I am reading Snow Crash again, one of those books I revisit time and time again. Some would have seen its over commercialized, corporate dominated world as a distopia, but compared with the real threat of a religious theocracy (Intelligent Design in science class? No thanks, I have a brain!) it sounds like (non-religion-specific) heaven to me.

Reading about the Metaverse, I became curious about the state of Second Life. It has cropped a number of times in the feeds I read over the last few months. Like the Metaverse, it is a 3D world where your custom avatars can meet, play, and even do business online. Even cooler, you can craft and script tools, clothes, wehicles, even buildings and, if you become real good, sell them for profit.

A one-time $10 nets you access to everything, a minimum wage, and the ability to build or script anything … EXCEPT you have no private land to store it on. For that, you will need to pay a montly fee and/or pay for a plot.

But for now I settled for the one-time fee, which would only be charged after a one week trial period. I clicked download the software and register. Truthfully, I was disappointed to see that while I could choose my own first name, I was stuck with selecting a last name from a list. Most were uninteresting, a few stuck out because of their geek pedigree (Doctorow, Herbert, and Shatner!) In the end, I needed something that sounded cool following “Coderonin”.

So I chose Yamabushi!!!

I installed the client, and got online. The hour was spent on designing my avatar. My keen-eyed girlfriend helped out. We went after something that resembled me as closely as possible, while paying homage to my “samurai” past.

Form there it was off to explore the world. Second Life provides multiple modes of transports. You can walk …

… and even fly!

Ahh, I love fulfilling my Zod persona. KNEEL BEFORE …

Anyway, one thing I quickly discovered is that Second Life is NOT World of Warcraft. Before anyone says “No shit” Sherlock, know that I am not talking about content or audience. I speak of interface and controls. While you do use the mouse in WoW, you quickly learn how to make use of the keyboard for chatting, IM, gestures. It was all very intuitive.

Second Life on the other hand is half-way there. The keyboard shortcuts are not obvious, and I am not sure how to trigger gestures from the command line. In fact, it is not clear if the chat is a full command line. A lot of it seems to depend mostly on mouse-driven interaction. I also wish it was more customizable. Still, at least there is some logic behind its thinking and I am sure with enough time I will get there.

I also had to verify how accurate the models were. I wandered into a less crowded area and decided to check the good so to speak. I quickly found a MAJOR flaw, .

That’s right; it doesn’t render any of my body hair!!!

One last thing before I go. The mentors I met in my brief time there were really friendly and eager to help. Particularly one named Cookie. She not only directed me to where I can practice building and scripting, but helped me with the basic interface and gifted me with a couple of bracelets. My last pic was of both of us posing before the sunset.

Next up for me is to create a motorcycle. I am dreaming of something Red and sporty. Really futuristic. Something a true Canadian would ride … or should I say Kaned-ian … heh heh …