I now get it. Absolutely.

Having come home on Saturday evening, completely drenched after a very British barbeque, I remembered the Guardian’s Guide mag had featured SecondFest – a virtual festival being held in Second Life. The dj roster looked pretty decent, including as it did Gilles Peterson, Ross Allen and Sunday Best amongst others (edit: as did the bands, I now notice having just looked at the miniguide for the first time…), so I thought I’d pop my head round the door and have a look/listen. I had a profile set up from some time ago, but I’d never really messed around in SL other than getting to grips with the basic flying around and bumping into stuff.

But now I see what the fuss is about. Having arrived at the entrance and gone through the gates, a staircase took you down into the festival site itself. Navigating around between the main stage (which was empty at that time of night), the indie tent, dance tent and outdoor cinema was pretty easy thanks to the print map included in the Guide.

There should probably be a picture here, but I was having too much fun to work out how to ‘take’ them … so here’s what flickr has to offer

Actually, I’m not going to go into too much detail about it all because I have a sneaky feeling that hearing about someone else’s SL experiences is akin to hearing about their dreams (quite dull), but suffice to say that ‘dancing’ feels strangely like dancing and ‘chatting’ to other people while you ‘dance’ is easy, as you can hear typing above the music. And kudos to the ‘girl’ (I’ve forgotten your name) who ‘mimed playing piano’ over that jazzy number and your friend (yep, forgotten your name too) who ‘mimed being dj’. And whoever those SL ‘royalty’ were who turned up: hello to you too.

I think I left the tent at about 4 in the morning and ‘went for a kip’ under a tree.

It might have been because it was a Guardian-sponsored event that the people were lovely (yes, yes, I know), but they mainly were, ranging as they did from first-timers to SL veterans. Altogether it was a shockingly fun evening that was weird only in how natural it felt. Still, while I don’t think I’ll be buying the condo on my own personal island just yet, or kitting myself out in Diesel from head to toe (I’m keeping my SecondFest tshirt and rollerskates though), I’ll definitely be going back for more SL events as and when they happen.

From: Niki Doubledee
Subject: Few of us ever met Chris McKinstry in person.

You cannot stop services in a clustered environment.
Work basket I could buy Molly’s birthday.
Here’s the method I use.
Wonder how it first struck him.
Harry, whose insides were aching with hunger, jumped off his bed and seized it.
When the bellows finally stopped pumping and the Jacob’s Ladder stopped sparking, the go button turned back to blue.
But first he drank out of the bucket himself.
This will launch and control LINES.
Wonder did he put that bible to the same use as I would.

But then you google a couple of the lines and some of it becomes intriguing:

One of our beloved colleagues, K. Christopher McKinstry, passed away on January 23. The cause of death was an apparent suicide. Chris was well known to the inner circle of chatterbot enthusiasts who cluster around the Robitron mailing list and the Loebner Prize contest. Even among eccentrics and excommunicated outcasts of academia, Chris sometimes expressed views and ideas that seemed incomprehensible and outrageous. His Mindpixel project however produced a unique contribution to A. I. research and no doubt will serve as a valuable corpus for years to come. Few of us ever met Chris McKinstry in person.

A Canadian citizen, he lived in Chile and worked for several years as a telescope operator there. Our view of him will be forever clouded by what is nowadays called cyber disinhibition. Goodbye Chris, we will miss you. It is people like you who make guys like me look normal.

Some of it is sci-fi:

When the bellows finally stopped pumping and the
Jacob’s Ladder stopped sparking, the go button
turned back to blue. A pale wisp of smoke curled from
the bottom drawer, and I heard a muffled yelp. Arlene
and I wrestled the drawer open. Inside was a living
Klave, blinking rapidly and trying to focus his eyes.
Arlene unlatched the side of the drawer, and either
Sears or Roebuck tumbled out onto the deck.

And some is plain disappointing:

You can apply SP2 without restarting your computer by stopping the following services and applications before applying the service pack:

•	Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MS DTC) and the Microsoft Search and MSSQLServerOLAPService services.
•	MSSQLServer and SQLServerAgent services for the instance being upgraded (for example, MSSQL$NamedInstance).
•	Microsoft Component Services, Microsoft Message Queuing, and Microsoft COM Transaction Integrator.
•	All applications, including Control Panel. This step is recommended, but not required.

You cannot stop services in a clustered environment. For more information, see section 3.10.

But I have to say it’s still the best email I’ve had all day…

the unwired light garden, by eness.

The interaction reminds me a little of some of the digital pieces that featured in the UK Pavilion of Expo 2005 Aichi Japan which I was lucky enough to visit last year.