Don't Miss It!

Last year's Second Life Birthday celebration was a lag-fest of the highest order! It was virtually impossible to even cross the street! This year is different!

There are 20 sims to explore! I opened the map, and chose one that had very few green dots. Upon rezzing I was delighted to see this cool build! An artist's work area. Complete with glue stick! (Thats me sitting on the cap). How cool. Nearby is a lovely area devoted to tinies! There are so many free items for tinies that I just might have to acquire an av and try that life style for myself!

Across the street from the art desk, there is an area to obtain your very own Greenie wearable pet. While walking around, some one said that a special Linden teddy bear is rumored to be available! I'll have to search for this one! There are a lot of other free things, I saw scripting tools, building tools and much more.

It should come as no surprise that the builds are incredible! This is an exposition of the best of SL creativity! So, please make some time to visit. Use the map! Search for SL5B, you can then see where the lag will be the least. Its a great world in which to live our second lives!

How is this possible?

It was a great time!
And there have been no reports of pulled groin muscles!

Backyard Explorations

I spent part of last Sunday exploring our back yard. Specifically Info Island, Info International, Infotainment and Imagination Island. I was in search of the details that make our SL home seem so real. They are the personality items. The small touches that make a house a home. In doing so, I found some whole new rooms I had never explored before!

For example, the Castle of Dreams on Imagination! The Space Music building on Infotainment. There were others. Too many others. So, now and again this space will feature one of the delightful and perhaps unexplored places right in our own back yard.

I'm also going to try to cover more of the special collections and displays that abound in our neighborhood. Just this morning, Rocky Vallejo announced the opening of "Take your vacation in SL". With a clever twist on the price of gas, Rocky has collected landmarks of wonderful places in SL to visit. This can be found at the State Library of Kansas, Cybrary City II (36, 164, 22).

Are you wondering why I spend time looking for the delightfully small items added to enhance our SL experience? Well, its going to be something of a treasure hunt right in the back yard mentioned earlier. Participants will be given a texture of 20 images of some of these objects found in the four sims mentioned. The photo at right is an example. Then, off you go to find them! Prizes will be awarded for the most correct identifications, and of course dancing and merriment after the hunt concludes! Watch for the time and date, it will be during the coming week.

Happy day, my friends!

HJ

Dancing

Any Infomaniac will know that dancing is a popular activity in SL, probably only second to anything related to sex! As you travel around SL, take note of the number of dance floors you see; they seem to be set up on just about every flat surface. Why is that, I wonder? What is so fascinating about watching avatars perform scripted motions that resemble dances that makes it so popular? I mean, a search on Youtube for “secondlife dancing” gets you 1630 hits, for heaven’s sake! (I’ve included some links to Infomaniac dance videos at the end of this blog entry.)

I was prompted to ponder the above question when I saw the latest issue (June 2008) of Scientific American; on the cover was mention of an article “The Neuroscience of Dance”. Now I don’t know how many of you are going to find this interesting, but as it combines my interest in neuroscience (my undergraduate thesis was concerned with the neurophysiology of olfaction) and dancing (in SL, anyway), I had to read it. It starts off with the sentence “So natural is our capacity for rhythm that most of us take it for granted: when we hear music, we tap our feet to the beat or rock and sway, often unaware that we are even moving.” It sometimes seems that, in SL, we do something similar. Many of us are known to spontaneously start up a dance anim whenever a group of us gathers to chat, whether we’re near the Den or not. I won’t go into all the neurophysiological details, but there seem to be specific parts of the brain devoted to both dancing and watching dancing. Another part of the article explores why people dance in the first place (it’s possible role as an early form of language is one theory).

So why is dancing in SL so popular? It gives us something cool to do with our avatars while we chat? Possibly. It does give those of us with two left feet and three right ones the ability to at least approximate poetry and grace in motion without the social stigma attached to doing it badly in RL. It also gives those who are members of couples the ability to do something together that singles cannot do. It is very much a group activity for us Infomaniacs, that’s for sure. Does it define us as a group? Partially, I suspect; it’s also true that the group dancing in the Den is a signal to others that drop by that says “Here is a bunch of people who regularly get together to chat, have fun, and revel in each other’s company”. Here’s to the Den of Inquiry – may it live long, prosper and keep on dancing!

SL dance videos on Youtube:

• Denizens: Infomaniacs Keep Dancing
• Impromptu Party
• Joyful Dancing

plus a non-Infomaniac video

• Evolution of Second Life Dance