Well maybe that’s overstating things. But I don’t know of another one, and from small acorns do mighty oaks grow; I’m quite proud of my new land investment in Second Life.

The plot, which has great sea views, already hosts a nice cherry blossom and one high resolution gibbon – complete with gibbon song environmental sound.

This is all part of an effort to explore and get to grips with virtual worlds as a vehicle for science communication. Having bought the land, I now have somewhere to practice building and scripting. Second Life uses a Java type coding language, but as the last coding I did was of a thermodynamic model for energy minimisation in silicate slag systems – in FORTRAN77 – I’m on a learning curve.

Watch this space…….

(I took the gibbon photo at the Santa Clarita Gibbon Conservation Center run by Alan Mootnick – hereby acknowledged and to which you are welcome to make a donation 🙂 )

Update January 2009 – Zoonmian’s Second Life presence can now be found at this location.