Week 2 - Rezzing a monkey and other (second) life skills

It was bound to happen.  My first attempt at "rezzing" an object (I'm hoping that's the correct use of the word, it's still all new to me) ended up with me wearing a large monkey which, for a short time, I genuinely feared might never be removed.  I'd heard the guys at AAI talking about noobs ending up accidentally wearing all manner of strange objects but, with unabashed hubris, I'd believed that I was already beyond that kind of rookie behaviour.  Heck, I was into my second week in SL so I knew how to dress myself at least, right?  

Wrong!  

Fortunately nobody else was around to witness a somewhat panicky noob running around the place with an oversized primate attached to him.  If only my accidental (and at the time also seemingly irreversible) blonde flexi-hair episode a day or two earlier had similarly transpired without witnesses.  Let us never speak of it again - I'm looking at you Pixie Arcana!  

So how did I come to be running around various sims trying to conjure a monkey out of thin air?  A not unreasonable question.  I'll do my best to paint the scene for you.  

Much of my first week, in fact virtually all of my online time, had been spent at AAI enjoying the tunes, the laughs, the gestures and most of all the company of some mighty fine people whom I already considered good friends.  I'd also spent a bit of time wandering around some freebie shops which had kindly been suggested for me, suggestions which I had great fun feigning massive umbrage at, accusing people of implying that I had bad hair….which to be fair was pretty much exactly what they were saying and rightly so.

During this time I'd accumulated a number of items in my inventory, either from the freebie shops or as gifts from many kindly souls, but most of which already had origins lost in the mists of my fickle memory.  I thought it would therefore be advisable to take some time and explore not only some other sights & sims of SL but also some of the stuff which I seemed to be rapidly accumulating yet, thus far, remained untouched.

Now, I can't tell you where I got the monkey because I have absolutely zero recollection of it.  But I remembered someone explaining to me how you could "rezz" items from your inventory so I thought that this would be a good way of figuring out what the hell this thing was whilst also practicing what was no doubt a basic life skill which I'd be needing on my SL journey.

Of course I couldn't quite remember what had been explained to me so I did what I always do, and just randomly clicked on buttons and items to see what happened.  Needless to say, what happened was that I ended up wearing the aforementioned large monkey.  Oh the shame of it.  

Fortunately a good friend of mine, in fact the very same friend who had originally suggested Second Life to me all those years ago, happened to also be online at the time so I directed a virtual cry of "help" in the direction of Min Fairweather.  Min was kind enough to walk me through a quick crash course over IM and I was finally able to rid myself of the monkey on my back (see what I did there?) with a not inconsiderable sigh of relief.  

Of course, what I'd not realised was that as soon as you start talking inventory to people they send you yet more random and obscure toys to play with.  So it was then that, thanks to Min, I was able to spend the next half hour or so parachuting over the SL landscape and larking about with a lightsabre pretending to be Obi Wan Kenobi (geek in RL = geek in SL).  

There's still plenty of stuff in my inventory that I haven't checked out.  Some of it I'm almost scared to touch (Mericat Ireland you know exactly what I'm talking about!) but no doubt I'll acquire even more over the coming weeks and the lessons learned this week should serve me well when it comes to trying these things out.  In fact, I think there might be some hair in here which I've not tried out yet……

……will I never learn?

Week 1 - You've taken your first step into a larger world

Like a newborn deer, I staggered around the Welcome Hub barely in control of my unfamiliar, virtual limbs.  I walked into the wall.  A lot.  And into a small pond.  Another avatar walked past and glanced over at me.   Did I imagine that look of disdain which I thought had played across his face?  

Not an auspicious start, but gradually I began to get the hang of my basic functions,  I even learned how to move the camera around.  The heady rush of success which accompanied learning a new (if somewhat basic) skill was quickly doused by the cold water of realisation.  I could now see what I looked like.  Ah.  Oh dear.  Something had to be done.

I think it was at about this point that I also realised I was now stuck with the Avatar name which I'd rushed into selecting in order to get moving along to the more interesting stuff.  Hmmm.  Aramos Darkfury?  Not sure I looked much like an Aramos Darkfury.  Maybe I'd get used to it.  Maybe Aramos Darkfury would make more sense if he had some decent clothes.  And some better hair.  Definitely some better hair.

As a penniless (sorry, Linden-less) noob I was inevitably going to be restricted to free stuff when it came to shopping for clothes.  This probably meant I'd end up wearing things you might have got away with back in 2008 but which would no doubt get you laughed out of all the most happening SL joints here in shiny, modern 2010.  But you've got to start somewhere, right?  

In my case (or in Aramos Darkfury's case, I wasn't sure about the first or third person yet) I started at The Yard, Honie Island - although to this day I couldn't tell you how I actually got there.  The phrase "more by luck than judgement" was never more appropriate than when applied to my first day or two here in Second Life.

So, I picked up a few freebies here and there (once I figured out how to shop, which would no doubt have been an excruciating thing to observe for anyone more than a couple of days old in SL terms) and tried to see if I couldn't improve the appearance of this Aramos Darkfury bloke.  My first thought?  "Oh No - I've made it worse, haven't I?"

My second thought?  Well, the items on sale behind me were……let's say a surprise.  And for any readers who might be wondering, I decided against it.

Still, at least I had "interesting" hair so I could always claim to be expressing my individuality or something, right?  Yeah, that sounded plausible.  I could get by on that for a couple of weeks, and by then I should have figured out how to look a bit less like a complete tool.  

Oh, and as further proof of the difference between the male and female genders (or yet more proof of my short attention span, I'll let you be the judge), I failed to spot that I'd forgotten to wear any shoes.  This was an oversight that continued for a good few days before it was finally brought to my attention.

So……now that I had new clothes, new hair and an apparent disregard for the convention of footwear, where should I go next?  

At this juncture in my story and for the benefit of my future self (who, like the muppet he is, has by now probably forgotten all this) I'd like to pause for just a second to identify this very moment, this one seemingly random decision, as the exact point at which my Second Life experience was to change from being a quirky little thing I was trying out into something that would very quickly go way beyond my expectations.  Something frankly kind of wonderful.  

This was the moment I teleported into a little Indie club which had caught my eye on the SL Destination Guide.  

This was my first visit to AAI.

It's actually kinda difficult to put into words what AAI means to me at this early stage of my young Second Life.  As I said, it's so far beyond anything I was expecting that it'd be easy for me to get all gushing and ridiculous  - I'll try to keep a lid on it though to maintain some modicum of British restraint.  I was looking for somewhere that might be playing cool music - I found that and a whole lot more besides.  

My initial reaction upon arrival however was that everyone in here looked waaaaay cooler than me and had waaaaay better animations going on.  Not to mention infinitely better hair.  Uh-Oh, I was gonna stick out like the proverbial sore thumb.  I would quite rightly be mocked and derided until I ran home crying.  Of this, I was convinced.

To my surprise however, I wasn't shunned as a noob but was warmly welcomed by AAI's co-owners Meri & Thom and the rest of the gang already dancing away their evening in this perfectly formed, atmospheric little place.  I received a number of welcoming IMs from people, most kicking off with a variant on the "wow, are you really only 1 day old or just an alt?" theme.  My evident confusion around their use of the term "alt" was enough to convince everyone that yes, I really was that new.

So the AAI guys 'n gals kindly took it upon themselves to show me the SL ropes.  Some of the gals taught me a rather fetching dance, indeed the "pointy-bottom" dance is still my groove of choice, though I maintain that I give it a somewhat more manly edge than in its original form.  I received some much needed fashion tips delivered in a kindly manner.  People suggested places I might like to visit.  Everyone made me feel like one of the gang within moments.  

Meri in particular must get a special mention for making me feel incredibly welcome into what was clearly a group that already knew each other well.  I can only presume that in RL she is the type of person who brings in injured kittens and puppies off the street and nurses them back to health.  Bless her for taking in a poor noob on his first night out in Second Life and, if she's reading this, I will be taking you up on that offer of some much-needed supervised shopping!

So whenever I'm online these days I tend to check out whoever's DJing at AAI and I've had a fantastic night every time.  The images of sharing the dancefloor with a dalek, or of Graz Firecaster hosting Jukebox Fury whilst furiously bounding around the club on a pogo stick will I'm sure live long even in a memory as unreliable as mine.  

There are still plenty of in-jokes which I'm sure are flying over my head and I certainly have a lot of catching up to do on the gesturing front, but AAI already feels like a second home here in my Second Life and I would encourage anyone reading this to come join the party.  You'll probably see me in there so do say "Hi" and tell me how awesome you think my blog is or how great my hair looks ;)

AAI - All Awesome Individuals!

Intro - If life's such a bitch, why have two of them?

So what brought me here to Second Life?  I'd heard of it a few years back through a friend (RL of course) but had never taken the plunge myself, partly because I always think I'm too busy and partly because I figured that my PC's obsolete spec and slow internet connection would just have made it annoying anyway.  Not to mention that people who hang out online are apparently scary types who only want to have sex with you or rip you off, right?  That's what the media always seemed to be telling me so it must be true.  Best just to stay away entirely and stick to updating my Facebook page with faintly amusing status messages instead.  

And so it remained for a few years.  Time passed, the (real) world turned, people grew older, I had to start buying jeans yet another size up.

The catalyst to changing my mind was at home one October morning in 2010 watching my daughter playing Little Big Planet on the PS3.  She never plays any of the actual platform levels, just spends hours and hours endlessly changing the appearance of "Sackboy" (effectively her Avatar) and decorating/building stuff in her offline level (effectively her Avatar's home).  Something about how much fun she seemed to have doing all this suddenly made me feel like I was missing out, though it would probably have been considered bad parenting to kick her off the game in order for me to have a go.  

It then occurred to me that there were more than a passing similarity between what she was doing and what I'd heard about Second Life, something which hadn't really crossed my mind for years.   Maybe it would be fun (as long as I kept a low profile to avoid those swarms of sex-crazed con merchants of course) and since I had this shiny new iMac to test run, why not give it a try?

So as I come to write this, after just a couple of short weeks in SL, what are my initial impressions?  Well so far nobody has tried to rip me off or have sex with me, but then if we're totally honest here I have no Lindens and still look like a tragic noob so this probably doesn't prove much.  In all seriousness though, I've been pleasantly surprised, nay overwhelmed, by just how welcoming people have been to me, not to mention how helpful and infinitely patient they've been with my noobness (which I'm still telling myself is "charming") and my near total incompetence.  You guys know who you are and you're the best!

All of which brings me to this blog and why I'm writing it.  I recently noticed that a few of the people I'd met thus far have blogs which chronicle the daily goings on of their Second Lives.  Most of these were centred around or linked from the Moonletters.com site - go there and take a look, it's great!  

Hold on, don't go right now!  Wait till I'm done at least.  I'll try and hurry it along.... 

These diaries and commentaries helped add a huge amount of extra colour to what Second Life means to a wide range of people in a short period of time, playing no small part in making me feel that this might be the kind of place I'd like to hang around in for more than just a couple of weeks.  I'm also notorious for having the most abysmal memory in the known universe, so left to my own devices I'd be unlikely to remember anything of these first, tentative steps into SL beyond Christmas.  

These two factors made me think that recording my experiences and musings in written form might not only be interesting for me to look back on in years to come (or, let's be honest, next week) but could potentially be read at some point down the line by others just starting out in Second Life and wondering what it might hold for them.  

So if you're reading this and you're a future version of me - hello, I hope this helps jog your memory (oh, and don't forget to put the bins out).  If you're reading this and you're new to SL, welcome and I hope you have as much fun as I did in my early days.

Oh, and get some decent hair for heaven's sake. Both of you!