Faithful reader, if the name Aimee Trescothick seems familiar to you, it may be from the occasions during the past few Trin and Voo shows, when Trin’s partner takes it upon herself to blow us all up, or run us over with a tank. However, it’s become more and more noticeable that very many residents know our sweet little Aims for her superb and innovative programming work, which has been making quite the name for her. This past week, she has been getting so much attention, that we decided that an interview was in order, to get a better perspective on the divine Ms Trescothick, and her own particular Second Life Story.

However, Aimee is know for not being the biggest self publicist inworld, and is almost notoriously shy when talking about herself, so in a first for me, I traveled in the real world for the interview, down to an undisclosed location in deepest Kernow (or Cornwall for our non Cornish readership). Once there, Aimee and I also logged into SL, and sat down at the Rez office on the Kernow sim where she and Trin live, and had a chat:

Voodoo – You've been a Second Life resident for almost four years now. What initially attracted you to SL?

Aimee – I actually first heard of Second Life while researching a sleep disorder. I happened to read someone comparing it to Lucid Dreaming, as a place that you can shape to fit your imagination, a description that intrigued me. I'd watched the field of virtual worlds develop with interest since I studied Computer Engineering in the early '90s, and tried various ones from time to time, but generally got bored once I'd seen everything and found nothing left to do. This sounded much more what I had been looking for, an actual world I could take a part in, rather than just another game. I have lost a lot more sleep to it ever since!

Voodoo - When I first met you, I knew you as an artist and flag maker on Kiva, the Lava Pit sim. Since then, it seems you have experimented with quite a few interests in-world?

Aimee – Around the same time I found Second Life I was made redundant from a job in research and development at a graphics card manufacturer. I enjoy experimenting and continually learning everything I can about the world around me, so finding myself without the creative outlet that my employment had provided, I was drawn into creating and scripting within Second Life. Having found a warm welcome from the regulars at the Lava Pit, I tended to do my building while hanging out there. Those experiments, and the friendships forged at the old Lava Pit eventually brought me a real life career.

Voodoo – Oh, yes, Kiva brought you into contact with Lord Leafblower, Founder of the Lava Pit club, and owner of Boxapixels?

Aimee – Yes, he asked me initially to help building an in-world presence for a large communications company, and later to build a flag-ship store for his sideline, the Lava Inside brand of gadgets. Through doing that work I eventually joined Boxapixels as its virtual worlds specialist.

Voodoo –You have gained quite a following for the Open Source work you have been doing on the Second Life viewer. How did you get involved in this?

Aimee – I have? :) I got involved through curiosity mostly, I saw fixing bugs as an opportunity to learn about it, and see what made it tick under the surface. A big leap forward for me came with the introduction of the Space Navigator as a method of controlling my avatar in Second Life, that acted as a catalyst for me. It was great to suddenly be able to move so much more freely, anyone that hasn't tried it is really missing out :) It was a big improvement, but I could still see limitations, where I knew it was capable of more. So I started creating a long list of JIRA entries on ways it could be made even better. Realizing that as it affected relatively few users, and at the time was probably a low priority within the Lab as they were making a concerted effort to improve client stability, I started working my way through fixing them myself.

Voodoo – Since then, you have developed quite a few other changes or improvements for the Second Life viewers. What sorts of things that you have been working on have ended up on release?

Aimee – Besides the Space Navigator improvements, mostly minor UI improvements and fixes, or things under the surface. Like turning off the mic automatically when ending voice IM calls, so you don't broadcast your private conversations (or the sound of eating your lunch) to the world, and clean-up of the code that drives the mini-map, to make it cleaner and more efficient, and to enable the community translators to translate text associated with it. I mostly try to pick up small tweaks, that will gradually add up to improve people's every day experience, in the hope that it will free up a little of the Lab's resources, helping them to concentrate on the real game-changing stuff. Most of my recent Open Source work, is going into Linden Lab's Snowglobe project, such as the increased zoom range of the mini-map there for example. I really just enjoy the chance to talk to and work along side some really talented people, both the other Open Source developers, and within the Lab, who I find I learn a lot from. The demos shown at SLCC gave just a little taster of some of the seriously awesome stuff the Lab are keeping up their sleeve right now, for Viewer 2.0 and beyond. I can't wait to see what's just around the corner.

Voodoo – Most recently you've gained quite a lot of attention for your work with the new media plugins. Imagine me a drooling technophobic child, can you explain what this is?

Aimee – Linden Lab announced at SLCC the release of the LLMedia Plug-in API, which is a way of allowing outside programmers to more easily extend the client, intended mostly as a way to expand the types of media Second Life can handle beyond Quicktime videos and basic web pages. When I got my hands on the initial developer release of the Plug-in API viewer and the Linden test application for developing and debugging them, I made a quick video just of what could be done with the Linden supplied plug-ins, to show a couple of the other Open Source developers what I was seeing. Before I knew it, the video had been shared around much more widely than I anticipated, even finding its way onto New World Notes. It created quite a large positive reaction, and that spurred me on to see what I could do with it myself. Through my work at Boxapixels I regularly have clients asking for better collaboration facilities within the virtual world. So as a first attempt while learning the API, I decided to make something of a Frankstein style experiment, and over a weekend spliced in the VNC remote desktop sharing protocol. I then posted another video of it in action, just to demonstrate the potential of the new API, and the ease with which it makes it possible to develop these sorts of projects. the reaction to that was phenomenal.

Voodoo – What kind of possibilities could this unlock for in-world residents?

Aimee – It makes it possible to view the desktop of another computer live on the surface of a prim in Second Life, the same way you would normally view a video stream. So as a fun example, I have a virtual replica Apple Mac on my Second Life desk, showing the display of my real one. In future it will also be possible to interact with it using your mouse and keyboard, it already works while running it in the Linden plug-in test software – as can be seen in my videos, but the support for those functions doesn't appear to be available quite yet in the client itself. More useful examples would be collaborating on shared documents, live software demonstrations in-world, or remote assistance, enabling people providing in-world training to see “over the shoulder” of the people they are teaching. The sort of capabilities that are provided by web conferencing applications such as Cisco's Webex, or AT&T Connect, but in the more flexible and inviting environment of the virtual world.

Voodoo – What kind of feedback have you received?

Aimee – I knew these facilities would be popular within the business and education communities, but as someone who generally avoids publicity and hides in the background, the amount of attention that it got has taken me a little by surprise! The messages of support and encouragement I have received have been fantastic, it felt a little like I'd unintentionally stumbled upon the Holy Grail. I have been told be several Lindens that the video has created quite a buzz while being passed around within the Lab too, which is flattering, really though the part I played is quite minimal. I just provided the glue between the VNC software and the new Linden API which between them do the real work, without them this would have been much harder to achieve.

Voodoo – Finally, can you give us a heads up on the sort of things you are working on now, and what is on the horizon for you?

Aimee – Well, for now, while this project is working already, there is still a fair amount of work to do to bring it up to stable production quality, ready for public consumption. So with the demand, I think I'd better finish it before I move on to anything else :) There are still other things I have in mind to further the joystick input support, and my other pet project the mini-map. As a registered Apple developer I have used Snow Leopard through the beta program for some time now, I would like to spend some time looking at improving the performance of the Second Life client using the new technologies found there, as I believe there is much to be gained. I do have a number of ideas for other media plug-ins I will be playing with, but it will mostly be a matter of pushing boundaries, trying different things, and seeing what grows out of it all.

All photos and videos used with kind permission of Aimee Trescothick. All rights reserved.