My Introduction and Second Life Experience

You can call me JohnnyRS because that is my name in Second Life. I’ve been a programmer ever since I touched my first computer, Sinclair ZX80. In the 90’s I checked up on some chat programs and some virtual reality places. Most of them were just too slow and confusing.

I’m not a big socializer so I tend to play games that I can play by myself or with my nephew. I’ve always wanted to find some place that had a mixture of chatting, games and creating stuff. When TD Goodliffe introduced Second Life to me I wasn’t that interested. I went there to listen to his radio show and that’s about it. I know I can get addicted to this sort of stuff very fast and didn’t want to affect my real life work. It’s been more than a month since I first signed up and figured I’ll try to figure out how to use it.

I found a group for newbies called “New Citizens Incorporated“, which has a lot of helpful information and free stuff to get. Saw some events from TeaZers, where they have classes for beginners to advanced users. All of this started me off and I wanted to start creating things, but first I want to give myself a makeover! This is where I got confused and found almost no help. I wanted to take a photo picture of myself and make a skin. I downloaded the face template provided from the second life website. Played around with stretching and smearing the photo onto the template. Looked good to me but when I went to upload the image, it was uploaded as a texture. My question is how can I actually make a skin? Looked everywhere for any tutorials and haven’t found an answer. So what I did was use the image I made and used it as a Head Tattoo. It doesn’t look like me at all. Well here is a picture of what I look like now. If anyone has the answer to this I’d be so happy.

I was looking for some events and found a showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”, one of my favorite movies to experience. I remembered going to a show with some friends in real life and I had lot of fun! So I made plans to attend this event on Saturday night. A friend was visiting me that day in real life so we both watched it and I took out some audience participation scripts I printed out many years ago so we can have some fun. For the first full movie I seen at second life I was very impressed. The movie was broken up into 3 parts. The movie was played inside a theatre so it really made it feel I was going to see the movie for real! In the middle of the theatre there were props to pick up. For the first two parts I moved the camera close so I can see it clearly on my screen. For the last part I watched what was happening with everyone else. People were throwing their props out and some stage performances were happening in the middle of the stage just like a real RHPS experience. I have to say I really enjoyed myself. Here is a snapshot I took of myself enjoying the movie.

I did find some other stuff to do in second life which were interesting. Found slots all over the place. Played with them for awhile but I think the most interesting thing were the small games. I tried Tringo out for awhile and found it a very addictive game. I need to check out more games and fun events to attent. I’ll post later about any interesting happenings. I am not ready to do any scripting yet. The only scripting I have done is at the beginner classes where they provide some scripts to try. I learned how to make a bouncing ball. found it interesting. Don’t know when I’ll have free time to try anything new. But I am liking the DJ’s at some of the dancing clubs. I might use that for background music when I am working.