Tough weekend at the races

Just about my favorite thing in Second Life is racing in Les White’s “superbike” motorcycle racing series, MotoSL. We’ve had 4 races so far, one-third of the season gone already! Lots of fast racers, and the bikes and tracks that Les has designed and the series he’s implemented are the class of Second Life.

I got off to a good start in this season, and I’m hanging on to first place in the points so far. But the battle gets harder every race, with so many fast riders just getting better and better. If you like racing, this is the best there is: some great tracks, superbly scripted bikes, and a highly professional series. No other motorsport in Second Life offers the level of realism you’ll get at Les’s tracks.

Moving SHL from mainland to an island

For quite some time I’ve maintained the Stanford Humanities Lab’s Second Life presence on the mainland, in Cayuga. It’s a glorious place, an old sim with just a few residents, great topography. Over nearly a year I was able to accumulate about half the sim, and I couldn’t have asked for a better locale. But events have overtaken me, and I have to move on. Fortunately, I’ve managed to secure the island right next door to the Lab’s existing project development island for the Life Squared project.

So now I’m transferring about 6,000 prims worth of stuff from one place to another, after having terraformed the island to be an approximate match to the old Cayuga hillside. It’s slow going, since the match isn’t exact, and I can’t resist tweaking stuff. The private galllery no longer sits on a tree-shaded bluff overlooking the river, but the ocean view of its new home is pretty nice. The sun deck/hot tub is now at the bottom of the main building (and may turn into a gallery, since it’s grown a bit), and the Revolutionary Tides poster exhibit is moving uphill, to be joined by student work from the California College of Arts that was done based on those posters. And the Life Squared gallery is on the rocky side of the island facing the Life Squared project space.

And it’s only about half done, if that. Time to get busy!

My umpteenth blog…

…maybe this is the one that’ll get used. I’ll be making entries about my “official” Second Lifed—providing the Stanford Humanities Lab with its in-world presence—as well as  the day-to-day events that fill my days in this world:  curating, racing, socializing, researching, a bit of wheeling and dealing, and quite a bit of shopping.  It’s a start.