When I was a child, we had an arrangement with a beekeeper friend of ours. We kept a hive of bees behind our garage, and he gave us plenty of free honey when it was time to collect it.

The bees were very unobtrusive. I was stung only once in all that time, and that was when I stepped on a dead one. With daily exposure to the bees and some guidance from the beekeeper and his wife, I learned a little about how bees interact with people. If one landed on me, I had a good idea of how to get the little critter to leave without attacking. I even learned to find joy in watching them bob peacefully along in the air, even if it was right past me, as they went about their daily business.

It’s amazing how a little knowledge can dispel fear.

One day when I was older and we lived at a different place, I was trimming hedges alongside the house. I cut right into a wasps’ nest hidden in the branches. The wasps were thoughtful enough to let me know.

That day I could have snatched the gold medal right out of Usain Bolt’s hands.

If I wanted to finish trimming, I had to do something about the wasps. I found the necessary poison but was missing one critical piece of information: How long would it take for the wasps to die once the spray hit? Would they have a chance for one more shot at me?

It’s amazing how a little ignorance can create fear.

This was a blood-boiling Houston summer day. It was risky to wear anything more than a loincloth, but I was determined to have a heat stroke before I got stung again. My yard maintenance budget was too low for a hazmat suit, so I had to settle for long pants, a long-sleeve shirt, a bandana around my neck, probably some gloves and a hat, and who knows what else I’ve forgotten about by now.

Sweating and a bit faint but duly prepared, I marched with grim determination (and a little trepidation) to war. Holding the can at arm’s length, creating as much distance as possible between myself and the nest, I pressed the button, and…

The scary creatures plummeted instantly to the ground. They had not a second to mount an attack.

Sigh. If only I had known.

But now I do know. Just like my experience with bees, this experience took away some of my fear in dealing with wasps. Now when I have to deal with the potent little insects, I save myself time, sweat, and adrenaline. I just spray boldly. No stings attached.

Ignorance is a fear-inducing venom. Knowledge is the antidote.

In April I went to a workshop led by the coauthors of The Decision to Join, a book that came out of a monumental study conducted by ASAE. I sat stunned throughout the day as one by one my assumptions about member recruitment and retention were systematically dispelled.

One thing that surprised me was how much less important direct mail and other forms of advertising are for recruitment compared to word of mouth. Direct marketing has certainly been my focus, and I suspect that is a very common way of thinking. After all, direct marketing is more tangible than word of mouth, and association staff, who are generally responsible for marketing initiatives, have more direct control over those kinds of efforts. Word of mouth is up to members, right?

Members certainly are the ones doing the word-of-mouth promotion, but staff can play a role that fits with their function as staff. The Decision to Join study shows that the more deeply members are involved in the association, the more likely they are to become promoters. Staff and members both can work to get new members on the path to deep involvement. To get members deeply involved, staff and members provide small, ad hoc tasks to start them off with. Involvement on a small scale will encourage involvement on a larger scale.

So finding ad hoc tasks for new members becomes a critical recruitment tool, more so than direct forms of advertising. That means associations must wrestle with several questions: What ad hoc tasks can we provide? How do we connect new members with those tasks? How do we track these efforts? These are questions I plan to discuss in later posts.

One of the things I wish I had known up front when I started building in Second Life was certain limits related to prims, Second Life’s basic building blocks. There are three kinds of limits I have found so far that have affected my building projects.

The first is the number of prims. If you own land, space is not your primary limitation. After all, even if you own the smallest parcel, you can build thousands of meters high. However, you are only allowed so many prims in your space at one time, regardless of the amount of space they occupy.

If you own an entire island, you probably won’t have to worry too much about your prim limit. But if you’re like me, you can’t afford a parcel that big. You can own the smallest parcel, 512 sq. m., and pay no land use fees. All you have to do is buy the land, which isn’t a great expense, and have a premium account, which costs $9.95 per month, or less if you pay in bigger chunks. But with a 512 sq. m. parcel, you have only 117 prims to work with. (Linking prims does not reduce the number.) There are several sizes in between, each with a different prim limit.

If you’ve got specific plans, you need to keep this limit in mind. It’s amazing how quickly you can run out of prims, especially because of the other kinds of limits.

The next limit is size. Each prim is limited to 10 m. in each dimension. Let’s say you want to build a little house. Even a simple shape like a floor or wall may take multiple prims. If you want a house larger than 10 m. x 10 m. x 10 m., that’s extra prims just for the floor, ceiling, and/or walls. So even simple objects can take multiple prims, if they are big enough.

The third limit is shape. Naturally, the basic building blocks are simple: blocks, spheres, cylinders, etc. Fortunately, a lot of tools are available to manipulate the shapes. But even so, some objects may require more prims than you originally planned for. The chair pictured below is ten prims, not counting the pose ball.

I’m not saying all this to be down on Second Life. This little enterprise is utterly incredible. But you do have to watch your limits. Here are some thoughts on dealing with those limits:

Adjust your design. Maybe you need to rethink what you want to create. Is there a simpler design that is not exactly what you originally planned but will serve the same purpose?

Alternate. Maybe you can’t have everything you want all at one time, but you can have one thing for awhile and then put up something different. (I’ve heard there’s a way to cheat the system and have objects rez in cycles, but I’ve also heard it can affect performance.)

Be efficient. With the many building options, you can get more out of the object by cutting the profile, etc. And don’t forget that you can sink objects into the terrain or other objects. Maybe you want a simple bookshelf with two sides and a top. You can use three blocks to make the two sides and the top. But if you make one hollow block, you will have the same thing plus one side. Then you just sink the fourth side into the floor. There’s a great article in the building section of the Second Life Knowledge Base on this topic.

Use textures. Transparency is your friend. You can create the illusion of complex shapes by having a transparent prim with a texture that has the shape you want. Many plants are created using plant images as textures on transparent blocks.

Use outside software. The Second Life Web site has a good review of different 3D drawing programs you can use to create sculpted prims, which are a special kind of prim not limited to the basic shapes you create using the Second Life client. This requires a lot of learning, but there are a couple of huge advantages. The first is that with sculpted prims, you can create the same objects with fewer prims. The second is that objects can look much better.

There are also megaprims, but that’s a whole different discussion.

I bet that all Second Life builders will lose a creation at one time or another.

Scenario one

The first time it happened to me, I turned a ball transparent and then clicked off of it or escaped out of editing it. Of course, it was completely invisible, and it was small enough that no amount of clicking around helped me find it. A friend of mine later showed me that all I had to do was go into the View menu and click Highlight Transparent. Then it was a piece of cake. Whew! It would have been no tremendous loss, but I hated to have something hanging around that could cause some kind of problem later on.

Scenario two

The second time I lost something, I was editing the object and accidentally made it so tiny I couldn’t see it. Again, I clicked off it or escaped out of editing it, and poof!

As with the first time, I could have re-created the object pretty quickly. But, as in the first scenario, I didn’t want a problem later on. I was also on a small parcel. Each parcel allows only a certain number of prims, the basic building blocks of Second Life. If you own a whole island, you don’t have much to worry about. But with smaller parcels, you have to watch that limit very carefully.

Well, this time the prim was not transparent, so having the Highlight Transparent setting on didn’t help. So I did a little Web surfing and found a handy video showing how to find it. Here are the essentials:

Use the Mini-Map to get the general location

If you don’t have a good idea of where to look for your object, the Mini-Map may be able to give you an idea. There’s a button at the bottom of the screen that opens it. Locations of objects you own are marked in blue. Use the Mini-Map to get close to your object and figure out which direction you need to face. (Of course, the entire area you’re in may be highlighted in blue, if, for example, you have a house.)

Get in the mode

1. Go to the Tools menu and turn on Select Only My Objects (an X will appear next to it).

2. If you are not in build mode, click on the build button at the bottom of the screen.

3. When the build window appears, look at the row of buttons at the top of it. The one in the middle has a little arrow. When you hover over it, the tooltip says “edit.” Make sure that that button is selected.

Find the object by selecting it

Now it’s time to select the object. Left click and drag across the screen. You should see a yellow rectangle grow as you drag. Don’t worry if the build window disappears. Whenever your rectangle fully encompasses an object you own, it will become highlighted. If you don’t succeed, then turn in a different direction. How far you are from the object should not matter. If more than one object is highlighted, you will need to escape out and right click on the object you want (so remember the location when you escape out).

This procedure also applies if you accidentally sink your object into the terrain.

My two-month stint in Papua New Guinea checking out the missionary life began with a short training program. One day we divided up into small groups and spent the evening out in the bush with local guides. My group spent some time hunting crayfish along a small stream. It wasn’t a serious hunting expedition: there was only one spear to go around, and we were reasonably satisfied when we caught only one of the pinchy little things.

Actually, for much of the time we were walking in the stream. And as I was stepping oh so lithely though the gentle current I ran into something unexpected: a large hole right in the middle of the water. You can guess what happened next.

As I sat there up to my waist in the hole, my first thought was, What’s a hole this big doing in the middle of a tiny stream? (My second thought was, Why me?)

I got the same kind of surprise when I started reading Flashing Steel: Mastering Eishin-Ryū Swordsmanship, by Masayuki Shimabukuro and Leonard J. Pellman. I originally ordered the book as background for a novel I want to write. I was looking for some insights on sword-fighting technique, maybe even some tips on strategy. I was only expecting to slosh through ankle-deep ideas. That made the depth of the book hit me all the harder.

Sure, I expected the authors to weave broader principles into the details of swordsmanship. That I would expect any master of a skill to do. I even expected the authors to draw some parallels to real life. What I did not expect was the completeness of the philosophy the book presents. In its pages I am finding a compelling, engaging perspective on the whole of life, a strong sense of direction for the road ahead. And the authors speak with the conviction and authority of ones who have been on that journey for some time. They also speak with incredible clarity, using language and analogies that make sense to Westerners.

One precept in particular inspired the name for this blog. In the book, the famous samurai Miyamoto Musashi is said to have told his disciple Jōtarō that he should “aspire to be like Mt. Fuji. . . . With your mind as high as Mt. Fuji . . . you can see all things clearly. And you can see all the forces which shape events; not just the things happening near you” (2nd ed., p. 14). What an enticing delight I found dangled before me! Is it possible that we can look at our lives without getting dragged down by the little things that threaten our perspective? Is it possible not to let our circumstances affect our judgment (p. 23-26)? I don’t know how attainable that perspective is, but I know I want it. And that’s what I want to keep before me as I blog.

The syntax is carefully chosen. “Pierce the Clouds,” not “Piercing the Clouds”: an aspiration, a place where I want to be, not a place where I am now. Every time I deal with an issue at work or home, my goal is to look at it from above, as if I were standing on the summit of Mt. Fuji. It’s also an invitation, as blogs are: come think through this with me.

A final thought: When we experience disaster, like falling into holes, our first reaction may be to get upset by the inconvenience or the pain. But instead, these are opportunities for us to practice looking at our lives from the top down, from the summit of the mountain, where we have pierced the clouds.

Jonathan West