Today in Second Life we had:

• 39,799 new signups bringing us to 3,154,248 signups total.
• A peak concurrency of 25,775 at 4:00PM, and a minimum concurrency of 0 (due to the update). Average concurrency for the day was 11,883.
• OpenSim, the rudimentary reverse-engineered err ... Simulator Simulator (yes, I know) was made into a libsecondlife project. It's in C#, and there's no documentation at this stage. Right now, that means a lot of assembly required, and no instructions to help you figure it out.
• The update to 1.13.3 had a slightly rocky time landing two hours late, but worked. Linden Lab spotted the Offer Teleport issue that had previously been reported to them in a (now deleted) mostly off-topic lambasting blog comment. Basically, you can't offer a teleport to a non-friend, because the system shows them offline.
• A new First Look viewer was released (and took my Shiny away).
• There was a goo attack in the evening (self-replicating boxes) but it was so minor that hardly anybody noticed.
• It was Mera Pixel's rezday today! She has been in Second Life for exactly one year. It's her in the photo there, in fact.
  

Mera Pixel, host of Building Shelter and a close personal friend of mine (though she'll deny it vehemently if pressed), has created a studio to display some of her wonderful portraiture. I should mention here that her photographs are mostly of her own avatar, and that her studio was created mostly to display her work for her own purposes, not to be advertising for any sort of professional photography work.

Her studio is a fine example of what galleries should be: well-lit, clean lines, interesting use of walking space to encourage wandering. If you like what you see, perhaps you can convince her to start up a photography business -- she does good work!

(Thanks, Mera!)

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!)