Japanese Researchers Develop Thought-Control System for SL Avatar

A research team led by professor Jun’ichi Ushiba of the Keio University Biomedical Engineering Laboratory has developed a BCI system that lets the user walk an avatar through the streets of Second Life while relying solely on the power of thought. This could be the beginnings of a system by which not only can you control your SL Avatar, but ALSO be immersed inside SL via an interface that feeds 3D graphics and 3D sound directly into your visual and auditory cortex… Sound familiar?
http://bme.bio.keio.ac.jp/01news/

Letters whilst waiting for an island

X,Y: (1060, 973) That's the grid referenceto the new Sunnydale-SL island. I am waiting excitedly to start moving the building work from the test parcel over to it. And waiting. And waiting. As you will have seen from my previous post it's now the 5th day since I ordered the island and yesterday I finally received a reply from my support ticket, from Dee Linden which neatly states:
Solution
Solved: (10/25/2007 9:09 AM PDT)
Should be delivered to you later today or tomorrow =)
Dee.
Right then! I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that that really is the case. As anybody who is a member of the Buffy group will know, we're planning a pre-launch party next saturday at The Bronze (friday 3rd of November). We were planning it to coincide with Halloween next wednesday, but the SL grid will be down for maintainance just before then and it's just too big a risk to take to count on it being back up in time.
We have a owner/manager of the Bronze who will be taking it over from saturday, and we'll announce that at the party. Immediately after we will close the island for access whilst working on the build, but hope to have the official, full opening very, very soon after that.

Support at Linden Labs

So I finally got an answer from Second Life support about the island I just paid 1680$ for. Three days was a long time to wait for a response, and in my day job that wouldn't be considered acceptable at all. Linden Labs have to be a little careful with that; basically support means everything for a service company on the net. Companies live and die based on that fact alone. I'll keep you posted as to how it improves. Or not.

Interesting article on "Is Second Life sustainable"

I bloody hope so after I just spent 1600$ on an island!!
:P
http://brokentoys.org/2006/06/06/second-life-has-too-many-servers-in-danger-of-eating-internet/

What do I look like?

So, finally decided to let you all know what I look like inworld, so that you regognize me when we meet. :)

Myst

A Tory Linden special...

One of the good ones: how to turn of the Clicky-clacky noise and typing anim:
http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/08/23/tip-of-the-week-how-to-turn-off-the-typing-animation-and-sound/
(This one is especially dedicated to Parrot Pimpernel)

Mysteryn11 Building tip of the week:)

Show your building axis - This is really useful:
Trigger client menu first (ctrl+alt+d), then select
rendering-> axes
Voila!

(Plus an unrelated but fun article on Torley's top Client+Server debug options:'http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/User:Torley_Linden/Debug_Settings

Nice little summary of some key Sunnydale places

http://www.weblo.com/property/Regular/Sunnydale/456118/

Path cuts

http://xahlee.org/sl/build_object.html

Here are some nice little tips (basic ones mind) on prims and what they do. I've been working with cutting paths and this helped.

Building in SL

Here's some resources I found recently:
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/04/building_in_sec.html
These are really great scripting bits and pieces (like adding a link to an object etc.)
http://cterport.ed.uiuc.edu/technologies_folder/SL