This is the thirty-fourth in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Rain Gide actually filled this questionnaire out a looong time ago, but I haven't been able to catch her for a photo until a few nights ago, so I apologize for my tardiness and the likely old-news quality of her answers. I wanted to include it anyway, if for no other reason than to get her some of the recognition she deserves for being so sweet. Regardless, it was lovely to spend some time with her at her plot of land, which is where this photo was taken. A Shelterite, Rain may also be found precipitating across this great nation of ours.

Your name:
Rain Gide

How did you first come to SL?:
I stumbled into it and haven't been the same since!

How did you choose your name?:
I love rain.

What's your favorite thing about SL?:
Peter, The Shelter, dancing, live music, the nice people

What do you like least about SL?:
The sex clubs. I don't go there.

Favorite hangout/store?:
The Shelter; Simone's!

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL:
The Tango!

This is the twenty-eighth in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Salvador Dalgiesh is THE coolest elephant I know, and one of the coolest avatar's I've seen. His color scheme responds to outside input! If you see him around, start saying colors to him and watch the fun! I'm dying to make an 'Elephant in the room' joke here, but ehnh, it'd be beside the point.

Your SL name: Salvador Dalgleish

How did you first come to SL?: I was bored with the MMOs I had been playing for the past 5 years or so ... DAoC, WoW, CoH/CoV. I got tired of their repetitive nature and was looking for something new. I found SL by searching on "virtual worlds".

How did you choose your name?: The description I read said SL was a very surreal place, and I've always been a fan of Salvador Dali. I chose the name (and made my first AV) as an homage to him. I suppose my elephant AV is an homage to him too, in a way.

What's your favorite thing about SL?: The only limits are my own creativity. There is no treadmill, no preset goal, so there are no "powergamers" ... folks are free to socialize and invent at will.

What do you like least about SL?: Griefers. But the new landowner controls have largely limited their abuses, so I guess I'll have to find something new to dislike.

Favorite hangout/store?: The Shelter

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL: A more powerful scripting language.

Shout outs: Travis Lambert, Onionpencil Musashi, Jacek Antonelli, Reina Quine, and the whole Shelter crew!

This is the twenty-seventh in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Turing Franklin picked a great name for SL, with its nod toward artificial intelligence. I'll forever remember him as the first person to ever speak to me in binary!

Your SL name: Turing Franklin

How did you first come to SL?: Invited by NFM Darkholme

How did you choose your name?: Alan Turing is one of my heroes. Franklin was the most "scientific" last name available at the time.

What's your favorite thing about SL?: Just wandering and meeting folk. Trains rule!

What do you like least about SL?: How women are always coming on to me and wanting to "cyber" me. Hey ladies, I'm not just a piece of cybermeat, I have feelings too.

Favorite hangout/store?: I like the Shelters --> Shelter Classic and the Shelter in Exile. Playing trivia is fun.

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL: Actually, if SL could just be a bit more stable that would be awesome. Oh, and get ALL the search functions working again.

Shout outs: Cocoanut Koala - the most genuine person I've met in SL! & Jesse Prior - dude, go buy a Ruby book, it'll be much faster!

This is the twenty-sixth in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Following on the heels of yesterday's Resident Snapshot, introducing Sharona Medby, Iris Ophelia's mom! While I've not met her yet, I anticipate the massive fun we'll have, discussing the adorable things Iris used to do as a li'l one! Embarrassing Diaper Moments: Attack!

Your SL name: Sharona Medby

How did you first come to SL?: I was curious about what my daughter was doing in SL and decided to check it out. I ended up getting a new computer as a result. Rez is much better now.

How did you choose your name?: From an old song, My Sharona, and Medby just seemed a good fit.

What's your favorite thing about SL?: I would have to say the shopping. You have some amazing designers, and I enjoy how the clothes look on my avatar. I also like the online Chat feature. You meet some very interesting people on SL.

What do you like least about SL?: Nothing leaps out at me, really. I do not like violence and avoid areas with shooting.

Favorite hangout/store?: I enjoy the Shelter, and Pixel Dolls.

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL: More information for newbies on how to get your inventory in order.

This is the twenty-fourth in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Shaunny, along with AllieKat Stovall, is one of the wolves of the Shelter, now the Shelter in Exile (long story). She doesn't look particularly fuzzy here, but believe you me, she can bring the heat when provoked!

Your SL name: Shaunny Stovall

How did you first come to SL?: I first came to SL from watching my sister AllieKat play and was hooked :)

How did you choose your name?: Well, Shaunny is my real life nickname so, it stuck!

What's your favorite thing about SL?: Getting to know people from around the world and meeting new friends daily.

What do you like least about SL?: Honestly, the freaking updates and bad lag.

Favorite hangout/store?: Has to be the Shelter, baby! And the Gin Rummy!

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL: Well, let's see ... the freaking database needs to be bigger!

Shout outs: HEY ALL YOU OUT THERE, STOP BY THE GIN RUMMY AND SEE ERBO & THE GANG!

This is the twenty-third in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Shockwave Plasma, or Shocky, as I like to call her, is someone with whom I don't get to speak more often, and that's a shame. I've always found her to be intelligent, witty, insightful, and whimsical, frequently all within the space of 3 minutes. I don't know how she was able to slip the Resident Snapshot noose for so long, but I finally nabbed her!

How did you first come to SL?: I was looking for some sort of on-line social, or gaming group, and tried to find one that was more than just blasting people and space ships. The ones I found were rather bland, or rather stifled, until I came across Second Life. It reminded me of Snow Crash, I must have read that in 2000.

How did you choose your name?: I was trying to decide between Plasma and Pixel, and as Plasma is the fourth state of matter, and as we are neither gas, liquid, or solid,
then a Plasma I must be. One of the first Cyberpunk novels was "The Shockwave Rider" by John Brunner, so that was suitable for for my first name in my first
cyber world. Now I find a Shockwave Plasma is also a spectroscope.

What's your favorite thing about SL?: The people and the imagination they display. Touring the Sandboxes can be more like walking in an interactive art gallery, than walking through a building yard. Meeting people from all over the world is my cure for insomnia. Sometimes I would be awake until 2am, but logging in to SL seems to get rid of the thoughts that kept me awake.

What do you like least about SL?: Being in the UK, and most of the parties, weddings, shows are mainly for a USA audience, where most of my friends reside. (That's life). No boolean searches in FIND/Search. Griefers. LL not banning Mime avatars.

Favorite hangout/store?: Shelter/ Shelter in Exile. I don't have a favorite shop, but I like to crash test Cubey Terra's planes.

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL: To have the servers spaced around the globe.

Shout outs: Hi Tateru, Mera, Sumar, Pip, Ordinal, Dani, Erbo, Aldo, Misty, and Oni (where ever you are!)

LOOK AT THESE SLIPPERS!

These are Fauna Footies, made by FireEyes Fauna, formerly of the Shelter (that story to come). These little guys are color customizable by way of the great new HUD FireEyes has developed ... you can change the eyes, horns, body, nose, nostrils, fins, and tail. They're available at the Kappa sim for 275L, and they're fabulous! And I'm not one to use that term lightly. Get yourself a pair today!

There are a lot of factors that make new Second Life residents hang about long enough to 'get it' (whatever their personal and individual version of 'it' is, in Second Life).

Chief among these are a peer group, and the right assistance, information and answers at the right time. The Shelter in Swinside, and its slightly younger sister organization, New Citizens Inc. in Kuula (usually just lovingly referred to as The NCI) are the primary providers of those functions.

Only the most hardy of asocial souls manage without a peer group. Just having people to talk to with some commonality of experience, makes you stronger and more resilient. Both of these establishments provide opportunities for that in spades.

The focus of the two groups is divergent and complementary. The Shelter (led by Travis Lambert) is more focused on social interaction, game-shows, dancing and the like. The NCI (led by Carl Metropolitan) focuses more on information resources, tutorials and classes.

Both organizations maintain safe spaces in-world. Each has a set of rules for behavior and people who break those rules or are rude or cause distress to others will be ejected. The new resident in Second Life is well-advised to visit both and see which suits them more.

Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water! This is the twenty-second in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Andrew (or Dr. Monkey, as I like to call him) has one of the best avatars I've ever seen. Some make it on the basis of flash, some on creativity, but Andrew's just feels right. He's a snappy dresser, and a fiendish trivia disputant. Here's to you, Doc!

Your SL Name: Andrew MacKay

How did you first come to SL?: I've always been a casual player of games and a user of 3d modelling programs. Due to some quantum fluctuation when jacking into the Matrix, my conciousness ended up here.

How did you choose your name?: Well it's the closest thing to my real name (Tom Jones.) :)

What's your favorite thing about SL?: Building, the Groovalicious people, the Sights, Stroking Akela... I mean.

What do you like least about SL?: Unfortunately due to my very stone-age system, lag attacks actually have thrice the effect and even leak out into the Real World for me.

Favorite hangout/store?: Ach, It's a tradeoff between the hip cats at The Shelter and a groovy buddy of mine, Lord Leafblower's club The Lava Pit.

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL: A more integrated and easier way of animating objects. It'd open up a whole new market, fully animated pets for example?

Shout outs: Howdo to Lord Leafblower, Aava Jeegoo, Cryptid Divisadero, El Taka, All the super sexeh people behind The Shelter and of course you groovy guys at SLI!

I do love trivia games, but frequently I'm not at the level of knowledge some of the games require. Fortunately for me, there's SLTrivia! Chock full of pop culture references, and with questions entered by common folk like me, the likelihood of my answering questions correctly raises tenfold.

I found this game in a corner of the Shelter (natch), but they have installations all over SL. You can check out their website for the top scores of the day, week, month, and year, organized by individual and by area. Also, go check out their sponsors and make sure this game sticks around for a while! I need something to remind me I'm not completely braindead!

Bastion of free-thinking gamers everywhere, Joystiq has posted an article about racial harmony in MMOs, and it got me thinking. It's not just gender that residents play with in SL, is it? Unless there's a RL photo attached to someone's profile, we don't know who's driving that avatar. Sometimes not even then. It's a given that men sometimes play women and women men, but how often does someone play a different ethnicity than their own?

Hamlet Au on the inimitable New World Notes once wrote a piece peripherally about this. I've heard direct, racially derogatory comments toward others in the Shelter. Let's not forget the continuing remarks Furries receive regularly. Race is still an issue, even in a world where one can look like anything one can imagine. I'd have hoped that, as a society, we'd have grown beyond this by this time, or at least have put this behind us when creating our utopias, but I've been wrong about many things.

If anyone'd like to comment on their experiences with racism, consider this your forum to do so.

(Via Joystiq)

I knew I'd missed something. I thought I'd covered all the games the Shelter has to offer, but I completely missed Building Shelter, Mera Pixel's contribution to the education/delinquency of residents from all quarters. Education because it's a game that requires building an object based on a theme that Mera announces at the start of each round of the game. Delinquency because it's all too easy to sit in the stands and watch others hard at work, while you make snarky comments.

This game is a great way to learn about building in a fun, communal manner. The best way to learn anything is by doing, so you'll want to just dive right in to the fun and get your game on. Unfortunately for me, being a wolfie means that I can't handle delicate prims very well. No opposable thumbs, don't'cha know. I now know the true meaning of 'You break it, you bought it'.

Building Shelter runs Sundays at 4:30 PM, with your host Dolmere Talamasca, and on Thursdays at 4 PM with Mera Pixel.

This is the nineteenth in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

Tangletwigs (or 'Tangle', or 'Tang', or 'Ta', or 'T', or ' ') is a lot of fun to have around. You can always count on him to have an interesting avatar or two or twelve. Hence, the photo you see in this post is not necessarily representative of him at any one moment. This is the way we like it, and him. Hey, Tangle! *waves*

Your name: Tangletwigs Fairymeadow

How did you first come to SL?: I left Everquest 2, having been involved with that and its predecessor for some 6 years. I was looking for a less frantic, conveyor belt
experience. SL fit the bill perfectly.

How did you choose your name?: Tangletwigs was/is a Hobbit, and is an av/character I have played throughout my Everquest years. It seemed natural to bring him with me into SL, and although my name has attracted comment most is of the 'oh, what a nice name' rather than 'LMFAO gey name do0d' variety. His surname is
the closest I could get to his original, Thistlemist.

What's your favorite thing about SL?: My angel, and my betrothed, Junette. Without her in my SL I don't know what I would do now. Also the genuine warmth and helpfulness of most players. [they've since been married -- ed.]

What do you like least about SL?: Griefers, idiots who cant get into the fun and use their ^%$£%$* imagination once in a while. People who have bever been in SL who dismiss the friendships and feelings you can develop here. Okay, the last isn't a gripe about SL :)

Favorite hangout/store?: My favourite hangout is my own rented parcel, which, now that I have Junette, is actually a home, rather than a playground. I also love the atmosphere and sheer damn funness of the Shelter. Stores - well, I love exploring and finding odd things, but I return often to BareRose, and Nomine. Anywhere originality shines above banality.

Name one new feature you'd like to see added to SL: Minimize button on the inventory, lol.

Shout outs: To my Angel, and my soulmate, Junette. To all at the Shelter who have the misfortune of being on at the same time as me... To my landlady Phoenix and her team, thanks for putting up with my constant rebuilds in your lovely sim :) To Cannae and his new bride Nala :)

This is the seventeenth in a series of mini-interviews with the residents of Second Life. For the most part, I'll try to leave the responses unedited, except where editing will grant greater clarity.

This one, however, is a bit different. Madison Carnot and Corey Akula are a couple in SL who took advantage of my offer to cover just about anything. I'd have found them sooner or later anyway, as they run a non-SL-related podcast called Bucket ("all other shows 'pail' in comparison"), which has an in-world home at Bucket Beach. That's slightly beyond the scope of this blog, or at least this particular post, but it's worth mentioning. Thanks, Corey and Madison!

Your SL names?: Corey Akula and Madison Carnot, hosts of BUCKET (www.BUCKETpodcast.com), owners of BUCKET Beach and CUBO! at Podshow Island in Second Life.

How did you first come to SL?:

COREY: We both tried out SL over a year ago, but really got involved in the game in April as a huge wave of podcasters came into the game, encouraged by Daily Source Code host (and former MTV VJ) Adam Curry.

MADISON: It was actually my brother that introduced me to SL. That seems like so long ago now!

COREY: And we all got together, hung out at Curry's castle at Doomaekkot, and many of us set up our homes and hangouts around his, promoting our own podcasts. We met so many people in rapid succession....it worked great as a way to get real-world listeners to our show.

MADISON: Yeah, but along the way it turned out that we were just plain old having fun too.

COREY: Then Curry (Adam Neumann in game) bought his own sim (Podshow Island, named after his podcasting web site Podshow.com), moved his castle there, and all of the podcasters in SL have spread out all around the virtual world since. But we all keep in touch and hang out regularly with our listeners and SL acquantances.

MADISON: There are still a number of them concentrated in that general area though. And even though we did eventually move, we're not far off.

Continued after the jump!

... and I'm not talking about defending it from griefers, either, though there's always a little bit of that going on.

I seem to be getting some good-natured ribbing about how most of my Resident Snapshots are of fellow Shelterites. At least, I hope it's good-natured... *shrug*... a few more tests...

When I set out to define my role as a blogger for SLI, I tried to think of all the elements of Second Life that interested me, and I kept coming back to the people, the people, the people. That's my thing, the reason I stay in SL, despite all the other wonderful events, toys, environments, etc. SL is my social outlet, without which I'd still hunch my way down the street glowering at the ugliness of life. It's here that I've met the most supportive, hilarious, generous group of people I've ever not actually met face to face. It so happens that many of those people hang out at the Shelter.

It would be easy to think that the relationship runs in the other direction; that I'm making friends of established Shelterites, rather than introducing new acquaintances to the Shelter. The fact is, when I do venture into the outer realms of SL, I make friends wherever I go. When I do, I tell them to come visit me at the Shelter when they get a chance, because if they're like me, then they'll find a lot to love there, as I do.

Continued after the break!