voyeurism

surf's up, dude! introducing Lily Beach

the one hundred and sixty-fifth episode of ventriloquy ends 2008 on a high note with news of the very first surfing beach that i have designed :-)

when your schedule permits, please do visit Lily Beach, where you can ride pipeline waves for 60 metres, and fluffies for 76 metres.

if, like me, you're a total newbie to surfing the Linden waters, not to worry because you can either rent a windsurfer or surfboard, or buy your own from a wide range to choose from, featuring boards from Analog Surf, Reaction and Namiko Surf.

there's also fishing, scuba-diving and boating available, and if you're flying in, you'll be pleased to know that all these water sports are within walking distance of Lily Airstrip.

please do join me in this 2.6 MB download, as i share my motivations for building Lily Beach.

Additional reading:
- SL Surfing Association
- SurfWatch
- Virtual World Windsurf Contest 2008

[update: i would just like to thank Socks Clawtooth for taking the time on New Year's Day to help me position and test the waves. Thank you, Socks! :-) ]

NOTAM for the Lily Airstrip

strictly speaking, this isn't a proper NOTAM - being improperly formatted - nonetheless i hope it will be useful to those of you planning to fly in to the newly opened Lily Airstrip.

after a hectic four days of building, i am very happy to announce that the Lily Airstrip is open to the public from today, just in time to usher in 2009 :-)

the Lily Airstrip affords you a base from which to explore the Lost Lakes region of the original mainland continent of Sansara. the airstrip is immediately adjacent to Lily Beach, which offers great surfing and diving opportunities, and also an upcoming tribute-build that i am working on.

the runway is at sea-level. it is 70 metres long, with overrun areas of 10 metres on either end.

object auto-return is set to one minute at the rezzing area near the southern end of the runway.

in addition, there is a helipad with emitter beacon.

happy landings!

APPROACHING FROM THE NORTH

approaching from the North is the easiest and more recommended vector.

from the Linden-protected sim of Bothnia, just align yourself with Runway 18 and fly straight in.

please note that there is an embankment directly at the end of the runway, so apply braking as soon as your wheels make contact with the ground.

there is sufficient space for you to turn your aircraft around at the end of the runway.

APPROACHING FROM THE SOUTH

approaching from the South is NOT RECOMMENDED at all and would demand an exceedingly steep descent, with no emergency nets to arrest your aircraft should you overrun and end up in the water.

[update: 29 November 2009: i have just discovered to my pleasant surprise that Lily Airstrip has been classified a 'Superior Service Airport' by the SL Airport Map Info Center run by Zack84 Burton. thank you very much, Zack :-) ]

Additional reading (wikipedia entries):
- NOTAM
- runway

never thirst again

who is this Christ, whose birth we celebrate today?

He is the Son of God, who came to us at Bethlehem two thousand years ago, so that "whoever believes in Him, shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3: 16).

He is the only One who can make and deliver on the promise that "whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed the water I give will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life" (John 4: 14).

in this year's Christmas episode, i invite you to please join me in this 46.1 MB download as i take the opportunity of a recent visit to the Marina Barrage in Singapore to be reminded anew of the only source of living water the world has ever known.

"If anyone is thirsty, let him come to Me and drink."
- John 7: 38

who's zoomin' who?

with a tip of the hat to the Queen of Soul, from the bleeding edge of geekdom comes the Weblin service from Germany, which presents a unique way of answering that question that's always been bugging you, namely:

"who else in the world is looking at this webpage concurrently with me?"

one of the coolest things about Second Life is - as i've enthused over just earlier today - the sense of non-co-located concurrency.

in SL, it's easy to get this sense, as one sees other avatars around oneself at each particular place (that sense of 'placed-ness' is so important to the long-term viability of any virtual environment, and one that is sometimes overlooked (vide Google's Lively)); but heretofore, it's been difficult if nigh impossible to replicate or achieve that same sense of placed-ness while browsing the regular 2-D web.

now, with this uber-peculiar mashup called Weblin, that issue has just seen a great step forward in being addressed.

go try it and see for yourself :-)

alas, right now, it only works properly with Windows; and that might be a deal-killer right there :-P

if you _do_ have access to a Windows PC, follow these clear instructions by Hamlet Au. do set aside about six minutes for the photo-taking session, and _don't_move_that_mouse_ during the shoot :-)

at the Weblin office in New Berlin, after my photoshoot

a place of magic

no particular reason for this post :-)

just a reminder of the tremendous creativity and real-time non-co-located collaboration that is so much a part of the true magic of Second Life.

steam-driven locomotive built by Sauron Dreamscape and scripted by gracy Sella, taken at Natoma sandbox, with the Ivory Tower of Prims in the background

farewell Lwaxana Troi, daughter of the Fifth House of Betazed

although doubtless many will remember her for the several other roles she played in the Star Trek universe, Majel Barrett-Roddenberry will always be - for me - the beautiful and ravishing Lwaxana Troi, daughter of the Fifth House of Betazed, and Holder of the Sacred Chalice of Rixx.

Majel Barrett-Roddenberry 1932-2008

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 :-)

... 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!

:-)

Nativity Scene by CONNIE Eichel

my friend CONNIE Eichel shared the Nativity Scene she made with me today, and she's made it copyable and transferable so please let me know if you'd like one too.

just look at the amazing care that has gone into this intricate build.

it's 14 prims and 0.5 metres in size.

yes, it's the same size as the default plywood cube.

thank you, CONNIE :-)

degrees of separation - meeting Radar Masukami

as is generally the case, Radar Masukami tells it best :-)

it was very good to meet you, Radar, after having followed your blog for so many months.

it was the best part of my day too :-)

many thanks too, to Garth Goode, without whose recent entry, this serendipitous encounter would not have taken place :-)

it's a small world after all.

:-)

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