~To Second Life and Beyond!~

Hello mah peeps and peepets!

How are you all doing?
Today I wanted to do an update on my life in general, as well as an update on my "second life" in general.
Second Life is a virtual world run and hosted by Linden Labs, in which Residents (that's what they call their users) can explore the world or actually own land by paying a monthly tier(monthly cost) and an initial purchase of land fee.
In recent years the prices for land have become atrocious and more and more people are leaving Second Life for the OpenSim network.

What is OpenSim?
OpenSim as I have come to know it (in my brief (very very brief) exposure to it) is too things;

1.) It is a way for people to have an offline home to play around with and to build their own little world.

2.)It is a way for people to host their own virtual servers for more affordable prices, and it is a way for people to access those servers.

The last part about it, the accessing of the OpenSim servers, that is actually not part of OpenSim but is rather a feature of the "Viewer" (webbrowser like application used to view virtual worlds) that you should be using to OpenSim it up. ;D

Well, needless to say, I installed OpenSim on my pc! :)
It was really confusing to set up at first, and then I realized that my computer was 64 bit so I had to run something with the name of opensim32bit.exe or something instead of the plain opensim.exe

It was so cool!! :D
It was my own little island! ^u^
I right away built a cylinder and a triangular block and tried to figure out how to link them.
(I had to google it, but you just hold down shift and click them both and then click "link". (I think you should move them so they are touching first though, as I am not sure if it will still work if they are seperated by a large amount of space... hmm... I should figure that out lol))

After linking them I changed my avatar from female to male, I guess the default was female, but my avatar still looks freakishsly like a man-woman!! XD
Apparently he's wearing a sexy woman outfit or something O.o
And I can't find any others that came bundled with the software lol.
I need to find out where I can download some free clothes haha.

I have a modeling program on my pc, so I hope to create some things that I could then import. (imports seem to be .xml files, so hopefully I can make xml files that are compatible)

As far as my RL (real life) goes, I went to church yesterday and had a good time. The entirety of my church lasts for three hours each sunday, from one to four p.m., and it consists of Sunday School and the taking of the Sacrament.
It was motivating as far as my own personal flaws are concerned, and it reminded me to make a conscious effort to be kind to everyone including my family. (well especially my family lol)

I am currently reading a book on my iPad called "Making the Metaverse" I think, (the making of the metaverse?? idk), and it is very very interesting.
It's about the creation of Second Life, it's community, and the culture as it developed throughout the similar Development of Second Life and Linden Labs.
It discusses the concepts of virtual worlds in general as well, not just Second Life, and is a very thoughtful and good read thus far.
I actually follow the blog of the author, I think it's called "New World Notes", which is a blog about Second Life mostly.
I really want a future making something like Second Life accessible to the masses, to everyone.
I don't know how graphics would work, but hopefully the tech will carry us through :}

I want to learn to program in Java and C# but I want to explore Second Life and learn to program the in-world scripting language first, so I can make my own world and get a feel for what I like and dislike about what Linden Labs have turned their world into. (since I plan on making my own kinda virtual realm one day)
I guess I need a career in 3d graphics (openGL tech), networking, and all the things that would make me desirable to a company such as Linden Labs.
(Because I would want some experience before I go and lay my whole life on the line, I would try and work with the existing big-players first and see how they run, get some experience, and then do it my-way and do it better.)

I think I have blogged about enough for now! XD
Sorry about the Length of the blog, I got carried away lol :)
I'll have pics next time to liven it up, I promise :P
(Maybe I got carried away because I am using my new Bluetooth keyboard on my iPad to write this? :D hehehe...)

Thanks for reading!

Sincerely,

~James Dodon



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad