Since a lot of people here don't seem to know about Second Life I figure some introductory materials can't hurt in case anyone decides to try it.

Second Life is made up of so called regions, each of them is a square 256m to a side and 4096m high as far as building is concerned. In theory the water level can be set to different values in each region but the most common is 20m, especially for the connected mainland regions where it has to match for the water to look connected between adjacent regions.

Inside a region there are coordinates x (low=west, high=east), y (low=south, high=north) and z (low=down, high=up).

Each region runs on a separate simulator (modern servers might host more than one simulator but it is separate processes) so crossing or teleporting into another region requires a handover. If regions are crossed in quick succession, especially with high latency connections, this can lead to crashes or falling off a vehicle.

The regions themselves are placed on a grid with x (again, low=west, high=east) and y (low=south, high=north) coordinates. The first region Da Boom around which the mainland grew has coordinates 1000, 1000. The coordinates can be shown in the viewer but the regions are more commonly addressed by their region name.

Spots on that coordinate grid that do not have a region show as an endless ocean (even if there are regions behind it you can not see them) and you can not enter them.

This coordinate grid has lead to Second Life expressions like "on the grid" for things happening on SL.

There are different types of regions with different performance characteristics, agent (avatar) limits and land impact (LI) limits for building and other objects. LI is often also referred to as prims by old time SL users since it used to be a limit in the primitives (cubes, spheres,...) that used to be the only way to build but since mesh objects were added the more general term land impact is used.

The Second Life mainland has a number of continents, almost all of them are part of a continuous area of connected regions. The major exception is Zindra, the adult continent.

Since this post is already quite long I will perhaps introduce the continents in a future post in detail. Hopefully this information will be helpful to some people.

This year's Summer Sailstice event is coming up this Saturday with lots of events. This link contains an event calendar among other things.

Since some people here do not seem to be very familiar with the many activities we use to fill our time on SL I am going to start a new series of posts, introducing some of them.

There are many different vehicles on SL, bicyles, motorbikes, cars, trucks, mechs and many other land vehicles of course, planes, helicopters, paramotors, blimps and others up in the air and of course sail- and motorboats of many different types.

Of course it is possible to just take some friends and make your own fun with these but there are also some organized group activities. Some are races and others are cruises where people just sail together on a route provided by some cruise director in the group. For some groups it is the same person every time, for others the role is shared by a couple of people.

These cruise groups are a great place to learn sailing since there are a lot of people to ask for help and there is always someone who has a moment to answer your questions.

If you don't have a boat of your own you can also ask and usually there is someone who has a free spot on their boat.

It is usually a good idea to take off any HUDs or attachments you don't need to make region crossings smoother. You also want to avoid crossing twice in quick succession since crashes or falling off your boat is quite common when you do (usually 3s is a good number to aim for). This is particularly important when crossing close to corners.

It is also helpful to enable property lines on the minimap (not supported by all viewers) which helps seeing the sim corners and also the open waterways (or roads for land vehicles).

There are many groups who have regular cruises during the week, this is just a small selection, feel free to mention more in the comments if you know any others.

(links go to the SL groups, you need an SL viewer installed to open those)

Leeward Cruising Club Phoenix Rising Yacht Club Rainbow Sails Yacht Club Tradewinds Yacht Club Topless Sailors Cruising Club Topless Cruisers

This post is already quite long so I won't explain in detail how sailing or navigation work or the SL continents and waterways but maybe I will add some posts about that soon.

If you have any questions for the Lindens at the SL20B (Second Life's 20th birthday) Lab Gab events you have two more days to submit those.

With Second Life's 20th birthday event coming up on the 22nd (next Thursday) the artists for the music fest might be something to have a look at

For me Fantasy Faire is definitely the one I am looking forward to most. They just have the best mix of stunning regions and avatars, great stories and music on the radio, amazing events for the whole faire and they somehow even manage to integrate the Relay for Life donations and remembrance of those we lost into the event without spoiling the mood of either the sad or the happy parts of the event.

In the past I was also looking forward to Mario2 Helstein's seasonal light shows but sadly he stopped doing those.

Since Linden Labs is notoriously bad about letting us know what is going on, what are your favourite events that others might not even know about?

Personally, apart from spending time with friends I do enjoy sailing and motorboats, dancing, live concerts, flying my planes, blimp, paramotor/trike, Shergood Aviation helicopters.

In the past I have also roleplayed in various medieval fantasy, urban fantasy and sci-fi regions but that activity, while fun, always took up a bit too much of my time to leave much for other things I enjoyed.

For sailing and motorboat use, apart from doing so on my own, I like to go on cruises with groups that design routes in advance. It is a good way to get to know the grid better and see how it all fits together and it is a fun way to get to know people in the group over a shared activity.

I don't like land vehicles as much because the roads often cross through sim corners or go close to banlines and security orbs I would like to avoid.

Personally I have been using the Firestorm Viewer for about as long as it existed and it offers a nice set of additional features over the default viewer but I regularly hear that others use a different third party viewer. What do you use and why?

Personally I sometimes read the ones below.

Second Life Community Blogs

Inara Pey: Living in a Modemworld

Through Owl's Eye

Owl is a good friend on Second Life who is always busy organizing live concerts and music and art events.

In this post you can introduce yourself, mention your avatar name(s) and favourite activities in Second Life if you want to, remaining anonymous as far as your SL identity is concerned is perfectly fine too.