Second Life Wind Farm

Though the facilities at the former Shimmer Island are in a state of redeployment as I install everything on a new SIM, to be announced soon, my work in Second Life still continues. One of the courses I teach is OOP (Object Oriented Programming), and for the project this year, I decided to task my students with writing an application that would calculate the energy in Watts that could be extracted from the wind by a turbine. I started with a lecture on the basic physics involved, and then presented them with a formula, the idea being that they would be able to assimilate the various values (attributes) and any associated calculations into appropriate classes, and generally this has gone well. The next stage will be for them to code and test this in Java. Once the applications are working I will then send them of in a research kind of way, to place their devices, in an imaginary kind of way, at various locations across the UK for which average wind speeds are readily available, should be good. Then I thought, how about getting them to create a wind class that emulates the way in which wind can vary over time, as indeed it does. Then I thought, the wind blows in SL, so why not get them in-world and have the experience of design / modelling? Of course the Java code will have to be translated into LS, but as I found this is not a major problem really. Anyway I placed my own working version on a small islet kindly provided by Tony Lusch at Greenwich Maritime, thanks again for that Tony, and now its just a matter of waiting for the turbine crop to grow. If you would like know how my students get on, then why not pay us a visit over the coming month or so at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Maritime%20Greenwich/109/9/21

Bye for now Skipper Abel

Leaving Notice at Shimmer Island

Well the Daydream Island group is no more and with it goes shimmer island. After a number of failed attempts trying to contact the SIM owner, I finally raised a ticket with Linden Labs and Izzy Linden arranged for me to have limited access so that I could retrieve any materials that were not in my inventory. As you can see from the screenshot of the first floor library at the Beach House, everything has been copied and removed.




Still in an optimistic frame of mind however I did elect to leave a message fpr anyone who may happen past the island in the future, though I suspect that such an encounter is less than likely.

So is that the end of the Second Life virtual learning experience? Of course not, I have acquired another island and am busily preparing it for opening, so stay in touch and we will be back. Bye for now Skipper Abel

Site Closed

If you are a regular or even new visitor to the Shimmer Island Site, then you will have noticed that the Daydream Island SIM is currently not available. I personally have no idea why this is, except to say that the plug seems to have been pulled no doubt as a result of issues between LL and the Owners. At this time I have been completely unsuccessful in being to extract any response from the SIM owner and must assume that they are no more. There is of course the possibility that the SIM will get a new owner and us residents get re-instated, who knows. Not wanting to be entirley at the mercy of forces that are clearly way beyond my influence let alone control, I have managed to acquire a new SIM and will be dropping a posting to this blog in due course. So I apologise for the inconvenience, but rest assured Skipper is on the case and from the dust of Shimmer Island a new and all together better SIM will arise.

Bye fro Now SA