I had overslept and wasn’t in the best of moods when I woke up, so after I got my coffee brewing I sort of tumbled across space and time and landed in Second Life. I noticed that an acquaintance that Mafie had introduced me to was online. We were planning to get together and talk about Artificial Intelligence, so I suggested we meet over at the coffee shop in Mill Pond.

Arisia “Ari” Vita is a software developer and his friends, Auroras Graves and Extropia DaSilva joined us for a discussion. It was an interesting discussion and we talked about a wide range of A.I. topics but I tried to keep my focus on Second Life as a platform for a typle of artificial world. Extropia appears to be quite learned and knowledgeable in the field, and she gave me a paper to read that was very interesting. In the past, I haven’t really gotten involved in any of the Second Life A.I. groups but I enjoyed chatting with the people from this group and it may help me revitalize my work on the Island Universe project. I’m thinking about writing a review of the topics we covered in the Cartesian Theater blog; maybe even ask Extropia for permission to publish her paper there.

Later in the day I spent a lot of time working on my photo collections. I went back to Valkyrie Manor to get some better pictures for sale. Also, I did some more work on New Key West. I looked for some other locations but the truth is, there is a lot of scenic beauty in SL but there are not many opportunities to photograph that beauty. The reason is the pollution and vandalism I’ve chatted about as I’ve made my expeditions.

I’ve started to realize that the reason that SL galleries don’t feature much SL based scenic photography is that it is difficult to find good subjects. As an example, I went to The Forbidden City sim to do a photo study and was confounded by the gaudy, unsuccessful commercialization of the grounds, and the clutter in the sky when you set your graphics preferences to max range. The sim is huge and if you want a good picture you have to try and frame out too much junk. I took a single shot (right) then had to give up on the project in frustration.

In the evening I completed my work on the store, with one exception. I still haven’t decided on which vendor system I’ll use to enable customers to purchase my products. I’ll have to get this handled tomorrow, because it is time to open this store. I’m planning to advertise the opening but I’m getting a little nervous about the whole thing. The economics of the store work in two ways, one is the sale of photos in the gallery and the other source of income is in the portrait studio above. I’m more confident of income from the studio than from the gallery; there are just too many galleries in SL.

I returned later in the evening and chatted with WT for awhile. His being away from SL so much has been very hard on both of us, and we have decided to just take a break in our relationship. My guess is I’ll see him from time to time, but not really until those Winter months return and trap us all indoors.