Without Sex, Second Life is Nothing!

I know this subject has been covered before, but I am compelled to add my two cents.

Without sex, there would be no SL. No Linden Lab. No users.

Get more info here.

Don't start with the cloning, either.

Linden Lab Closes First Land Program

Due to rampant profiteering on First Land and the fact that the program is not functioning to provide the benefit it was originally intended to, The Lab has decided to shutter the program.

The program was intended, according to Linden Lab, to encourage land ownership by Premium members. While it could be argued that the land flip was a valuable resource for new land owners taking advantage of the program, it was also clear that SLers were gaining through the First Land program in ways that had not been intended by The Lab. Though the practice of using alternate accounts to turn a profit on the First Land was surely expected, the sheer volume of accounts and skyrocketing land prices finally forced Linden Lab's hand.

The announcement also mentions that LL hopes that increased supply will cause market forces to drive the price of mainland down over time.

Carbon Capture Concept

According to the BBC news site, geo-physicist Professor Klaus Lackner is floating an idea for an artificial tree that would leech carbon dioxide out of the environment.

Lackner's contraption would ape the behavior of actual trees by having "leaves" pull out CO2 from the air as it passes over them. In essence, the CO2, when coming into contact with sodium hydroxide, is absorbed, resulting in a sodium carbonate liquid.

While an intriguing possibility, Lackner admits that it would be a stopgap measure. The Prof's vision would be that each of thousands of the devices would extract 90,000 tons of C02 from the atmosphere every year. According to the BBC article, the yearly production of one of the "trees" would be roughly equivalent to the emissions of 20,000 cars.

The proposed storage method (extracting the gas and pumping it deep underground, where the temperature renders the gas denser than water) leaves a little to be desired, but Lackner has come up with an idea to ponder.

An SL Saturday Morning

It was early Saturday morning and I was looking for a bit of SL fun before digging into weekend work (the horrah!). I ended up going back to an old favorite. In recent SL times, vehicles have not been a part of my daily experience. There was a time when I spent much of my time cruising about, crossing the SL continents in all manner of vehicles. Due to various SL issues, I haven't bothered of late.

I took the opportunity Saturday to see whether I could make a go of it. Abbott's Aerodrome seemed like just the spot to rekindle my passion.

Things lurched out to a rather sorry start when a local flimflam man accosted me mid-purchase to offer me "a better deal". He wasn't taking the hint that I wouldn't be buying from anyone but Cubey Terra. Regardless, the situation was eventually resolved.

I followed up the nonsense by taking a ride on the baggage claim and then over to the Abbott's Loop Airship Tour. Things were, technically speaking, going fairly well.



















































Following the Airship tour, I went down to the docks to look at the submarines on display and was really fond of the work done on the Linerunner, seen below (retro Vendetta shirt availabe at Nocturnal Threads in the Pimushe sim).






























I was inspired to go pickup the available airship (which, I actually had been going to purchase at the outset, before I was interrupted), and ended up also grabbing a submarine and a biplane. What followed was in many typical, but also fairly entertaining.

I trudged on over to one of the Linden vehicle sandboxes (Georgean) and was, of course, unable to rez anything. I tried two more before finding a vehicle sandbox that would cooperate. I ended up having to rez my Terra Dolphin Submersible (TDS) on one sim and dragging it to the water in another sandbox. Despite the hiccups, I was able to pilot the TDS smoothly in the available sandbox waterway.


You have to admit, the submersible looks pretty spiffy.













It was good to see a decent number of people making use of the vehicle sandboxes. It had been a while for me and it brought back memories. Just standing aside and watching planes, boats and cars tooling all around brought a smile.


I caught a snapshot of akhenatan Grommet driving by in this beauty.













The culmination of my morning jaunt was an extended flight in my newly purchased AircoDH.2 from Cubey Terra (a "high-prim flyable combat aircraft"). This WW1-era, replica biplane is a nice looking machine. New in box, the AircoDH.2 comes with the craft, the HUD controller, an unscripted display model, a ground shadow (for use with display), a 500 round gun magazine, and fuel can.

The easy to follow instructions detail the use of the HUD to rez the plane, fire up the engine and get flying. There is a full explanation of how to refuel (the plane will run up to 15 minutes on one fuel can), monitor the engine temp and use the combat system.

Also provided is a brief historical note recording the plane:

HISTORICAL NOTES
------------

The Airco DH.2 was a British combat aircraft introduced in 1915. Designed by Geoffrey de Havilland for the Aircraft Manufacturing Company (Airco), this "pusher" biplane helped the Royal Flying Corps repel the agile and capable German Fokker airplanes, known to British pilots as the "Fokker scourge".

Because the British had not yet developed the interrupter gear that allowed guns to fire between spinning propeller blades, aircraft with front-mounted engines had to position the guns awkwardly above the pilot, lest pilots shoot off their own propellers. The rear engine placement of the DH.2 allowed a Lewis gun to be mounted directly in front of the pilot.

The DH.2 remained in service until 1918.

Seats: 1
Engine: 100 hp, 7 cylinder Gnome Monosoupape
Wing Span: 28 ft 3 in
Length: 25 ft 6 in
Armament: .303 (7.7 mm) Lewis gun using 47-round drum magazines

------------
References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airco
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/FWWairco.htm
http://www.answers.com/topic/airco-dh-2

Some quick and dirty snapshots of me in action.....right before I tried a few too many sim crossings and managed a wicked crash in Nexus Prime.












































Check out Cubey Terra's website for more info on vehicles and the trials of using them in SL.

Feb 7th SL Music Scene

Last week, I spent an evening hitting a few of the live music venues. My first foray for the evening took me to the Oyster Bay Aquarium (Oyster 22,221.22) for a 7 pm (SL) show. To begin, I was cordially greeted upon teleporting to the show. Manager, Cyanide Seelowe, and owner, Morris Vig casually pointed me in the right direction, which was straight ahead and down..to the ocean floor. Fully detailed as such, complete with fish and a resident shark, the Oyster Bay Aquarium took beautiful advantage of the freedom of SL. The musician, Komuso Tokugawa, lived up to the live blues billing. I enjoyed his take on the blues, including some great guitar/harmonica blends.

















Immediately following, I took myself over to Terrapin Station (DarkStar 221, 47, 27) after a notification from the Further Tribe group and host Starling Glitterbuck. SL musician, Willy Delec, was going to be playing some laid back tunes in the amphitheater. Willy was in top form and played a range of covers, including Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Steven Stills, Foo Fighters, Dylan....the list goes on. There was a decent crowd and there were no performance issues on my end. Delec played well beyond the schedulted hour and sounded like he was enjoying every minute of it. The crowd certainly was.

Anthony Bourdain guest blogs at ruhlman.com

Anthony Bourdain gives us his thoughts on the Old Guard of the Food Network and a few choice bits on the New Crew. Well-written, sharp and witty. He's also on target, as far as I'm concerned.

What the hell are you waiting for? Go read it. I can't say it any better than he can, so I won't bother rehashing it here.

Music at Peg Leg

Couple pics of Cylindrian and Juel from January 29th show in the Vampire Empire sim. Very entertaining.