voyeurism

emporio ergo sum

the fashionista among you would doubtless have heard by now that Armani has just opened in Second Life, at Armani via Manzoni.

a t-shirt costs L$150.

try not to max-out your credit card :-)

"Communicating Across Disciplinary Cultures in SecondLife" Graduate Seminar, University of Texas at Austin

the one-hundred-and-twenty-sixth episode of ventriloquy is a recording of a graduate seminar for students of the Graduate School, Professional Development and Community Engagement, at the University of Texas at Austin.

i was invited to participate in the seminar by its Chair - Dr Leslie Jarmon (SL: Bluewave Ogee). in attendance was graduate student Jose Sanchez (SL: North Lamar).

the seminar was held in-world, starting at the Manatee Reserve sim (which, by the way, is featured in Sean Percival's upcoming Second Life In-World Travel Guide :-) ), thereafter visiting the Minshara sim, and ending off at the Raymaker Field Studies Centre at Sky Island Bay (where we were joined by my good friend Ludvaig Lindman).

do join us in this 13.0 MB recording :-)

[update: as of 2008, the facilities available at Sky Island Bay have been relocated to:
- the Raymaker Field Studies Centre at Norma; and
- the Raymaker Vulcanigallery at Da Boom]

active avatars in Second Life, ranked as a proportion of countries' respective population sizes

[prelude: a very warm welcome to all visitors browsing by from Hamlet Au's (RL: Wagner James Au's) kind referencing of this post at his New World Notes blog :-) thank you very much, Hamlet :-) i truly appreciate it! ]

the Lindens have just released the key metrics for last month :-)

partly prompted by a question which one of my friends in RL had asked me a couple of days' ago, and also prompted by a blog post somewhere in the ether from a few months' back, i decided to make a quick go at how the population numbers by country look, when equalized against total population size of the respective countries (as obtained from the CIA's World Factbook).

the United States, for example, had 157289 active avatars last month. the population size of the USA in July was 301139947. this means that 0.05 percent of the US population had avatars active in Second Life last month.

i took the top 30 countries by active avatars (ranked by absolute numbers), and processed them by 'active avatars as a proportion of country population'. China, Mexico, South Korea and Turkey have been excluded, because the proportions are really tiny.

here's what the numbers look like :-)

the Netherlands 0.10 %
Denmark 0.08 %
Portugal 0.07 %
Australia 0.07 %
United Kingdom 0.06 %
Belgium 0.06 %
Switzerland 0.06 %
New Zealand 0.05 %
USA 0.05 %
Germany 0.05 %
Canada 0.05 %
Ireland 0.05 %
France 0.04 %
Spain 0.04 %
Italy 0.04 %
Sweden 0.04 %
Singapore 0.04 %
Finland 0.03 %
Japan 0.03 %
Austria 0.03 %
Israel 0.03 %
Brazil 0.02 %
Greece 0.02 %
Poland 0.02 %
Romania 0.01 %
Argentina 0.01 %

analysed this way, Singapore is the Asian country with the highest proportion of active avatars in Second Life :-)

[update: the World Bank has just released the 2006/7 edition of its Doing Business guide. for the second year running, Singapore tops the list of 178 countries :-) ]

Technorati Tags: geography, globalization, Second Life, Singapore

a holy place

i have many people on my Friends List in Second Life.

a handful of them i am in contact with and see several times a day, but there are many whom i am not in regular touch with.

one such person is, well, i'll just refer to him as S.B. here - i'd like to let him have his privacy.

i first met S. about two months ago, i guess shortly after he first came into Second Life. he was the one who initiated contact with me, asking if he could rent some space on one of my plots for his boat. back then, i was as new as he was, and i was wary of renting to a stranger (i still am, i guess). but we put each other on our respective Friends Lists nevertheless.

i was very happy, therefore, to learn some time ago that he had managed to find a plot of land to call his own. he invited me over, and it was a decent beach plot - nothing special, and he had nearly run up to his prim limit. he very kindly took me on a memorable ride in his helicopter, which i enjoyed thoroughly, despite the fact that we occasionally ran into his neighbours' red ban lines.

i remember he told me at that time that he was a good pilot, and i did not have any reason to believe otherwise.

that was some time back, as i said.

today, i'm not sure why, i decided to drop in unannounced onto his plot, just to see how he was doing.

he has totally transformed it. it's no longer a simple hut. there was no sign of the Huey either. but i think he has managed to expand his land and might have bought up some of the neighbouring plots - i can't be sure, because i didn't want to pry.

the centrepiece of his plot is a lovely secluded garden, which surrounds a small altar.

i was very happy to see that S. is a Christian, and even happier that he acknowledges the Lordship of Jesus in his avatar's narrative.

in our conversation, he told me that he felt strongly that God was protecting him in Second Life, and i knew that to be the case too.

he also told me that he felt that God had called me to visit the altar, and it was not merely a whimsical visit.

after he logged off for dinner, i lingered in the garden, because it was so peaceful in a sea of ban-lines, and we both agreed that it was a holy place, and it was for people who love God.

i sat on a bench, and listened to the usual sounds one hears in a Second Life garden - birdsong, flowing water, and frogs. but there was definitely something special about the garden, because the plot was blessed by God.

i felt prompted to pass the blessing on, so i messaged my very good friend Ludvaig Lindman.

we enjoyed the peace for a while, and imagine my joy to learn that he is a Christian too.

:-)

Ludvaig and i enjoying the serenity of my friend S's garden and altar

second chances

it could be argued that Second Life is all about second chances.

so, it's completely apt (and not at all unexpected) that the RMS Titanic will soon sail again...

:-)

Additional reading:
- the RMS Titanic (wikipedia entry)

are you for real?

the one-hundred-and-twenty-fifth episode of ventriloquy revisits questions of reality and identity in virtual environments.

in a way, it's my way of making sense of various events and experiences that i've experienced over the past month, from concert gigs to bereavement, from musical soirées to live studio appearances. this episode can also be thought of as my response to Gwyneth Llewelyn's post yesterday On Second Life Celebrities. indeed, i use her post as an organising framework around which to structure this 2.7 MB download; so perhaps it might be a good idea for you to read her post before listening to this episode.

i'm also including this video because in a strange way, it is quite relevant to the discussion:

this episode draws on several of my earlier posts, so for your convenience, i'll list them here in order of their date of publication:
- episode 107
- episode 108
- SpaceJunky's gig at la plage aux folles, Whitsundays
- meeting James May
- discovering hidden talents

two artists

i'd just like to draw your attention to the work of two artists, both of whom i had the privilege of interacting with earlier today.

both are British, and both are pioneers in their respective fields.

Sanspareil London is the more familiar acquaintance of the two. he was the first artist to have his work exhibited in the Nova S Straaf Gallery aboard the SS Galaxy, and that was how i was introduced to him three months' ago. most recently, i've taken advantage of the expansive wall space of the Captain's Suite to showcase some of my favourites from his portfolio.

the other artist is Tryptofaa Sands, whom i only met yesterday. Tryptofaa has developed what is presently the most realistic tornado simulation in Second Life.

the tornado seems to approximate windspeeds of about 200 km/h around the vortex. this would place it as a Category EF2 in the Enhanced Fujita Scale.

i'm thinking hard about how to incorporate his work into a larger learning space, but my plans for that are still nebulous. instead, i've chosen to publicise Tryptofaa's work now, because i wish to acknowledge it for the great achievement it is.

Technorati Tags: education, geography, learning, Second Life, SS Galaxy, TLLM

dad would be proud

as a child, my parents gave me lots of opportunities to discover my talents.

at one stage of my young life, i was simultaneously put on swimming lessons, judo lessons, math tuition, Mandarin tuition, violin lessons, piano lessons, French classes, and German classes.

ALL as after-school activities, totally outside of the formal school curriculum :-)

well, some things had to give, and i fairly early on discovered that although i had a flair for languages, the same could not be said for music, and my judo went out the window.

between the piano and the violin, i personally preferred the piano. however, i seemed to be more (and i use this word advisedly) successful at the violin.

and thus it was that i found myself buying a piano today.

not just any piano, mind you - but a concert grand piano, no less.

after shopping around a bit, i decided on the model offered by (SZ) Pianofabrik, designed most artfully by Suzanne Zeluco.

it was a trifle expensive, but i can honestly say i don't regret one Linden$ spent on it. the moment i rezzed it, sat on the provided leather bench, and started playing the first notes of Chopin's Nocturne in F# major Opus 15 Number 2, i knew that this would long be remembered as one my most worthwhile purchases.

somewhere, somehow, there's a story waiting to be told about how a human agent who loves the piano but is hopeless at it, finally finds fulfilment through his piano maestro avatar...

but that's a story for another day. this evening, just join me under the stars in the Captain's Suite of the SS Galaxy as i tinkle the ivories for no reason in particular, other than the fact that i just can :-)

Additional reading:
- Torley Linden's 10 March blog entry (solo piano 2) Torley Lives

[update: check out Elisheba Rossini's 9 October write-up in Issue #3 of FreeLife :-) ]

sawatdee khrab :-)

thanks to my good friend Veritas Veriscan, i had the pleasure of being introduced to shamblesguru Voom (RL: Chris Smith) today.

shamblesguru is working with Takeme Homewood to build the International Schools Island (which i presently can't seem to locate on the grid :-P ).

together, they maintain a blog, which i've added under 'external sites' as a permanent link to the navigation bar on the right of this page. shamblesguru also produces a series of podcasts. he's presently based in Thailand.

the International Schools Island is initially conceived to support international schools in Southeast Asia. it'll be exciting to track the progress they make :-)

[update: as of 5 February 2008, the ISI is open to the public :-) ]

Technorati Tags: education, isi, Second Life, Web 2.0

presentation "an introduction to Second Life"

the one-hundred-and-twenty-fourth episode of ventriloquy is a recording of the first-third of an introductory talk on Second Life, that i gave today to colleagues from the National Institute of Education, the Ministry of Education, and the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies / Nanyang Technological University.

unlike my talk two weeks' ago, today's presentation - the recording of which is 6.2 MB in size - was targetted at people who are approaching Second Life with very little prior knowledge.

unfortunately, i ran out of disk space after only twenty minutes, and therefore i am not able to bring you most of the talk. for this i do sincerely apologise.