Cafe Bucky

I recently marked 3 years in SecondLife, and have also been spending time using OpenSim.  I think OpenSim is the virtual world equivalent of Apache, and I think it’s going to catch on in a big way …

Backing up a bit …

So, OpenSim could be seen as an Open Source implementation of SecondLife.  But It’s more than that.  It is a platform for creating your own virtual worlds.  It’s a 3D environment where the users create content, can meet each other, and interact in real time from anywhere in the world.

Oh oh .. blank stares …  Some from tech people in the audience who think they are all done learning ;)

I recently had three encounters with a couple of friends and a recruiter, and each had the same sort of skeptical look or response to the idea of SecondLife and Virtual Worlds.  Pretty much 3 in 24 hours …

If SecondLife is off the radar for many in the tech world, OpenSim is farther still.

So let’s meander along.  I’ll explain.  I’m good at this.  I’ve been on the web since 1993, and in Virtual Worlds (VW) for three years.  Relax, this will be fun. Get your popcorn.  Keep your frikken butter off my sofa! Sheesh… some people …

In 1993 and 1994, the web was still way off the radar screen for most people.  I was at Autodesk, and I can say most managers there Simply Did Not Get The Web.  I went on to AOL to work on AOL.Com.  I made and lost a fortune, but that is not today’s topic.

So I am used to the blank stare thing.  Y’all will get the Virtual World thing… eventually.

Enter SecondLife and OpenSim.  SecondLife is a great VW platform.  It’s controlled by one company, and the server side of it is proprietary.  A few of the strong points of SecondLife are:

• immersive 3D environment
• user created content
• an economy
• great place to have meetings and trainings
• it is what you make of it
• strong creative and educational community

The client side of SecondLife is a viewer you run on your computer that gets you into the immersive 3D environment …

… and it so happens that the viewer (and its derivatives) work fine with OpenSim servers.

.. Where can an OpenSim server run?  On your Windows, Mac, or Linux machine.  Yes, you can have a self-contained virtual world on your laptop.  This is fine for some.  They’ll run a server, tell their friends how to connect, and that’s that.  Just like a private web site but in 3D.

Where it gets really interesting is to survey the publicly available grids out there (collections of one or more OpenSim instances), and to realize that companies and organizations can have their own private ones.

1994.  Apache.  Web.
2009.  OpenSim. Virtual World.

I’ve thrashed through some of the basics.  You can go to SecondLife.com and Opensimulator.org sites to get more background.

OpenSim is becoming to Virtual Worlds what Apache has been to the web.  It’s Open Source, there are brilliant people from all over the world contributing to it (echoing the development model of Linux, Apache, PHP, Perl, and some other high profile successes).

And we are at 1994 all over again.  OpenSim is at version 0.6.4, which means it is 64% of the way towards implementing the functionality found in the SecondLife server.  It looks as if it could reach 100% parity by the end of 2009.  There are already many organizations getting real results from their initial explorations (such as IBM), conducting meetings and trainings, or using a virtual space as a museum (ReactionGrid.com is recreating the 1939 Worlds Fair).

Do you think I mention meetings and trainings too easily?  Would I really do that?  Of course not.  Amada Linden did a good writeup entitled “Working in the Virtual World“.  Amanda says:

“I believe that the only good alternative to virtual meetings is a face-to-face meeting. It would be a hard to argue the teleconference calls or WebEx can create as immersive an experience”

If you want to drill deeper, see Caleb Booker’s post: Why Webcams Fail

I had known about OpenSim last year, but dismissed it as too early.  The wake up call for me was an article “OpenSimulator: The Choice for 2010” by Gwyneth Llewelyn.  She analyzed the state of OpenSim very well, but more importantly, she has a great handle on what it is going to take to succeed as a VW platform.  It got me thinking, and together with my partner Kim, we started checking it out.

Without going into 20 reasons why we personally love it, I will just paint with some broad strokes:

• SecondLife provides a great reference example
• the OpenSim developers are very capable, and there are organizations such as IBM committing real resources to the effort
• the developers of OpenSim do not feel constrained by the Linden Lab efforts
• there have already been very real advances in the OpenSim platform that cant be found in SecondLife, such as scripting at the region level, integration with skype, dynamic text on prims, arbitrary images on prims from URLs, and HyperGrid (teleport from one grid to another)

In a nutshell, OpenSim is evolving into the sort of effort we have previously seen with Linux and Apache.  A very real community is forming, and there’s even some tutorial material out there …

It’s 1994 all over again, and it makes me smile.

“Dark To Light”

– dedicated with much love to my wonderful wife, Kim

It was an echo back
and far away
along the shore
a distant day
cloud night and rain and slush
moved in
kicking hope out to the curb

It was a rock and stone
and wall
that formed
surrounded me, and did
adorn
gargoyled expression
confused disposition
a soul of joy
turned apparition

It was horizon and sun
off in the distance
with light and a warmth
on in this instance
a glow and a hope
and peek of
a future
that would dawn
with some patience
and some care
and some sense

So as I wondered
and worried and sat
was given to ponder
I asked hope to come back
to cease with its wander

For I knew that
a light in my face
and my walk
would press back
on that wall, and that stone
and that rock

It was a room and a lady
then another, now two
That second turned only
her glowing imbued
her stance and her charm
and her heart made me see
her mind and her wit
such gear of precision
my wandered apparition
would have to depart
replaced in hearts space
with hope and a start

It was light and trees
and grassy warm fields
waters and rainbows
sweet bountiful yields
lips of such heat
and exchanged emotion
my wander supplanted
with heartfelt devotion

For I knew that
her light in my face
became joy in my walk
the charm of her key
is happiness unlocked

It was us and our path
that went forth
and explored
we built and we kissed
and a time or two
did not see eye
to eye
and we cried
but rejoined for more
caroused and grew bonds
hand in hand in days shine
caress in nights long

It is this time and hour
and all the rest to follow
where walls turn to flower
I vanquished the wallow
her hand and mine
encircled fingers
we stride happy pace
and look at our photos
our memories to make
wrapped in albums
bowed with lace

The countryside beckons.  Worn out roads need their picture taken.  They aim to put on asphalt makeup and cover their bots dots for a “Roadway Pinup Monthly” centerfold (daring Cornwall cliffs shed retaining walls, show you all!).  I aim to see a few roads.

I love to travel, and so have been mulling over dastardly plans on how to do that and get paid.  Snicker not, kind reader, for I am armed with a skill or two!  I shall Dance In The Country! Techstyle!

Perched in the midst of Getaway Central, Somewhere in Europe.  Perhaps I am in Tuscany.  Go with it, y’all…   Some people cant make it that far, ya know.  They have boring jobs and soccer brats and mortgages and neighbors with habits that scare them slightly and one too many frikken meetings to go to this week, and, yep, looks like the next one after that.  Their life is living them.

However, some people love to live vicariously….  We’re not just talking about the Peeping Toms and Tanyas…

And therein lies the country wheat germ of a hint of an idea.  Somewhere in this post I will spell it out, but I am going to my damnedest not to crystalize it in one sentence.  This is a post about the country, where paths meander.

Back to Tom and Tanya and their Peepers…

Would they watch an irreverent slidecast that shows the beauty of Dancing In The Country?  Which country?  Which part of the country? Well, send me money and I’ll alter my travel plans!  I sense that there is an opportunity to cater to the wannabe traveler.  Ok, well a subset of them.  I aim to displease those who would look down their nose at anything less than a high minded exhaustive treatise done by thee Almighty BBC.  Think of David Letterman and Monty Python pulling into town in a noisy oil smoking 1969 VW Bug with a grinding clutch and rusted shirt hanger antenna. Whoa there, move it, we have weak brakes!  Park, grab camera, some cafe coin for coffee, cheerful attitude, and a hankering to satisfy the insatiable desire of Jonathan Livingston Armchair Traveler Seagull.

I love to write and photo and video.  I also enjoy talking to the locals and getting the sense of things.  As it turns out, I’ve been doing this sort of thing in Second Life for the last 2 1/2 years.  Yeah, and the experience surely does spill over to the Real World.  Something about SL has made it much more comfy to strike up conversations with strangers.  Amazingly, most of them do not recoil in horror when I do this.  Could be all of the free Lindens I give em.

So the threads are  .. travel, take in the gist, write and photo it, and …

Omg.. is he going to talk about yet another fucking Social Networking Website?  Bucky!  How could you?  It’s almost 2009 you big smelly gorilla!

Now hang on there pardner.  We have the advantage of history.  We know what doesn’t work (like Sarah Palin applying for Mensa), and we know the world economy is on brink of collapse.  What a great time of opportunity!  Nobody can afford to travel, so we’ll do it for them!  We’ll mash it up on a web site with commentary, supplement with local feeds, point to Amazon Associates items that actually talk about the locale in question, and laugh all the way to the credit union.

So that is the thought .. how to mash up skills and local feeds, and turn the situation of traveling into a self sustaining gig.  It would be a side project.. a weekend here and there to start.  The two keys would be the power of the mashup info (content from elsewhere), and the irreverent look at things (local discontent :)

And that is the Dance in the Country.  Cha cha cha.

Am thrilled that Colin Powell endorsed Obama!

I would love to see Colin reprise his role as Secretary of State.

So I am in my fave chinese lunch spot, Jennie Lows, laughing to the point of tears at my David Sedaris book between bites of Mongolian Beef, trying not to spit up my Tsing Tao …

My cookie comes with the check.  For just once, I want to see “Today you do not have to pay!”.  Wouldn’t that be a hoot?  I would do a victory lap around the joint, waving my precious slip of paper like Mr. Bean with a First Class Ticket.  They’d give me a key to the city and a massage.

But my fortune was altogether different, and very, very, wrong …

“For better luck you have to wait till spring”

I blinked.  Wait, someone got paid to write that?

“For better luck you have to wait till spring”

It was real.  WTF! …  It’s not even October!  Maybe they meant when Spring comes in Australia, but I checked with my friends there and it’s still cold.

It couldn’t be serious, right?  Someone bored in Fortune Central?  Perhaps this could have been worse.  They may have had extensive editorial meetings on this one:

(boss) Jenkins!  What da ya got today!

(jenkins) Well…. How about “You may as well give up till the groundhog says so” ??

(boss) Ohhhh.. no we cant use that, we’d be liable if someone got upset and choked to death on their egg roll

(cathy interjects) How about: “Your blood will run cold till the leaves turn green” ??

(boss furrows brow) Noo.. too Gothic.  And the Red Cross wouldn’t like it either

(jenkins) “Oh! I know!  — “For better luck you have to wait till spring”

(all)  Oohhhhh yesssss!!

(peterman, the wise sage in the corner)  Yes!  It gives a ray of hope but does not really promise a thing!

(all) Ha ha ha ha!

Adam Kimmel presents: Claremont HD from adam kimmel on Vimeo.

If you have done downhill runs, you will know.  FF to 2:30 if you want to get to the run itself.

Closest I have come to this level (which is, not very!) is Mirror Lake, Yosemite.

This is the real deal — gives me the muscle memory twitches :)

Do not attempt!

Daniel

I am staying offline tomorrow, Saturday August 30th.

Why?

To switch gears a bit. Think of the last 20 years, and all of the change that has snuck up on us:

• cell phones
• blogs / facebook / myspace / linked in
• web
• twitter
• IMs
• email

It’s amazing when you think back to the 80’s.  In terms of communication, and the sense of being ‘always on’, they seem almost tranquil by compare…  It will be good to stop for a moment and reflect a bit.

So I will do my best to play hooky from the online world tomorrow.  One of the best parts is that I wont be checking online to see if anyone joins me.  It is a switch off day.  I’ll apologize on Sunday :)