Second Life and Lunch Wrapup for 10-07-2009

Dewey Decimal Signs Group Project
This week at Second Life and Lunch members worked on the Dewey Decimal Signs Project and are beginning to turn in note cards for their chosen locations. New educational locations are added to our list every week. You can find a complete list to choose from here. With multiple authors, it's important to have a few guidelines so our note cards have some consistency in their usability and naming conventions. We have a short list of guidelines on the group wiki here.

Building "Cheatsheeet"
As promised I brought along a "cheatsheet" for the keystrokes used while building. This sheet was created by Second Life resident, Kippie Friedkin and the page is available on we Web as a PDF for you to print out yourself here. This sheet covers the common keystrokes used in the Second Life interface. It's helpful for remembering the keyboard shortcuts used for building, but it also covers all of the other keystrokes you'll need, including the Advanced menu.

Second Life Building Limitations
Second Life maintains a Wiki with a wealth of information including the limitations of the software. If you've ever tried to build a large structure you'll realize there are limits to how large you can make a prim and how far apart your prims can be if you want to link them. For example, the Kirkwood island sandbox is made up of separate prims that are too far apart to be linked as one object. If you want to know what the building limits are, you can find that information and a whole lot more here on the Second Life Wiki.

Demo of Second Life Database Tool Coming Soon
I made an announcement that Bob Wise from West Liberty University has offered to give us a live demo of new database software written for Second Life called Glasshouse by Green Phosphor. You may remember Bob was the first to give us a tour of an educational place in Second Life. He showed us around his college island as he was building it. Bob gave me a quick look at how he is using this software with information from his college. He created a Second Life graph from a Microsoft Excel document. We will be scheduling a demonstration of his use of this software at an upcoming "Second Life and Lunch" session this Fall.

Pumpkin Building Contest Entries Due Next Week!
Don't forget that the deadline for submissions to our Pumpkin Building Contest is next Wednesday, October 14. 500 Lindens are up for grabs to the best build. All you have to do is build a pumpkin or something with a pumpkin in it and submit it (and your entry form) by the deadline.

That's it for this week. Keep sending in your tour cards and I hope to see you at next week's Second Life and Lunch.