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.