Greetings and Salutations

My name is Amin Paine. Well, it's not actually. My real life name is something completely different, and Amin Paine is an alias I adopted purely because it sounds a wee bit funny when you say it aloud. But I'm digressing, and digression is something this blog doesn't need.

Basically, as far as you know, this is me. Standing there, next to my cheap looking trailer. With the cheap looking suit and the cheap looking glasses, with the default hair and skin you get when you sign-up to Second Life. I'm not quite the poster boy for the land of opportunity that Second Life advertises itself as. No, as far as virtual cliques go, I'm quite a loser.

I signed up to Second Life a month ago when I was bored one night. Knowing that I wasn't a geek, I knew that I wouldn't get sucked into it. I'm not one of these lifeless bastards that spend all their time trying to advertise their latest business venture when they could be out socialising and whatnot. I have a life. I go to college, I have many friends, I go drinking and clubbing and gigging, and I'm in a small, respectful band. I'm far more different than these Second Life losers.

It was last night, when I realised I had spent $60 in real life (which is roughly £30, the currency that I'm interested in) on gambling in Second Life. There I was, with my badly skinned suit and my free Sex on the Beach cocktail (which was really a transparent cylinder which I put to my mouth every so often), penniless and meandering about a scripted Roulette table, when the thought briefly occurred to me that I may just end up being one of these Second Life losers you hear about after all.

Here's what you should know about me. I'm not one of those mid-life crisis people you get on Second Life, that are looking for an escape from their sixty children and a violent husband. Neither am I one of those ten year old masterminds that can code an intricate banking and accounting system in twenty minutes, but can't seem to formulate an argument that goes beyond “YOUR GAY K”. I'm a student in his late teens. Unlike most people my age, I'm not trying to pursue an active sex life on this Second Life malarkey, because damn it, it just seems to me that clicking a low-poly cock repeatedly just doesn't have the same arousing effect that a real life hand job has. Unless, of course, Carpal Tunnel Syndrome happens to be your fetish.

But being a student means that my money surplus is a little low. So gambling away £30 (that could've been used to buy books, stationary and alcohol) on some online game is not good at all. I've resolved to attempt to change my ways. This blog will be about my attempts to earn back the £30 that I lost by manipulating the Second Life market.

Now here's the thing. I can't do very many things. As I say, I'm not an adept coder. I can't build, I can't model, I can't texture, I can't animate, I can't do anything. But there is one thing I can do: play the guitar. And just for the record, I play guitar very badly. Unfortunately, we live in a world where we have to make do with the skills we were given. In my first month on Second Life, a humble, Moldovian company wanted me to make a theme song for their latest, Second Life product, the Prism Durosport. Those wonderful Moldovian people and their sado-masochist ways approved of my tune, and they gave me a few L$ in return. If you'd like to hear that song, just click here. Make sure you only play it three times, though.

Obviously, I gambled those few L$ quickly. But it did make me think. How awesome would it be if I could actually make virtual pennies from making songs for people? Awful, dire songs that wouldn't even win an NME award. You see, when you're a talentless bastard like I am, gambling seems to be the only way to profit from this Second Life malarkey. But with all the casinos and sex shops, would there be a gap in the market for a ditzy songwriter?

So when I bet my last few L$, realising I had spent £30, I knew that it was time to stop with the casinos. I deleted all my the casino landmarks from my list, and it was time to start anew.

To start off with, I put an advert in the SLExchange for a custom song. Perhaps you'll want to click that link and buy one for yourself? Perhaps not. Whatever works for you.

In any case, I'm entering my second month on this damned, sordid hell hole. I rented the trailer that you see above me (just a stone's throw away from the DuroSport shop, incidentally), and now I'm going to try and make back the money that I lost. I don't know how I'm going to do this, but damn it, I'll think of something. And by the time you get back here tomorrow, you'll be reading about the first steps to my success!

With love,
- Amin.