Report of 2014

WordPress users would do well to laugh themselves sick as they gorge themselves on the feast of stats tools provided by their blogging platform.  Here in the land of Blogger, there is the choice of a pen, paper and calculator or obtaining the PhD required of understanding Google Analytics.

So I'm not able to present a flashy Annual Report as my WordPress buddies are, however 2014 has been my blog's most successful year by far - gaining over 28,500 hits - so I thought a little celebration post listing the year's ten most popular posts was in order.

Here they are, in ascending order:

#10 Ticking off the To-Dos (March)

My March update on my New Year intentions.  I've no idea why this was so popular.  Behind it by just one view was my article in October, Is Sex in Second Life Pornography? which was much more interesting.

#9 Farewell Dave (May)

My farewell and eulogy to one of the most influential men in my life.

#8 Paraffin Winter (May)

My review of Peter Chowney's incredibly immersive novel.

#7 Could an office in Second Life 2 be the killer app that virtual reality is looking for? (July)

When we think of VR going mainstream, we imagine wondering around and interacting with each other in amazing photo-realistic environments.  All well and good, but a virtual office might also have much to promote it.  I seriously desire the set-up I describe here.

#6 Inventory: Your own personal ticking time bomb (June)

A discussion on how we own absolutely nothing in our SL inventories and how one day it will all be gone.  Interestingly, this issue became suddenly thrown into focus on the announcement (later that month) of a Linden successor to SL, since this news also served the purpose of highlighting to residents that SL will one day shut down.

#5 The second life of Second Life (February)

My thoughts on how the Oculus Rift will give SL a temporary second life, once it launches commercially.

#4 AFK, Indefinitely (2014) by Huckleberry Hax (February)

I published the third novel in the 'AFK' series in February.  The fourth is on its way.

#3 Linden Lab announce a successor to Second Life (June)

My thoughts on the Second Life news story of the year drew well over a thousand viewers.

#2 Twelve Pet Shop Boys songs expressed as charts, diagrams, etc (May)

I created this post whilst off work with a kidney stone and it provided a small amount of relief from the complete agony I was going through at the time.  It also proved to be a bit of a hit with the fine bunch of people who are Pet Shop Boys fans.

#1 Second Life 2 going alpha (January)

My most popular post of the year is, to be honest, a bit of a red herring.  I wrote this brief snippet to report on Philip Rosedale's 'High Fidelity' going into its alpha stage; at the time, the announcement by Linden of a successor to Second Life was months away and I chose the title because it sounded snappy.  Since Linden's announcement, however, it's drawn a high number of hits, presumably from search engine queries.  Move along.  Nothing to see here.

I'm glad to say that my #1 post doesn't account by itself for the success of the year (it would still be by far my blog's most successful year without that post).  It's also gratifying that many of the posts which didn't make it into the top ten still got a respectable number of hits compared to averages from previous years.

I'd like to thank all my readers for finding something of interest within these pages.  I'll continue to develop the blog in 2015 - its ninth year - and hope I'll see some of you make return visits during that time.  It looks set to be an exciting year potentially for virtual worlds and virtual reality.  Let's see what it brings.

Happy Holidays

Free book offer for five days

Over the Christmas holiday, I'm giving away the Kindle version of my novel, 'Beside an Open Window' for free on Amazon.  The offer runs from Monday 22 December to Boxing Day, Friday 26 December.

Click here to go to the web page for the novel, where you will find links to your 'local' Amazon website.  Of course, the easiest way to get hold of the novel is direct from your kindle itself.

'Beside an Open Window' imagines an ultra realistic Second Life of the future, in which the brain scans of people who have died in real life are uploaded to avatars so that they can continue to interact with the living.  The story follows Jason Harlan, a popular singer in real life who wakes up in the digital afterlife to find that he's been dead for thirty years and his personal fortune has been claimed by another copy of himself.

I hope you enjoy the book if you download it - and consider giving me a review at Amazon (every review helps, even if it's just a single line).  I'll be updating in the new year on my latest novel, 'AFK and Avengement'.  In the meantime, if you celebrate Christmas, have a peaceful and happy one.

Black Mirror: White Christmas

Speaking of digital entities, Channel 4 last night screened the latest episode of Charlie Brooker's 'Black Mirror', an anthology of dark dramas which Brooker has described as having the purpose of  "actively unsettling people" about the future.  "White Christmas" weaves together three separate tales of near-future technology, tying them up brilliantly at the end through the use of brain scanning as a plot device.

Brain scanning is the central theme running through my novel Beside an Open Window, and it was fascinating to see the thought given to the consequences of this idea by Brooker - which include using a digital scan of your brain to organise your life, the use of an avatar body in virtual settings for scans, the incarceration of scans and speeding up time for scans so that they experience enormous stretches of time in just a few seconds.  There are plenty more ideas explored besides, perhaps most notably the concept of blocking/muting someone in real life.

It was one of the best written and certainly the most imaginative pieces of TV I've seen all year.  If you live in the UK, you have a month to watch it on demand here.  If you're elsewhere, watch out for this on your networks.

Worm emulation

In Beside an Open Window, I portray a future in which human brains are scanned and uploaded to a virtual world once the 'original' human has died.  Whilst such technology might be a long way off, it's  not inconceivable that this could be done one day.  Of course, it might be the case when this happens that human brain scans get uploaded to robots (as explored by Janet Asimov) rather than virtual worlds; I chose the latter because I presumed it would be cheaper.

The OpenWorm project has for a while now been working towards a the complete emulation of Caenorhabditis elegans, a microscopic roundworm consisting of about a thousand cells - 300 of which are neurons.  I won't attempt to pick apart the science here - there are plenty of articles about the project to be found - but feast your eyes on the video below, which shows a Lego robot being controlled by the current emulated model of the worm's brain.

Take a moment to consider what this video represents.  A living creature has had its brain - all of its neurons and their interconnections - recreated in software and connected to a few sensory inputs and motor outputs.  The robot has not been 'programmed' in any way: the responses you are seeing are those of an actual 'mind' which has been separated from the hardware of its brain.  It is one of the most awesome and somehow terrifying things I have seen this year.

Out stealing horses

Last week, Kate Bergdorf invited me to see Winter on Nordan om Jorden.  It's getting to that time of year when something within me starts to yearn for snowscaped scenery.  Perhaps it's nostalgia for Christmas during my childhood, in which a countryside snow scene was the default image for the middle class greetings cards my parents received and the necessary background picture to the front cover of any vinyl record of seasonal music.  Perhaps it's just that the journey between summer and Christmas is a long one and by the time I near the end I'm exhausted and the white erasure of detail appeals to my desire for something slower, purer, simpler.

Whatever it is that creates the yearning, Winter on Nordan om Jorden really hits the spot.

NaNoWriMo 2014 update

It was a tough one again this year, with a busy work month, a streaming cold in the last few days and the 2014 series of 'I'm A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here!' all conspiring to prevent 'AFK and Avengement' from accumulating 50,000 words by 30 November.  Thankfully, the conspiracy failed and another mad final dash (nearly 9,000 words written over Friday, Saturday and Sunday) saw 50k reached and breached.

As has been the case for the last few years, there is still a fair bit of work to do before the book is actually finished (I added another 10,000 words after 30 November last year).  If you're a fan of the series, keep an eye out for the publication of this, the fourth installment, early in 2015.