Hungry, Bored, & Lazy

Yes, I'm hungry, bored, and lazy at this moment. Hungry because lunch was ramen noodle soup over an hour ago. Bored because there is nothing fun to do at the moment. Lazy because I have lots of important things to do plus fold the laundry. I guess I'm just depressed. Things are changing in Second Life, I'd love to have a Real Life girlfriend (virtual smooches are nice, but not the same), and the Real Life stuff I'm avoiding is, in itself, depressing. Interestingly, the pic below that I took just today is depressing, too.

As seen in my Profile Snapshot Feed. Did you see my JIRA about that?

Super Powers iRL

Often I wish I could do some of the things in Real Life (iRL) that I can in Second Life (iSL). Speaking is the obvious example. Main chat mimics speaking publicly while Instant Messages are like telephone calls. I'm sure that there are more than a few people wheelchair-bound iRL that enjoy the illusion of walking or running iSL. But living in Bay City for a little while now and working to conform to its relatively close adherence to a Real World appearance have made me wonder about running, jumping, and flying iSL.

Running. I sure as heck can run faster in Real Life than I can in Second Life and with a greater variety of styles. One of my alts, however, has a "dash" attachment (here are a few) that teleports her in such a fashion as to make her appear that she runs with blurring speed, a trail of dust following her. Wouldn't that be cool iRL? And iSL I don't have to put on a heavy-duty bra to keep my center of gravity from going all over the place and slowing me down (or making me ache a lot after a long run ... I hated doing laps in High School gym class).

Jumping. Apparently my avatar can jump, unassisted and with incredible consistency, some eight meters. That's a bit farther than the best Real Life women's long jumpers have done (see here). Pretty impressive. Then when I strap on an Abranimations Jump Enhancer, look out!

Flying. Do I really have to mention flying? If I correctly recall stories I've heard, both flying and teleporting were accidental features in the early days of Second Life, but where would we be without them today? And what would Real Life be like if everyone could fly as they can in Second Life. Even without flight enhancers for speed or altitude, I'd love to be able to fly iRL. Imagine being able to nip off to the corner market or out for a burger without having to get the car out of the garage, drive to the location, park .... you get the idea. If flying were commonplace, then Disney World would have to invent ways to make a human's ability to fly into an amusement ride.

Am I missing any super powers? Camming great distances. Terraforming. An infinitely deep storage closet. Creating plywood out of thin air. Lifting whole buildings with a flick of the wrist. Someone far more clever than me needs to write a novel about this sort of thing, really.

Happy July 4th!

Happy 4th of July from me and the Isle of Lesbos.

New Home: Teaghlaigh in Bay City

With the generous assistance of Marianne McCann and Marx Dudek, my brother (CC Columbo) and I were able to purchase some land in Bay City, that wonderful part of mainland that is more than just a place, but a community, as well. Every parcel we've looked at in the past year has been outrageously priced but fortune and friends smiled on us so we now have Teaghlaigh in Bay City (SLurl), a home and a "coming soon" garden shop.

Teaghlaigh in Bay City is a simple home and an empty garden shop. Well, there is some furniture in the back and a few plants, but right now it's status is "Coming Soon" as a store getting ready to open. Actually, we may not have enough prims left to have an actual shop, but you never know. I'd like to start making plants to sell.

The greenhouse end is very nice with a  great view of a very unkempt lawn. Originally, my brother had a lovely gazebo and garden set here, but Bay City is an urban landscape and as much as we liked what he had done, it just didn't fit. That's when CC got the idea of "opening a business" that would allow us to keep a lot of greenery.

My contribution to the decoration was finding this nice desk for CC to buy (I was broke) and coming up with the backstory: Teaghlaigh is a small remnant of an old family farm with a city growing up around it. The family (CC, me, and my wife, Angela Seale) still live at the farm and are going to use what is left to make a go at a garden shop.

Our land is right on a canal with ferries regularly passing under a drawbridge. The canal wall and a fair chunk of land on the dry side is Linden-owned so technically we can't build on it, but the ground prims we put down are anchored on our side and will likely be overlooked by the authorities. I sure wish I could extend the grass over there.

With this land acquisition, CC is selling his land adjacent to the Memorial Park in Nangrim (SLurl) — two 512m² lots and a 1024m² lot. Each is only $L1/m² and that's cheap. I also have a 384m² lot that I should put up for sale, too, but I promised some friends that they could set their Home there, though no one has taken  me up on it as far as I know.

The land in Nangrim, my first home in Second Life. The Memorial Park remains, of course, but some 2048m² of land is up for sale, cheap. Wanna be a neighbor with free run of the Park? Actually, you can just come visit, if you want, either at Bay City or Nangrim. Everyone is always welcome.

A JIRA for My Second Life

These are my in-world snaps featured and you can see the updating stream here.

Above is a screenshot of the snapshot section of the My Second Life microblogging site provided to every Resident of Second Life. I have a few issues with "MySL" but chief among them is the inability to export the in-world snaps to another blogging site such as WordPress, Tumblr, Blogger, etc. or accessing them without having a Second Life account. Since I feel this is such a great service I'd like to see this issue corrected so I created [WEB-4835] Snapshot feeds from mysecondlife.com/resident.name should have the ability to populate external blogs on the Second Life Bug Tracker (JIRA). If you have some time, please take a few moments to look it over and comment on it, if you'd like, but please vote for having the issue resolved. If this works, I might file to have other fixes/improvements.