Rituals

The plain scarred by the lines covers the snow. The snowflakes fall down to the ground in red light of the Sun on the horizon. There is a small silent oasis in an infinite whiteness. The lonely house and the lost boat only remind us a purity of the spirit of the human itself and its humility, of which we miss in this cloven world in these days.

I myself remind it during Christmas time every year. Daily rituals that we do every day during the whole year, the next moment they obtain another dimension. As if we would change and try to slow our swim and to think about us ourselves.

The Christmas tree decoration is one of these rituals. At the first look, it seems that it is every year the same, but it is not truth. I always remember, how we (I and my sister in childhood) decorated the tree, which my father brought from the forest. Later it changed. We bought some plastic tree and we have it till now. These child bulbs and small lamps in a form of red fly agarics are maybe funny. But nevertheless, I like them and in general, the next generation, ergo sister children like them as well.

Even Second Life is full of the rituals. Although, we do not admit it ourselves. Maybe they exist only close to the bounds of our observations. Thereabout, where our eyes or other senses already cannot reach. It is just the interface between that, what it already is and is not real or virtual.

This is my last contribution in this year. I would like to wish to all of them that stray here the best to the next year and I hope that we will meet somewhere in SL

Peace to all people of good will.

The Tower

Pure and disposed to mount unto the stars. (Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy – Purgatorio)

Since it is possible to see many interesting and fantastic things in Second Life, I already know for long time. During my stay in SL I have seen so much amazing and fully surprising that I never had supposed to be surprised by something.

There is one interview of SL freelance writer Mariner Trilling with SL builder Mariner Trilling on The Alphaville Herald blog. You can find the whole interview here. The SL tallest object is interview topic. Certainly you remember my blog contribution about the largest object in SL. It is SS Galaxy ship that lies on 4 sims. In this case, it is a huge column built from about 300 proms and it rises up to height of 2 miles, which is 3.22 kilometers.

I have decoded to explore it. So, I have flown there myself. This object is placed on sim named Campus and in fact you will land right now near it. Then I have decided to fly right to the top and to see world and the tower from close-up.

It is a bit heady feeling, when you rise up, you pass different skyboxes and you see fading sim surface. It is so breath-taking away feeling that you do few stops. One look up, an end is in distance beyond sight. I am continuing up and I am gradually passing several platforms, where you can have a rest. The horizon is missing now and the stars waken their lights. I am breathing heavily du to tiredness and even my wings do not obey me.

Finally top! I am landing heavily on the platform. Coordinate z, so altitudinal one, is showing the value of 4097. Here maybe only the angles may. I am staying calmly and I am listening the distant singing of the stars.

SLUrl: Campus

Documental movie

There is no enough information about Second Life world. Now I have in my hands an interesting contribution at New World Notes blog. Here, some documental movie about SL is presented. This super machinima is made by Studio Kanzen for its SubPixel series.

Are you newbies in SL and do not know what SL is and what you can do here? So, this machinima is just for you.



WARNING: It contains sexual content, which is suitably filtered over blurry graphic to do not go against ToC at YouTube! The full version is placed at the official site.

(Source: New World Notes)

Decision

We make the different decisions every day. Often it is the essential decision; otherwise it is wholly common one that we make automatically without any forethought. Often they are the painful decisions that we do not want make. However, the agreeable ones we make without a blink.

Even I have made recently several decisions. The first one was surprisingly spontaneous. And I did not have to force myself to do it. There was my old vice, which I could not get rid of time. I have stopped smoking. Ah, of course in RL!

Look at the world is still super beautiful! The second decision was more prosaic. I needed the winter shoes. I chose a long time and finally I found something to my satisfaction.

It is funny, that both are possible to live it up also in Second Life – a cigarette, a cigar or a pipe and super shoes and other accessories as well. One has to buy them only. You do not worry about where they are stored. Maybe only, if the inventory would go crazy and the thing would disappear from it.

One says: “The third time all good.” Nevertheless, my third decision was absolutely cardinal because of SL. I am longtime member of our Czech and Slovak community in SL. I was at many births and at many endings here. The newbies support is one example. So, I decided to leave just the support for good. I think that a scope for help is exhausted and to continue with team that did not satisfy me yet.

So, I have enough time now to paddle, to wander and to explore beauties of Second Life. One example is the sim Peterhof with the beautiful palace from time of tsarist Russia.

SLurl: Peterhof

Long Way – Point Ten – Magazine

“… same away from the stars and from the atoms as well we extend our knowledge to grasp both the very small and the very large.”

Carl Sagan

It is a bit longer delay, but I would like to come back to my wandering through Second Life. Actually, I do not know how it is begun. Somebody spoke to me, if I wanted to work in a team, which is preparing new and particularly the first Czech in-world magazine. At that time, I was already writing my blog, so not a big problem to disagree.

If I am looking back at this, so I think that nobody of us in the team was not doing some illusions that we will be the best and the most interesting. But some ambitions were, at least by some of us and by me too. Without these I would never join such a business. Thus for some time, ma SL wandering was teaming with many people, who were embarking on some experiment. However, they did not know how this experiment ever will end.

The number of published issues finally achieved number ten in a span of the entire one year. We also published even one special issue about the Blue Mars virtual world. The content quality and the graphics increased with each new issue. I wrote rarely, but I had a big task to make language correction of each contribution.

To speak to bigger amount of people by force of our magazine was surely our main aim. If it succeeded, other people would have to judge it. Of course, some objection could exist, for example, a website or a blog can speak to more people. But on the other hand (Btw. we had also our own blog.), if some is launched longer time, then it has much bigger chance than some new.

However, I would not want is as an excuse. We achieved at least certain audience both the magazine and the blog. We recruited the advertisers and fair number of group members. The magazine was available at many Czech and Slovak sims and it was also free to buy at xstreet.

I do not regret it and it was my great pleasure to work wit these people. The matter that the magazine closed its existence is one thing. The second one is that it was big experience for me in all respects, both proofreading and work with people.

And some small paraphrase at the end: “The distance from the stars or the atoms is, actually, big in both directions – big and even small. Nevertheless, I extended my knowledge in both directions as well.”

Fragments

Today, it will be not long contribution. I am working on some longer now. Now there are only two fragments from today's. In the morning, I wanted to sit under the tree with book in my hands in park in Bohemia and to meditate bit. Day has flashed by quite slow and I have remembered later, what day has been today. So even I have joined to the AIDS Day as you can seen on the second picture.

In Farinelli’s Footsteps

So just it was name of Friday’s concert (13.11.2009) in Besedni dum in Brno, Czech Republic. Who was Farinelli? His proper name was Carlo Broschi and he lived between 1705 and 1782 year. Since in the time of baroque, the women characters were sang by men, so called castratos were needed. To boys, mostly from the poor families, the testicles were removed surgically just before the beginning of their puberty. It was almost at age of 8. In consequence of that, the boy voice was preserved and we are speaking about boy or male soprano. Since male has bit other physiologically ordered vocal cords and bigger volume of lungs, then such soprano has not only a big register but also a dynamic. Besides women may not sing in the cathedral choirs in Vatican and so the castratos were required, even if the church denounced it.

Farinelli, he himself, was considered as a star mainly due to his singing technique (mezza di voce, bel canto in his time. He sang in Italy, but also in Vienna, London and Madrid. Such greats of baroque music like Johan Sebastian Bach, Georg Friedrich Händel or Antonio Vivaldi wrote just for the castratos.

Therefore, I was very curious about this concert. The reason for that was following. The male soprano Marian Radu (male soprano) sang with musical group called Ars Antiqua Austria form Austria. They play the period baroque instruments. I would like only mention that the last real castrato died somewhere in Spain in the middle of 20th century. Marian Radu is absolutely unique soloist. He was born in Romania. He has a pure natural soprano with register from c´ to c´´´ (C4 – C6). Strictly speaking, he is so called “Endocrinological castrato”, because he did not undergo the surgical operation, but testicle evolution was not finished by him. The timbre of his voice is absolutely unique and absolutely not comaparable with contratenor or women soprano.

So, I am giving you here two inspirations.

Absinthe

I never tasted the legendary drink of “cursed poets”, but I still have in my memory some scene from Total Eclipse movie. Artur Rimbaud (palyed by Leonardo DiCaprio) and Paul Verlain (played by David Thewlis) are drinking absinthe in twilight of some pub somewhere in France.

The typically conic goblet placed on small plate is partly filled with green liquid of absinthe. Then some special flat spoon – maybe of silver – is placed over the goblet and white sugar is put in the spoon middle. Old wiry host is pouring small amount of pure water over sugar into goblet. Absinthe is milk diming; however it is losing nothing from its sharply green color. And then this wild drink is moistening the lips and the throats of poets and their brains is going crazy due to an influence of a substance called thujon.

It is just thujon presented in “grande wormwood” (Artemisia absinthium), which is with anise (or anise essential oil) and huge amount of alcohol (close to 75 vol.%) part of absinthe. Thanks to thujon influence, absinthe was forbidden in 1915 and it was replaced by other similar drinks without wormwood – pernod and pastis. Its renaissance in original form begun in 1990, when it was produced in several European countries and also by us. Nowadays, it came back to home France and to the U.S.A.

My first meeting with absinthe in Second Life was maybe like this. I obtained somewhere a bottle with it. After wearing, there where tiny green fairies around me, they flew round and round in some hyper. Of course, it is reminiscence on famous music movie Moulin Rouge with Nicol Kidman and Ewan McGregor as main characters. The green fairy was beautiful Australian singer Kylie Minoque.

My second meeting with absinthe in SL was more artistic. There is one small exhibition of works of art in some way related with absinthe. By the way, it is placed on very nice sim with characteristic name – New Toulouse. You can find the exhibition in the library building. Chessboard floor and the hall walls are absinthe green. In the hall middle is small dance floor. What it captures for the first time, so it is a huge goblet filled to capacity by absint. I recommend you to test it.

And now whitherward? So just this way!

Water

If we were immortal, we would not respect the life so much. (Jacques-Yves Cousteau)

He gave human being knitted to Earth the key to the world of silence. (The epigraph on the National Geographic Society Gold Medal, which Cousteau received from the hand of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in 1961.)

For bee and even for dolphin, the life itself is happiness for them. For human being, it is happiness to see life and to be amazed at it. (Jacques-Yves Cousteau)

Today, I have begun my contribution with several citations, which have not only inspired me, but at the same time are fascinating for me. The see deeps are one big unexplored world. Unlike that we look at the stars and fly to them, but still we know about the underwater universe quite little. There is a micro- and macro-world around us that is maybe an analogy of space distances measured by kilometers, astronomic units and light years. The space, where the stars come to existence and die in a cataclysm of energies of mega-, giga- or terajoules, Energies, about which we know nothing.

Water is one of the Aristotle elements, where belong also fire, air and earth. No, he would assign them himself, but he talked as the first one about them in Greek philosophy. There is also some elements system in China philosophy. Unlike Aristotle, it includes wood and iron. And whole system becomes hexagon and connection of all six systematically placed elements in circle give a star symbol with its all relations.

The world of Second Life is of course closely connected with water. Except Mainland, all sims are placed on the surface of Second Life ocean. Water itself is also on the sims whether as free surface of lakes and ponds, or as part of rivers and waterfalls or fountains splashing water in the cities.

When I searched for suitable pictures I used in internal search word “elements”. So of course many links appeared for different places. The first one is sim named Elements, where I liked small lakes. But the hillside with a dance floor is bit cluttered up. But Dolce Valentina hides in some shop just these four elements. So, I made the snapshots for you.

SLurls: Elements, Dolce Valentina

Silence

Yesterday’s day (04.01.2009) was a little bit funny, but also even sadder and silent, at least by me. The funnier part was set in RL, I was at some degustation of wines from Vinofol Novosedly wine making. These wines was no any miracles, but we have tasted ten samples of white and red wine in an agreeable atmosphere of nonsmoking room in restaurant called in Czech “U zámečku” (Restaurant by manor). Humor was funny, in places too noisy.

After the degustation, I have already moved in Second Life. The 2^nd November has in calendar written All Soul’s Day. Even if it was on Monday, then Momo Seriman and Scalex Overton prepared nice audio evening consisted of songs and music only so for contemplation and silent. That all in La Fabrique club.

I will not name individually all interprets on playlist, because of course I do not remember all of them. I have found on YouTube three examples that were heard in this evening.

Marika Gombitová – Koloseum (Colosseum)
Hana Hegerová – Lásko prokletá (Cursed Love)
Věra Špinarová – Jednoho dne se vrátíš (Once Upon a Time in the West, music from this movie by Ennio Morricone, Czech text by Zbyšek Malý)

It was great day spent in very pleasant society.

(Source: YouTube)

Baphomet

Recently I have read some article about rock club Baphomet by xender Xenno at Globe blog (in Czech). Surprising I have received an invitation to party in this club. Behold, I was kindly surprised. The club has gone through several exterior and interior changes.

Two maybe fallen angels welcome you at the entrance. They stand on the pedestals with mysterious inscription in foreign language. The inscription symbols burn in color of fire. The column capitals are crowned by four big human skulls. There was only one fallen angel, was not there? I think so.

There is a big burning dance floor inside. Pictures and symbols move on this floor and one has spin head. After hard dance and music, everybody settles for some drink at very style bar. Possible one gives himself/herself to laze on a big sofa. There several possibilities to relax there on poseballs and also in pair. By the way, there are two sofas in club; one of them is near to dance floor.

Personally I am not fun of the music, which is played there, but if you switch off, it is never mind. The way is simple in club, use only this SLurl.

Do not burn yourself!

School

With permission of Fanda Ryba I would like to offer you a translation of his article about Bwindi Orphans Project. It concerns a new school for the orphans in Uganda, see here for more info.

If it was all so simple in real life as it is in the virtual world. It would be sometimes too nice, but sometimes also not. If children had amongst themselves man like Shiny Iceberg in Ugandan village Angola. He would build the school them possibly without a blink. And maybe he also would fit the WC door by all manner of useful sensors. These children have maybe amongst themselves some like Shiny. So, their Shiny have to more learn. But where? Well, he has to go to the school. Do you think that he has a chance to prove himself in the classroom with other 150 classmates?

So, you know that there is some fund-raising campaign both in SL and RL to build the school.
Bigger chance could be given to all Shinys to learn something there. Do you know ever how this school should look? We acquired plans of the school that should be … What should … It WILL build even many of you. Therefore, Shiny Iceberg took the tools and he dared to call even me (Fanda Ryba) for some pair of helping works (but only to hold the timbers and to mix the clay in mix-machine). Now, you can scan through the model of the school that will serve the children in real world, the children, which receive school fees from some yours personally.

So, where is this school? HERE!!

(Pictures with permission of Fanda Ryba)

Antinomies

So, it is here again! Hour between dog and wolf has already passed, but I am remaining somewhere in wasteland. There are only the following things as my companions – a muesli stick, a silent railway station, vibrating engines of some train, a ticking railway station clock and then nothing.

Second Life is maybe only wasteland too. Sometimes we roam and grope there. We look for something and somebody and we still do not find anything and anybody. Is that vainness or? No, it is only my motional effusion at so moved hour, when strangely influenced brain is producing these lines.

I would only like to dream and fall asleep in the arms of some honey or only to fall in the embrace of beauty and nature of the lost gardens of Apollo. Small interruption of a local drunk, who is talking to himself and bit diffusing early morning glooms and fogs. Some bird screams in the darkness maybe brings beneficial Sun.

Small mouse is running around the rails and it is an observation of reality of our world. After long waiting, a rescue is coming. It is the leaving train, in which, of course, I am sitting. The escapes from and the returns into the world of Second Life separate only PC switch on and off and log on, log off. Such as the Yin and Yang principles are the antinomies each other, then also Second Life and Real Life drown one in other and they take from the other, what they need.

Burning Life in Flames

“Rise ancient city from sand of desert and show its own beauty!”

In fact, I do not know where I have heard it. However, even I already long time ago heard the sounds of wind in sand dunes and saw the flashes of the fire flames. Yes, the Burning Life festival is in full swing and the individual installations already are covering the big space of Second Life now. I also have not withstood and have clicked to some places using of the interactive map at official website of Burning Life. What arises from that, you can see on several pictures below.

Temple

Tokyo Stage

Berlin Stage

Snakes

Funny

Long Way – Point Nine – Job

Work is a word of which interpretation at the first sight is not so simple. You understand it in physical point of view, and then we talk about mechanical work, electrical work or other ones. But in result, it will be again some kind of energy. On the other hand, we can talk about physical work using human powers and muscles, which result in fantastic constructions and buildings. They were created during course of human history on many places of our globe. They are again human pieces of work, which were launched outside our planet and gravitate many planets and moons or head distant star, as for example the space probe Voyager.

There is a basic dilemma, which I have solved and I am still solving during my Second Life wandering: to work for myself and to make lindens for me or on the other side to work for someone else and to be paid for that. At my SL beginnings, I got down to some job and I worked for me myself. Actually, I worked with my friend together. Unfortunately, this job was cancelled.

However, another job came along. I have written about it there – newbies support. This one captured me, it was creative job and I do it from its morning till now. Nevertheless, man still seeks something new and perspective. Later, it was work in magazine Globe. How one can say it, this work became “my living love”.

“Ça va,” as Frenchmen say. I felt for writing and correcting of articles. I looked forward to every new Globe issue. My native language is all for me, because I see and hear everyday, how people use it, in newspaper, broadcasting, TV or infinite (or finite?) medium as Internet is. I am really disturb, how people use their language. So many orthographic and grammatical faults in newspaper and using of terrible neologisms make me angry.

Thereafter however, it comes some break point. Maybe it relates to autumn with its rainy and foggy days, when people have spleens. All is otherwise the next moment and the we realizes how we are tiny.

... somewhere in Norwegian Forest ...

Inventory

Quite normal morning, but not so normal. There is rainy and misty autumn day and Sun is hidden behind clouds as I am seeing through the window in some train that is approaching Prague again. It is this time a business trip, but with pleasure program. The unusual thing happened that morning. I waited at the Brno main railways station in the hall full of people. When I walked through the hall and waited for my colleague, I had found some green-black wallet, which lay on one stone block by closed ticket offices. When I opened it, there were ID-Card, Train-Card and some little money inside. After handing it in Railway Center, I heard an announcement of station loudspeaker that owner of this wallet can withdraw it in Railway Center. I hope that it happened, but I do not know and maybe I will never hear about it.

Forget or lost things, it is perpetual pain perhaps of every avatar in Second Life. Inventory, which achieves monstrous dimensions, is chaotic. Directory takes after directory, item takes after item. Random erasure including Trash can cause the big loss of some favorite thing. I happened also me, when I completely deleted one of my first favorite hairs, which I bought for my hard earned lindens. I would like to try to describe my system of inventory ordering, which I proved.

1. Names and titles

It is the same as by usual work with PC and the directories in it without regard to work wit the operation systems like Windows, Linux, Mac or others. Short and apt titles are the best without diacritical – English does not handle – and better do not use too much special symbols like &, @, #, $ or other. On the other hand, these symbols are suitable to move given object to the highest position in the list. Since all is in alphabetical order, then the special symbols are the first, then numbers and finally letters. I recommend this method for example for Landmarks (LM), when the most used LM you can put to the front position using *.

2. Directories

Since I do not build anything in SL, so then Clothes directory is the most used one by me. At the beginning, it was terrible, when I have all things together on one pile. Maybe you think that the icons on the left side of the object title can help. For example a shirt can have three different icons: Undershirt, T-shirt or Jacket according to that how they dress avatars, even if it is superficially same thing. It is similar by pants, shorts or underwear. Finally, I made the optimal classification of clothes. It looks like that (the subdirectories are in brackets). Of course, I tried to translate them into English; the original names in Czech are underlined:

01 Kalhoty – Trousers (Jeans, Pants)
02 Samurai – this one is only for two samurai suits, which are quite complicated and they have many objects
03 Obleky – Suits – it is clear, there are all possible and impossible suits, including formal clothes and others
04 Kosile – Shirts (Rukavy bez – Sleeveless, Rukavy dlouhe – Long sleeves, Rukavy kratke – Short sleeves, Top)
05 Boty – Shoes
06 Ponozky – Socks
07 Spodni – Underwear
08 Kabaty – Coats
09 Shorts, Trunks
10 Rukavice – Gloves
11 Plavky - Swimsuits
12 Bryle – Glasses
13 Doplnky – Accessories

3. LMs

So, it is also some special chapter. It is worst, when you buy some goods, mostly clothes, hairs or some accessory, then there is automatically LM to shop in pack. And if you buy many such things from one brand, then you have multiplied LMs to one place after click on Mini-Map. The next thing is the name of LM. The coordinates on the end are useless, as far as I would like to have a short LM name or to adjust it. I found that it was better to give some two- up to four-letter code (capitals), which someway characterizes LM, for example, CZ for Czech and Slovak sims, BUS = business, CLUB = clubs, SHOP = shops, etc. One should be careful, because the number of characters is limited. Where are the times pf the operation systems, when it was allowed only 8 characters for some name. It was a space for creativity.

The same thing will be also by objects, Body Parts and others, but here I would like to give the space for your imagination.

Long Way – Point Eight – Courses for Newbies

“Knowledge is power.”

We learn ourselves during the whole life, whether we want or no. Sometimes it is a spontaneous thing, at other time we have to do it. It means we have to attend some educational institution, which is usually a school. It begins sometime in a kindergarten and continues at basic school right to higher variant of education. Well, after that there are other educational methods like a self-study, courses or a university of the third age.

The Second Life environment is like created for that to organize courses, tutorials, meetings, etc. After coming of a voice chat into SL, the education moved to another qualitatively higher level. Well, even if phraseology and speech style of some avatars was not correct or standard. By the way, do you know that when Linden Lab announced the implementation of voice chat into SL, the big protests appeared, also demonstrations? Nevertheless, in August 2007 you can communicate with other avatars using your own voice.

So today, there is no problem to use voice chat by different activities in SL. 8th March 2008 was an important day for me. I gave a lecture at the first course from the series of the lectures for the newbies in our community in city Bohemia. Of course it was without voice chat only with text chat. There were purely rational reasons for that. Some people did not have installed voice chat and did not want it or were not able to use it. Because of my text writing, the whole lecture was hard to lecture preparation and management. Unfortunately, I have no any pictures form this time, but the lecture room in Telefónica O₂ building was rather full. And actually what about talked I, respectively wrote I, there? Here is the handout of this lecture for interest:

1. What Second Life (SL) is?
1.1. General presentation of this phenomenon.
1.2. History.
1.3. Definition of some names.

2. SL enviroments.
2.1. Terrain – sims, islands, space, area, objects.
2.2. Avatar – human beings, possibilities.
2.3. Communication – languages, media.

3. Entrance.
3.1. SL main portal.
3.2. SL client.
3.3. Security.

4. What can I do in SL?
4.1. Earning – money, camping, surveys, Earn2Life, job.
4.2. Communication with avatars.
4.3. Entertainment.
4.4. Objects creation. Building.

5. Ethic and behavior in SL
5.1. Question of avatar age in real life.
5.2. Reciprocal behavior among avatars.
5.3. Weapons, violence, bans.

6. Premium Account

This series of courses continued with other topics later. And as it is seen today, some of them are repeating because of big interest, for example, course about scripting.

Actually, I am realizing now that I could reincarnate me only for image into avatar shape, which I had by this lecture.

Lag

It is nice sunny morning and I am again speeding to Prague after long time. Again, it is a comfort of international train Eurocity Carl Maria von Weber, which is going from nearby Vienna, through my loved Moravia, then through Czech basin to Prague and later to Berlin and it terminates in Ostseebad Binz in neighboring Germany.

After the initial difficulties caused by usual delays, I am inside and I am fully enjoying drive in the first class and the second breakfast in dining car. The insolated landscape full of the fields is changing behind the train window. The fields have already yielded their fruits and there is only a contrast of brown (fields) and still green (trees and grass). It means that summer has no ended and autumn did not approach yet. We are just leaving Moravia due to the arrival to the Ceska Trebova station.

Since I get out not until ion Prague, I travel the pure distance 262 km = 262,000 m (162.80 mi = 286 526.68 yds). For instance, you can imagine that it is the distance of about 1,203 sims in Second Life. However, it is valid only in that case that we are moving along edges of squares in on direction. The question is where we would finish. One thing is certain; the teleport would take several seconds unlike RL. There we have to take into account time about 2 hours 48 minutes.

Somebody says in one Luc Besson’s movie: “Time plays no role.” Unfortunately, this premise is not valid either in RL or SL. We are dependent on time. Even we made it up ourselves. Time does not follow from any physical laws or any physical properties of our world or other worlds.

The next moment, the train stopped somewhere in a wasteland. There are any rails nearby. They run somewhere in other place, where time has stopped maybe. These rails are really there, but they are full of weed. Hell! Delay is increasing by another 20 minutes. It is totally already 50 minutes! Oh, we are not alone in this situation. The Super City Express Pendolino has stopped nearby us. Then we all are lost in the wasteland.

After that, it occurred to me that the preceding situation is an analogy with world of SL. Surely it is a lag! Tom Boellstorf written in his book:

… small talking about lag is like talking about the weather in rl [1].

Lag exited because Second Life, like all “massively multiply” virtual worlds during my fieldwork, was based on a “client-server” architecture, where most of the virtual world was housed on servers rather than the personal computers of residents [2].

It is therefore incorrect to assume that “everything in the new computer world is temporary and fleeting. … Time is now a resource, not a reference point.” [3]

I cannot move from my place, either in time or space. I am as a newbie – absolutely bare. I have nothing. I don’t know, what is happening. How it is working. Is there any hope?

Yes, it is. Courses for newbies.

References

1. T. Boellstorf: Coming of Age in Second Life An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human, Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 102
   
2. ibid, p. 103
   
3. ibid, p. 105

(It was written down in dining car of EC Carl Maria von Weber on 09.09.2009. It was served Prague’s omelet with roasted potatoes. Further, it was served Chardonnay, a sacramental wine from Archbishop's cellars in Kroměříž)

Long Way – Point Seven – Support

Nobody is omniscient and nobody also knows everything. Second Life is very wide and structured world. That is precisely why it is not simple to orientate inside for the first time. Of course, basic (advanced) knowledge to work with PC, Internet, or playing MMORPG right to knowledge of foreign language, mainly English, this all is the big advantage at newbie entrance into SL.

However, what about the newbies those are not adept in above mentioned things? This is an example, where I remembered an advance of my high school professor of chemistry. I follow this advice from my professor whole my life. And what does the advice say? “Student does not know then student consults something.” Since somebody already answered our question sometime. This question already was solved somewhere. Before I ask, then:

1. Try to find an answer by searching the Web.
   
2. Try to find an answer by reading the manual.
   
3. Try to find an answer by reading a FAQ.
   
4. Try to find an answer by inspection or experimentation.
   
5. Try to find an answer by asking a skilled friend.
   
6. If you're a programmer, try to find an answer by reading the source code.
   

Application in SL is surely possibly, maybe with one exception. Item 1 unambiguously covers different web sites, blogs and discussion forums about SL.

Item 1 can be linked with items 2 and 3, i.e. 1 + 2 + 3 = www.secondlife.com, so it is an official web. It offers also SL official blogs and mainly illustrative videotutorials that it is possible to see directly on web, on YouTube or to download to PC for later replay.

Item 4 is definitely interesting. I myself have used it several times. There is nothing like you yourself can find something and it works! Well, it is fantastic! But, you must not abandon it just by the first fiasco. For example, in scientific research, if you reach a blind alley that it means fiasco. No! It is unambiguously positive result, which says that this is not that way. It needs to analyze the whole procedure and find a mistake.

Item 5 is also important. But even if you ask good friend, you have to ask her/him right to do not look as an idiot. It would pass by your good friend, but others will consider you to be a looser.

Item 6 is perhaps for programmers, e.g. in the case of scripting fo SL objects.

Whole this thing is applicable to the Technical Support Service that works at our sim in city Bohemia. Every evening, one team member (inclusive me) sweats there and tries to answer also question that are primitive and easy, even if the answers can be found elsewhere. In spite of that the team members answer with a big long-suffering.

In conclusion, I would like to recommend some article on the web – How to Ask Question the Smart Way. It is probably focused to bit other subject, but it is fully applicable to asking in SL. You can find it here. I recommend reading it.

Party

There were a lot of parties at the last weekend in August this year. I have received about eight invitations to some party during the afternoon and the evening. Of course, neither human being nor can be at several places at the same time or be divided into eight. Therefore, I had to choose. So, the first choice was Insomnia, where DJ Stase played. I came bit early, because our Globe editors meeting finished sooner than the party beginning. However, I managed to change my clothes on time.

Linn was already there and she harmonized the club lights. Some minute later, even DJ Stase appeared. After that, the good party started and several nice people came. Moreover, the super music was in the air and all danced on the floor, nobody sat. Even in spite of all these problems that were in SL in that day – lags, lags and lags again. For all that, there was pleasant atmosphere in the club.

However, I was relatively very tired lately, thus I said goodbye using my usual statement: “I am going to hug my pillow.” Nevertheless, I visited Arsenal club at one German sim, because I knew from the invitation about party to the second anniversary of club existence. Actually, it was a megaparty, because it took 12 hours and altogether 12 DJs played their music.

To my big surprise and this day’s lags, 48 avatars roistered there and all worked during my stay there. There were many light effects around me and the sploder worked continuously and lindends rained down in given time. Just I would like to be there longer, but my job called me next day, so log out.

The next morning, two surprises waited for me. The first one was that as I entered in SL, several people still danced in Arsenal. The last rests said goodbye after 12 hours marathon. The second surprise was after receiving some news from Koinup.com about top SL sim in August and voilà, what it appeared there: sim Nautilus – Gisco represented by Insomnia club.

Links: Top SLsims in August, Top - Insomnia

Second Life 13

Today I give again some interesting places in Second Life to see some beautiful, but by way of machinima. Some ship plows neverending see at Black Spot sim that is home of pirates ship of Black Sparrow. You can also find there other pirates ships of different sizes. INSILICO is a cybercity like cutting out from sci-fi or comics, everlasting dark and only enlightened by light in the buildings. And finally, AM Radio's The Red and The Wild – lost in the see at IDIA Laboratorie.

HD is highly recommended.

SLurl: Black Spot, INSILICO, IDIA Labs

Long Way – Point Six – Community

The word “community” originates from the Latin words cum = together, among each other and munere = to give something. It is a group of people that share the same space, the same interests and the same wishes. As the sociologists said, the physical contact belongs to the community. However, how can we apply the term – community – to the Internet as something like that and to a virtual world like Second Life? Are there the communities? Can be found people or their embodies, i.e. avatars there, ones that make to unite themselves for soever purpose to create the community?

Yes, they can. They are called Groups and really they unite the SL residents with similar interests, maybe only to inform members about some event, exhibition, party, etc. The physical contact is probably not necessary and it would not even work in SL. Nevertheless, the groups have its enormous advantages like the groups in other social networks, e.g. Facebook or MySpace. Also the discussion groups common in Internet work the same way. This advantage is to inform all members immediately in a given time. This info receives all members whether they are online or offline. The so-called multimessaging is the second advantage. Unfortunately, it sometimes becomes corrupted into prattle about nothing or into simple bothering spam.

There are plentiful amount of SL groups and even if their number is limited to 25 maximal. Sometimes it is not even enough and one has to leave some whether he/she wants or not. Some groups have a huge amount of members and I think that Czech and Slovak communities do not fall behind them. For example, the community www.secondlife.cz has 10 345 members now. And I think that my list of groups does not differ from other ones. You only want to go shopping in the interesting shops; you want to visit favorite clubs; you want to trade the interesting stocks connected with SL world or you only want to have some friends group.

Community is maybe something like family, you are member of or you would like to be a part of it. Community, it is maybe your friends or your enemies. Simply, community is necessary and in upshot it is essential to survive in SL.

(It has been finished yesterday by watching the final sequence of the movie from Wim Wenders – Paris, Texas.)

Long Way – Point Five – City

“I am seeing a big city of which glory is touching the stars.”

This prophecy of duchess Libuse is related to our today’s capital – to Prague. (Note: Libuse was a character from ancient Czech legends and myths.) So, nobody even then could know or foretell two years ago what this city would be like and if its glory would touch the stars. It is obvious that I am speaking about our Second Life city Bohemia that however is placed ion sim Czechoslovakia.

Like duchess Libuse foreseen into the future from the depths of history and time then maybe the creators even seen Bohemia and their imaginations were imprinted into the city walls and plains. Particle by particle was approaching and connecting each other, and pixels and prims grew by addition and multiplied until the final city look came into the world. However, that was another place.

Shadows – Secret places – Dark corners and retreats – Roads that pass nowhere – People that do not exist – Silence and darkness. Like when The Childlike Empress and Bastian determined destiny of Fantasia in the final moment of The Neverending Story movie. Like when some spiral rise up thread by thread or fall into itself and then gets lost.

There were a grain of sand and some wish, then other wishes and then more other wishes to be born the world. The mists of Avalon are disappearing and I am seeing the big city that is stretching over the whole area from edge to edge. However, a period of time is long.

The move – physical and maybe psychological, will induce the birth of another city on different place and this city will be the same. So, we can find it there today too. It is not other due to its outward appearance, but it is other due to its internal identity.

Silent and empty Bohemia.

Long Way - Point Four - Friendship

In Second Life, there are a lot of different creatures – avatars, which are an incarnation of somebody in Real Life. The word “puppet” characterizes this thing aptly. I do not know, if we are the puppets, the lifeless lonely beings to be lost in SL and controlling by other powers, and for all that in certain meaning they are alive. No, the loneliness is not that, because of that Second Life would lose its original and main feature – the social contact.

The contacts are equally important maybe as clothes and shape at the first steps in SL. Regardless, there is no good to mistake contacts for friendship (Contacts List vs. Friends List). My friendlist increased more or less to huge dimension during my existence in SL, when I added to my list everybody, who offered me friendship. Many of them communicated with me, the others mostly not. Only truehearted few are staying, the hard core, and few pillars tower over this core.

However, one of them has as big as immense importance for me. This meeting was pure random in the nature of things. I was an absolute newbie and he was seasoned and experienced resident. He was, strictly speaking, who brought me in this world. He was, who taught me and I learned a lot of things from him. He was, strictly speaking, who “made” me as that, what I am in SL today. There are his experiences and knowledge that I use and with help of them I have built my being here. He is not here, but his account still exists. However, we did not see each other for long time, only sporadic contact in RL. Just that is definite principle of genuine friendship.

My contributions are often with pictures from SL, but these ones are too personal like another in other situation with other friends. Let us then sleep the.

Insomnia – Parable about Wine and Un(Sleeping)

Wine of this year’s vintage (2009) of course is not at disposal on north hemisphere. Bunches of grape have already the small green little berries and time of their maturation will not be until end of August and than in September and November. However, wines of year 2008 are rearing their heads. One says: “It will be wine of century!” But I think that there I no time to some rating yet. Young wines are beautiful, often very fruity and very pleasant to drink. They show their potential later and with age gain richness of tastes and smells, and also they develop in the whole color range.

Young – new – club is similar to young wine. It arises as wine, but no from one grape variety, rather it is a cuvée of one or many varieties. It needs also sensitive work in vineyard and in cellar like wine. It is result of ideas, deals and compromises. It is about that, where the club will be, how it will look, what kind of inside equipment will be there or what music will be played there. It is result of maturation of all these things. And like young wine comes to the market at definite maturity according to winemaker decision, the new club introduces its own also in public.

I have tasted one new wine several days ago, concretely on Monday July 27, 2009. Its name was Insomnia. And similar as wine degustation, I have also tasted and savored this wine.

Color: Insomnia is in general in dark black on the walls and columns that loom up to ceiling to achieve some opening, where free sky can be seen. Otherwise, the club revels by all colors of light effects and of textures variability of dance floor.

Smell: It is quite hard to consider. Maybe it was pleasant presence of kind people, which I almost know personally, but also presence of others that I know only from Second Life.

Taste: That was certainly fantastic atmosphere. All people had a good time, danced or talked to somebody. Further, there was super DJ, which played great mix of interesting songs. It tells about wine that it is either short or long. This means that you feel some wine taste still short or long time on back tongue part and on palate after downing of wine sip. In the case of Insomnia, it was long and pleasant persistence. It held long tome still long tome after that, when I left the club. Actually, it was several days.

Finally, I would like to lift wine goblet and wish Insomnia: Na zdraví! Na zdravie! За здоровье! Cheers! A ta santé! Zum Wohl!

P.S. Wine sleeps and at the same time, it does not sleep, i.e. it matures to beauty. Insomnia also sleeps and does not sleep. It sleep, when nobody is there, and does not sleep, when it is full of people avid for dance. Let its mature also to beauty.

SLurl: Insomnia