Chandra’s Page

Nope, this post has absolutely nothing to do with Second Life. I’m just abusing my blog to test plogit on my new Palm LifeDrive.

Posting is remarkably fast, aside from the time required to scribble out text via Graffiti. It’s a bit irritating that plogit can’t set the category of a post, but it could still be useful.

Of course, if I’m blogging about Second Life, I’ll be seated at a powerful desktop computer that’s running Firefox, so I don’t really need this wireless toy. But it makes my inner nerd smile, at least.

Castles aren’t exactly a rare thing in Second Life. “A man’s home is his castle” is, more often than not, taken quite literally in a world where erecting a fortress is hardly more difficult than building a bungalow. However, there are some builds that stand head and shoulders above the rest.

The Elven Tower in Orwood is one example of such an exceptional build. I ran across it, like many things I’ve seen in SL, completely by accident, after a physics mishap tossed me several sims away from my workshop. (To my neighbors in Drawbridge: I apologize for the giant smoking crater. I’ll have someone in to fix that in a few days.) I looked up, and the distinctive outline of the tower immediately caught my eye.

Despite some clunking and thumping about in the bowels of the colocation facility housing Second Life (yes, the infamous asset server was acting up again), I still managed to get in a few good hours of general lolling about. I gazed in amazement at the new, super-tacky field of cubic doom in the neighboring sim (-no picture available at the moment; Cristiano’s got Snapzilla down for a move to a new server- picture here on Snapzilla), discovered a brand new plywood box hovering above 250 meters near my airfield, and got in a bit of flight time over the northern continent in the biplane I’m building.

I had two of my best friends in SL log on about the same time, both of whom I keep managing to miss. We caught up and generally shot the shit most of the evening. Even on a night that’s not conducive to much building, it’s nice to know I can still have an enjoyable time in SL.

I’m amazed at the deep bonds of friendship I’ve developed in SL. I’ve been in online environments for half my life, but before Second Life, I never really formed any lasting online relationships. There’s some magic underlying this little virtual world, some bit of shared experience, that somehow makes the people I meet in the Second Life community more real to me than those I’ve met in other virtual worlds, games, and chat environments. I don’t know what it is, but I’m thankful for it.

Typo seems to have installed without any effort for a few other people I’ve asked, and instructions on a couple pages for installing it on Dreamhost, though seemingly simple, gave me no love.

After no small amount of bashing my face into the keyboard, I started from scratch with a fresh installation. Lo and behold, it worked, without complaint, first try.