Skate-less

Sometimes it is just good to hang out with friends, dance a little, chat a little, and laugh a helluva a lot.


I am lacking in the roller-skates department though. I've decided.

Wherever Wednesday - Bug Island

It's a little late, I know. But I got there. Eventually.

This week's random explorer tour (I'm not explaining again - if you want background read back here and here and here) took me to Bug Island. Look at the view below that I saw as I landed. Erm, not a good start, eh?. Just once can I go somewhere interesting!?!


Yes, you guessed it, it is a sandbox. The gods of the loading screen decided I should explore a sandbox. Genius.

But, on your behalf, I decided I should still walk around to see if anything interesting was around.


There was some mildly interesting stuff as I cammed around. Some blocks and some balls and some numbered blocks in the sky.


Probably the most interesting thing I found, and everything is relative, was a Dan Linden shiny test. You sit on a pyramid and get given 4 huds and then check a picture the HUD shows you against what you are seeing in order to check that your shiny works. You do it for noon, midnight, sunrise and sunset settings. Yes, that's it.

There was also a lighting test. But I figured I could only take so much excitement for one day.


The final piece of relative excitement was noticing a blue dot on my mini-map. I don't think I've seen a blue dot before, only green ones and yellow ones. So I cammed over, and ooh, hello a Linden. I always expected them to dress better.


I then left because someone sent me a TP and dancing with friends in her roller rink sounded much more appealling than a sandbox.

Unreachable

You know, there are some great things to be said for SL. For plurk too. We virtually meet people, we make friends, we share our SLives (and lives, to some degree) with wonderful people all over the world. Who would not want that, eh?

But then sometimes there comes the realism that our friendships, our relationships, are really quite detached and vague and really quite unlike their RL equivalents. When someone is a plane ride away you can’t just nip round for a coffee. If they’re offline, usually we can’t just phone them or send them a text to say hi and see how they’re doing. If they are not inworld or plurking, for the most part, there is just no way of reaching them and no way to find out why. No way at all.

I feel lucky in some ways because so far in my SLife I haven’t had a friend disappear without warning. Speaking to friends though, it seems clear that at some point it will happen. It happens to us all sooner or later.

Now, this post is not really melodramatic or anything emo like that, and is hopefully just prompted by storms causing power outages in Queensland, but it just made me realise, I guess, that when we need to speak to someone, sometimes we cannot. And that is frustrating. And there is pretty much no ideal solution. Our world-wide community has its limitations and drawbacks as well as it’s attractions and advantages. We just have to hope that the latter outweigh the former.

A glimpse of the future?

I went to see a movie last night. In RL. I know I don't blog RL here and make a point of not doing, but the film is kinda appropriate so I will break my own rules this one time.

The movie was Surrogates. If you've not heard about it, it is set in the near future. Basically robotics and stuff have developed to the stage where almost everyone use a robot in every part of their everyday life. People are linked to their robots via "the grid". They stay at home in pretty much isolation, on their "stim chairs", and go and live their lives via a robot they are connected to. Their Surrogate. They can be young and attractive forever. They can do things they would not normally do. They can be who they want to be.

Do you begin to see why I might have thought this movie made me want to blog?

The story of the film is not really important. It's a decent murder/intrigue sorta of a thing but the key thing for me was the basic premise. The idea of surrogates. It all felt quite real, and not really too far from the lives we currently lead. The second lives, I mean. For surrogates read avatars.

We can be who we want to be, and we can do whatever we want to do. We can leap from tall buildings. We can fly. We can be perky blonde bimbos instead of fat blokes in Iowa.

The only difference is that at the moment most of us only use our surrogates when we have spare time. And the grid is still inworld, rather than outworld too, if you see what I mean. But it's not too big a leap, I don't think. How many of us prefer our second lives to our other mundane one? How many of us would leap at the chance of a surrogate?

As the film ended, some punk-kid stood up in front of me, turned to his mate and said "well, that will never happen". I think most of you, like me, would disagree. The future is not far away.

Arora

A little while ago, I met Arora. We clicked instantly. It's hard to put my finger on it exactly, but it just felt right. And good. We fitted.

She is the Nala to my Simba, the Buffy to my Angel, the Princess Buttercup to my Westley.

I learn more about her every day. And I love that I do. Time spent with her is so easy, so perfect, but always too brief.

We can sit and chat alone for hours. We can hang with friends and laugh. We can explore together.

It is easy. It is fun. It is perfect.

Wherever Wednesday - nowhere

Wherever Wednesday has been cancelled this week as I have been exploring in RL instead of in SL. It will return, as usual, next week.

I am tempted to bore you with my wanderings around Sydney instead but this is not an RL blog so I won't. If you want to see pics of that you'll have to find me on plurk.

Wherever Wednesday - Gibson

So far Wherever Wednesday has taken me to Beaumont and Insilico. Wednesdays roll around fast these days and before I knew it was time once again to cast my dice and submit my wanderings to the gods of loading screen.

There are some places that looking really quite interesting on the loading screens. And some that don't. There is one that just looks like an empty beach. Last night, said empty beach appeared as I loaded up Emerald. I thought about having to blog my time roaming over sand dunes and nothing else and almost decided to cancel and reload SL. I reconsidered. That wouldn't really having been playing within my own rules, would it?

So, an empty beach, and a sim called Gibson. Expecting sun, sea and sand I donned a pair of shorts. It felt semi-appropriate. I didn't give my companion explorer and guest photographer, Arora, any clothing guidance as I wasn't quite sure what to expect. It turns out SL is the a place you can explore in heels. Her. Not me.

When we arrived we found a box of a city with skyscrapers called Nexus Prime. A citadel perhaps. There didn't seem to be any doors though or anything to press or click. Even the gun turret just sat there doing nothing. Luckily there were a few others things to explore though that we saw as we cammed around.


The first we found as we wandered over a hill from the landing point was a big pool-type thing. We're not really sure what it did or why it was there. We just took a quick look and then wandered off to find some more stuff. I blame the over-exuberance of having a full sim to explore. The stuff at the beginning always loses out.


Round the back of the citadel was a delapidated wooden hut - the love shack the sign said. In side we saw a dirt mattress on the floor and another leaned against the wall adorned with a blood stain. Not precisely my idea of a love shack, to be honest. Moving on...


Up in the sky we came across a glowy white sphere and inside it was big organ with screens that seemed to want to play media but did nothing. Oooh, so close to actually having something to interact with...


Under the citadel, in a pond, we discovered a black box. It took impressive camera ninjery to find it, to be honest. Camming inside showed some sort of Tron-looking room labelled Black Sun.


And through the screen doors there were some inaminate but intimidating sentinels. Like lots of this sim, we were kinda left thinking "Interesting, but why? And why put it here?"


By now we were feeling a little deflated with Gibson. There were some nice ideas and stuff but we were left with more questions than answers. Some things we wanted answers to. Some, like the very organic-looking tunnel complete with bright blue nub over the entrance, we didn't really want to enquire about in too much depth. Either way, we decided it was time to move on and noticed movement on the sim next to us so headed over. What we found was a waterfall overlooking some sort of officially-branded educational stage.


As we stood there we noticed more movement. Huge cubes flashing with colour were falling from the sky to the ground. Tens and tens of cubes. A waterfall of giant flashing cubes. With no indication as to why. It was becoming a theme for the evening.


In a short while, they were everywhere, almost completely covering the sim. One cube that wasn't falling or flashing was a Borg cube complete with "We are the Borg. You will be assimilated" soundtrack. In the end the sim got so covered we decided to run over to the next sim where we had seen some sort of racing inflatable ring boats things complete with cannon. But we didn't get time to check them out as the cubes continued falling, speading out into the new sim we were on. We couldn't quite figure it out but it seemed we were being targeted. Was it some sort of surreal security device? We certainly had no answers.


In the end we had to wander over to the next sim over again, the third over from Gibson, where we started. Here we found an eclectic collection of houses and judging by the "Foxes at work" signs and 'erotic' porcupine wall art (don't ask!) I reckon it could well have been a furry community. But I have no room to explore that further here even if I wanted to.

In summary, Gibson, where we started for this Wherever Wednesday doesn't quite seem finished or have any common threads we could really identify. And the sim next door pours flashing cubes on you. And the next one but one after that has porcupine soft porn. All in all, we were not quite sure really. This week was a bit on the confusing side.

But for every Insilico there is a Gibson (& neighbours), I suppose. That's the beauty of SL isn't it?