I’m about to go off on a rant. I work as a tech writer and I have a love-hate relationship with MadCap Flare, my authoring tool of choice. On one hand, it has simplified my work immensely by making it easy to create professional-quality documents in a variety of format from a single source. In that respect, Flare is head-and-shoulders above its competitors. On the other hand, every day I have to struggle with Flare’s bizarre, non-standard WYSIWYG editor. Honestly, simple editing tasks are brutally painful. Continue reading “”
Second Life’s missing Canadian content
It’s sad news when a high-profile Second Life destination closes down, and it seems to be happening with alarming frequency. Today I heard that the “Visit Mexico” sim will be shutting down, and it made me wonder why there’s no “Visit Canada” sim. Maybe someone should build it. Hey, maybe I should build it!
Just picture it: An entire sim dedicated to nothing but Canadiana. But no! One sim is too small to contain the vastness that is Canada. I would need at least a dozen to capture the full glory of each province and territory.
Visitors would be required to wear the appropriate avatars of famous Canadians (Justin Beiber, William Shatner, and Céline Dion) or Canadians that the CBC execs think are famous (Ben Mulroney, Rita MacNiel, and a guy who used to play bass with The Northern Pikes). On arrival, red-coated RCMP will check and approve your avatar, search your inventory for copyright violations, and give you a good tasering. After that, you’re free to explore!
Escape from Abbotts Aerodrome
I have decided not to finish this year’s attempt at a NaNoWriMo story. It’s now day ten of thirty, and I haven’t made any more progress. So instead, here’s the opening to the story. Yes, the character is named Cubey Terra, but it’s not actually me. It’s a story about an avatar. Just so we’re clear.
Standing motionless, behind closed eyes Cubey inhaled the chill morning air and flexed his fists against permanent half-numbness in his extremities. As he closed his fists tighter, he could hear the glove leather creak under pressure. Gusts tugged at him, swaying him forward and back by centimeters. And between breaths of pure air, in the distance was the drone of propellers and the thin howl of jets. The wind pushed again from behind, making him step forward to keep from falling. He opened his eyes. Continue reading “Escape from Abbotts Aerodrome”
Braaaaaiiiiinnnss
Some readers may ask, “Does Cubey really have the guts to walk across the continent for the second weekend in a row?” The answer is yes. You can see them, too.
Sunday at noon, SL time, I’ll start in Coniston and walk (or stumble) to Hau Koda on the other side of the continent in search of braaaaaaiiiinnnssss.
The Oldbie
They found his avatar standing motionless next to a pile of prims, slumped at the shoulders like a marionette whose strings had been cut. T1g3r bumped Daisy45 to get her attention, “Hey Daze, take a look at this guy.”
Daisy45 sidestepped T1g3r’s aggressive moves and zoomed her camera toward the motionless avatar, orbiting her view to examine it from all sides. It was a male avatar, shorter than average, with unfashionable, helmet-like mesh hair that hugged his skull like a lump of clay. He wore a tight-fitting charcoal flight jacket with the words, “Abbotts Aerodrome” printed in gold across the back, and on his feet, to Daisy45’s amusement, were default avatar shoes. Not even prim shoes: just textured feet.
“Phht, some noob,” she smirked. “Default hair and shoes. Let’s go.” And with that, Daisy45 turned to scout for more interesting material to scavenge, with T1g3r scampering ahead on all fours. Honestly, Daisy45 found T1g3r’s presence annoying, but useful. He had a way of sniffing out previously-undiscovered content.
For several hours, they had been combing the remains of this grid. It wasn’t glamorous work, but for every unique new texture or object they could scrape from this dead world and upload into the OpenGrid, they earned gridbux for new toys and an item of clothing or two. Maybe even an upgrade to their avatars so they could get into the popular sims. Enough, eventually, to leave behind the salvage business altogether and earn full grid citizenship. Daisy45 suppressed a sigh at such distant goals. Here in the decay of the first grid, all of that seemed infinitely far away. Continue reading “The Oldbie”