I spent a couple of hours wandering through the postings on your blog- you truly seem to have enjoyed and gained from your time in Second Life. I’ve read similar accounts from people who (re)discovered parts of themselves while exploring other online games. It seems to me that there are some interesting social and emotional dynamics being revealed as we take our first steps into different kinds of virtual existences.

Anyway, I’ve continued my wanderings in Second Life. I’ve bought a few “gadgets” for my avatar that make me wish I knew more about object editing. One was a tail ornament for my wolf-drake form, which when I put it on doesn’t wrap the tail as it is supposed to…it misses by a few inches, looking comically like a spring attached to my butt If the ornament was modifiable (its not) and if I knew what I was doing (I don’t), it seems to me that it would be easy to fix. That irritation/curiosity is usually my first step on the path towards digging into the code: “hacking”, as we old-timers used to mean it

Therein lies a problem: so much of SL is graphically based, and I’m not artistically talented. I usually do well hacking someone else’s code, figuring syntax and such out by context…but that seems less constructive than I’d want to be. But I’m getting ‘way ahead of myself: I still regularly end up with boxes on my head and so forth when I forget to instantiate (rez) an item first

I encourage you to create your own content–amuse yourself, and then see what reactions it creates in others.

Be well.