Re: Second Life, in my experience the people who enjoy it most, and stick around the longest, are the people who create stuff in it. They tend to socialize and explore more, because they can meet other creators and see other creations (for inspiration and such).
Pure consumers (people who explore and buy but do not create) are far more numerous, but tend to vanish after a while.
Re: IRC, the only time I've ever enjoyed IRC is when I have something in common with the people I'm communicating with. Freenode is great for this, since it tends toward channels related to particular open source projects; and in many of these, plenty of idle chatting still occurs, not just technical talk.
I also hang out in channels created to reflect specific real-life groups; for example, the channel for my university's Linux User Group. As an alumni, I see people come in whom I've never met, but we have the common bond of the group, and that helps with conversation.
No real point here, just some observations :)
Also, in my opinion, anyone trying to actually use the in-world Second Life tools is *insane*. My wife does this, and I don't understand how she keeps her sanity. And, of course, several things *can't* be created in-world (sculpted prims, audio files, animations, textures). I use:
qavimator for animations. I'm also *technically* a developer on this project; I haven't committed any code to it in a *very* long time, though :(
blender for sculpted and non-sculpted prims (jass for the former, prim.blender for the latter)
For scripting, which is my favorite thing to do in Second Life (or, well, anywhere else), emacs, lslint and a modified copy of lslmake, although I can't find the old page for lslmake anywhere...
Of course, none of these programs are particularly easy to learn. I'm just saying, the in-world tools are *painful*, and only a masochist would use them (as evidence, my wife prefers the in-world building tools over blender :P ).
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-09-11 01:42 pm (UTC)Pure consumers (people who explore and buy but do not create) are far more numerous, but tend to vanish after a while.
Re: IRC, the only time I've ever enjoyed IRC is when I have something in common with the people I'm communicating with. Freenode is great for this, since it tends toward channels related to particular open source projects; and in many of these, plenty of idle chatting still occurs, not just technical talk.
I also hang out in channels created to reflect specific real-life groups; for example, the channel for my university's Linux User Group. As an alumni, I see people come in whom I've never met, but we have the common bond of the group, and that helps with conversation.
No real point here, just some observations :)
Also, in my opinion, anyone trying to actually use the in-world Second Life tools is *insane*. My wife does this, and I don't understand how she keeps her sanity. And, of course, several things *can't* be created in-world (sculpted prims, audio files, animations, textures). I use:
qavimator for animations. I'm also *technically* a developer on this project; I haven't committed any code to it in a *very* long time, though :(
blender for sculpted and non-sculpted prims (jass for the former, prim.blender for the latter)
For textures, the gimp. For sound, Audacity.
For scripting, which is my favorite thing to do in Second Life (or, well, anywhere else), emacs, lslint and a modified copy of lslmake, although I can't find the old page for lslmake anywhere...
Of course, none of these programs are particularly easy to learn. I'm just saying, the in-world tools are *painful*, and only a masochist would use them (as evidence, my wife prefers the in-world building tools over blender :P ).