voyeurism

SS Galaxy Community Gateway

it has been three weeks' in the making, but the wait has been well-worth it :-)

if truth be told, it's something i've wanted to do to contribute back to the Second Life community, for a few years.

with the help of my friends DBDigital Epsilon, Sanspareil London and Dacob Paine, the SS Galaxy now has a Community Gateway of its own :-)

Community Gateways are orientation areas for avatars who have just newly registered their Second Life accounts, as alternatives to the Linden-designed ones.

the Galaxy's Community Gateway is a restricted-access area, for the safety and comfort of the newbies. it has been designed after careful observation of the best characteristics from ten other gateways. it is staffed by a hand-picked team of nine crew from a variety of time-zones and with fluency in several languages.

if you have been thinking of opening an account in Second Life, the Captain and crew invite you to kindly consider choosing the SS Galaxy Community Gateway for your initial orientation :-)

the SS Galaxy Community Gateway welcoming its first newbies :-)

Technorati Tags: Second Life, SS Galaxy

friendlydeveloper.com - a forum for learning about iPhone development

if you've been thinking about coding for the iPhone, or learning more about the Linden Scripting Language (LSL), my good friend Ludvaig Lindman has just set up a forum for like-minded individuals to post questions and learn from each other.

please do consider visiting friendlydeveloper.com and signing up as a member.

there are separate sections in the forum for HTML, PHP, LSL and iPhone development.

in the latter, Ludvaig has posted a 33-minute-long video tutorial, which comprehensively walks you through the process of creating a simple iPhone applet which swaps images when one drops one on top of the other. to have a look at this simple walkthrough of this aspect of Xcode and the iPhone SDK, go to 'iPhone Development' -> 'Tutorials' -> 'Video Tutorials'

happy coding :-)

Technorati Tags: games, Second Life

... pondering the source

a Chinese proverb (loosely translated) goes, "when you drink from the stream, do ponder the source of the water".

something that has been at the back of my mind for several months was the question of which Linden Infohub my first avatar rezzed at, on the day that i took the momentous leap of faith of leaving Orientation Island as a white-shirted newbie.

a little bit of backstory here... my primary avatar - Veritas Raymaker - was not the first SL avatar i created. Veritas was created in May 2007.

my very first experience of Second Life actually began a full seven months earlier, in October 2006. not surprisingly, i found Second Life to be a thoroughly disorienting and pointless experience. my memories of that very first day on the Linden mainland were wandering along a road (the Infohub where i had landed was by a road, but the name of the sim had escaped me) and looking at the shops (along the road) and wondering why everything was so _deserted_.

i logged in a couple of times once or twice after that, but finding nothing much to see or do, and quite totally missing _the_point_ of SL (to the extent that such points exist to begin with), i logged off one last time, for good - or so i thought.

then came news of the Second Life Best Practices in Education 2007 conference, and the rest, as they say, is history (Veritas Raymaker was created only after i had first invested some time reading Second Life: The Official Guide.

well, i had the realisation the other day that since our inventories are sorted by chronological order, if i were to go back to my original avatar's landmarks, i might - just might - be able to use the earliest ones to infer which Infohub i would have landed at that very first day.

with bated breath i scrolled down the (short) list, and saw that the earliest landmark i had made was for a store selling (virtual) Macs. ah yes, that sounded about right.

i teleported over, and...

found that the store was there no longer.

however, it turned out that i had landed in the sim of Honeoye, and there is a _road_ running through Honeoye.

and what might there be following that road east to the adjoining sim, but the Warmouth Infohub!

so, thank you, to whoever took the time and effort to build the Warmouth Infohub. in fact, thanks to Google, we do indeed know who built it - thank you to Lewis Nerd of Pocket Protector Projects!

:-)

Technorati Tags: geography, landmarks, Second Life

veritasraymaker.sl

this blog can now be accessed through the URL veritasraymaker.sl

:-)

Technorati Tags: Second Life

for the record - my name at Google's Lively

just posting this for the record - so no one gets confused down the road :-)

my name over at Google's Lively is veritas.raymaker

introducing the Six Learnings

the one-hundred-and-fifty-fourth episode of ventriloquy introduces the Six Learnings.

the Six Learnings refer to the framework which i have conceptualised in order to make sense of the educational affordances of virtual worlds in general, and (so far) of Second Life in particular.

the Six Learnings are:
- learning by being;
- learning by exploring;
- learning by collaborating;
- learning by building;
- learning by championing; and
- learning by expressing.

the Six Learnings are not arranged hierarchically, nor are they mutually exclusive. in this 3.9 MB download, i briefly introduce each to you.

Show notes:
- Bay City in Second Life
- Celestial Requiem NYC
- Jaws
- Amity Island in Second Life
- Topher Zwiers's 4 July 2008 entry (Business Class vs. Content Class Virtual Worlds) MUVE Forward

Technorati Tags: education, geography, learning, place, podcast, sledcc08, Second Life, Singapore, Six Learnings, TLLM

Introducing the Starling Project

the one-hundred-and-forty-sixth episode of ventriloquy introduces the Starling Project.

The Starling Project refers to my proposed research into an education initiative in Second Life and other virtual worlds, that will keep me busy till 2011.

i am applying for funding for the Starling Project, under the third round of Singapore's National Research Foundation's Research & Development Programme on Interactive and Digital Media in Education.

please do join me in this 3.3 MB download, as i share how i came to decide on the name for the project.

Additional reading:
- Carl Zimmer's 2 May 2006 article (Starlings' listening skills may shed light on language evolution) The New York Times

Other projects named Starling:
- The Starling Project Foundation, Inc. (classical music education)
- Teach the starlings (biogeography education)
- Project Starling (social science research)
- The Starling database program

Technorati Tags: education, learning, podcast, Starling Project, Second Life, Singapore

air to the throne

MacBook Air, and its solid-state predecessor from eleven years ago :-)

Technorati Tags: education

Raymaker Land Management

Welcome to Raymaker Land Management!

We offer a select number of choice rentals in Second Life.

All our land and water parcels are operated against a carbon-offset scheme. We are one of the first land operators in Second Life to do so.

Raymaker Land Management has a small gallery at Livigno, from where you can learn more about the rental opportunities we offer.

There is also a vendor at the gallery, which enables you to teleport to any rental plot, or just pay the vendor directly to initiate your rental.

Presently, we have parcels on the Linden mainland, some of which are flat and ready for you to build your dream home, while others already have enchanting builds there for that quick weekend getaway.

We also have a number of water parcels for your boating and aquatic-lifestyle needs.

For those who prefer high-rise living with great ocean views, we have partnered with ukryan Bloch at Unzen, where we offer a few apartments for rent at reasonable rates.

Finally, coming online later in 2008 are choice residential and light commercial rentals at the new Temasek sim. Temasek is planned to be a showcase of all that is best about the culture and ecology of Singapore. Temasek is owned by Veritas Raymaker, and its Chief Architect is Limkopi Davis.

Raymaker Land Management is run by Veritas Raymaker. Please feel free to send an IM in-world with your land queries and needs. Even if i am unable to fulfil them personally, i will try my best to help match you with someone who can.

Additional reading:
- Livigno

[update: as of 18 February, the premises of Raymaker Land Management has shifted to a larger plot at Durango.

Additional reading:
- Durango, Colorado]

Technorati Tags: carbon offset, geography, Raymaker Land Management, rent, Second Life, Singapore, Temasek

... and so it begins ... #2

the original post which bore this title, was my very first post commemorating my first day in Second Life.

eight months later, i think it's worth documenting another milestone, just as significant.

we've only just begun...

:-)

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Singapore, Temasek