I swear, people, I'm trying to get an entry a day done right now! Unfortunately, though, the Linden servers are making that nearly impossible for those of us on low-end computers; for the last week or so, in fact, most of the times I log into the grid on my puny little Mac Mini sole processor, it takes a good 10 to 15 minutes just for a simple 128-meter-long view to fully rez in (to say nothing of turning, for example, or God forbid moving.) I admit, it's frustrating to try to run a daily publication about a virtual reality, when the technology of that reality is not allowing you to have a good experience; I'm hoping that either one thing or another gives soon, that either Linden upgrades their servers or I can raise the money to upgrade my computer.

For example, I got some cool news this weekend -- that my membership application for Bear's Marina [Tamsi 223/249/27] had been processed, and that I was now ready to do some sailing from their piers. This the docking service I mentioned in a previous entry, to remind you, that offers something I find intriguing; they basically own a series of ten or so private piers all over the grid, in various reknown spots for sailing and boating, and for US$2 a year you can rent permission to rez your vehicle on their parcel and start your own boating while there.

So why pay money to visit essentially a public space, some might ask? Well, that's because of yet another technical glitch in the grid's gameplay, or perhaps it might be more appropriate here to call it an irony; that while it's extremely easy to both walk and fly over most parcels of land, it can be a lot more troublesome to try and rez a vehicle at any given random location. Although not seen too terribly often, for example, landowners always have the right to ban all members of the public from their parcel, which even prevents you from walking or flying over it; much more common, though, is for landowners to allow the general public to visit, just not to erect their own prims while there. And even when you can find a piece of land with full build permissions, it still needs to have the extra room for the 31 prims your vehicle is suddenly going to take.

So instead of spending 20 minutes every time you want to go sailing, roaming from parcel to parcel to see if you can rez your boat there or not, you simply buy a membership to a place like Bear's, and have a place guaranteed every time. Which still wouldn't be worth a whole lot to me, frankly; but at $2 a year, is something I consider a pretty good deal. And so last Monday morning I picked one of the piers that Bear's maintains, over on the Orwood sim that connects to what they claim is the grid's largest enclosed sea (and after checking out the big map, I have no reason to doubt that claim), to do a little sailing; that's the entire sea you're seeing in the above map, with Bear's pier over there to the extreme left where the yellow asterisk is. But, what was supposed to be a leisurely three-hour tour around this multi-sim environment instead turned into a three-day trial by fire for me, as both the grid and my computer continued to crash on a frighteningly regular basis, and with me alternating between jumping right back in and getting sick of the whole damn thing. And thus it is that I didn't get my final photos finished until just this morning, three days after first getting the invitation. Sigh!

Now, you can see here how it is that Bear's manages to maintain almost a dozen marinas around the grid, in some of the most sought-after land areas in the entire Metaverse; because in reality each are not much more than simple water-based parcels in the middle of a larger body of water, containing not much more than a low-prim wooden pier for starting one's boating adventures. This is pretty smart of Bear, I think; such small underwater parcels typically sell relatively cheaply, and of course with only an extra $5 a month in land usage fees from Linden, which is what lets him charge so little for membership in turn. It's a no-frills approach to boating, to be sure; but hey, I don't need some fancy clubhouse everywhere I dock, not if the main point is the sailing itself.

The area around Bear's has been set up in this interesting way, incidentally; it's been terraformed into a series of steep small islands, separated by these tiny little rivers with enormous wind tunnels whooshing through them. One of them, for example, is rimmed with a series of private fantastical estates; while another one of these islands has been turned into an impressive Lord Of The Flies Temple of Doom Joe's Volcano thingamabob.

And this of course gets into yet another endlessly debated issue within SL; that of the pleasures of "island living" versus having a space on "the mainland." See, even though they look and act the same, there are actually two types of land within the grid: there is the land specifically created from scratch for a private resident, typically terraformed as a standalone island in the middle of the ocean; and then there is land created by Linden specifically to be sold in smaller chunks, terraformed into a consistent larger landmass known colloquially as the "mainland." And in fact even this term is a holdover from an older time, when only one such landmass existed; as we speak there are actually three main bodies now making up the grid's mainland, which for lack of better terms could be referred to as the "North Continent," "South Continent," and "Linden Lakes." (These photos today, by the way, are from that "Linden Lakes" area just mentioned.)

Check out, for example, this seaside furniture store I came across called Caesar's [Borden 10/156/38], which specializes in (duh) Roman furniture, and includes this amazing private island in their private lagoon, for entertaining and live events and whatnot. Now, as some would argue, is it better that Caesar's have a large presence on the mainland like you see here, where sailors and tourists like me have a chance to randomly come across it and be intrigued? Or would it be better, as others argue, that Caesar's own its own island (or at least rent space from a larger private island), so as to not have to worry about neighbors, visual pollution, clutter, etc?

In effect it brings up a larger debate, of whether one sees a presence in SL as more an eCommerce project, or one rooted in the world of brick-and-mortar businesses: of whether one simply rents out an entire island to do with what one pleases, much like starting a website, in order to bring traffic out to where you are; or whether location is the most important factor, with one literally counting on "virtual walk-in" traffic. The grid, after all, is the Frankensteinian child of these two parents; there are no "correct" answers to these questions yet, since this is the first time these questions have even been asked.

Did I mention, by the way, that I actually caught two very young males talking about Second Life at a cafe last weekend? I'm not making this up, I swear! One didn't know what it was, and the other so succinctly replied, "It's Grand Theft Auto for your freakin' mom and dad." I'm not making this up, people! And I couldn't stop laughing, either, thinking about this scarily precise definition of the grid, as I was tooling along in my little sailboat this week; I'm in my late thirties, after all, technically old enough to actually be the father of SL's youngest players, definitely old enough by now to be the dad of some snotty little console-obsessed 14-year-old gamer. I can just see me now, being one of those dads, excitedly calling my son over to my Mac, to show off my mad L33T sailing skills and maybe develop some street cred among "his kind;" just to have him cross his arms and shake his head and say, "God, dad, why do you have to be such a dork around my friends?"

The fact is that SL is a gentle place, despite the reports of griefers and gamers, swingers and mafia and all the like. Because of what it stands for, because of the limitations involved, the grid simply does skew to an older, more thoughtful crowd, one that enjoys building and sightseeing much more than slicing dragons' heads off and popping a cap in one's ass. You can think of many SL fans as those who used to love building up environments within "SimCity," but then got bored once it came to regulating traffic and increasing property values. You know, the ones who were obsessed with David Macaulay books as a kid; who used to build elaborate environments out of construction paper in their basements, and then later on grid paper for Dungeons & Dragons, and then even later in such apps as Poser, SketchUp and Flash. These people are in the grid for entirely different reasons than typical gamers, and expect different things from the companies vying for their attention; as I've said here before, I think it's something both business owners and marketers getting involved with SL would do good to spend some time pondering.

Anyway, at the end of my loop I decided to snake up a little northward to finish my trip, through a series of narrow rivers that eventually led to yet another sea of the region. But alas, no matter how carefully I went, my computer just kept crashing from the overload of information, and after something like the 12th crash in three days I had just finally had enough. Anyway, so not much left before our water feature here at ITG is over; maybe an interview with Bear himself, hopefully a chance to sit in at this week's regatta at Starboards Yacht Club, and maybe one or two reports on various water-based stores if I can slip them in. Here's hoping that Linden's continual server issues get solved soon, or that I'm able to raise the $2,000 or so I need for a new decent gaming computer; and speaking of which, I'll have some thoughts about that coming here soon as well, later this afternoon, for those who are interested.