My views on Second Life:
I created a Nightclub avatar (Judypat Gabe) and then changed her appearance as much as allowed. I had fun experimenting with body type, skin color (green), eyes (magenta), hairstyle (aqua spikes). I received a chain-mail shirt but did not put it on. Several people stopped and chatted while I was transforming myself. I first used my old iMac and became very frustrated during the transforming process because it was very difficult and time consuming to keep rotating the avatar to front-view. I then signed on with my Dell laptop and things became much easier to manipulate.
Since this was very first foray into a “virutal world”, I followed the tutorial carefully. I walked along a rat infested, trash-strewn ghetto until I found a car. I could not tell that the image in front of me on the street was a trash can tipped over on its side until I was almost on top of it. I was a little disappointed in the quality of the graphics, they seemed flat. I sat down in the car and drove it a little bit. I was told to drive and run over any additional rats I saw – I didn’t see any more after the ones on the street in the trash cans. I then flew up to a building and down again to the street. There I found some people and a few Segways. I drove one around for a while, dodging people, fences and buildings until I got bored and followed someone into the area where you can buy chainmail shrits. I got one and saved it for later and continued on to transforming my character. Here I remained for over an hour before switching computers. I enjoyed experimenting with the many different options and now realize what can and cannot be changed within my character. After being here for almost 2 hours, I saved my revisions and signed off for another day. All in all, I enjoyed looking around and look forward to exploring again next time.
