The other day, the Canadian government announced that they would, like Australia, ban the sale of traditional incandescent light bulbs. Why the move to alternative light sources? Where incandescent bulbs are extremely inefficient and waste most of their energy as heat, the alternative, compact fluorescent lights (CFLs), use about 75% less electricity to produce the same amount of light. It's an obvious way to save energy and reduce carbon emissions nation-wide.

<RANT>

I like to save money as much as the next guy, and I do support the idea of reducing carbon emissions by using less energy on a national scale, but I have to admit a little When it comes to lighting, fluorescents just feel... wrong. The tint is off -- usually too green or blue -- and they flicker. Usually not perceptibly, usually at an extremely high rate, but they do flicker in the same way that your CRT monitor flickers.

I'm not just making this stuff up. An article published by the National Research Council Canada (link) states that the frequency of fluorescent light flicker can have a significant effect on visual performance. Maybe I'm overly flicker-sensitive, but I feel distinctly uncomfortable in fluorescent light environments. At past jobs, I have ensured that the fluorescents above my desk are off, even if my workspace is a little darker, and used a halogen desklamp instead. Incandescent bulbs don't flicker at all.

The colour bothers me too. A few people insist that modern CFLs can produce a nice warm glow, but that's not my experience. I recently bought a resonably expensive, brand-name CFL bulb that claimed to produce warm light. It's over my desk right now, and I hate to turn it on. It's sickly, yellowish-green, and the flicker grates on my visual cortex. It's a constant irritant, like the visual equivalent of a barely audible high-pitched whine. Like a grain of sand stuck in your sock when you're out for a walk. Like that yappy little dog barking a block away.

What is it about the colour that bothers me? Back in high-school physics class, the teacher used a spectroscope to demonstrate the differences in light from different sources. Where the incandescent bulb produced a nice, full rainbow, the fluorescent had large, obvious chunks missing from the spectrum -- very few frequencies were actually visible. A handy page by I.N. Galidakis documents his photographs of actual spectra produced by various light sources. These images show a striking difference between the two spectra:

Spectrum produced by a common type of compact fluorescent


Spectrum produced by an incandescent bulb

There is an apparent difference, but why should it bother me so much? Maybe it pokes at some deeply primitive, caveman part of my brain (which, incidentally, is most of my brain) that associates firelight with warmth and safety. The caveman in me -- let's call him Zog, because I understand that was a common name back then -- feels more comfortable in the warm glow of something that's actually burning hot, like a campfire. Zog like fire. Fire make Zog warm. Fire make meat good. Zog like eat meat. Zog not like eat fire. But Zog like fire anyway.

Zog talks about himself in the third person a lot. Conversations must have been confusing before they invented the first-person pronoun.

So even though CFLs are bright and efficient, even though the country would save a bit of energy if everyone adopted them, I have to question whether an outright ban on incandescents might be a little heavy-handed. I can reduce energy in other ways -- I turn off lights when I don't use them, I avoid turning on the heat, I turn off appliances whenever possible. I'll do all these things, but I refuse to light my home with that nauseating, flickering light. I would rather light my home with candles.

I wonder. If other people feel the same way I do, will people resort to buying light bulbs on the black market? Will it lead to more people lighting their homes with candles and oil-burning lamps? Any potential reduction in carbon emissions could be negated with the burning of millions of candles country-wide.

Before this draconian law comes into effect, I plan to buy a few crates of bulbs. Not only for myself, but for other cavemen and cavewomen who prefer to gather by firelight. And I'll buy an extra box of those little bulbs that go into lava lamps too. Canada would only be diminished by the extinction of lava lamps.

Zog like lava lamp.

</RANT>

Literally. Apparently, one of the enhancements coming soon to Second Life is a new sun. It's no longer just a yellow circle in the sky.



Check out this and other new stuff on the beta grid.

While the cybervirtuametaverse is down for repairs this morning, I thought I'd spend a little quality time in the blogosphere. It's a little chilly in here. Did someone leave the window open again?

Since the release of the Terra Z, I have started on a couple of new projects, but I'll get to those later. Let's first take a look at what's happening in skydiving.

Thanks to the scripting efforts of Effsey Nelson, I can now show a beta version of the Skydiving Top 10 page, where ten Second Life residents are revealed for the obsessive skydivers they are. I'm just astounded at the accuracy of people like Arex Koltai, who maintained an average distance of 0.6 meters in his last 100 jumps. Then look at Pilatus Masala, TheManKnownAsDaveP Crosley, and Shandon Uggla who each performed over 1000 jumps -- and that's just since March 10, when the database came online. Some performed as many jumps or more before that time. So we have some seriously dedicated and competitive skydivers. To them, I say this: For crying out loud, turn off the computer and get some fresh air or something.

While they're out for a walk, let's look at the evil schemes that I'm hatching in my top secret laboratory. I'm a little behind schedule, but I have started work on the new Stearman. It's in the very early stages, so I expect it will be done in about 4 to 60 weeks.

Meanwhile, in a dank corner of the lab, I have constructed a new and improved vendor system, which should allow more people to earn a few extra L$. Like the last vendor system, people can sell skydiving gear or aircraft and earn L$ on each sale. The improvement is that the system can handle more vendors at once and is less likely to explode. Oh and it sells penguins too.

And finally, Abbotts Aerodrome has a new level with living/office spaces. It's done in a pseudo-Japanese style with pine beams, shoji screens, and tatami. If anyone has any good suggestions for the large open space around the elevator, please drop me a line or leave a comment here.

It looks like the grid is back online! Pilatus, Dave, and Shandon, you can come back in now.

A tragic accident struck last night, causing the brutal maiming of my Second Life light cube. While investigating the reason why the cube no longer turned blue, I accidentally broke off two of the three LED lights inside.



Although the cube is still able to turn green, it has lost the capacity to emit red or blue.



Second Life residents will know this particular cube as the photo source for its digital counterpart, which is located on the hill at Waterhead welcome area. Should the cube succumb to its injury, I ask everyone to carry a light cube in SL in memory of this fine desktop knickknack.

Cast your mind back, if you will, into the murky past of the Internet. Think back to before the Y2K scare. Back, before the dot-com days. Back, before the Browser Wars. Back, to a time when Babbage's computing machine was powered by steam, and monkeys were routinely hired to operate it.

Hold on. No, we've gone too far back. And I'm not sure that the bit about the monkeys is true anyway. Let's fast-forward a bit.

It's the early nineties. The World Wide Web has yet to reach the public consciousness -- it's a vast empty plain roamed only by herds of geeks and plodding researchers. And while everyone is thrilled with this nifty "hypertext" idea, nobody is quite sure what to do with it. Of all the hundreds of home pages in this primordial web, the majority include governments and universities, Star Trek fan sites, pornography, and occasionally Star Trek pornography. Geeks the world over are able to freely exchange information, ideas, and photos of Lieutenant Tasha Yar, naked. It was an information revolution.

I remember clearly my first encounter with the web. I had connected to UBC's network through an old text-only terminal to check my email when I noticed a link named "Web of Wonder". I didn't know it at the time, but as I activated that link I was about to surf the web for my very first time.

Glowing green text rippled down the screen as I hopped from page to page, and before long I found myself looking at what appeared to be pages from the UK. Was it possible? Had I unwittingly connected to a university across the Atlantic? I was agog at the possibilities.

And then, with a world of information at my fingertips, I found and downloaded the game cheat codes for The Secret of Monkey Island. A useful thing was that "Web of Wonder".

For a time, life was good. As I surfed daily, my surfing addiction grew. I found new and fascinating places, often just by chance. I'd click, click, click away the hours.

Then corporate and business interests sank their filthy claws into the web. Like the tarantula wasps of the American southwest, the advertisers grappled the web, rammed their ovipositors into its belly, and laid millions of eggs in the web's helpless, writhing form. What had been an egalitarian and non-commercial service, unsullied by business, by and for educational institutions became a living zombie spider rupturing poisonous, stinging ads.

It's a sad fact that 87% of all links on the average website lead to advertising (and 89% of all statistics are just made up). So in any given hour of surfing, most of your jumps will probably lead to ads for all variety of products and services, including online dating, pornography, herbal treatments for men, and insurance. Incidentally, 99% of men purchasing three of these products will also require the fourth. The other 1% fails to use the dating service correctly.

For the net junkie, alternatives have evolved along with the web, and in some cases, they merged. The venerated dial-up bulletin boards, where people chatted, debated, and SHOUTED IN ALL CAPS at each other moved to the web as forums. Internet relay chat (IRC), which predates the web, continues still, and is mimicked by web-based chat rooms.

I have never understood the appeal of chatting anonymously with random strangers on the net. To me, chatting online is like walking along a busy sidewalk and striking up conversations with oncoming traffic. I know that some people actually do that, but they're usually off their meds.

So while others whiled away the entire night in chat rooms LOLing and emoting with sideways happy faces about nothing in particular, I shrugged and continued to surf through increasingly commercial websites, dodging pop-ups and other hazards. But the chatters and forum surfers grew in numbers and evolved a sense of identity. They were communities who found homes on the web, LOLing and ROFLing with like-minded individuals.

It was around this time in the web's history, one early morning at about 3:30, that I woke up with a keyboard waffle pattern on my face and drool oozing between the Ctrl and Shift keys. My desk was littered with discarded snack wrappers, and my screen was full of dancing hamsters -- the official Hamster Dance website, in fact. My screen was full of dancing hamsters, and I had no idea how I got there. It was in this moment that I realized that I might be wasting my time with this "web surfing".

And then, as if chat rooms cross-pollinated with online games, something new sprouted from the steaming, fertile soil of the Internet. Imagine a chat room, but in a 3-D virtual world. Like a computer game, you walk your character around and interact with the environment; like a chat room, you can engage in light banter and even throw in the occasional LOL.

Among the first of these was ActiveWorlds, the grandfather of all metaverses. Then came There and Second Life. Soon there will be others, as Sony and other companies enter the arena of virtual worlds.

It seems to me that the development of the metaverse mirrors that of the early web. The Second Life world is constructed mostly by individuals as a hobby, and populated by casual visitors seeking a little light chat and entertainment. Of those looking to engage the metaverse for practical purposes, researchers and educators have led the way. All the metaverse needs for the parallel to be complete is Star Trek porn, and I'm fairly certain that you wouldn't have to look very far to find that or any other kind of porn in Second Life.

Metaverses and Second Life in particular are at a stage where the news media writes articles about virtual worlds as a curiosity, reheating tired phrases like "It's not even real!" and "You can make real money!"

Eventually the novelty will pass, as it did for the web, and interest will turn to more practical matters. Business matters. With the growing list of corporate players like IBM, Dell, CBS, and NBC, we find ourselves at a crossroads where longtime Second Lifers fear being crushed like ants under the wheels of progress in the corporations' greedy rush upstream to the rich spawning grounds. There simply aren't enough clichés and mixed metaphors to describe the apprehension growing among longtime Second Life residents.

I would hope that, like the web, there would be room in the metaverse for both business and personal use. Second Life needs both an Amazon and a MySpace: the metaverse may need to feed on advertisement, but it will thrive on communities. Second Life may have been impregnated with writhing wasp larvae, but we aren't yet a zombie spider. Communities still have control. For now we can still log in and ROFL and LOL in a completely ad-free environment. We can even post pictures of Tasha Yar.

In fact, I think I'll do that right now.

Mmm. Yar.

Some poeple ask me how I name my vehicles. It's not easy, when real-life vehicle makers have taken all the most interesting names: animals, birds, precious stones, cities... even fish. So when I produce the next-generation vehicle for Second Life, thinking of a name can almost take longer than making the vehicle itself.

Consider this latest vehicle: It's a scooter that hovers. Unfortunately, scooters are so popular in real life right now that pretty much every scooter name is already trademarked, and trademarks do apply even if your scooter is made with bits and bytes instead of nuts and bolts. In desperation, I turned to the friendly folks in IRC for suggestions.

Thanks, Sezmra, who suggested "Scoover" (it hovers, it scoots). Unfortunately, the name has been taken. A nod also to Gabe, who suggested "Hooter", but I think I'll pass on that one. Other suggestions include "Scootair" (already taken), "DiscHover" (annoyingly clever), "iScoot" (already taken), and "tScoot" (also taken).

In the end, I've decided that this whole naming thing is not worth the effort, and I'll just not name it at all. It's Z. Just Z. The Terra Z. Please don't write to tell me that the letter Z is trademarked.



What's the big deal about the Terra Z? Not only is it the most agile aircraft you will ever fly, but it can do something traditional SL vehicles can't do. It can go with you through teleport.

Using an advanced technology developed under high security in a top-secret location in my living room, the Z is actually a wearable item. This means better control, easier sim border crossing, and it teleports with you.

The transition from walking to hovering takes only seconds, and you don't even have to stop. Click the "REZ" button on the HUD attachment and a Z appears at your feet and automatically attaches to your avatar.

The Z isn't quite finished yet. I have to work on the colour-changing script and touch up a couple of details. Expect it to hit the shops by the weekend.

Update: I'll have this in the Flight Shop at Abbotts Aerodrome by Saturday morning.

As you can see, I'm trying out a new look. This happens from time to time -- I get bored and look around for something that I can rip apart and redo needlessly. Take Abbotts Aerodrome, for example. I've torn it down and rebuilt it about twice a year, on average. Sometimes I just feel the need for change, to freshen things up.

I had the same look for this website since I started it in 2004. The art deco font was interesting at first, and was at the time well-matched to the kinds of products that I made -- the ornithopter, the rocket backpack, the airship. Now it's time to develop a new look. Cleaner.

The new logo is part of my redesign. Why a black-and-white square? Well, you could say that it represents the sky and the earth within the four corners of the Second Life grid. You could say that, or you could notice that it's almost the same logo that I've used for my modular building products, Noir SkyLife, which I make under the SL name of Blanc Noir. (Francophones will notice that "blanc noir" means "white black".) So basically, the logo is mostly meaningless and I'm using it only because I thought it looked nifty.

Expect to see more monochrome squares popping up wherever Terra products are sold.

After weeks of market research and longer weeks of development (I used 8 day weeks), I'm happy to announce that the leading supplier of aircraft in Second Life, Terra Aeronautics, is now entering the arena of real-world aircraft.

Our first product: the Terra Dart. The Dart is not only incredibly fuel-efficient, but it is also constructed from revolutionary fibre sheets, which keep fabrication costs extremely low. These fibre sheets can be "printed" from almost any conventional printer and recycled for later use.

Click here to get a free Terra Dart