Mid-life in Second Life

OK, so I just have to ask....why are there no middle-aged avatars? Looking around at all the hip young things I see virtually tripping blithly around me might make one think that the only folks out in RL-ville who are actually SL users are, oh, maybe ages 18-25 max.

But don't you believe it, boys and girls! There are a LOT of us 51-year-old virtual fuddy-duddies traipsing happily around in SL, lookin' purdy darned cute. I mean, I don't think the standard accessory package for avatar skin options currently includes wrinkles and a cane quite yet, and even if they did...who would want 'em??

That's one of the things that makes it so much fun to run into RL friends and acquantainces in-world, though--in a very real way, you get to glimpse into what they really look like. Get it?

Fun with Babbler

Last weekend, I went to Phreake Isle and picked up a copy of Max Case's translation program, Babbler3. It works like a charm, and I was able to converse in several different languages (French, german, spanish and portuguese) with a number of people in SL, which was an absolute blast. One of the folks I met was a french-speaking artist from Algeria, who offered to show me his art gallery. It was a fun visit, and particularly nice because without Babbler I wouldn't have been able to meet and converse with him. There are so many different applications for this in education that it simply boggles the mind. Miraculously, I have NOT make any dumb mistakes with Babbler so far--in fact, I was having so much fun with it that I actually hung around Phreake Isle for a while giving people a hand when they ran into trouble figuring out how to attach the HUD to themselves in order to use the translator.

Who Let the Chickens Out?

Let me tell you about the chickens. You see, I went to a public sandbox this afternoon in Second Life to continue working on my house (a sandbox is a place where you can go in Second Life to practice building things), and I noticed that in my "inventory" of objects, I had something named "chickens". Hmmmmmm--I didn't remember anyone ever giving me something called "chickens". Curious as to what it was, I dragged it out to the ground to see what it was. Big mistake. Turns out it was a scary little scripted object that I must have picked up at some point--possibly earlier in the day, packaged inside another object that was in the guise of some free clothing.

When I initially dragged the "chickens" object onto the ground and it "rezzed" (SL slang for gradually displaying), it just looked as though I a had a bunch of dead chickens lying around my feet on the ground.

But then....crap! They all jumped up and started running around! They were animated chickens! Then they started replicating themselves! Double crap! 1000 animated chickens! THEN they started shrieking! Eeee! 1000 shrieking animated chickens! That was when I bailed out and teleported back to my home world, like a little kid who'd knocked over a vase and ran to hide under the bed.

But very soon I realized that someone might report me for abuse in a public sandbox (setting thousands of noisy animated chickens loose in a public place is a BAD thing), so I teleported back to the sandbox with my virtual tail between my legs. The local sandbox mentor met me as soon as I arrived by saying, "No more CHICKENS, ok?" Of course, I explained what happened, which I am quite certain provided her with her major laugh for the day. She was the one who told me I'd probably picked it up in the freebies box.

Suffice it to say that is the last time I will ever rez an object I don't remember picking up, and that I will be renaming generically-named objects to help cue my memory later on. I'm adding the "don't rez objects you don't recall picking up" rule right up there with the first rule I learned when I initially arrived in Second Life: If you see someone coming at you with a cage trailing behind them--RUN!

Learning By Futzing Around

Since this is the first posting in my new blog, I figured I may as well start off by saying that mostly what you'll read about here are some of the funny things that happen as I attempt to figure out how to learn various kinds of new/emerging technologies--mostly things that are educationally oriented but not always. Most of the time, I learn by making the dumbest mistakes imaginable. I choose to look at this in a positive light, and have dubbed the process "LBFA" (Learning By Futzing Around). I heartily recommend it. I figured a blog would be a good way to share what I'm learning, and make people laugh--two pretty good goals from my POV.

Lately, I have been learning how to make my way around in Second Life, which has been getting a lot of play lately on TV shows like The Office and CSI. In a nutshell, "SL" is a 3D virtual world--but it's not a game (although it could certainly be used to play various kinds of games). It's more of a virtual social space--somewhere you can go to meet and converse with people from all over the world, see incredible sites that other users have built (like a replica of the Sistene Chapel, art galleries, and lots of other wonderful places), and learn to build objects and script them so they can be used for a wide variety of different activities (more on this later). Second Life can be quite intimidating, but dealing with risk, newness, and "not knowing" is also part of any learning curve. This blog will be about my learning curves--in Second Life, Real Life, and everywhere else. I hope you enjoy it.