Sabrinaa Nightfire at Erato

Sabrinaa has an amazing talent to organise and show work from a number of artists, (and patience with some of them I think) and here she has done just that yet again.

MASKS! is a show of...well...just that on her new island at Erato of Caerleon, and, unlike a lot of Caerleon her terraforming and landscaping skills are to be admired.













Now, these poor photos don't do the show justice as there are lots...lots... of masks and most or a good many of them are moving. Some of these that I liked are scripted so its best to pop along there and see for yourself.

Erato of Caerleon, find in Search or IM me or Sabrinaa for am LM.

:))

More sex

Well, to be accurate, grammatically, more ABOUT sex.
Otherwise it sounds like I am promoting promiscuity, which is, after all, not really down to me to have an opinion on......except that I always tend to have an opinion on things that are no concern of mine....

No, this is about sex, in particular the new Museum of Sex in SL which you can visit here




and, of course, dear reader thats exactly what I did, all in the name of good reporting. :)) ...well, lots of very ugly (this is an aesthetic point of view, not a moralistic one) pieces of furniture from the "good old days" through to the present day.
Now I get bored easy so I didnt spend a long time there.

The roasting spit, however caught my eye.
Now I would have thought that World of Warcrap would have had more use for this than any sexy SL ers. I know that getting hot is important (that much I have learnt) but I had always assumed that the "hot" was more emotional than literal. Still ...what do I know? Not much apparently..........

Comments from spit-users could help enlighten me.....

Much more amusing though was this news item from FL (first life) about a boy with a paint can and a good sense of humour who decided to decorate the roof of his parents home with a rather tribal decoration so that his house could be seen by Google Earth.

The parents said they would make him rub it off....although the posted item has been changed to say the parents would make him SCRUB it off... not sure if thats a real improvement, verbally.....

:))

Tree

Well.. this tree has been a problem to plant, poor thing. It started life at Scotsgreymousers sandbox, visited a couple of sims at Caerleon before finally taking root on my beach.

Its my 75th Ancient One and, not for the small back garden, its 180 prims approx... so its by order only...too big to link..:))

The scale is great for the beach and it will stay, although the other stuff may well get moved around... everywhere is like a building site at the moment...the shop is a real mess....so be warned.. but that hasn't stopped the intrepid shoppers...I'm glad to say.

I read that LL are "consulting" on what to do about bots...(an earlier topic in these pages) and, if you have the will... can comment ....I just didn't think I could spare the time to read thro all the stuff, but if someone has more time than me.......

I figure that they will do whatever they decide to do..(duh! stupid comment)... and I will get to hear about it eventually.

oooo...I do like building....

Aliz said I should get the Salt HUD for calling up any size mega prim you want, and tho I was a bit stroppily resistant in the beginning ...she is right...absolute miracle... should have had one years ago (except they weren't available)... so I have been mega ...ing my little socks off.

also I joined Builders Brewery (group) and they are like the Mac Users...a great bunch of chatterboxes...love it.

busy as an ant...

:)))

Stuff.... (sod it)

Well, a good number of Second Life bloggers have been disappointed at not being mentioned in the list of the top blogs. I was disappointed for approx 0.5 seconds.
NWN and other sites have been giving advice on "how to increase your blogs authority" and, labelling every post as "Stuff" is apparently not the way to get famous. Well....sod em all. hehhehehe

Seems to me that I blog cos I like it, not cos I'm working towards world domination. I'll leave that to the poor fools who are spending their time slitting pigs throats in World of Warcrap (world domination, not blogging.)

When I log into one of these facebookie type sites it asks me..."what are you doing now?" like I'm gonna Twit a comment. Well.... fool! ...I just logged onto your site...Duh!

Social networking as its now called (I've no interest in Botgirls recent forays) seems to me like a way of reassuring yourself that your 25467 friends have just as boring a life as you do. I am sooo disinterested I can't even finish this senta....... :)))





Now...every picture tells a story and this is a very amusing one...well, that is to say it amused me.
It is, of course, from the beastly bears at Hotel Dare ... I went back again last night with Pixi.. very amusing... don't know if it would be classed PG tho. I kinda hope it wouldn't be...

:))

Appearance and self-respect.

Well, not wishing to leave stuff half-finished, I wanted to complete this small section of my writing about the psychology of virtual existence, knowing that I am merely scratching the surface of a huge subject. The journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

Having written a little about fear, I wanted to write down some ideas about shame. Why?... well... traditionally (in Western esoteric writings at least) fear and shame are the two Guardians. They are known as The Lesser Guardian of the Threshold (shame) and The Greater Guardian of the Threshold (fear) and the Threshold they guard is the one between normal consciousness and "The Spiritual World".... (that is to say in normal language that lack of self respect and anxiety hold us back from achieving our full potential.)

Their job is to allow no-one to enter a higher realm (consciousness for example) until they have been prepared as an acolyte (esoteric student) to such a degree that the revelations that ensue will be understandable/tolerable to the individual. Now this is all allegorical.... but has an archetypal stature which is worth talking about. We all share archetypes, they are the foundation stones of our psyche.

Now, no journey starts for the know-it-all. There is nowhere to go...

For the rest of us, self knowledge is the starting block. As we learn more about ourselves we come to the point where the balance of self respect and self loathing swings backwards and forwards. This is the Shame that is the Lesser Guardian, and the theoretical question he asks us is.... "are you worthy?"

OK..so what has this got to do with me? or anyone for that matter? and what has it to do with Second Life for gawds sake?

Well...having written a little before about the real healing possibilities of SL... I am very interested in appearance.

The way we look in FL (first life) is very important in determining how we deal with the self-respect/loathing balance. There is absolutely no point in saying that it shouldn't ...or that its a material world... people the world over are interested in improving their appearance as it increases their self esteem.

Now, this doesn't mean that pretty people pass the Guardian any easier than others. Their self-torment comes in the form of wondering if they only got the job/boyfriend/whatever because of their looks. Age hits the pretty pretty hard, after all.

So....appearance. In SL its all quite different, I think. I am better able to distance the surface design (appearance) from the typist (human) working behind the scenes,. I do this more easily in SL than I do in FL , the duality is more normal, more immediate. I can change what I don't like easily, daily and at a click can become a different gender, species, whatever. this reinforces my feeling that appearance in SL is an illusion TO A GREATER DEGREE than it strikes me in FL.

This, this degree of awareness, is I believe a healing element in Second Life.

People have become my friends before I knew what they looked like or vice versa....

I like that. I am valued for who I am, my behaviour, my thoughts and feelings. That is a healthy environment.

oh, yes...and...the answer to the traditional question..."are you worthy?"...ahhh ...well..the answer is..."In spite of my faults.....yes, I am."

:)))

8000 visitors

Well, over 8000 visits to this humble little rambling collection of words, and it seems like just yesterday.....sigh...



6% of you, my dear readers are hooked/returning folk and a fair few of you seem to spend some time browsing, which is very heartening for me...:))




There are 40 different countries that people visit from, but obviously the language narrows it down, along with SL membership to mainly US and Europe...
but it would be interesting to know who my Russian reader is... a special Hi to you, whoever you are and I hope you soon see Spring springing, that must be a pretty rough climate....:)))

:))

Shop.... time up

Yes, my shop. Well... I thought I would upload a couple of photos cos ... its on its way out. That's to say, I'm bored with it and i'm planning some radical rethinking of my beach and stuff with the aim to get rid of the 'cloud' shop.
...most of what is on the beach, (should be ALL..), is up for sale, so it seems a bit unnecessary to have stuff in the shop as well.

It started life as an idea to get a friend who was a very good builder, Kaltusaran Moonsoo, to put his stuff up for sale. He was my first building mentor in SL and his stuff was fabulous, (I say "was" cos he's now left) and I had started making a few clumsy things for sale too. The thing is/was he would never get around to selling stuff cos he never really finished tweaking the last bits to his satisfaction. The same thing happened in the shop.

Anyway.... gradually I made more stuff and now theres not room for more than half of it up here anyway, the rest being on the beach and it seems like the beach looks better than the shop, so I'm gonna re-do it.





I dug out this old photo for a comp at Orange, not that its necessarily good enough to win, but I like it. Its Timewave2012 Planer (DJ) playing at my first party on the beach...it was v cool...I laid out a prim on the sea and lights underwater...18 months ago now..:)).. in the old days.... :))


:))

Adult content... :))

Well... the big talking point for some (mainly the bloggers I think) this month has been the Linden Boys' idea to get sex segregated in SL so that you can't bump into it by accident.... "In particular, it has become clear that some Residents are interested in pursuing certain “Adult” activities in Second Life that others would rather not casually encounter."

Well...there are obvious pros and cons with this... and many people have voiced their opinions on the matter..

To be quite precise...

"First, it will provide a way to geographically separate Adult content and activities to a part of the “mainland” designed to accommodate these activities (Estate owners with Adult content on their land will be required to flag their content; they will not be required to move).

Second, it will filter search results, so that those who do not wish to see “Adult” results will not.

Third, it will require that those who access or see “Adult” content (whether on land or in search) have had their accounts verified – such as by a payment or age verification method."

Well, that all sounds fairly clear cut....until you start to remember Nipplegate, at Burning Life. For those too young to remember or who haven't heard...Nipplegate was the case of a statue in a PG sim that had nipples. Now... lets be serious ..there aren't that many children who havent seen nipples on a regular basis...(i.e. several times a day..) and, compared to what else you could stumble across on the web.....lol...

So...this is the problem....what is Adult Content? Obviously the recently sold out devices from Xcite ( you know which ones I mean) are fairly shocking, I guess, (if you have lead a sheltered life) and quite obviously Adult with a capital A.

Nipples on stone structures.. hmmmm, doubtful,... but with the Boys you never know..

Now I have seen a few girls walking round mostly dressed.... and they could be borderline...:)))) so are they banned from PG sims ..??? is there a dress code? and how would that be enforced? It all gets a little hazy, and probably not worth me using my brain on.

What I do find a little difficult though is the attempt, if thats what it is, by the Boys to please neurotic mothers (?) and the 'moral' "majority" (questionable term in the extreme) by jumping through hoops...or making us do so. Sex is so relatively harmless when compared to war and violence.

I am definitely in the "make love not war" camp.

:)))

Alizarin Goldflake at Evolution

Aliz is showing at Evolution and (with the help of Sabrinaa Nightfire) filled the sim..... IM Aliz or me for an LM.




I finished the sea stack at Lifstaen... thanks Kasey for the prims xxxxx





And Calista celebrated two years at Calista (sim name) with a long party. Calista may have been the first club i went to as noob with Caro, Burton and Sapphire... and, of course, met Calista .......happy days....hehehhehe

:))

computers

Now, its all very well designing the slickest and most fashionable sims on the grid .... but .... I have a question. What happens if only 20% of the people who go there can rezz what you have designed?

Obviously some of our top designers have fantastic computers....they don't make do with the little old laptops some of us use. So...should they (or I as a designer) take the crummy laptop into consideration or not when fashioning the trendiest stuff they can?
There are pros and cons.

Pro....(doing the most taxing stuff you can)... is the point that, generally people will, over the years, upgrade their computers and so more of them will be able to see the designers original intentions as the old (e.g. my) technology catches up with theirs.

Con.... in the meantime people will give up trying to rezz stuff and go home.

and, of course, some people say its down to the Boys to sort it out so textures load better.......

Well, you may be wondering what has suddenly brought on this deliberation??? Well...its Poetik.. now....i can criticise Poetik without Nur displaying any of the outraged hurt that Georg did, for two reasons, one....I'm not building at Nurs....she doesnt really dig my style...and two...no-one can surely get that excited about a little criticism based on an blue-haired bimbos opinion.

I have a lot of friends who, very kindly, come and look at stuff I've built, especially new stuff. But Poetik has foxed a lot of em. They can't find their way anywhere.... its laggy....and its not got any signs, and they fall down holes.
Now....based on the recent comments reported in NPIRL that I made about this medium... namely that using the computer screen to design on is like working with stained glass.... then...... black glass is a mirror. Or...very like a mirror. Try going to Poetik on a sunny day (unless you have your puter in a dungeon).....and you'll see my point.

Anyway....based on Bettinas recommendations I went to AVZ... and that where the above photos came from... I didnt buy anything, cos I couldnt see anything. I know malls are normally bad...but...lol...

BUT....AVZ had great, really great signage...


:))

Twits

Well... twit is an english slang word for a silly person. And Twittter is, as we all know, something birds do in your garden, which we, in typical anthropomorphic tradition deem to be about how wonderful life is, etc. (In fact they are saying "get off my property...or...I'm better in bed than he/she is").

Well.... having not done much of the more recent Twittering... I felt I shouldn't be left out...so I thought you might like to see what a years twitter from me would be like:

"Hi...got up, drank some coffee" X 365
"Hi..... making my breakfast now" X 365
"Wow driving to work"... X approx 200
"hey, y'all I'm eating my lunch" X 365.......

continue in the same vein until...

"Hi...everyone of my 23546 friends.... I'm going to bed,.... good night" X 365

So... basically thats my year gone...and its good to think I've shared something of depth and meaning with my thousands of best friends who all like to know exactly when I'm blowing my nose.

How did we manage before we had this facility? Hardly bears thinking about.

:)))

NPIRL blog post

Well, about 18 months ago I did a build at Burning Life. I got the plot in a "lottery" and didn't have to go through the mind numbingly tedious landgrab that is practised..... ("because thats how its done in FL").

My plot was next to Bettina Tizzy's and she implied it was more than just coincidence, (synchronicity may be Jungs greatest work). At that time I had no idea who she was, or what she did.(NPIRL).

So.... over the past 18 months or so we have got to know each other a little better and I have always been very grateful for her moral support. But even so....it is a very cool post she has written about me......thx Bettina

fear

Well, I was gonna write about healing by saying what a good environment SL is for healing because of the lack of fear, but realised that for some this isn't so because they hold so tightly to their FL (first life) personnas like drowning souls. I'm thinking here of people who put their FL photos on the first page of their Profiles, or who design their avatars to exactly match their FL bodies, and those who immediately tell you everything about their FL, expecting, sometimes demanding that this "revelation" is immediately reciprocated.

I have mentioned before that I find it somewhat mystifying. I realised though that fear is greater for some people in Second Life than in their first life, and wanted to go into that more, as it is unfinished business in my brain...:))

"The unity of consciousness or of the so-called personality is not a reality at all but a desideratum [a desire or wish]" says the great Dr Jung, and to expand on that "The psyche is far from being a homogenous unit - on the contrary, it is a boiling cauldron of contradictory impulses, inhibitions, and affects, and for many people the conflict between them is so insupportable that they even wish for the deliverance preached by theologians" [i.e. being "Saved"].

So the opening of the unconscious (which SL can do....more of that another time) reveals those elements of our psyche which have been swept under the carpet for years. These "contents" do not peacefully gather dust but grow in the darkness, gaining power, and independence. So SL can be like opening Pandora's Box, and a thing to be feared.

Clinging maniacally to FL personnas seems to be how some people cope with the looming loss of control, but the FL personna is just as much an illusion as any role a person might involve their avatar in. The FL personna is as fictitious as any other fairy story.

As is the 'control'.

So, the fear is that "dark" things can be revealed but the duality of good and evil is a construct of western Christianity. The goddess Kali containing light and dark in equal amounts is not a problematic paradox for the Eastern mind, nor is Ying better than Yang; no moral judgement being assigned either one.

I make no excuse for posting this again...

A SLEEP OF PRISONERS

Dark and cold we may be, but this

Is no winter now. The frozen misery

Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;

The thunder is the thunder of the floes,

The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.

Thank God our time is now when wrong

Comes up to face us everywhere,

Never to leave us till we take

The longest stride of soul we ever took.

Affairs are now soul size.

The enterprise

Is exploration into God.

Where are you making for? It takes

So many thousand years to wake,

But will you wake for pity's sake!

-- Christopher Fry

Affairs are now soul size. The enterprise is exploration into God. Well... the psyche anyway, God is an autonomous complex.
SL is, potentially, a huge psychic research facility for anyone who wants to use it in that way, and provides a great opportunity for the brave of heart to examine the contents of their "boiling cauldron" without terrible consequences.

Re-uniting the unconscious elements of our psyche with our consciousness is healing and called Enlightenment.


:))

Stuff, again

Well, when you have been getting a bit of grief it is even nicer than usual to get a gift from a stranger. Youki Cioc gave me this funny little elephant rucksac which I have been wearing like a comfort blanket. Cute. I popped over to his shop, Yome Shoujo, which if you can't Search is at Cloncurry (176,205,236,) and found a nice skirt which I will no doubt show off at some point.

I go to Hrajukubox occasionally too, I like the fact that Japanese people are a little less "reality" obsessed and have found some strange stuff there (at a good price).










The above photos are all from Phoenicia sim. More than a year ago I was commissioned to do new trees and plants for a sim by Jade Vandyke. Unfortunately the (dare I say) very beautiful result, the Rainbow Forest, was taken and put in his invent while he moved home and job in FL (first life) never to be seen again until elements of it reappeared on Phoenicia.
What is interesting is how much landscaping is about composition... Jade owns full perms on all the trees and plants I made him, and its great to see a property developer using NPIRL elements in his landscaping, but he really should have had them planted by a landscaper....:)))

And again the question of shadows, which I got so excited about last year and which I got all wrong, not realising it was Kirstens viewer, not The Boys who had given us shadows in SL. Welll.... rumours, partially substantiated, abound to the effect that shadows will be coming to SL via the Boys' viewer. Now that will probably mean.... for those that don't have a Mickey Mouse graphics card like mine.... NWN are carrying the story and the links.

:))

Lifstaen.. soror nishi new build

Kasey has let me have 10k m2 on Lifstaen, which is the island she, Iz and I live on, and this is day two of my build there..

It still has a lot of fiddling about to do, but its mostly there if you wanna take a look...

:))

Poetik snaps

A few snaps from the opening last night at Poetik Velvets



In conversation with a bear in the Hotel Dare




Not sure about this....looks a little dodgy




Tea and cake with the famous Four Yip, and Mescaline, with Bryn in the background....




This in my part of the build......




This is Hern, the master builder (and DJ) with Lola..




And there was some dancing...:)))


:))

Poetik Velvets.... wow

Well, today is the opening of the most amazing sim, Poetik Velvets, sponsored by Nur Moo and Juju Dollinger, Hern Worsley has spent 3 months creating exactly the sort of thing that SL should be home to.

Stunning in execution and conception, this is art which is NPIRL, and there is a great interview with Hern by Bettina here.

My small contribution is in the Hotel Dare (v 2.0) as seen above in the photo. Its a collab colon done with CensoredMy Lunt. Gattina Dumpling has been the mastermind behind the hotel part of the build, other geniuses on the site are numerous, Alpha Auer and four Yip, for example.

It opens at 8am and has a 24 hour party, the address is Poetik Velvets (179,100,72) or just search the sim on your map.

Don't be surprised if the sim is closed from too much traffic, just try later.

:))

Wrong?

Now, I know I have a big mouth.

But, if I'm wrong, i'm quick to admit it.

So....




















....is calling this an Art Ghetto wrong of me?
(I know I may have hurt someones feelings, but that is not the point.)
The point is..... can you just plant a load of art on a sim and achieve anything of beauty?

Should certain restraints be put on art shown in a collective setting?

...... if you have time, post a comment.

:))

Why?

Ok, so we know the linden Boys sometimes pour coffee over the keyboard and get pizza stuck in the CD slot....this can happen to the best of us, (even such dedicated professionals as the Boys surely are), life is like that.

Now... not being able to log on, I was advised to check the status... Hmmmm ... well...the status page on the blog tells me that some residents may have trouble logging on. OK. I had come to that conclusion already...thats why I'm on this page (duh!)...

So this page also invites me to monitor the RSS feed...and like the model resident that I am...i do... and find:



Now.....my question "Why?" relates to this particular thought pattern...

1) through my tier payments and multiple uploads etc. I presumably contribute to the US$ 5 000 000 that LL takes per month in tier.

2) some of this money hopefully goes towards paying wages of people who know how to post an article and have the necessary fingers available to do so..

3) yes....(you can see where i'm going with this train of thought).... here's an idea for you Boys, (its a free idea, with full perms), why not get someone who can type to write a few words on why you are having problems, or maybe what they are, or even how long you think it might take to get the whole thing going again. Just a thought. Some of the Boys have indicated that they are always on the lookout for new ideas to help improve my experience of Second Life... soo.. thats one.

Now the other thing, there are surely more, but lets take one at a time.... is... anyone who has been in SL for a while can predict when a new viewer is about to be unleashed on us.
Caro said, not 12 hours before the event, we must be getting a new viewer cos everything is going wrong. And... she was right... Aliz had black gloves on that she couldn't take off...crashes and tp probs....and... like a bad penny the new viewer was foisted on us.

Everyone knows that a new viewer precedes a period of instability, whether you download it or not; it is as predictable as ...hmmmm....something very predictable.

so..... Why? (2.0).....

There are always hundreds of words printed about all the fixes that this latest viewer adresses .. :)) why does it mess up the system to the point that we cant log on when it has fixed so many "issues"......?

Well.... I better stop now and try and log on again... good job I don't do anything important in Second Life, this could get me really mad.


:)))

Island build

Busy as an ant, I am...:)) and I love it, although I was getting a bit burnt out...:)) ... (sorry to all those who suffered with me, but, hey, thats what friends are for, I hear). will definitely take a break after this little lot.

Anyway, the pictures are of the very start of a new build on Lifstaen, my island, well....mostly it belongs to my two good neighbours, Iz and Kasey. Now, Kasey has given me 10k m2 to fool around with and so I started on my mega stack. This is, in principle, the same one I was gonna build at Caerleon until I decided against it.

I have two other builds which are nearly finished, both at Caerleon, one on Sabrinaa's island and one on the collective.

Poetik Velvets, is finished as of tonight (unless Click has other ideas) when I am just gonna put a little finishing sound prim into the thing.

Photos will follow no doubt...

:)))

Wall

Well... this is the sort of thing I spend my day doing...:))














and I only need the one...ahh, well...the creative process.

I got interviewed, sort of, well...I interviewed myself, in fact....its an interesting idea... but I'm not sure that anyone is really gonna find me in all this stuff....still , for those interested its here


:))