Its A Beautiful 'Day' in the Neighborhood

Last night I was at my SL home. Its a nice place, poorly decorated (my fault entirely), on a lovely island (all credit goes to Hypatia Dejavu). Once in a while I enjoy a stroll around to see what my neighbors have been doing to their homes and property. Last night I found this delightful gem!

On a corner of the sim was this lovely tent with a charming fountain out in front. It was especially inviting at night. The warm glow of the interior was beautiful! It was easy to imagine myself relaxing on the sofa, listening to the waves, watching the play of shadows as the soft netting moved with the breeze. It was charming. It seemed to me the perfect place to live in either life. Simple, clean, private and enchanting.

I have never loved any of the homes in which I have lived. Not one of them. I'm not sure why this is. I've heard friends say that they fell in love with a house. That they had to buy it and planned to live in it for ever! For me, closing the front door and handing over the keys to the new owner was never a problem. The only reason my Second Life home is still 'standing' is that Haldin likes it.

I've cared about some of my yards. We had a great garden in New Jersey. I loved that very much, and wished I could have brought the soil and climate with me when we moved. I love the trees and space of our current yard (the fallen leaves not so much). But, when its time to move I won't feel a thing about leaving the house.

I admire the person who created this home on the beach. Its a virtual realization of a dream. Maybe thats it, the key to loving a house. Imagination to realization. Doing what you love and not caring about what it will mean for resale! That is a tall order for me. I think too much about what will happen next. Once, in an apartment, I painted an accent wall a dark, lush color. It was just beautiful. But, having to put about three coats of white paint over it before moving was awful! I've never had another accent wall.

Maybe its time to go buy some paint. Maybe the lesson is to love today, and let tomorrow take care of its self.

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

Not Another Pop Quiz!

Learning, learning, learning. Life is the ultimate professor. Every day it seems that life presents a new problem. And often they are the dreaded story problems! No, not grade school algebra, but real-life story problems. Lately life has decided to teach me more about endurance.

I have a friend in real life who will not quit anything! She will stand in place and just take it until the task is completed. On one level I admire her, on a separate level I think she is nuts! Its the old hold 'em, fold 'em thing. She will stick to the most unpleasant job because she does not want to be labeled a quitter. I feel that knowing when to say thank you and walk away is a sign of wisdom. Its the line 'don't go where you're not wanted' expanded to 'don't stay where you aren't wanted'. These seem to me to be easy life issues. Look inside, think and decide which way to go. I have rarely regretted stepping away when it was time to do so.

Right now I am staying put. I'm trying to learn what life wants to teach me about being steadfast. This morning I heard my knee pop with every step as I dragged the trash out to the curb. I don't need this right now, thank you very much! I need to be ten, or twenty years younger now! I need to be tough. I need to wake up ready to take on the world.

People have called me strong. I don't know about that. All I know right now is that when the child in me cries out "I don't think I can do this anymore", the adult says "yes, you can, and yes you will". I'm getting good at developing my own work-arounds. Shedding a lot of the nonsense has felt good. My priorities are different now, better. What rises to the top of the worry list is no longer silly stuff. My sense of clarity and purpose has never been sharper.

So, the endurance lesson goes on. I wonder if there will be a gold star on my paper at the end.

And The Winner Is: Time

Time is about the strangest thing there is. It changes pace, its warps and bends, it can be heavy, it can fly, it can be wasted, or it can be the only thing that matters. Its measurable and ethereal. Time can run out, it can be on our side, or it can be the enemy. This weekend was a perfect example of how time can be the greatest trickster ever!

On Friday night time moved at the speed of light for me. The 30's swing bash at Gatsby's was really nice. What great music! Of course I had a slight wardrobe panic. For an insane moment I thought about going shopping. Thankfully, I reconsidered, and just went to enjoy the event. And enjoy it I did, until it was time to race home, change clothes, and go the next party!

Then, in what seemed like the blink of an eye, the the party at the Jazz Cat was in full swing! Three hours just flew by. It was such fun. We had a lot of new visitors to the club. And of course, our Infomaniacs! It took me about two hours to realize that I was hogging the mic, it seemed like 15 minutes. (Feel free to boot me out of there if you want to sing). It wasn't until my fingers started to ache that I realized how long we had been there!

Saturday dawned in RL. (Time spent sleeping is the oddest of all, no sense of it passing. Just close your eyes, and when you open them again, poof, hours have gone by. Hours spent with insomnia cannot be described without using words like glacial or molasses). I had a meeting in SL at one pm. It had been three weeks since the previous meeting, and I had not done my homework! Where did that time go? So then, I had to spend a few torturous minutes begging forgiveness and promising to do better.

Saturday evening is lost to memory. A topic for another post. I think I actually logged off for a while. If anyone knows what I did, please remind me. LOL!

Sunday I did some RL yard work. Which is of course synonymous with eternity. Then back to SL for another meeting! (Meetings are better in SL. Its not necessary to govern your expression at all times). And before I knew it, it was dinner time!

A friend suggested that some quiet time might be just the thing. We fantasized about it for a while. No notices, no IMs, no chats, no nothing. Of course we might have set busy for a while, but my goodness, what might be missed? We could have logged off, but then we would miss even more. Its like being a small child unwilling to run home for lunch, something might happen while you are gone.

Time will win in the end. And that's fine with me as long as I can spend time with you, here in SL.

HJ

An adage worth remembering: Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time.