I made a few guitars while mucking around in Second Life. I’ve put up a few for sale over at SLexchange.com. Have sold two as of this post. Decided to price them at L$50, which is equivalent to USD$0.10 each. I don’t intend or expect to make any serious money (real or otherwise). It’s more to experiment with the creation/ buying/ selling process.
Here’s the link to a video of how one was made. In Second Life (SL), you build things by using something called “Prims” or “Primitives”, i.e. “Primitive Shapes”. Everything in SL is built out of Prims.
The information provided at the SL website on creating stuff is sketchy at best. I’ve not found any blogs that provide a tutorial (I have to admit I didn’t search very throughly). What you might want to do is to ask if people can explain to you how it works. Most people I’ve encountered in SL are very willing to share what they know, but always be polite and don’t push your luck too far, if you know what I mean. There’s also a great place to learn how to build stuff (I’ll add the link as soon as I can log back into SL).
I made one basic guitar shape (modeled after the Gibson “Flying V”) and subsequently played around with textures and colours. I was advised to use as few prims as possible. The one I’ve made has 37 prims. I think that’s not too bad. Most guitars I’ve seen in SL so far are made with less and usually with a texture/ image (which reduces the need for more prims).
Kevin produced this video, while I showed him how I constructed a guitar in Second Life. The background music was from this song that I composed earlier.
[UPDATE 31 Dec 06: I've since learned that "Hearing Impaired" is not a preferred term. I should use "Deaf" or "Hard of Hearing". Thanks.]
In my view, those who cope well in life tend to adopt a philosophy that they are comfortable with.
Here’s Joseph, who blogged about his hearing-impairment being deaf. Near the end of his post, he asked — perhaps rhetorically — whether he has a choice in being deaf. It’s clear to me he has made a conscious choice to accept what he can control and what he cannot.
Getting something like a Cochlear Implant, after weighing the risks, is a conscious choice. Accepting that one has to make do with a physical disability as best as one can — that’s a conscious choice. Blaming everything on “fate” and being angry with the world is also a choice, arguably not made consciously perhaps (Joseph didn’t come across as having taken that last position).
“Acceptance is also a choice”, as I inferred in my “I Am Singaporean” podcast. When I read Joseph’s (who is hearing-impaired) blog post, two words came to mind: “Pragmatic Acceptance”. It may seem like I’m trying to be a smart-aleck in choosing such a term; “acceptance is acceptance” right?
Well, I think there’s “acceptance” (as in saying “I’m not even going to try since I can’t change things”) and there’s “acceptance” (as in, “I know I can’t change things right now but I’ll keep a look out for tomorrow”).
There are quite a lot of artistic and creative ideas in modern advertising, like this TV ad by a UK telecoms company.
A simple idea that’s beautifully executed. They choreographed and filmed a bunch of people from a plan-view (i.e. top down), with the people (dressed in plain colours) standing up, linking arms and moving in sync where needed. I especially like how they simulated movements of the wheels of the baby-pram (3rd scene), and the ball being thrown (4th scene).
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Posted by Ivan Chew
