The Lab Directs Your Life

*Generic Pointing System

If you land in Safe Hub - Arapaima (SLurl) and don't know where to go once you tire of ... of ... whatever it is that happens there, look for an arrow in the water on the eastern side of the building. It directs you across the nearly empty Whorelbow sim to the Zindra continent. I say "nearly empty" because there are several more direction arrows and on the sea floor among some some sparsely place plants is a landmark giver. Touch it for a landmark for called "Reserved for future development" and would take you a few dozen meters away from the landmark giver. The parcel name, by the way, is "GO EAST 500 M TO REACH THE SHORE" — yes, seriously.

Second Life History

Here's some Second Life history for you ... The first Lucky Chair!

• Chair Design by Funaria Moose, created on January 4, 2006.
• Converted to a Lucky Chair by Shep Corvin on January 5, 2006 (modified until Jan 29).
• Sixteen prims and one script (a Lucky Tribe game script was added later).

See it for yourself in the LapGirl store in Broadwater (Adult; SLurl). You can buy a modern Lucky Chair and other familiar merchandising products at the Lucky Designs store (SLurl). You can try all the products and maybe win some cute little prizes. If you see Shep at either location be sure to thank him for starting an important and pervasive part of Second Life culture.

SL9B: Is this the theme? [Update]

The Lab posted "Help Us Celebrate Second Life's 9th Birthday!" and the picture shown above on the Official blog today. Maybe its just a teaser, but the phrasing makes me think that the theme is Community Events. Residents are given a link to the Destination Guide and encouraged to submit information about event and party information. There are also links to the various social media sources The Lab relies upon (more than the Official Blog, IMHO).

It might stretch the boundaries of the celebration's No Commercialism policy, but in-world communities such as Virtual Ability, Luskwood, Relay for Life, and others could stand to benefit greatly from focused exposure at such a large event.

[Update 17 April 2012 12:19PM]
STOP! Go read "Building Community in Second Life or Not" by Honour McMilan NOW. It seems there will be no SL9B at all in the traditional sense. The Lab wants us to celebrate their birthday without them.

The Cat Is On To Me

50 Thousand Plus

Uccello the Owl swooping in to catch some squirrel prey for her Inventory.

Last night after doing a little bit of Inventory maintenance I was pleased and dismayed to see my total item count was just over 50,000 pieces nearly 51,000 pieces. Mind you, my least used Alt has a mere 3, 205 pieces in her Inventory, nearly 10 bird avatars being the bulk of her acquired-since-Rez Day additions. Quite a difference, but some things really need to be noted:

• My wee pixy Alt has been accumulating items for landscaping so my total inventory is actually much larger.
• The bulk of my textures are not in viewers.
• My Building folder is filled with stuff — raw materials, if you will — such as columns and arches and furniture bits and .... you get the idea.
• I've been fairly good at but I could be much better at keeping Uccello's Inventory organized by boxing backup copies of most everything that had Copy perms and boxing up unused items such as 20-something shades of a particular hair style when I really wear but five at the most.
• Landmarks and Note Cards I don't frequently use are deleted almost immediately.
• Calling Cards count toward your Inventory total so if you remove a friend, remove their Calling Card (especially since every time a friend logs in or out, your entire Inventory is scanned so your experience slows).
• I keep too much stuff out of sentimentality.
• Too many items I've collected were picked up for "I might need this some day" reasons.

All this was on my mind when I was making lunch today and listening to Episode 24 of The Ihnatko Almanac podcast, "The Big Edit," which focused heavily on keeping only things you can't really live without by editing your complete collection of stuff. Like do you really need all those comic books (the host's example) or all those Legos you don't play with (my example). Or those ten pair of boots you have in your Second Life Inventory just because you had to have them for particular outfits you don't really wear any more. Yes, I really need to do some editing, if only more boxing of things I don't use much and don't want to lose.