I have been hearing a lot about Second Life lately. Basically, it’s a virtual world where you can be anyone and do anything you want. You can buy land, build a home, open a business, design clothing, hair styles, jewelery, vehicles, and all kinds of other things. It’s becoming quite a phenomenon because its Linden dollar currency (L$) has an actual exchange rate with US dollars, so tons of real money is getting converted into virtual money to be spent in the game. Not only that, but if you make money by creating goods or providing services in the game, you can exchange your Linden dollars back into US dollars. I heard an interview on the radio with a guy who was making USD $8000/month for a few months making animations for the avatars that represent people in the game. Other people are making good money from selling houses and fancy clothing.

I decided to give it a try. It’s pretty overwhelming at first. There’s a walk-through to get you used to some of the controls, and to teach you to modify how your avatar looks and dresses. It also teaches you some of the basics of building and manipulating objects. They give you a bit of money to start you out too.

I found that I wasn’t comfortable unless my avatar sort of looked like me. Well, kind of like me but slightly taller. Better looking too. He also has cooler clothes. Ok. So maybe he doesn’t look like me. After a while, I started wanting to find some way of making money. I experimented with “camping chairs” in the casinos. Basically they pay you about $2 every 15 minutes to sit in these chairs, surrounded by casino machines. I guess they hope you’ll spend more than that gambling because you’re bored sitting in these chairs. It worked for me. Even though I only sat in the camping chairs while I had other work to do on the computer and could just let SL run minimized in the background, I found myself going back to stare at it. Eventually the lure of the slot machines would get to me. The camping chairs turned out to be money losers for me.

I also had a short-lived career as a dancer. Dance clubs will pay about the same as camping chairs for you to dance in their club. I guess this gets people to come to the club and play their gambling machines too. I gave up on the dancing pretty quickly though, mainly because it’s not fun. Well, it’s more fun than camping chairs, but you would expect camping chairs to be boring. It’s just that it’s unexpectedly boring to sit there and watch yourself dancing. There’s a wide gulf between expected and unexpected boredom.

This left me with turning to my only talent for generating revenue: photography. You can actually be a photographer in the game, taking pictures of other people, and Photoshopping them to perfection, just like in real life. You can buy lighting equipment and backdrops, and special poses for your subjects. This didn’t seem to appealing to me though. Although it’s called photography in the game, it just isn’t. I decided instead to sell some of my real photographs in the game. I spent some time figuring out how to upload my photos, create some photo frames, and stick the photos onto the frames. Then I wrote a little script to attach to the frame so that when people clicked on it, they’d get a note with information about the photo and a link to my website. Might as well get some advertising too.

I found a little gallery owned by a guy whose SL name is Esch Snoats. That’s him in the crazy pants. His rent was very reasonable… L$8 per month per photo, and he takes no commissions. I wish real galleries were that generous. He was also very helpful in making space for my photos on the wall. The picture in the middle shows “me” standing beside the three photos I’ve uploaded so far.

Anyway, the game is quite interesting. There’s no real point to it, but it’s still fun to wander around, checking out some of the amazing things people have created. I don’t think there’s any danger of it replacing my real life, because I like my real life quite a lot. However, I can see that some people would find it easy to become immersed in Second Life and not want to come out.

I had an interesting experience today. I went to a client’s office to do some work on one of their computers, and walked into a conversation between two women who work there. They mentioned how convenient it was that I showed up there at that time. One woman’s son had been hired to clean up around the building, and had found a computer behind the building. It seemed like a fairly new machine, so it was strange that it was just sitting there. It was also a Dell system, and that office doesn’t buy Dell (thanks to me) so they were mystified as to its origin. However, they couldn’t get into it because it was password-protected. The son had opened the machine up and decided he would take out the memory and other parts if they couldn’t get past the password.

Anyway, to make a long story short, I reset the Administrator password, and logged into the computer. It was set up to log into a corporate file server, so there weren’t a lot of identifying files. However, I was able to find their UPS shipping software, and got the contact information for the company and user who owned the computer. The women agreed with me that they should call and find out if this machine was missing. It turns out that the company that owned it had had a break-in at 4AM on Monday morning. The computer was stolen. They were relieved that we had recovered it, and would be picking it up later today. The son was disappointed that he wasn’t going to get a free computer upgrade, but decided that he had done his good deed for the day.
It was cool to find myself on the other side of the lost property equation, after having benefited a couple of times in the past few months from someone who did the right thing. I’m glad I could help someone else feel the same kind of relief that I felt when my stuff was returned.

I’m a little disappointed to learn today that Adobe has bought the RAW processing technology assets from Pixmantec. That means that you won’t be able to buy Raw Shooter Premium any more, and the free program Raw Shooter Essentials won’t be available after Adobe’s Lightroom comes out.

I haven’t used Raw Shooter Premium much, but it was nice to have it around. It was inexpensive, often on sale for $99 compared to several hundred for any of the competing products. Not only that, but the results were good and the workflow was fast and easy. I like it far more than both Bibble and Adobe’s Camera Raw plugin for Photoshop CS2.

Raw Shooter Premium’s technology will be rolled into Adobe Lightroom, whenever it comes out. I’m sure Lightroom is going to sell for much more than $99. It seems strange to me that Adobe would be making this purchase so late in the development of Lightroom. They’ve already released a public beta version of Lightroom for the Mac, and they’ve had their own raw processing software for years. I really wonder how much effort they will put into using Pixmantec’s technology in a product that’s probably pretty close to market already. I think the reason for the purchase was mainly to snuff out a competitor.

Even worse is the fact that Raw Shooter Essentials is going to disappear from the landscape. It’s been an amazing free tool for years, and a perfect introduction to RAW file processing for beginners. Not only that, it was good enough to satisfy most photographers in the long run. I reviewed Raw Shooter Essentials a while ago, and liked the program quite a lot.
I guess in the end, Pixmantec wasn’t making enough money to turn down an offer from Adobe. It’s just a shame to lose these feisty, upstart competitors.

I’m a shame to artsy people everywhere. I’ve returned to my old habits of cheering for the Blue Jays. It’s been a long time since the Blue Jays organization has fielded a team worth watching, but this year’s team is really good. I guess I do remember enough about baseball to appreciate that. Anyway, I am finding that I watch entire games now, from the opening pitch until the final out. I think the only time in my life that I enjoyed watching baseball more was when I was involved in an online baseball pool with my friends. Nothing like putting bragging rights on the line to motivate us.

But, the shame doesn’t stop there! I am also fully involved in watching the Stanley Cup Finals! The damn Edmonton Oilers are putting on such a show of heart and teamwork, even after losing the goalie that carried them all the way there! I was cheering and yelling at the TV too. Oh no.

My shame is completed by the fact that I’m enjoying FIFA World Cup soccer. I’m not cheering for anyone in particular, but seeing all of these different countries and cultures meeting to play a common game is really inspirational. I also find it cool how slow a game can seem for two hours until there’s a sudden flurry of action and someone scores a goal. I also find the rolling-around-on-the-grass-clutching-wounded-knees-after-being-touched-lightly-by-an-opposing-player hilarious. In today’s match I saw a French and a Korean player both leap for the ball at once. The French player’s knee bashed into the side of the Korean’s head. Both players went down. The French guy was clutching his knee in agony. They brought out the stretcher in case he was incapacitated an incapable of walking. Not surprisingly, he was perfectly fine within minutes. Unfortunately, the Korean had to leave the game with a concussion. I don’t think he was faking it. There should be some Academy Awards presented at the end of the tournament.

Maybe tomorrow I’ll go out and search for a hat with cup holders attached, and straws leading to my mouth. I’ll also pick up a giant sponge hand with the index finger pointing up, and text that says, “We’re #1!” on it, paint my face with a Blue Jays logo, and stick Vernon Wells bobble head doll to the dashboard of my car. Ok. Maybe not. But, I’ll definitely be watching the Oilers battle the Hurricanes in game seven on Monday night! Let’s go Oilers, let’s go!

For no reason at all, the word Australopithecus keeps popping into my head. I didn’t really know what an Australopithecus was, but it didn’t stop it from invading my head. I googled it, and found out that it’s a family of upright-walking primates that may be our evolutionary ancestors. They lived in East and South Africa around 4 million years ago.  I wonder why I kept thinking that word?