My dear friend Wrean Mechanique, whom Where's Waldo afficiandos may have glimpsed in the background of one of my photos from yesterday's post, has just put up the inaugural entries on her new blog, What Wrean's Seen. Wrean joined Second Life about three years ago, although she's been away half of that time, but she has the perspective of someone who knows Second Life from its early days. She intends to post at least part of the time about places she finds in Second Life, a kind of virtual travelogue, which I think is a wonderful idea.

Her first real post is about something she told me the first day we met, a way of looking at parts of our Second Lives and our First Lives that has contributed quite a bit to my happiness lately. It's about bubbles ...



^^^\ Kate /^^^

You might already know that I started a Second Life portal site called Second Links, with all of the most useful Second Life links I could find. Well, I've been doing some work on that to make it more useful, and now I've added some Handy New Things.






The Second life portal at http://www.secondlinks.com/portal is the original portal page with key links for news, basic Second Life sites, fashion, building, freebies and those kinds of things, but now with the ability to show a compact version (without the descriptions, easier to get to what you want to click on if you're visiting sites you already know) and to hide any categories you'd like, permanently (or until you decide to click on the option that brings them back).

(You can also just go to http://www.secondlinks.com and it will bring up the portal and give you links to the other two pages.)



The news page at http://www.secondlinks.com/news shows the latest five headlines from each of 23 Second Life blogs or news sources, and they're always shown most recently updated first. It uses the same categories as the portal page, so you can permanently show or hide listings there, too. Glancing at the page is kind of like getting a quick answer to "what's going on with Second Life"?



The blogroll page at http://www.secondlinks.com/blogroll collects all of the Second Life blogs I could find, over 900 of them! Actually, there are about a thousand right now, but I'm slowly working through and checking each one, eliminating any that haven't been updated in a long time or aren't really blogs or whatever, so I imagine the number will go down to closer to 900 by the time I'm done.

I'd love suggestions for any of the pages! Personal blogs go on the blogroll page, and the ones with descriptions go up top. If you have a blog that's about things going on in Second Life in general and you update it regularly and it's not mainly about your life or your store or your venue or your friends, then it might be a good candidate for the news and portals page too.

Let me know if this is useful. I kept feeling like there should be sites like this, so in the end, of course, I had to run out and make them. :)

^^^\ Kate /^^^

Over the past couple of days I've noticed two places - a blog and a virtual world - where the avatar figure question is very much alive.

The creepy one is Lively. In Lively, you can either look like an extra from a Tim Burton computer animated feature about the suburbs or you can look like a somewhat-normal person with assembly-line features and arms like a starvation victim (although I have to admit, at least the waistline isn't ridiculously skinny).

I admit it, I went into Lively just because there had been so much talk about it. Here's my Lively avatar. In case you're having trouble picking me out, I'm the one without wings. Oh hold it: nobody has wings in Lively! (Who came up with that? That's a *terrible* idea!) Not that anyone could fly if they *did* have wings. But then, I haven't even figured out how to walk in Lively, or even if it's possible.



Anyway, apart from the beautiful top they let me choose (Lively does get one gold star for that...and how did they know I wanted green? Did they purposely match my eyes?), Lively is not on my must-try-again list, and that's partly (Kate said, finally getting back on the subject) because of those freakish limbs. Oh, and you don't get to choose not to have the exaggerated body shapes they use, either. Boy oh boy, have sliders spoiled me.

The other avatar figure-related discovery was a much brighter one. I came across the blog of a resi whose picture I had seen, but whose name I didn't know: Rosie Barthelmess. Her avatar is beautiful! And very full-figured.



After seeing her blog and pictures, I had to ask myself why I never made another shape for myself that was much more full-figured. It wouldn't convey what I look like in First Life, but it would definitely help contribute to making larger avatars a little more present (and maybe accepted) in Second Life, which in turn might help people think about weight in a happier way.

So why wasn't I trying it? Oh, I could excuse myself from considering it and say it was too much of a change to the avatar whose shape I barely modify (although I do change my shape a little for a better fit with both my Japanese and black avatars, and my faerie avatar is more faerie-shaped than I am). That's a reason I don't spend any time as a furry, for instance. But really I think it's much simpler, and more embarrassing: I want people to admire me. I don't mean that I want people to write me love letters and give me prizes and shower me with compliments, but I like to feel that I'm impressing people with my grace and elegance and beauty (this is why I've always felt like turning and running the other way from events where people wear their worst hair, or their newbie clothes), and apparently I don't have the chutzpah to try to do that with a heavier shape. I'm definitely not interested in an underweight or starved avatar, so that's good, but apparently I won't go the other way, either.

Well, fortunately I have other issues that I work with in other ways, and I don't feel like it's important to me to have a heavier avatar. But who else besides Rosie is up to that challenge? Anyone want to dare themselves? And let me know what you find out?

^^^\ Kate /^^^

And now a brief post about why New World Notes is so entertaining.



Frankly I'd be surprised if anyone who reads my blog doesn't already know about New World Notes, but just in case, I'll say that it's a very well-written, information-rich, news-and-trends blog by Hamlet Au, with contributions from other clever people such as Iris Ophelia for fashion and Charlanna Beresford for events (Charlanna, by the way, is a truly delightful person. I mention this so that I get credit for knowing her).

Anyway, New World Notes is insightful and informative, but it's also freaky. This is something I love about Second Life: I can go out searching for mermaid clubs, I can complain about there not being enough flying dances, I can tell people the story of the time I was griefed into bondage gear in a freefall ... and we can see pictures like "Carp" by Ashanti (this stolen from New World Notes):



I'm curious whether those carp were caught in Jen Shikami and Seven Shikami's wildly popular Seven Seas Fishing game. (Jen and Seven are also delightful in person. Is this some kind of trend among Second Life movers and shakers?)

NWN is also a source of wonderfully bizarre sentences, some expressing the weirdness of living in a virtual world and some just clever. :) For instance:

This time, the part of Shawn Fanning is played in part by a tiny pink cat, while everyone else in the world gets to be Metallica.

(from http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2006/11/second_life_clo.html)

and

Is a Japanese company selling live kittens for Linden Dollars?

(from http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2008/06/kittens-for-lin.html)

and finally, from today's entry:

All I can hazard is that it featured this seasoned dancer and took place in this Shibuya bar, which is also a hangout for this Japanese-based SL musician, who reports on his blog that this former CEO of a San Francisco-based virtual world company was recently spotted scribbling his name on the bathroom door there.  No, really.

^^^\ Kate /^^^