The controls are simple to operate. After saying (via chat) the word “start”, the Page Up key ascends, the Page Down key descends, the Up and Down arrows control the throttle, and the Left and Right arrows steer. There’s also an “MouseLook” mode which lets it fly a lot faster, but I’ve yet to master it. It is also very easy to change the body color “on the fly” using a dialog box.

There’s a very simple text display of throttle setting, speed, and altitude. The Second Life UI shows the current region name and coordinates, making it possible to chart and then fly a course from point to point. Except for the fact that some Second Life regions are flagged as “no fly” by their owners, I can pretty much go anywhere I want.

The ship is “keyed” to my owner id so I’m the only one allowed in the pilot’s seat. Other Second Life citizens are free to hop on board without my consent (this happens pretty regularly) and the pilot can eject troublemakers at any time (Note to Boeing, please add this feature to the 787).

I’ve had a lot of fun flying around different parts of the Second Life landscape. I also used it to make a grand entrance to my talk last week, although I ended up leaving it hovering about 30′ above the ground in my haste to look cool!

Here are some pictures. First, the side view:

a 3/4 view:

From the back:

In the cockpit:

Taking off from the Phase 5 airstrip:

Cruising above the Phase 5 sales lot:

Just flying around:

In the cockpit:

Overall, the value of this hovercraft, expressed in units of fun per Linden, is really, really high!