Cerebrate's Contemplations

I'm Here (for Second Life)

Another one of my Quick'N'Dirty product range, I'm Here is a really simple application for shop owners, homeowners, landowners, and anyone else in Second Life who'd like to let their visitors advertise their presence.

In short, it's the ugly twitterbird-patterned pyramid (don't worry, if you buy one, you can reshape and retexture it all you want) shown in the picture.  All you do is rez it somewhere on your land - it learns the local parcel name and SLURL automatically - and then when a visitor clicks on it, it posts a tweet to their account (after prompting), of the following form:

"I'm visiting Arkane Systems at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Strata/224/137/51 #imheresl"

If they haven't previously authorized the I'm Here application to post to their Twitter account, it will walk them through approving it using OAuth, but otherwise, it should Just Work.  So, in a nutshell, all you have to do is rez it, and it takes care of letting your visitors advertise your place for you!

(Note: Some users may experience problems if they're behind a firewall which doesn't allow web access to high-numbered ports for the web; unfortunately, this is a limitation of the Second Life servers and we can't fix that right now.

I'm Here, while not itself open source, makes use of Babbage Linden's Twitter OAuth library, which is under GPL.  Please find more details of that here: http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Twitter_OAuth_Library , including where to obtain the source code for the library.)

Get your I'm here on XstreetSL here, or at the usual store location.  L$100.

Presentation HUD

New!  For Second Life, and more specifically for Viewer 2.0 now I can take advantage of the new shared media feature, here's my quick-and-dirty "Presentation HUD".

While wearing this HUD, simply type "/48 <url>", i.e., "/48 http://www.google.com/"and it will automatically rez a web browser in front of you, enabling you to give ad-hoc presentations, look things up, or show videos, pictures, and other web content to your in-world friends.  Here's a quick example showing my blog:

 
And since this is HTML-on-a-prim, you can browse freely, and use the regular back/forward/zoom controls.

If you right-click on the rezzed browser and "Touch" it, you get a menu of options.  By default, only the owner of the browser is able to use the browser controls and interact with the web page (thus, suitable for presentations), but to enable everyone to browse and interact, you can use the "All" option; "OwnerOnly" sets it back.  The "Reset" option forcibly resets the browser to the home page you specified on the /48 line; and, finally, the "Close" option de-rezzes the browser when you're done.

NOTE: Note that it do absolutely no validation on the URL you specify; I didn't want to limit what the Shared Media feature might handle in future, but this does mean if you typo the URL, you'll need to delete the browser and make a new one.

And, obviously, you need script and rez permissions for wherever you are for this to work at all.

Get it on XstreetSL here or from the usual bat-vendor at the usual bat-location!

L$ 50.

The Most Irritating Thing in SL

At least for today.  Here it is:

Escalators.  Freakin’ animated escalators.

Now, guys, I don’t mind you having escalators in your stores.  I don’t even mind you having texture-animated escalators there.  All I ask is, for the love of sanity, if you’re going to have escalators that look like they’re moving, for goodness sake script the blasted things so that they move me when I step on them.  ‘Cause nothing takes your virtual suspension of disbelief out and punches it in the head like standing still on a moving escalator.

Oh, and make sure you get the speed right, ‘cause walking up – or, being scripted to move up, if you take that suggestion – a moving escalator at a speed which isn’t the same speed as the texture is moving also punches your VSoD in the head.  And is vaguely nausea-inducing, besides.

Running OpenSim on Amazon EC2

So, yeah, I’m moving a bunch of stuff off local servers to the cloud, starting with my blog, and also including my Notebook – well, that one, I’m moving both into local storage and out to the cloud.  But instead of stashing stuff on another wiki, I’m going to simplify things considerably and just post ‘em up here, and let search find them for me when I want ‘em.  So there’ll be a fair few technical notes and such cropping up here in the future.

Anyway.  Here’s how to run OpenSim on Amazon EC2, for testing.  This is fairly old, but it’s what I used when I was playing around with it, and is probably readily transferrable to newer versions.  It’s a simple standalone image of a Linux installation of OpenSim (based on 02/12/2009 SVN release).  It is configured in the simplest possible configuration, using SQLite, and with no provision made for persistence between instances.  Thus, it is intended for evaluation/test/play/try-out purposes only.

Or, of course, for building further OpenSim instances on top of.

First Stage: Running the Instance via EC2

Ok.  So, how does all this work?

Well, if you haven’t used Amazon EC2 before, the first thing you need to do is become familiar with Amazon Web Services in general, and it in particular.  Go along to http://aws.amazon.com/ and sign up, then take a look around.  In particular, if you intend to use your shiny new OpenSim server a lot, you may want to pay attention to the information on pricing you’ll find there.  It doesn’t add up to much for casual use – indeed, all the time I spent initially getting things set up, complete with false start using the Windows version, only cost me $0.64.  But be aware of it.  I am not responsible for any costs you may incur due to losing track of time, forgetting you left the instance running, etc.

I’m going to assume that you can read the getting started guide on your own, and don’t really need me to help you out with that.  After all, you are about to run a piece of server software here, so I’m going to assume that I’m dealing with a relatively technical audience.

Anyway, before you proceed to the next step, you need to have:

• generated a key-pair
• created a security group for your OpenSim instances (I call mine “opensim”).

The rules you want on this security group are:

• tcp/22 (ssh) from your external IP address – and note, if you are using NAT, this means the address on the outside of your router
• icmp 8:0 (ping) likewise
• tcp/9000 from anywhere – 0.0.0.0/0
• udp/9000 from anywhere – 0.0.0.0/0

If you’re using the command-line, the results of an:

ec2-describe-group.cmd opensim

Should look something like this, only with different user/group numbers and IP addresses:

GROUP 465102135893 opensim OpenSim instance group
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS tcp 0 65535 FROM USER 465102135893 GRPNAME default
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS udp 0 65535 FROM USER 465102135893 GRPNAME default
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS tcp 9000 9000 FROM CIDR 0.0.0.0/0
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS udp 9000 9000 FROM CIDR 0.0.0.0/0
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS tcp 22 22 FROM CIDR 24.249.106.76/32
PERMISSION 465102135893 opensim ALLOWS icmp 8 0 FROM CIDR 24.249.106.76/32

And/or you’ll see the analogous thing in the web-based EC2 console.

Okay, now you’re ready to start that instance up.  Here’s the command line for those of you who installed the tools; those of you who are using the console get a nifty wizard when you right-click the AMI and launch it, so just plug in the right data in the right place.  Basically, you want to launch one instance, on a small server, in security group opensim, and with the key-pair you made – mine’s called ec2-keypair, for this example – which on the command line looks like this:

ec2-run-instances ami-73f3141a –g opensim –k ec2-keypair

Now, when you see it “running” in the console, or you see that ec2-describe-instances has started showing it as running instead of pending, then the server is up and running.  And you can move on to the next step.

Second Stage: Fixing Up The Instance

So, can we connect yet?

No.  See, OpenSim needs to know the external hostname or IP address of the server it’s running on to serve the region, and it gets that from one of its configuration files.  Trouble is, every time you start an instance on Amazon EC2, it’s automatically assigned a new one, so the first thing we need to do is log in to it and alter that config file.

When you started the instance, the command-line tool or the console will have given you its external name, which happens to have its IP address embedded in it.  It looks something like this:

ec2-75-101-189-104.compute-1.amazonaws.com

So, the next thing we have to do is connect to the server using ssh, and for identification, use the private key file which you got when you generated your key-pair, and username root.  Since there are about a gazillion ssh clients out there, you’re going to have to check how it wants the information on your own; for mine, PuTTY, the command line looks like this:

putty ec2-75-101-189-104.compute-1.amazonaws.com -l root -i z:\ec2-putty-keypair.ppk

(Oh, yeah. With PuTTY, due to annoying stuff, you have to mangle the .pk file EC2 gives you into PuTTY's own format before this will work. Details at http://docs.amazonwebservices.com/AWSEC2/2007-03-01/GettingStartedGuide/putty.html . You probably won't have to do this with other ssh clients.)

Okay. Now you're logged onto the instance. The file we need to edit is /var/opensim/bin/Regions/default.xml, so open it up for editing:

vi /var/opensim/bin/Regions

(Assuming you know how to use vi; tutorial here: http://www.unix-manuals.com/tutorials/vi/vi-in-10-1.html . I suggest practising on your own local copy for cheapness's sake.)

Find the external_host_name="174.129.229.27" part of the Config line, delete the part between the double-quotes, and replace it with the IP address of the host name we got above. That is, if the host name was ec2-75-101-189-104.compute-1.amazonaws.com, fill in 75.101.189.104. (This should work with the host name, yes, but it doesn't seem to for some reason.) Then save the file.

Now it should be able to find itself when it starts, so start it up. You need to be in the same directory as the server to start it, so these commands should do the trick:

cd /var/opensim/bin
mono OpenSim.exe

You'll find a whole bunch of text flashing by in your SSH session as the server starts up. When it ends with the lines:

Currently selected region is root
16:07:18 - [STARTUP]: Startup took 0m 15s

You're ready to go.

Third Stage: Running OpenSim and Connecting

You can connect to the OpenSim with any compatible viewer, including the standard Second Life viewer. The easiest way to do this is to simply copy the shortcut for that viewer on your desktop, and edit the "Target" line in the shortcut properties to include the --loginuri part below, obviously replacing the host name part of the URI with the same one that you used in the last step.

"C:\Program Files\SecondLifeReleaseCandidate\SecondLifeReleaseCandidate.exe" --loginuri http://ec2-75-101-189-104.compute-1.amazonaws.com:9000/

Then just run it. The AMI is set up to accept logins from one user with first name "Test", last name "User", and password "test", initially.

And you're in your very own test sim!

When You’re Done

You can type "shutdown" to the OpenSim server if you really want to, but since in this instance EC2 will just throw away all the changes as soon as you terminate it anyway, there's not much need.

Anyway, don't bother trying to shut down the Linux server from inside it. Instead, either use the ec2-terminate-instances command:

ec2-terminate-instances.cmd i-b4bd37dd

with the instance number you got when you started the thing up, or right-click on the instance in the EC2 Console and hit Terminate.

DO NOT FORGET THIS STEP. OMIT IT AND YOU WILL BE BILLED FOR ALL THE TIME IT WILL BE RUNNING BEFORE YOU REMEMBER.

Stuff To Note

If you hate changing the IP address manually in step two, yes, you can get around this by using an Elastic IP and associating it with your instance each time you start it. Then you only have to change it the first time. I've done this myself when I was fiddling with it a lot, but please note that while Elastic IPs you use are free, Elastic IPs start costing you money when you aren't using them, and it adds up.

Yes, this is impractical for actual hosting, because any time the instance shuts down or is shut down, you lose all your changes. It should be possible to use Amazon's Elastic Block Store volumes to house the data files, with or without a MySQL database, to get around this, but I haven't got around to it yet. And, well, unless I'm gettin' paid, probably don't hold your breath for that coming out any time soon.

Date an Alt!

Do you hang around Metaplace Central calling out for people to date you?

Are you hanging around the more dubious parts of SL trying to find a partner?

In short, are you desperately in need of a boyfriend/girlfriend/sheepfriend (hey, I don't judge)?

Date an Alt!  Simply create an alternate account of the appropriate sex (or species; again, I don't judge), bring them into the world as a separate person and personality, and go out with yourself! Heck, sleep with yourself, if you want.  Remember what Woody Allen said on the subject?

Think of the advantages:

• You always know what they're thinking;
• You always communicate perfectly;
• They will always love you (possible self-hatred notwithstanding);
• They will never leave you;
• They always want to do what you want to do;
• And they're always on at the same time you are.

All this, and you don't have to deal with any of the personality clashes or other inconveniences of a real relationship, like behaving in a manner that at least one other person in the world finds attractive, or avoiding doing things that would make a real woman/man/sheep haul off and punch you in the face.

Seriously, date an alt.  It's the clean, drama-free, trouble-void, ultimate Relationship Of The Future!  All the validation and regard from others of an actual relationship, without having to go to all the trouble of having one!

...and the lack of whinging on the topic will mean I won't punch you in the face, either.

Metaplace Standard Time

One of the advantages of Second Life, as a virtual world, is that it has its own time zone.  Well, sort of - Second Life Time is exactly synchronized to Pacific Time, both PST and PDT, so it's more that it has the time zone of its servers.

But nonetheless, having a consistent in-world time-zone is useful for several things: setting appointments, holding meetings, and generally knowing what everyone means when they say "2 o'clock" without having to spend a bunch of time negotiating time-zone corrections with each other.  Especially as it's continuously displayed in-world, which makes it easy to get a feel for it even if you don't live around there.

So, here's my latest Metaplace module, Metaplace Standard Time, which is the software part of my planned efforts to push time standardization on y'all.  It's just a simple behavior that you can add to a place which shows the MST/MDT clock to everyone in that world, in a little window of its own.  And, voila, the same effects - at least if it achieves currency.

(For convenience of cross-world events, and also since they're located in San Diego, MST/MDT also tracks PST/PDT.  See how I overcome my personal timezone prejudices for the common good?  I'm in Central.)

So, buy it today, and join the crusade for greater time standardization!

Hair Collection

This entry goes out to Missy, who back during Blogathon spoke thus:

I am amused and intrigued by the idea of a "hair collection".

And so, for your viewing pleasure, here is my hair collection.  Well, actually, it's Athanasia's hair collection, rather than Athanasius's, since when I looked into the matter I recalled that I only had one piece of male hair (Sirena's Brad, which you can see at the link above, and, well, wherever there is a picture of me in the Blogathon posts).  Of female hair, though, I have fifteen styles - although, really, by SL standards, that's a tiny collection:

April is my "standard" female hair, much like "Brad" is my male; it's the one I wear day-to-day unless I'm feeling like a change of some sort.  Or, as this is something in which we can indulge ourselves freely in the virtual world, I'm picking different hair to go with a different outfit. It's from Dernier Cri, who actually seem to get the majority of my hair business.  Three of these are from their store.

Like "Red Run", which I mention below, Bun Fun is another freebie hair I picked up early on.  I still use this one occasionally, even though I mostly wear my paid-for hair these days.

Another Dernier Cri hair, this is their Half Up Bun.  They're rather clever with some of their hairs; they come with a built-in script to let you reshade them to whichever range of colors you purchased, or indeed to any color in their entire range. So while this style of mine may be blue at the moment, as you see it here, it can become pretty much any hair color I like, natural or, well, not natural.

Laynie comes from Exile, a different hair store.  I originally bought this - well, back in the day, it was on sale to raise money for a good cause, and since I quite liked it when I went to take a look at it in the store, why not? Of course, I've since discovered that I quite like being blonde on occasion... (Incidentally, I bought this as what the SL business calls a "fat pack"; I have six different hairs in different shades of blonde.  This is "champagne".)

The third of my hairs from Dernier Cri, this is Madeline, in which I own a reshadeable-to-any-red version.  It's actually my most recent acquisition, so I haven't found a particular niche for it yet in my outfit sets, but I'm sure I will.  I love that slightly dishevelled look.

And this is Codie (named after the inimitable CodeBastard Redgrave), from Mirada.  If I remember correctly, I found this, or was pointed to this, at the 2008 Hair Fair. And while longer tends to be my usual preference, it is awfully useful - for many reasons, a lot of which are hats - to keep some shorter hair around. (Evidently I was getting in touch with my inner redhead that day, as I own this in both "Red" and "Fiery Red".  The illustration is the former.)

Next up is Artist, from Miriel Enfield's now tragically closed store.  I really miss her store for her eyes and jewelry, which were both made from the purest virtual awesome imaginable, but her hair was certainly no slouch, either. Which is why I own two of them, starting with this one, whose attractive-yet-casual arrangement is perfect for working days in-world. And, yes, I do own it in purple.  Or rather, "amethyst".

This next one is actually a Miriel freebie, her Gibson Girl.  I always rather liked that look, so naturally it had to be mine.

Musician actually comes with one of the default newbie avatars that we get in the library, "Musician Female by Renegade Clothing".  I mention it specifically here because it's the only one I've taken out of the library to use semi-regularly, just because I like the effect. It's actually made by Aemilia Case, and while I don't own any of it, you can see more of her hair designs at her store, Philotic Energy.

Despite it's name, Red Run, this is a black hair.  Well, actually, its full name is "Red Run (black tint)", so it's not quite as odd as it sounds like it is. It's a freebie hair that I picked up quite early in my time in-world, when my budget was a little more constrained.  I don't think I've worn it for ages, actually. Incidentally, the tail of this style demonstrates one of the two possible responses to, well, that stopping all the individual twisted torii of a hairstyle passing through the avatar mesh is really computationally expensive, so SL doesn't - in this case, the tail of the hair standing well out from the body so it won't intersect you when you move your head.  The other one, just letting it and trying to minimize the visual problem, well, you'll be able to see down below.

Next up, Riku, which actually - I suppose - counts as a male hair as well because I've been known to wear it irrespective of sex.  It's my metallic-silver hair, which I wear on days when I'm feeling more like an anime character than I do usually. (I have eyes for those moments, too.) And, actually, it comes from Japan, in a manner of speaking.  See it and more at Hayate's Hair Lab ("high detail hair from Japan"), over in Harajuku.

Shea - I can't actually remember where I bought Shea, and the creator comes up unknown when I look in my inventory, so I can't find out right now either.  Sigh.  Sorry, creator! It's another one of my color-changing hairs, even though it's dark red right now.  I got it to experiment with the over-the-shoulder look, but unfortunately, I don't actually wear it much because I can't resolve the hair-penetrating-the-avatar-mesh problem, as you can see in the middle there, to my satisfaction.  Regrettably.

Zoey is the first of the bought hairs I obtained, from the store I generally recommend for newbies to go for hair - as per the linked post - Sirena Hair and Fashion.  I own it in four colors - Black Pearl (as shown), Grey, Jet, and Midnight - and it was my standard hair for quite a long time before I got April.  It's still an old standby I go back to quite regularly.

For a rather more messy bun, we have Drop, from another Japanese store, TekuTeku.  I got it originally to go with one specific outfit, but it's since become one of my regular choices.

And finally, Tyrin, from Sinsation, whose location-pointer I have seems to point nowhere, so I can't give you a SLURL. Unfortunately, this seems to have been my hair-buying mistake; while it looked great in the vendor - and I've seen it look good on other people, so it's not the hair - I just can't seem to get it to sit right on my head.  Ah, well.  Maybe one day.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a quick tour through my hair collection, some hair stores, and some random stuff about Second Life hair.  Hope you enjoyed it!

Extropian Space Elevator

So, way back in this Blogathon post when we visited Extropia, Jeff left this comment:

So where does the beanstalk go?

Well, sadly I can't tell you it goes all the way up to geosynchronous orbit, even virtual geosynchronous orbit, and there's a reason for that.  You see, the Second Life world is flat.  I mean, there's height variation, yes, but there's no overall curvature - as a rectangular grid of perfectly square regions, the world as a whole is flat as a pancake.

(Yes, the sun and the moon orbit it, but we'll deal with the incredibly skewed orbital mechanics that keep them locked 180 degrees apart along the same orbit in a later post, and let's not even mention that we get two hours of daylight and one hour of night in a three-hour cycle, m'kay?)

It does, however, take you to both a sky platform at 1150 meters:

...(pay no attention to the station orbiting near it), and, up at 2050 meters, the low orbit viewpost and bar, with a splendid view of a faux-Earth below:

Not bad for simulation, eh?

Blogathon: 8:00am; The End Is Nigh

(Pledge your support today!)

In point of fact, the end has jolly well arrived.  49 posts, something like 140 pictures, and 24 hours - and a heck of a lot of caffeine - and in exchange, we raised $338 for the American Cancer Society.

So far, I mean; PingHud sales, donation boxes in-world and belated pledges may still raise that figure by the end of July, and that's all to the good.

Anyway, whether or not, it's a good achievement, and I'm certainly happy with it.

But as of right now, it's goodnight from me:

...and it's goodnight from me.

(It may be early in the morning, but it's not early in my morning.)

Blogathon: 7:30am; The Mayflower

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And for my penultimate post, here's an educational chunk of Second Life that may even be of use to me directly, at least so far as the jolly old citizenship test is concerned.  Yes, it's a virtual reconstruction of the Mayflower and the Plymouth settlement (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Southern%20Cross/140/17/30 ).

Very nicely done, with everything in place down to the charts and the captain's quill, and the Plymouth Compact all laid out in the after cabin as it was signed.  And the ship and shore colony both well provided with informational signs so you can actually learn quite a bit from the reconstruction.  The more so with a guide, I should think.

They didn't stint themselves with the details or the signage ashore, either.  Or with the sound effects, actually, which I wish I had a way to post in audible form.  They've done a good job of making them atmospheric.

...except it looks like the settlement itself has been dismantled.  Nothing there but trees and flat ground.  Huh.  I hope that's just for refurbishment, because it really was very good.

Ah, no, scratch that.  I just spoke to the owner.  They're just using the land for another build over Halloween.  It'll be back for Thanksgiving.  Excellent!

Just realized I never did cover any art galleries. Oops.  WE HAVE ART GALLERIES IN HERE, PEOPLE.

Blogathon: 7:00am; Samurai Island

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Next, we return to slightly less serious matters, and travel to Samurai Island (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Samurai%20Island/125/120/22), Home of, up in the big building in the picture, what is described by various blogs as "the wholly badass melee combat game", complete with competing clans and differing warrior philosophies.

I, after a few minutes of flailing about with a free practice bokken, soon decided that actual combat wasn't for me; but that still leaves me two of the three regions to enjoy; both the well-done Japanese architecture and scenery, and, of course, the shopping for well-made sword and kimono.

Blogathon: 6:30am; Big Business is Big

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One thing I haven't shown any of so far is how big business uses Second Life.  Part of that is because some of it is not open to the general public (teleconferencing, and other business-internal usages, especially when they're using spinoff virtual world technology (OpenSim) behind their own firewalls.  A lot of the rest of it is that the history of Second Life is littered with failed corporate islands when they've tried to use the virtual world as a marketing tool, and failed to learn one very important lesson: namely, it's damned hard to succeed with conventional advertising when people have to voluntarily go to look at it, and then keep coming back of their own free will.

But nonetheless, there are a couple of success stories I'm familiar with.  Here's one of them; this is Microsoft Island, and this is the home of the Second Life .NET Users' Group (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Microsoft%20Island/158/135/76):

There are a whole set of virtual meeting spaces below this auditorium on Microsoft Island, too.  There's also a giant, fiery-bearded sea serpent.  I'm not sure what he's for, but I don't judge.

Amazon, and specifically Amazon AWS, also have an island - actually two regions - in Second Life.  They have a lot of information there for AWS developers, but quite apart from that, they recently held a job fair - very successful, by all accounts - in-world.

Note the glass-walled booths behind the main pavilion where the actual interviews were conducted.

Blogathon: 6:00am; Bring On The Nukes

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Back to science, now, for the first of my Final Five posts, and here we are in the Science School II region, standing outside the Areva Nuclear Power Plant (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Science%20School%20II/217/190/25):

It is pretty much exactly what the name suggests.  Courtesy of the University of Denver and NPL, it's a giant virtual model of a 1600MW Pressurized Water Reactor, complete with either automated tour, or point-to-point teleportation so you can walk around it.

Plenty of working models and informational signs for the student, from the containment building:

...to the turbine hall, and back out past the transformers:

Blogathon: 5:30am; Greenies

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And here's me almost forgetting something this neat.

Rezzable's a bit out of popular favor at the moment, both for effectively leaving Second Life, and for the concerns SL content creators have with regard to their new sim-copying BuilderBot product, which no-one wants to see become a CopyBot - a program that could copy other people's objects without having permission to do so - writ large.

Nonetheless, it can't be denied that they've produced some marvellous work in their time here.  I've always been particularly fond of Greenies Home; the way you teleport in, and look around, and realize that you're in a gigantic house... and on the wrong end of a terrible problem of scale.

Once you hunt around a bit, though, the cause of the problem becomes apparent enough.  Your home has been invaded!

By really tiny invaders...

...some of whom have problems of their own...

...not that anyone seems to care.

It's the high level of detail on everything that makes this build awesome.  The giant, scuttling cockroach, on the other hand, is just unnecessary.

Blogathon: 5:00am; Essential Gadgets

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Well, moderately essential gadgets, anyway.  As the morning rolls on towards the completion of Blogathon, I'm going to take a moment here to list the three - yes, only three - essential gadgets which you wouldn't catch me going anywhere in Second Life without.

The first is my Hank Ramos Universal Translator.  (You can pick one up here: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Grignano/100/99/27 . just sitting out next to the street) .  It's free, meaning of course that donations of L$ are greatly appreciated but not required, by which I mean "pay the man, already, it's incredibly useful".  The UT hooks into Google Translate, and automatically translates local chat in foreign languages near you into your language, and your local chat into the foreign languages of the people speaking.

Remember, only about 53% of Second Life Residents come from countries that have English as their native language, so if you hang around long enough, you will find yourself dealing with people who only speak foreign languages.  And you don't speak ALL of them, that's for sure.

Second on the list would be my ZHAO-II animation overrider.  The ZHAO-II is pretty much the de facto standard for animation overriders, so the chances are wherever you get one, it's going to be the ZHAO-II or a derivative.

Why would you want one?  Well, what an animation overrider does is change the way you move.  You've heard me mention the newbie duck-walk before, and if you've seen yourself doing it, you probably want it fixed.  But, that aside, there are a whole range of other animations, for everything from flying to sitting, and most of us can recognize the default ones quite some way off.  And, socially, they don't just scream "newbie", they scream "extremely green newbie".

Besides, wouldn't you prefer to move in a manner that reflects your personality a little?

I picked my original AO up at Animazoo (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Brightown/198/151/33 ), but goodness knows there are plenty of places selling them.

Third, but definitely not last in importance, is the MystiTool, from Mystical Cookie Designs (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Blumfield/24/145/296).

You want to get this, and you want to get this nice and early on.  Start with the free one if you have to, and then upgrade, but you want it.  This sweet little device does everything.

Which is to say, it replaces a veritable panoply of other gadgets that you would otherwise have to carry separately.  Flight feather to get above the 150m ceiling?  It does it.  Radar to check for the presence of people around you?  It does that too.  Defenses against griefers like movelock and non-physical vehicles?  It has them.  Teleport history?  URL catcher?  Does that too.  Instantly make quick-change skyboxes (so you can get changed not in public) and posing stands (so you can check your appearance)? Yes.  And more. and more, and quite a lot more.  It's the Swiss Army Knife of Second Life tools, and you don't want to be without it.  Trust me on this.

Blogathon: 4:30am; And A TV Network, Too

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Remember back at 11pm, I was talking about how the virtual world had its own communications media?

Would you believe that includes its own television network?

No, really.  Its studios are right over here, in Northpoint (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Northpoint/129/169/32 ), look:

Of course, one advantage of virtual television over the physical kind is that, if you don't mind teleporting over to the studio to get them, they give you the television for free.  Even the big 'ol wall-mounted widescreen:

Not that you have to have one to watch; in fact, you don't even need to be a Second Life Resident.  You can just hop on over here and watch the live stream directly:

http://archive.treet.tv/get-shows

Enjoy!

Blogathon: 4:00am; The Shelter and Starting Point

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Four hours to go, and my brain may actually be falling out!  Worse yet, I've started getting that tight sensation that means I can't drink any more coffee.

But then, only four hours to go, and I'm already so wired I'm bouncing off air molecules.

Going to throw another one in here for anyone who might be feeling inspired to get in-world, and talk about a couple of places that are useful to the newcomer.  Both of these, incidentally, are privately set up, owned, and run - there's no connection to Linden Lab at all.

The first of them is The Shelter (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Isabel/48/228/81).

It's primarily a social place, somewhere where newbies can find a friendly and helpful environment to ease them into the Second Life social whirl which can, I think it is fair to say, sometimes be a little rough.  Much like First Life, really.  They have areas to sit and chat, dance floors, the pool, stage events and game shows, have some live music, and generally try to keep things lively for you until you find your niche.

Starting Point (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Moodle/111/208/26) is a different kettle of fish.  While it does have lots of amenities available to its residents, what it mainly has is that most precious commodity for the SL newbie, namely, somewhere to stay.  Second Life residents under 90 days old can apply to stay here in one of the furnished apartments for up to eight weeks, giving them somewhere to hang their hat and keep their prims - and, hopefully, by the time the eight weeks are up, they'll have found somewhere more permanent to live.

There is a waiting list, however, so be prepared for that if you look to take advantage of this place.

Blogathon: 3:30am; Bay City

And next, Bay City!

Bay City is an interesting development in Second Life terms.  Most of the time, mainland land is sold empty, as is, which given people's different ideas and tastes tends to lead to much of the mainland looking like God's own melange of different buildings in different styles, from different periods, etc., etc.  Which is, I should say, not necessarily displeasing to the eye - albeit occasionally riotous, and helped by recent Linden policies involving kicking irreformable land cutters, ad farmers, and suchlike off their parcels with all due prejudice - but is definitely inconsistent.

Bay City, on the other hand, involved considerable public works building of roads and canals, along with some public content, and also was intended to go along a definite theme, described as: "the American urban experience, between 1940 and 1965, perhaps best typified by Chicago circa 1950 and marked by a distinct deco influence."

Not every parcel in Bay City holds a structure that fits this theme, I should say - there's always some jackasses who want to flaunt their out-of-theme buildings - but quite a lot do, and certainly the Bay City regions have much greater visual consistency than the rest of the Second Life mainland.

Here are some pictures of the public buildings of Bay City:

Welcome to Molexandria, an archaeological site investigating the ancient inhabitants of this region before the Lindens came and opened it up for Resident colonization...

I kind of like these little bits of fictiomythology they come up with for this sort of thing,  It adds a nice bit of color to the land even before anything's been built on it.

The Bayjou Theater.  It's a pity that bayjoutheater.com and the grand plans to show machinima films here don't seem to have worked out as planned, because it's such a really cool movie theater build.

It's very attractive inside, too.  The movie poster for "Away With the Breeze" was a nice touch.  Not shown here, though, as it's up in the lobby, and I'm in the theater itself, watching the movie.

And one last place:

This is the Channel Island Asylum, located appropriately enough on an island in the channel between Bay City and the mainland.  If the in-world Justice League (yes, we have one) ever capture some sort of virtual Joker, one imagines this is where they'll imprison him.

Hope they've fixed that gate by then!

Blogathon: 3:00am; New Toulouse

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Well, having just mentioned Bay City, I guess it would make sense to show you some of that; but instead, we're off to New Toulouse.  A lady I conversed with briefly back when I was in Caledon suggested I should add it to the list, as somewhere well worth looking at (based on 1900s New Orleans), and far be it from me to turn down a suggestion from a lady.

So, yes, your suspicions are right.  I'm about to show you somewhere I've never been before.  Always something new to discover in 20,000 regions, eh?

Well, I've never been to New Orleans at all, much less in the 1900s, so I have no idea how authentic the build looks.  (Leigh?  Are you reading?).  Well-executed, though.

I do rather fancy some of the clothing styles on offer in the pictured store, though.  Time Lord waistcoats?  I must landmark this place.

Blogathon: 2:30am; The Friendly Skies of Abbots Aerodrome

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I just remembered that I hadn't taken you over to Abbotts Aerodrome (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Abbotts/160/148/71) yet, and considering I mentioned it way, way back there in the post that this post is about to knock right off the bottom of my front page, it's about time.

Impressive-looking structure, isn't it?

It plays host to a lot of good stuff, too.  The shops up at the top, for example, are where I bought my Terra "Z" Personal Transport, or, to put it in possibly more recognizable terms, that cool hover-Segway I was showing off earlier.  And the blimp you see there?  It demonstrates Terra Aviation's products quite nicely by flying you on an automated voyage through several of the nearby regions until you get to their branch in Bay City (of which, in turn, more later).

On the mid-level, of course, you have the parking area for these good-looking planes:

A runway for the conventional aircraft is down below, with another nice collection of aircraft in the hangar:

And then, of course, there's the submarine (and seaplane) dock.  You really can build just about any vehicle that you want, with the right application of virtual physics:

But, of course, for a lot of visitors to Abbotts, what brings them is the skydiving.  (I trust you will forgive me if for this demonstration, I force it to be daylight, and do not remove my hat?)  In virtual skydiving, like this, special skydiving pods carry you up thousands of meters into the air; and then they de-rez, leaving you conveniently in free-fall.  Hope you remembered a parachute!

Blogathon: 2:00am; Layers and Hair

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You know, Blogathon means that this will be my most prolific blog posting month ever?  My previous record was 54, and I've already blown past that this month.

Okay, where were we?  Ah, yes, I was going to explain layers.

If we ignore prim clothing - that is to say, clothing made from actual objects attached to you at various points, like rings and other jewelry, and many shoes, and belts, and codpieces, and suchlike - the way clothing in SL works is pretty simple.  You have a shape - the avatar mesh - and your clothing is painted on top of it on its own mesh, in layers.  The complete result of putting these pieces of clothing one on top of each other is what you look like.

I have a diagram of the layers somewhere...

Okay, so here it is, right?  (You know, I have no memory of where I got that from.  I hope whoever made it doesn't mind me using it here.  If it was you, and you do, please e-mail.)

Anyway, what this represents is more or less the original scheme, from furthest out (skirt) to deepest in.  Each one overlays the one below it, at least insofar as it covers the same area of the body.  Of course, they can be transparent, so if your jacket is open at the front, your shirt'll be visible, and so on.

Problem is, the original scheme's all messed up, because people were quite a bit more devious than the designers allowed for.  The basic Linden skin doesn't look good, so people started using the tattoo layer for actual skin derived from, well, people-skin, so it could have texture and hairs on your chest and nipples and stuff.  That meant the tattoo makers ended up using the underwear layers for tattoos.  Transparent socks and gloves have been used to overlay painted nails on otherwise unpainted skin.  Most jackets use the skirt layer to fill in the bottom of the jacket to prevent it from clinging quite as closely to the butt as the jacket layer does.  And so on and so forth.

And so, considering that in practice the juggling of these various different types of ingenuity in putting together a single outfit can mean wanting to wear articles of clothing on layers that are not where intuition might locate them, a designer who'll sell you a piece of clothing on EVERY layer where it might need to go is a designer who will get a lot of repeat business, if you know what I mean.

Okay, hair.

Sirena Hair and Fashion (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/West%20Sunset/176/27/21)

I don't really have a go-to supplier for hair.  (Yes, we buy in our hair.  Second Life avatars do have hair of their own, as you learn in orientation, but that was implemented way back in the day, and looks... well, today it looks terrible.  Because people have since learned to shape and texture a whole bunch of prims into hair that looks much more realistic, and, y;know, moves when you move, and reacts to wind, and suchlike, and then glue them to your skull to form your hair.  And it all looks much better.)  I haven't yet settled on any one place, so my hair collection comes from a variety of different people.  I do, however, have a send-to supplier for hair, and Sirena is it.  Good and consistent quality, and reasonably priced.

Actually, her "Brad", in its brown variant, was the first hair I ever bought in Second Life, and I like it so much that I'm still wearing it (I am in all the pictures of me you've seen today, for example).  You can call that an endorsement, if you like.

Blogathon: 1:30am; Rest Is Hard, Let's Go Shopping

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As Barbie didn't say.

Well, no, let's not really go shopping.  It's a bit early in the morning for me to be spending large numbers of dollars, even if they are only Linden dollars (current exchange rate: US$1 == L$228, which actually means it's appreciating against the US$.  Hm.  There's a warning).  I could spend them on anything.

But what I will do is give you a quick whirlwind tour of some of the stores I favor for essentials in SL, as I'm hopeful that I've inspired at least some of my readers to try it out, and knowing where to get good stuff is always useful.  So, then, in no particular order:

Hoorenbeek (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/JT%20World%20VI/128/171/23)

Best place I've found on the grid for men's business clothing, and since what I wear in-world - at least while male - is essentially men's business clothing, that means it's my main go-to store.  The suit I was wearing earlier came from there.  Also, as I may have mentioned, for some reason male fashion is a lot harder to get hold of, certainly quality male fashion, so when you find a good supplier, you tend to want to keep using them.

They're expensive, it's fair to say, but worth it.  Also, they sold me a bitchin' pair of cowboy boots.

Also known for having the best watch in SL.  Taking a look at the copy, I agree with them - I just can't see myself spending L$2,600 and incurring a rendering cost in the 100+ prim range on something that, let's face it, is small and on my wrist and so unlikely to be looked at closely enough for anyone to notice the intensely handcrafted small detail.

Or so I tell myself every time I go in and end up looking at the thing, because it really is a pretty awesome piece of virtual craftsmanship, and my tech-lust pretty much dictates I will end up buying one sooner or later.  Oh, woe is me, forced to buy myself nice things.

Style Starts Here (SLURL: - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Style%20Starts%20Here/115/130/28)

This is my go-to place for women's (primarily, but not exclusively) casual clothing, and its sister store, Simone!, is likewise a go-to place for formal clothing.  That's for a numver of reasons.  Partly it's because I've had consistently good luck with the clothing I've bought from it, in terms of appearance and fit.  Partly it's because the owner, Simone Stern, is thorougly competent and disinclined to take any crap - and goes so far as to issue a notecard outlining this to shoppers - and I find that refreshing.  And partly it's because she does something that not nearly enough Second Life designers do, which is produce clothing on a number of different layers.

I need to explain that, don't I?  Okay, well, as it's 1:27, I'll do it in the next post.

Blogathon: 1:00am; Drama Dolls

Special note: Goes out to all the lovely people who've left me comments; sorry, but I probably won't be replying to your comments 'til Sunday afternoon.  Kind of single-tasking here right now.  Hope you understand.

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Right.  Well, this next post was inspired by a couple in that turret just down from where the Bridge to Nowhere meets the mountain, who were unfortunately disturbing the peaceful atmosphere of the Lost Gardens somewhat with an argument over why one of them was wearing a wedding ring that wasn't the wedding ring the other one gave her, or some other such thing.  In short, DRAMA.

Which in turn reminded me of a store I heard about recently whose product line is specifically tailored towards helping you deal with drama.

Drama Dolls (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Taylor%20Bay/80/202/26 )!  The best thing in interpersonal problem resolution since the love bat!

Each of these dolls is scripted to help work out your drama.  They listen to you, then "give you the acknowledgement and apology you richly deserve", and then self-destruct dramatically.  Much like the people who tend to be involved in DRAMA, really.

And there's a whole range of different drama dolls, to represent the different people and avatars who turn up during DRAMA.  The vampire, the neko, the robot, the SLebrity, the fashionistas and fuginistas, the content thieves, the elves and the drow, the kajira and Men of Gor... and, of course, most relevant to me, these lovely chaps with their ThinkGeek T-shirts are the bloggers.

Oh, and right at the back, the special models.  The type of labels they used don't come through on screen-shots, so I'll just tell you: from left to right we have the Drama Kings, the Drama Queens, and the... other Drama Queens, or as the actual label reads, the Homosexual Theater Performance Monarchs.

You know, I kind of wish I could buy these in First Life.

Blogathon: 12:30am; ...And Rest

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Well, not me, strictly, I can't rest.  I have blogging to do.

My avatar, on the other hand, to whatever trifling extent he and I can lead separate existences, can take a break from his wanderings around the Metaverse.  So, in the hope that some of that resting will trickle vicariously across the link to me, I'm off to one of my favorite Second Life beauty spots, and places to go for rest and relaxation.

The Lost Gardens of Apollo.  (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Apollo/66/179/23 )

The little forested nooks,,,

...any number of hidden places to just like around and relax...

...and when they build, they build with style.

They call this place the Bridge to Nowhere.  I really love all the architecture in this region.  It's simply gorgeous.

Blogathon 12:00am; I'm Fresh! I Swear I'm Fresh!

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Heh.  No, but seriously, I have a big ol' pot of coffee, thanks to my wonderful wife, who has very graciously put up with my dedicating of the weekend to Blogathon, and who has done wonders for keeping me maintained and on the keyboard during it - a big hand for her, if you please - and only just over eight hours to go.  No worries.  I can do it.

Meanwhile, take a look at this place:

,,,aargh.  I was hoping to track down for you a rather nice store I found once that does mixed-reality e-commerce; i.e., you browse and purchase gadgets, consumer electronics, in Second Life, and then the company behind all this ships them to you in the physical world.

Unfortunately, it looks like I can't find the wretched place again, and now I've taken most of my time for this post to not find it.  Oops.

But hey, check this gadget out.  It's a Twitter fountain!  Now you can get your koi and your tweets in the same place...

Okay, I admit it.  This post sucked for actual content.  Sorry, people.  I'll try not to do it again.

Blogathon: 11:30pm; And They Have A Plan

Special note: special re-shout-out to Missy doing Blogathon over at The Chef's Table; thanks for the shout-out, and I'm glad you're enjoying the show!

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Okay.  Back we go to the world, and this time, let's hit up a specifically FUN museum, pop-SF-geek-culture style.  Here we go, it's the Museum of Robots!

Many of the full-size reproductions you see here can actually be bought in the physical world, too, studio-scale and museum-quality, courtesy of Fred Barton Reproductions.  Very nifty.

Gah, that Asimovian enslave-the-robots meme gets everywhere.

Incidentally, although you can't see it anywhere in the pictures, one of the robot drones wandering around in here wandered up to me and welcomed me to the museum while I was typing this out.

Somehow, that robot slave-race thing never works out, you know?

Blogathon: 11:00pm; Second Life Not In Second Life

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Sounds paradoxical, doesn't it?

Well, you might be surprised on first thought, but there's an awful lot of Second Life social activity that goes on outside the boundaries of the world itself.  The reason's simple enough, I believe: it's just that, a world.  It has, if you will, a telephone system (in-world IM), and assorted other means of communication and media, but unlike in the physical world, some of them stick right through the edges of the virtual universe.

And I'm not just talking about SLim, useful as that is in extending the virtual telephone system beyond the edges of the virtual world, nor yet about that feature that lets out-world telephone calls be routed directly to your avatar.

No, I'm talking about blogs (the newspapers of the virtual world), and I'm talking about Plurk, which is, well, the Plurk of the virtual world, or I suppose you could call it the Twitter of the virtual world, except it's also the Twitter of the physical world.  Except that there's a lot of Second Life activity on Twitter, too.

(I think I need to drink more coffee.  That was a horrible sentence.)

Anyway, Plurk is the microblogging service which had so much avatar-based Second Life activity on it that the service owners added "Second Life" as a selectable country in people's profiles.  There's an awful lot of SL-related socialization going on out-world on Plurk, so if you have an SL account, my bet is that you're going to want a Plurk account too.

Leaving that aside for now, let's talk about blogs.  Which SL blogs are worth reading?

Well, that's a tricky one.  Once you get past the official blog - which you certainly should be reading, since even if a lot of what they talk about there doesn't apply to you or doesn't interest you, a decent portion of the rest may be applied to you, and it's good to know about that in advance.  The in-world gossip chain is about as reliable as any gossip chain ever is, so if you want to keep an eye on policy or code changes coming down the pipe, read the official blog.  'Nuff said.

Anyway, once you get past the official blog, what's worth reading becomes disputable and very much down to personal taste.  Personally, I would suggest reading New World Notes for a general sense of the virtual news; I think it's very good at that - and I'm not just saying that because they linked to my Blogathon today - and also, frankly, "Chestnut's Choices", Chestnut Rau's weekly event roundup, would probably be worth the cover price on its own if, you know, a blog had a cover price.

I was greatly saddened when my favorite of the fashion blogs, Linden Lifestyles, stopped publication not all that long after I got in-world.  Nonetheless, their archives are still worth a perusal, and I continue to think fondly of it because I found some of my favorite clothing shops through them.  I have not yet found another fashion blog I consider an adequate substitute, but I keep hoping.

Continuing on fashion, I could not fail to mention What the Fug?, the anti-fashion blog at - I show this URL intentionally - http://wehatewhatyourewearing.blogspot.com/ .  Yes, you can use it to point and laugh at the afflicted - and I do, for sometimes I am a cruel man, alas - but I can't help but think it should be shoved under the nose of every newbie with a decently thick skin as a cautionary guide as to what not to do.

Newbies, of course, and anyone else trying to get by on a low budget, should be reading SL for Nowt.

So, what else do I read?  Well, off the top of my head, I have been known to read Ch'know?, dwell on it, Girl Wonder Speaks...,  Mermaid Diaries (good archives for places to visit, especially), Metaversally Speaking, Second Effects, Second Stindberg, and probably half a dozen others I can't quite recall, from time to time.

But that's my taste, not yours.  I suggest you head on off to ArminasX Saiman's blog list, here, read through a bunch, and decide what you want to read.  It'll probably work out better in the long run.

Blogathon: 10:30pm; Here

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Where?

Here.

"Here" (SLURL: ) is the region belonging to Torley Linden, Resident Enlightenment Manager at Linden Lab.  To use his own phrase, he "amplifies your awesome".  And lest you be rolling your eyes at this point, O cynical readers of the Cerebrate's Contemplations, let me point out that it doesn't take that much time spend making use of the information he hands out in his video tutorials for Second Life and in other ways soaking up the infectious enthusiasm he has for the world and what he does before you just can't help agreeing with him on that.

And this is me saying that.

Anyway, here's Here:

Bright, isn't it?  The man does love his watermelons, and his watermelon colors.  Still, retina-burning though it may be without preparation, it surely is cheery and distinctive, and who can fail to love the giant flaming LOL over there in the background.

You know, now I've started typing this, I'm altogether unsure that I should have picked Here to cover during this Blogathon, because I'm entirely uncertain as to how to go about explaining Here to anyone who hasn't had a chance to absorb the Torley experience, at which point you don't need it explained to you.  Especially when given only 30 minutes to try and do it in.

But no sampling of the Second Life experience, if you ask me, would be complete without at least mentioning Here, so there it is.  I don't think I'm going to try to explain it further.  Suffice it to say that if you have some problem, or want to learn something to do with SL, you can almost certainly find the answers Here.

If you don't, just come Here anyway, wander around, and soak up the ambience a bit.  It's good for you.  Trust me.

Blogathon: 10:00pm; Enough With The Science, Off To Linden Village

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Well, at least for now.  We'll probably go back and pick up some more later.

But for now, we're going to have another entry that's at least a little meta, since it concerns an area of the virtual world that exists for the world's own sake, rather than for anything outside it.

Yes, it's Linden Village (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kirkby/181/194/33 ).  Modest little place, isn't it?

This is the place in-world where the Lindens dwell, or at least hold their office hours when you can go and talk to them.  It's also a little bit of a showcase; it's located very near the primary point at which newbies - who've come in by the standard route - get dropped off in-world, and gives them somewhere to explore quickly.

So, don't go rooting around in any Linden desk drawers you may find here hoping for inside information.  They know that newbies haven't figured out that private property thing applies here just as well as the rest of us do.

(Those are kept in Lindenworld, the super-privileged superuser part of the virtual world that mere Residents don't have access to, don'ch'know?)

Ah, the old days.  And we had to walk uphill to the Infohub in the virtual snow, too.  Both ways.  But just like it says, it all starts with a cube.

Now here's some fun over on the other side of Linden Village, in Ambleside (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Ambleside/47/39/33).  This automated balloon'll take you on a guided tour of Linden Village, taking you around most of the Lindens' offices and pointing them out.  Which can be quite fun, because as you may have noticed in the background of some of these shots, very few of the Lindens' offices here are boring old offices when they can be something more... creative.  And if the balloon's not there, feel free to enjoy a nice glass of lemonade or a coffee while you wait.

I'd take it and show you some of them, but the time has come, and in any case, it's much better in the daylight.  Guess you'll have to sign up and take it for yourself, won't you?

Blogathon: 9:30pm; Okay, Let's Try Some Hands-On Science

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In short, let's go to the Exploratorium (SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Exploratorium/147/118/21), where they have many hands-on exhibits.  Of course, this won't be nearly as much fun for you guys as it is for me, since it'll still be hands-off from your perspective, but it's something.

Ah, the dragon who ate the sun.  Wait, that's not science!  ;)

Now this is more like it.  A simulation of the moon passing in front of the sun, in proper eclipse style.  (Would have been even better if I had forced the environment to night so there was only the local light of the sun, but I wanted you to be able to see it.)

And while I don't want to go too picture-heavy here (yes, yes, I know)m just opposite it on the path there's a marvellous orbital simulator that explains how we get eclipses when we do and not at other times, and further down the path are interactive models of the moon and sun with particles, models of the Earth-Moon-Sun system which allow you to choose point of view, and more.

Personally, I really like the ride that you can take on a beam of light from their Sun model, crossing the orbits of the inner planets, all the way to the tiny specks of their Earth and Moon models.  It crosses most of the region, but that's what makes it a very effective interactive way of showing the true scale of the Solar System.

Of course, all of that's just in their special ellipse exhibition in the garden at the front of the Exploratorium.  Further inside, they have all their regular exhibits: the optical illusions, the interactive models, and more.

But now, alas, time is pressing and we must move on...