no, I won't even listen, I won't hear you scream

"Is it all less exciting when things have become more stable? Has it all drifted, from bleeding edge, to simply bleeding?"

Second Life continues to be a help and an asset for people with Asperger's, a form of autism. Especially artists.

There's at least one madman out there building protein chains for sale to educators. Talk about your vanity projects--I mean, I understand the application, and it's amazing, but--primmy? What do you do, rez out three and you max out a parcel? Waaaay too many prims.

On the other hand, I'm fairly sure that sculpting them would be an equal amount of effort, and, while you could likely lower the prim count, you'd up the frustration to quantum levels.

"Some sort of conventional narrative traction, to get me through...In the process of the journey, whatever the meaning of the piece is going to be emerges, for me...And as long as I keep one hand on the plot device, that's taking me to the end, and do my best to make the resolution satisfying..."

A paraphrase from William Gibson from an interview in Paris; it's disjointed, the original statement, and doesn't finish, but I thought it was just such a pure expression of what it is to write and in a sense, to create at all.

"I think that readers enjoy imagining that the author steps back from the text, and goes through a sort of conscious and deliberate process of invention...but on those rare occasions when I attempt to do that, the results are always very poor. So I'm working immersed in the material..."

Another paraphrase, but so very true: when I write--and apparently, when William Gibson writes--I feel more as if I'm watching my characters move through the motions of their lives, not as if I'm moving them, puppeteer creator, into place and marking those places down. Sometimes they go where I don't want them to go; sometimes, writing is the frustrating process of screaming at the screen that they're being idiots for doing...whatever it is they're doing.

But by and large, it makes a better story when I don't try to interfere. When I just...watch it happen.

Peter Stindberg compiled a list of the "top five requested features" of Second Life; I'm really wondering where that list originated, because I cannot conceive of anyone wanting any of the things on it, from a business perspective or not.

On the other hand, his top five requested list makes so much more rational sense. Why can't we have those top five features?

Hells, at this point, I'd even settle for one.

A year.

Do we have to change the name of the Swiss Army Knife now?

The Project Wonderland developers have been sacked by Sun Microsystems; they say they're going to keep working on the project. Which is vaguely interesting, because I'd dismissed Wonderland long before now as a dead end.

Color your world? It seems to be dismissed as a sort of virtual PopCap game, the social setting women can walk around in and feel productive. I'm not entirely sure of that, but the concept does sound interesting--start in black and white, and 'harvest' colors for your surroundings, and yourself.

Some interesting questions from Massively's virtual mailbag...enough to keep me looking out for the series on occasion, at least.

*watches the train wreck burn*
*walks away into the trees*