Why yes, thank you for asking -- I have been doing a lot of hair-pulling these days, when it comes to the subject of reliably logging into and staying in Second Life. It's frustrating to be sure, because I have a lot of plans for expansion this month and the next, including the introduction of a new adults-only SL publication, and the creation of a new online events calendar (one that will work much better than Linden's, and have a lot less spam, and will hook up automatically with your Google Calendar or iCal account, and that will let you create an account if you want, for referring to your business over and over again there); ahhh, but the combination of my low-end computer and Linden's infrastructure problems are keeping me from getting in there very often these days, and getting the daily entries done that is the backbone to it all. Sigh! What's an unemployed aging hipster freelancer to do, I tells ya!

Anyway, so last weekend I decided to finally steel myself up again, pick up a six pack at my corner convenience store, and see if I could make it through an entire evening of events and all the subsequent crashes and restarts I knew that would entail. First stop -- over to an acquaintance of mine who I've mentioned here before, Ishtvan Pippen of The Art Loft [Owlet 212/43] and Keenag, who was holding a press night for his latest exhibit, a collection called "Joys of Life" by so-called "lowbrow" artist Eric Luden. For those who don't know, lowbrow art is a sort of glorious combination of fine-art techniques, postmodern messages, and liberal borrowings from such "low culture" items as hot rods, cartoons and pin-up girls; Los Angeles was arguably where it first caught on big, but adherents and fans can now be found all over the world (with a huge concentration it turns out in Scandinavia, which for some reason I just find odd and humorous).

Ishtvan, Eric and myself got into an interesting conversation while there, concerning the arts and my previous review, of Ishtvan's future plans and how the unique elements of the grid can be taken advantage of, etc. For example, the three of us ended up flying over next door, so that we could look back on the now greatly expanded space over at The Art Loft; simply because he can, in fact, Ishtvan's decided to start a weekly schedule of new gallery shows there, and to let each show exist for a good month and a half or so simply by continually moving them up a floor each week. Hey, what a smart idea! With there being no practical costs for the moving of artwork, repainting, and other RL expenses -- hell, you could simply duplicate the entire room and all if you want, and move it up 10 meters with your mouse -- why not build a six-story gallery that is constantly in the state of showing six particular exhibitions? And it's an intuitive interface, too; the newest artists are always at the ground floor, where the teleport pad and most walk-in traffic is found, but with always the opportunity to trek up the entire six floors too, if you're new and entranced with what you find there. It's one of several interesting things Ishtvan has going on right now; in fact, his organization and mine might be co-sponsoring a live public event soon, if the details can be worked out. As always, more information when it's available.

So after several crashes and restarts, then, it was off next to track down a new fashion store I'd heard of called Tres Blah, which had recently gotten a good review at one of the many fine SL fashion blogs I read. And lo and behold, when I got there I found out that this wasn't merely one isolated store, but also part of a much larger complex called Amicitia [Amicitia 156/180/28], which seems to have a high emphasis on designers with a unique vision and high sense of photorealistic craft. (Disclosure: After arriving, in fact, I discovered that a friend of mine is the owner of one of the stores -- "Pushbutton Industries," run by the always delightful Pushbutton Slotnik [or whatever her last name is].) I always love shopping complexes like this, to tell you the truth, mostly because of the pure free-market capitalism you see going on; how designers of a certain look or attitude will voluntarily band together, to bring added united emphasis on all their companies at once. As you can see, the temptation there was an overwhelming one for me; as usual, I ended up walking away with something like half a dozen new outfits. Damn you, gifted SL fashion designers!

So after that, then, it was off to visit a place called Idea City [Idea City 120/123/37], home of a creative agency known as GSD&M. They invented something for public use recently that I wanted to come by and check out, called a 'tourHUD;' it's not only a way to publish travel guides within Second Life, but also in a form that will show up on a person's screen via "heads-up display" (or HUD), and with people able to teleport from one location to the next just by clicking on a photo icon. (And on top of everything else, users can also configure the interface in a number of ways, as seen in the above screenshots.) And not only all that, but they've released it under a GNU open-source license as well, so that all you need to do is change the photos, descriptions and landmarks to create your own customized tourHUD.

This is something Second Life has needed for a long time, to tell you the truth, and will be of benefit to residents in a number of ways: for specialized individual touring, of course; group touring from one location to the next; the growing amount of big events now that start at one location but end at another; as fun supplements from the SL publications you know and love (note to self: assemble tourHUD of "places in SL to check out for people who enjoy Boing Boing" to give out to readers). Or hey, if you belong to a circuit of galleries or gentlemen's clubs, why not box landmarks for all of them up in a tourHUD as well, to give out at each venue on the list? It's a cool thing I have a feeling we're going to see a lot more of soon, and I thank GSD&M for releasing it under an open-source license.

So, not too bad, I guess; three destinations in roughly two days or so of logging in and crashing, logging in and crashing. Here's hoping that something about the situation gets better soon -- perhaps, if I wish intensely, a new SL client specifically for low-end Macs, now the the SL source code has been made free and public? How about it, Appleheads? I and my sole-processor Mac Mini thank you highly!