*crickets*

No, really, go ahead.

*crickets*

Doh.

So I killed Cubey. First I killed Twitter Cubey who had only a modest 200 followers. But Cubey wasn’t dead yet. His persona lurked elsewhere. So next, I killed Facebook Cubey, an avatar with a list of several hundred “friends” that he’d never spoken to, let alone actually befriended.

Those were just outposts, however. I turned my eye to Cubey Terra, the Second Life oldbie. If I was serious about it, I’d wipe Abbotts and cancel my account. Even zombie Cubey can’t come back from that.

My finger hovered over the kill button, but I couldn’t do it. I may not be Cubey, but in the end I want to keep him around. I’ll probably even let him make more stuff in Second Life. So Cubey gets a reprieve for now.

When I think about this more, I have changed my Facebook and Twitter name to match my real name, but are those avatars any more real than Cubey? I am not Facebook Steve or Twitter Steve either. Maybe it was all a misguided attempt at “keeping it real”, and my assassination attempt was futile.

So that’s my confession. I killed two Cubeys. And he’s still alive and well.

It seems to me that my inventory list is like an archeological record of my years in SL. It’s sorted chronologically, where it’s sorted at all, and so as I browse down the list of nearly twenty thousand accumulated items, it’s like excavating deeper into my past.

The oldest objects in the oldest folders reveal a record of how I spent my first couple of months. There’s my Star Trek folder, where I made Kirk-era Starfleet uniforms, a working phaser, and a tricorder that makes a tricordery sound, but doesn’t actually scan. About as old is my folder full of noobish avatars that I created for Jeff Linden’s “Avatar of the Week” contest. Yes, there was a time when various Lindens actually organized and conducted events at places like the former Stage 4 in what’s now the Ahern/Dore Welcome Area. The Lindens quickly realized that approach wasn’t scaleable, so they started paying regular residents to take that task.

That’s why, near my “Star Trek” folder, I have a folder full of stages, lighting, and props that I used for my own events. A couple of months in, I built a theatre and began my “Bad Poetry Contests”. Yes, oldbies, I still have your bad poetry on file. I’ll pull out selected verses to embarrass people another time.

After I tired of the poetry slams, my inventory began to fill with something new. Hoverpods — hovering, sleek vehicles that hugged the terrain — like my “Squiddy” hoverpod. They aren’t my oldest vehicles, certainly, but they were the first ones to use actual SL vehicle physics, which hadn’t been available previously.

Besides the vehicles, theatre parts, and assorted newbie builds, artifacts from that era are mostly run-of-the-mill objects that anyone with any sense would have deleted long ago to recycle their bits for better uses. I see the Linden beach ball and party hat, which were once party toys, but since have been made into symbols of replicator objects, though these are the originals. I have the parrot, of course, and the hand lamp.

They represent a simpler time when user numbers were so small that it was possible to recognize everyone’s name. You could log in and create a random build in the Morris sandbox and think that it was worth keeping, like my giant meat grinder full of pink flamingos, zebras, and parrots. (The reknowned SL sculptor, Starax, in his Morris-dwelling days, encouraged me to do that one.)

Things changed, of course. Objects became productized, as they say in business, and our Linden dollar balance became worth more than just a ranking in the “Richest Avatar” list. Was it then that SL transformed from a casually creative community of artists and geeks into an economy? When did we mutate from hobbyists into part-time businesses?

When I dig down to the foundational layers of my inventory, I need to ask if something fundamental to the wonder of Second Life has been buried under the escalating efforts of creators-turned-businesspeople. For newbies now, their folders fill not with their own creations, but with polished, professional-looking products — the work of full-time content creators. The barrier to creating something new and unique — something that truly stands out — has become almost insurmountably high. The new user is now faced with over seven years of accumulated products that have evolved from clumsy primitives to refined sculptures.

Somewhere in Second Life, however, is still that spark of creativity. For example, every weekend, Pirate Air goes for a weekend group flight. They pick a destination and fly across the map en masse. Maybe the next level of creativity won’t be from filling inventory folders with objects, but from creating experiences like the group flights. Or Squeebee’s Mystery Science Theatre events. Or the snail races. Or live musical performances. Or countless other events that happen daily. I’ve been in SL seven years, but I guess I’ll have to stick around longer to see where Second Life will end up.

Now I’ll close the archeological record again until next year, except maybe to pull out the occasional exploding penguin. Best newbie build ever.

Thanks!

<br />Your browser doesn’t support HTML iframes. You will not be able to see the Wired Celebrity Meter. Please try with a different browser.<br />

I scored a measily 7… whatever that means. Anyway, I guess I’ll have to work harder at becoming Internet famous. Time to release that viral video of me dancing with a hamster with a lightsaber. Or something.

panthar: I love when blogsandthings take little quotes out of context.

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.

I start my day having completely forgotten about the planned downtime. I go to my kitchen, brew a pot of coffee, and plan my morning’s work in my head. The beans are hand-roasted by a guy in Steveston BC, and are quite delicious. Much better than that Terrabucks swill. Steaming mug in hand, I sit down at my computer and log in.

After my seventh or eighth login attempt, the reality sinks in. SL is down. And that’s when I start knocking my head against the monitor. Not hard — just enough to make a good “bong” sound that kind of resonates a little. I think the precise note this produces is G sharp.

So after a good fifteen minutes of G sharp, there’s considerable blood on the monitor, since that’s the nature of head wounds. Though gory, it gives me a medium in which I can work. I’ll spend a while finger-painting red airplanes on red runways, with little red workers in red jumpsuits driving red fuel trucks. This blessed reprieve from withdrawal is shortlived, however, since the blood clots and dries within minutes.

It’s important, when deprived of Second Life, to distract yourself. Clicking Belaya’s horrifying links in IRC works for only a short time, and pushing coins up your nose yields few positive results beyond a surprising ability to pick up radio broadcasts.

The best distraction that I’ve found is to strip naked, sit on the window sill, and scream the theme song to “Farscape” There are lots of good screamy bits in that one.

As an aside, if your neighbours object to the presence of a bloodied, screaming, naked person, you may wish to try the backup distraction, which requires a bottle of Vietnamese vodka, a toilet plunger, and two live ducks. Contact me for details.

By the time the police are done with me, it’s around noon and Second Life is back online.

What do you do during SL downtimes?

Cubicle Dweller was a blog that I wrote from the perspective of an office cubicle. While it’s not necessarily about office life — in fact, it’s most often about anything but the office — it reflects how I viewed the world as a drone writing user manuals for a software company. I wrote Cubicle Dweller obsessively for years, but eventually lost steam when Second Life took hold of my imagination… and all of my free time.

If you’re in a reading mood, please feel free to browse the archived Cubicle Dweller entries. Links are at the side. Or, if you prefer hard copy, please do order Cubicle Dweller in softcover book form: “Raised by Penguins“.