That was another week....

...and a strange one it was too. Apparently the boys are upgrading the wires and replacing the bits of chewing gum that hold all the servers together, so we shouldn't complain that things are absolutely horrible online ....well... they could at least say sorry.....on their status page...couldn't they??...

Last time I complained about the lack of info on the status page a certain Ari Blackthorne TM simply commented with the address of the status page, if you crashed several times today and looked...you would find....

"[Resolved] 1/29/2010 2:03 pm PST The issue with the regAPI has been resolved.
1/29/2010 12:35 pm PST
Some residents have been experiencing failures with the Second Life regAPI for certain requests. We are working on a resolution right now. Please check back to this blog for updates."

My previous complaint was that they only told you when stuff was allegedly fixed... (what's a regAPI anyway??)





Well, regAPI or not, things have been soooo slow loading.... the above photo is me inspecting sand at 0,0,0...hmmm.... immersive, I guess.






I have spent all of my time underwater this week when not dancing my spare time away with the lovely Nur in my local opium den.
Maeve and I are creating an Irish peat bog... photos to follow when things get more photogenic...

Frigg is currently busy so my Norwegian Village project has a few bits and bobs still to finish....but it is looking good..





Popped over to see Betty Rogan's photos (the above one is called "Watching you without me") at Raglan shire yesterday....always a nice place to visit...

...and Scarps sculpture garden too.... IM me for LM, if you don't have it...(sorry, no slurl)....

Also...I joined the newly acquired (by LL) Avatars United, which is a staggeringly forgettable social media site, for avatars. It has poor graphics and its hard to see it taking off to be honest. I thought...well...that's nice, this disproves my previous idea that everyone is out to get my Real Name and sell me junk.
However.....before I left the site, I was asked if I wouldn't mind answering a survey...for feedback. Now being the Public Spirited Being that I am, I agreed.
The first 3 things they wanted to know where.... age, sex, job...... now, I ask you..how is that gonna help their feedback, really. Duh!!

I have the terrible foreboding that SL is gonna become a 3D Facebook if some people have their way. Luckily I think it will be a fruitless exercise, this Mass StoopidvilleSL. Let's hope the pockets of creative anarchy don't all have to get on their life-rafts and jump ship to Reaction Grid or Open Sims.

And....absolutely brilliant, I thought, this video on Dusan's blog..... has to be seen...



....and his recent post is, as often, a must read.

Oh, and Dusan is gonna pour coffee over my head for complaining about the Lav... apparently picking the bits of pizza out of their keyboards is real tricky and I shouldn't complain...... they are doing a really good job, he says. Bloody well should be doing a good job when you think of the mountains of cash they take of their "community" of poor suckers... i.e. me.

...and lastly......., the Australian Open has finished, and I am now weaned off TV til the French.... watch out prims...I'm back.

:))

Wolf Avatar.... lamb is not his real name...

Awww....so cute, how nice of someone to send me a fluffy little lamb........ aww...all they want is total perms on my friends list.......

.......just like that nice Nigerian man who wanted my bank account details so he could send me a few million pounds....so where's the harm in that??


:))

The Real Me....... hide!

Well, as I wrote previously, there are not really any such people as virtual friends. You can have enemies, you can have acquaintances, but you can't have virtual friends.

I don't believe either that there is a virtual me. That is nonsense. I am, and my friends are my friends. Does your brother on the other end of a phone line suddenly become a virtual brother?

Now, the controversy is raging the blogsphere on the idea of real names, real names being the weird choice of a woman with hormones in turmoil (your mother) combined with some ancient ancestral legacy for a surname (your father's).
That is real..(?)
The fact that everyone you know may have chosen a nick-name for you, or, like Ringo Starr, that you have a stage name, or that you have an avatar with a weird name....is of absolutely NO use to those clever people who are data mining your details.

As Lalo points out so clearly you are not a bankable asset until you link your real name to your consumer purchase name. You are like an apple on a tree, not part of the great consumer enterprise that runs the world, and the future, until you are plucked.

...and plucked you will be, if LL has anything to do with it. ...anyway...lots of very clever people have voiced their opinions recently, just check out the above link for more (links) on the subject.

I have previously spoken of persona and, it seems, as far as Online Persona goes:"You Are What You Buy".

Just imagine what a list of 20,000 people who own huge motorbikes in SL is worth to a RL bike salesman....etc etc...and Facebook could point the 'salesman' in the direction of your friends, some of who may well have similar interests..... like terrorist 'profiling', consumer profiling allows targeted advertising, which could obviously be a huge saving for a huge industry.....surely there is no-one out there naive enough to believe LL couldn't change the TOS overnight if they wanted to....(my bank does it weekly)...

Real Name = Consumer Name...... (target, mark, punter, sucker, victim...etc.)

Obviously there are teams of people at the Lav who ask, continually..."how can we make more money from SL?"...a few years ago someone had the idea to sell more land which would increase the Tier to around 100,000,000 US$ per year, and there is a good little earner with the exchange rate too.
The downside is that with 70k online peeps rattling around on 40k sims....its about as populated as the Sahara, and, to many....just as attractive.
So now.....lets dumb down SL so we get More Real Names, because More Real Names=More Cash.

Let's go for mass??

The mass is a fool, does LL want to become the next StoopidFarm?.... why dumb down a decent product so you can scrape some more dollars together.... cheap crap is crap, cheap, and dumb crap...yes...that's right.

So.....monetize...(God I hate this verbalisation of nouns, see below for some words from a true wordsmith).... well, altho it is all quite "hippy"...I would like to share this with you Dear Reader....

"At any price that I can pay, let me own myself.

And the price is worth paying if you keep what you have bought....

A man may apply his independence to what is called worldly advantage, and discover too late that he laboriously has made himself dependent on a mass of external conditions for the maintenance of which he sacrificed himself.

So he may be festooned with the whole haberdashery of success and go to his grave a castaway.

Some men hold that the risk is worth taking.
Others do not."

Now this was part of a speech by the Lord Rector of St. Andrew's University in 1923, a certain Rudyard Kipling.

...and my point is..???...

My point is that LL doesn't have to spend it's energies scrabbling in the gutter for every cent they can worm out of me.....

...if they spend their lives with their heads up their bums they are gonna have a limited outlook..

Do SL properly, Boys, before you try to take over the world.

:)))

ColeMarie and other stuff

Well, it was after I was in this machinima shoot which Cole was doing that she told me she was gonna do a blog, and I was very pleased. She’d had trouble with people telling her what she could and could not write if she was gonna write for them and so she’s started her own....its here... Its a MUST read.

....and I’m very happy to have a soul sister who isn’t frightened to call crap “crap”...cos it’s important that the rubbish gets pointed out and the positive gets praised.

And....I am VERY glad she’s done a wonderful post on Bryn. Bryn has been on my mind a lot recently. She is one helluva builder, a real SL genius and, altho she doesn’t need anyone to tell her that, I haven’t been able to really give her the credit she’s due, simply because melancholia and I don’t mix. I guess it’s a temperament thing, it just makes me giggle (unrepentant shallow fool). soo.... excellent post on Bryn...here.. well done Cole.
I’m the sort of person who would tell Van Gogh he was doing it wrong, I guess......

In other news..... well.. Jung’s Red Book has sold out of it’s first edition ...so if you bought one....it’s now worth twice what you paid for it...

I have put in my January competition entry at UWA, and, showing what an amazingly discerning person she is.... Juanita told me how much she loves it....well, good someone understands me.

I’m working on two new trees at the moment too... getting stuck in between moments of clarity.

and....I’ve been looking into switching to Linux if/when I get a new machine, and have joined the SL Linux Users Group.... and what a thoroughly pleasant group of people they are.... 38% of my readers are Mac users...so I apologise to the faithful, but the price of machines may turn me traitor...

...and I start work tomorrow on a peat bog....for a friend/commission....v interesting...

Last but not least.... Botgirl is two.... congratulate her here...

:)))

Happy Millennium

Today I am one thousand days old.

Happy Millennium to me.

(and thanks to Awen Stardust for pointing it out to me).

Do you think that like cat years, and dog years, there are X number of Avatar years to one human year? At times I feel like I'm a thousand years old.

:)))

Virtual Treeline

Now, obviously, anything called Virtual Treeline Gallery is gonna attract my attention. Add to this the fact that a very talented artist, Juanita Deharo is running the place and you have all the makings of a great place for tree fanatics like me and possibly you, dear reader.

Her new show features a couple of very good artists, and altho I am quite wary of 2D stuff in a 3D environment, this is quality worth a visit.

Jadyn Firehawk has some absolutly stunning photos in this recent show and Lynda Robinson some very good pastels (I think).

The tree pictured above called Blue Text is by Juanita and has some of the nicest textures I've seen on a tree.

The show has already opened....the details are here.

Go...


:))

Alizarin Goldflake at Sapphos Commons

Now, Alizarin Goldflake is no stranger to these pages and no stranger than anyone else you would meet.
She has a big show on at Sapphos Commons that opens today, Saturday... full details here...

Now Sapphos Commons is not somewhere I have visited before and it’s always a surprise to find large community based projects going about their business which you/I have never heard of, I guess I don’t get out much...

There’s a web page here......or...to sum up..
“This is a cooperative project, ....This community was started in the late summer of 2008 through the efforts of:
Impression Melina,
Tasha Kostolany,
Melvin Starbrook,
Beauti Sorbet,
Energy Sosa,
Kyllie Wylie,
Sano Ra,
Marlena Poliatevska.”

Anyway... Aliz does beautiful digital drawings which you can now buy from her website (see above) which would hang nicely inbetween your Nishi oil-paintings...hehhehe....

and....RobertSteven Smythe you will maybe know in connection with Artemesia....one of the great curators, I think.

"The new Art Conservatory and coffee bar is a perfect place to simply enjoy the peaceful surroundings, read a book and chat with other visitors, and is now scheduled to have art exhibitions by SecondLife's most famous artists, sculptors, and workers in other types of media.

Art Conservatory Exhibitions are via the courtesy of RobertSteven Smythe, our
Art Curator, and Tasha Kostolany, our Design Director.

A big "Thank you" to RobertSteven Smyth, Tasha Kostolany,
and to Meagan Thespian for all their work and dedication .... "

Detailed information about the Art Conservatory Project via the following
website:


The upshot of all this is......a must see...

:))

About this blog... a small news item.

It’s a very important thing to know your limits, well, actually to know my limits and limitations and to live, as far as possible, within those boundaries.

Time is always a constraining factor and so, this blurb is really just a sort of justification and explanation for the most recent news ....which is that I have given up writing for Koinup.

I have been very aware, dear reader, that I have not been making the most of this blog, and have a good dozen or so unwritten posts which I should have or could have written to entertain, inform or, at least, amuse you, with.

As this “boring little melodrama” (so-called by Rezzable’s boss) approaches it’s 20,000th hit, which means 30,000 page turns, I am suddenly amazed and pleased that so many of you get something out of following my strange meandering mind as it wanders from scene to scene in this compelling VW adventure we are currently experiencing. Assuming, of course, that it is not one weirdo reading my blog 30,000 times.

Of the recent posts I have blogged, Wizzy, self-proclaimed media tart, attracted 600 hits, including a large portion of the Lab Boys, and in second place, with 300 hits was the post on pseudonimity (NWN then blogged a similar post with a survey which showed that 65% of it’s readers favoured some degree of pseudonimity).

As there is a continued interest in the psychology of virtual existence I will be following this theme up in the near future, and, as I hate almost all fashion blogs I will try and throw in a few ideas on alternatives to the norm. Trees, crappy posts and general ramblings will features as well....so don’t worry, I’m not about to go strangely intelligent but hope my rabbity mush of a brain will continue in it’s usual mode.

Those of you who have followed my blog for a while will know my only interest in sport is tennis and a small typist-outage may be experienced next week, the second week of Melbourne, then it should be plain sailing til May (French Open) and, shortly folllowed by Wimbledon which has me glued to the goggle-box like a moronic lounge-lizard.
so.... onward and upward....

luv ya all

:))

Relationships.

There has been occasional reference in blogs over the past while to the question of Second Life interfering with RL relationships and even comments by people who have given up spending time online as their RL relationships have suffered.

This supposition, that there is a conflict between the two worlds, is common, and is not unlike the exclamations that went up when TV started being a 24 hours entertainment service. Family life would be ruined, we were told and people would never speak to each other and that would be The End.

Well, there can be little doubt that TV has changed the way most of the ‘civilised’ world spends its evenings, but basically...life goes on.

Now, if sitting beside your loved one on the sofa watching either some dreary football match or Big Brother is what constitutes ‘quality time’ then fair enough. I don’t personally see any problem in one or the other partner choosing to go online instead. As one girl said to me..”I didn’t know when we married that he would become a football maniac”. Surely there is room in a relationship for partners to have different hobbies, be they football or SL.

But the thing that really annoys me about this whole debate is the idea that my virtual friends are virtual friends, they aren’t. My friends are just as real online as off. A relationship doesn’t become virtual because you use the telephone or email to keep in touch, the communications media you use to maintain that relationship is surely immaterial.

The written word has been used to form and maintain friendships for many hundreds of years and IM’s are exactly that, the written word.

There is, anyway, no such thing as a virtual relationship, either it’s a relationship, or it isn’t.

Which brings me on to relationships in general. As far as I understand anything my ability to form and maintain any relationship is dependent on my own self-respect and morality (I am not using the word in a Christian sense) and, I am surely not alone in believing that, any form of therapy is aimed at improving firstly one’s self belief and self worth, and, consequently, one’s ability to form meaningful relationships.

So.... as I have tried to point out in various posts here, SL has a therapeutic element.... therefore, it follows, that SL can have a very positive effect on all relationships and, more importantly, on our ability to form and maintain relationships.

This is precisely the opposite view to that which is fashionably thrown around blogs on a regular basis.

I go even further than this in a past post and suggest that the normal preconceptions we have about who we could make friends with is broken down because of our understanding of how unimportant appearance is in SL. We know someone’s appearance bears little or no likeness, often, to RL, and is therefore both changeable and transitory. We look beyond this initial impression and find the person behind.

I have friends in SL who may be older, younger, of different nationalities, than people I meet in RL. They may be physically handicapped, deaf, or have any number of disabilities which would restrict their social lives in RL, and all this matters not one iota in VW’s. My preconceptions of who I would form a friendship with are blown away.

Second Life is great for relationships.

“Would you be my friend” is just sooo sweet it brings a lump to my throat.

:))

New skin, with blue stripes.

Spent a little while making 6 different make-ups for this one too. It's not for sale yet,....IM me if you are keen.....

Again tho I am left with this problem of 'realism'. 99.9% of clothes available to buy in SL are directed at 'realistic' humanoid beings. Now, that's only natural, after all...99.9% of avatars are probably of the two legged variety.

Faeries, warlords and tinies wear humanoid style clothes... Na'vi Avatar avatars wear native american clothes... but what of the furries, dragons etc...well, dragons obviously go nakkid, as a lot of furries do....still...

....have to get my thinking cap on.... time to catch up with Gilles again... hmm.....I can feel another shopping spree coming on....


:)))

Mommalove..... Steaming Hot!!

I know it is a side of SL that I have neglected a bit, music. When we start to get artists with talent like Mommalove performing live for such small (compared to RL) groups of 70 people then we know that things are going in the right direction.



Mommalove kicked off Sabrinaa's brilliant (as usual) show of steam punk stuff at Erato today. Loads of top artists and friends gathered to see and hear....great




Zhora's piece sort of stole the show for me...I loved it, but then I'm a sucker for a tree of any description... especially something out of the ordinary like this one....





...and Scottius' "otterly amazing" (Wizzy quote) piece Starfish Command had me giggling...well...easily amused....

Bryn has a staggeringly good piece too, unfortunately my computer, my inability to walk and lack of patience have thwarted me in its full exploration, so far...but...like the man said..."I'll be back.."

Great pieces too by Dekka and Penumbra....well........they are all good actually.....

anyway...all in all, an amazing show....congrats Sabrinaa...

:))

Weekend Rubbish Post, the usual...

Leading Artist Wizard (likes to sit on stuff) Gynoid and I looking somewhat dazed after a not-so-successful attempt on a new world record, the details of which are remaining secret as we don't want the Norwegians to get there first.... and as I'm rebuilding Scandinavia like Slartibartfast...which, by the way resembles SL, in that 1 person per sim is pretty high density for some parts of Norway.... I'm keeping schtummm...

Recently likened to an Indie Pop band by CEO Mark Linden....." @Wizard, glad you believe in Safety First :) you girls look like "twisted sisters" in this pic. I LOVE it. :P" tho, not sure it was a musical reference, probably more corporeal... (not corporeal9).,,

He went on to say..." Wait til Second Life has a bona fide outer space!!"... now I wouldn't take that as a corporate promise or road map immediately, the Boys at the Lav have got more than enough to deal with what with RL named meshes on web-linked prims with revolutionary viewer and little box homes to all new-comers, they are gonna be pretty busy this year, and as the lag increases exponentially day on day we will just take it all in the light-hearted manner it was intended.





Oh, yes, new skin..... here I look like a Sister of Bryn ... well, we have the same hair-dresser, Herne, I think, well....his salon anyway.
Bryn will be showing at Erato tomorrow, Sunday along with loads of other people, but the place will get jammed, so no Slurl...





.and...in other news, Jayjay, pictured above in his Babe-Magnet Avi, reminded me that it's your last chance to win L$60k (not peanuts).... all you have to do is produce a stunning Machinima of a not very stunning sim... piece of cake....


cake....La Madeleine is continuing it's Jung themed chat this Saturday, today at 1PMSLT....talk to Isabella Alphaville if you are interested ...it's an exclusive salon....


... oh yes, one more thing, some Blender Users are popping over to compare notes on Sunday 6AMSLT (not many Californians, I guess...) at my place.... IM if you are interested.... no format.

oh...yes...darn...one last thing on the subject of "privacy is a thing or the past"..... check this out...eeeek.... persona gone mad...


:)))

Magoo revisited

Soup Magoo has been radically transformed from the exotic swampland of my fertile imagination during the last month by Dekka Raymaker and Penumbra Carter to a very different landscape....





Resembling a Nuclear Punk power station I felt I should have been wearing a robot avi or at least something radio-active...






On the Soup website they have the following to say...

"This is a freeform art build. When we were given the homestead at Magoo to produce a piece for it we had no preconceived ideas for it, so we tackled it in a manner that we constructed our Burning Life 2009 collaboration, throw a plywood cube prim down and see where it took us. The resulting madness is what you see.

As the build developed, we wanted to include some avatar interaction, and we wanted the work to come alive around the spectator. We hope that in some way we have achieved that. The build encompasses sound, light and movement. The build is foremost about fun, nothing heavy, no deep meanings, just subconscious energy driving us to complete the build in the first 3 weeks of December (we actually extended into the first week of January too, taking a 8 day break over Christmas week).

While discussing where the build was going we often used words like 'mad', 'scribble', 'no idea', 'sketchbook' and 'wtf are we doing'. There is a visual remark about an upcoming Linden Lab policy to charge L$99 per month for listing 'freebies' on it's Xstreet marketplace (Joke: "when is a freebie not a freebie?" … "when it costs L$99") there seems to be religious overtones too, but there is no bible in here.




The build is one that does indeed look like a sketch book and shows off their obvious skills both with prim bending and texturing. I did think that if the Lindens every get round to giving us scalable prims, that this build would have benefited from being two or three times the height, I would have liked to have been overshadowed by these things.

The tiling of the terrain texture immediately gives you the feeling of a clinical or laboratory site and the rusting textures contrasting with the neon glows is a great juxtaposition.

It has been a lot of work, you can see that, and worth a visit ... here

...as you know I always try and learn something from stuff I see and had to ask myself again that old question about back-story, theme and would I ever publish my sketch books.... well, it's a tricky one. In one way all I can hope to do as a builder is to provide an environment where things can happen.....) and with 30k sims and 70k avis....it's gonna be sparsely populated)
..or... do I also need to provide more than that?

RMB City left me with a similar feeling... would I go back? Well, I would for a cracking good dance party...

...as for my sketchbooks....well....too much blank paper inbetween the good bits.



:)))

999,999,995,904 meters (+25)

Well, fully equipped with the necessary safety gear, Wizard Gynoid today made a third attempt on her world record.

[3:05] Wizard Gynoid: how many 0s in trillion
[3:05] soror Nishi: 9?
[3:06] soror Nishi: yes
[3:06] soror Nishi: 9
[3:06] Wizard Gynoid: no that's a billion
[3:06] Wizard Gynoid: 12
[3:06] soror Nishi: o
[3:06] soror Nishi: ok
[3:06] Wizard Gynoid: hehe
[3:07] soror Nishi is not as good at maths as her Sis


She decimated, centimated and millimated her previous best of 2 billion meters and tped up to nearly a Trillion meters.





Although she sent a tp and I was more than happy to follow, the tp system couldn't quite handle the billion kilometer distance, which is not anything I will be posting a ticket about, after all, that isn't something one does very often.

Now, her Emerald radar shows me as being 999,999,995,904 meters away, and, I am actually at 25 meters already....so the combined height is in fact 999,999,995,929 meters.




On returning to the surface Wizzy experienced a temporary loss of vision, but examination of her eyeballs revealed no permanent damage.
She assumed, unwillingly, a horizontal pose for some minutes. It looked very much like she was kissing the ground, a bit like a pope, which she isn't.

Unwitting bystander Xeon Quartz was also a witness to this historic event and was somewhat bemused by it all. ([3:23] Wizard Gynoid: remember xeon. fame is fleeting. [3:23] Wizard Gynoid: don't let it go to your head.)


[3:19] Wizard Gynoid: how do i look
[3:20] Xeon Quartz: a bit scary ..
[3:20] Wizard Gynoid looks around
[3:20] soror Nishi: nope you look fine
[3:20] Wizard Gynoid: scary? is my head on?
[3:20] soror Nishi checks Wizzy's pulse
[3:20] Xeon Quartz: not sure
[3:20] Wizard Gynoid: i lost my head at 2 billion meters.
[3:20] Wizard Gynoid: remember sor.
[3:21] soror Nishi: yes
[3:21] soror Nishi: you said
[3:21] soror Nishi: well...you may have grown a bit again, of course
[3:21] Wizard Gynoid: i tend to lose my head when i'm under pressure.

Convinced that she had grown through a stretching process, we checked her height ....however, she was still only 7 foot 2 inches, so the effect must have been a psychological stress-induced delusion. We have yet to see if permanent psychological damage has been done.

As this little record has been well read by the Boys, I would like to suggest to the Lab that a memorial be erected on this ground for future generations to visit. Historic events should be marked ... they constitute our culture.

Wizzy will no doubt be publishing all photos on her Flickr site.... here..

A great adventure, and one to be commemorated.


:)))

Exploring the psyche

I am often asked where my inspiration comes from and I always think, well, it comes from the same place your does. It comes from that part of my psyche that dreams come from.

Jung was amazed at an early age that he could not control his dreams and that lead him to conclude in later life that they came from the same place that the weird ideas, images and “content” that his psychotic (an old term, I know) patients were at the mercy of. He called this part of the psyche, the unconscious.

He disagreed with Freud that these were merely repressed conscious ideas (Freud dealt mainly with neurotic patients), seeing some content so strange and ‘foreign’ to the individual’s experiences and conscious knowledge that it had to be more than just repression.

Because the unconscious is not controlled by consciousness (by definition) it acts as a free agent, it is autonomous. It is not MY unconscious, that implies that my ego controls it.

As the unconscious is a part of the psyche then consciousness is not the totality of the individual. The totality of the individual is only fully manifest when both parts of this duality work together.
So... exploring this part of our psyche is integral to developing as a ‘whole’ person.





Folk tales tell of treasure to be found either in the depths of the ocean (a pearl of great price, a golden ring in a fish's mouth) or in the bowels of the earth (guarded by a terrible dragon), and these gems are things that have been buried (maybe not even by ourselves)... like stuff in a large inventory.

Now, once you start on this path, looking into the mirror, the first thing that pops up is the Shadow. This isn’t a person, but in it’s manifestation shows a trace of personality, like a being in a dream.

...and it’s enough to
“frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we project everything negative into the environment. [blame others]. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least bought up the personal unconscious.” (Jung)

...and I have written of shame and fear before in these pages.


now...why would we bother exploring?

“The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form.”
So...we have to learn to get along, not something that our traditional western culture makes very easy for us.

“It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalised into harmlessness.”
Jung says how difficult this obviously is, to forgive ourself these weaknesses but...
“Nevertheless, the account has to be settled sooner or later.”

...sounds like a good place to start...

So...VWs allow me to see my own behaviour in a totally new way because I am standing outside myself looking in. Normally (RL) I am standing inside looking out, a situation where the tendency to blame others is far easier.

Now, the shadow is the first , and most obvious of the ‘personalities’ that an explorer is likely to meet in the unconscious, but not, by any means, the only one there.

The anima/animus encounter I will tackle later as it is a far more complicated experience to blog...:)) suffice it to say that there are also positive guides, helpers and generally compensatory influences hidden in the unconscious (pearls and gems) with no other aim than to help you find balance.

Star Wars, a tale based on western christianity, presents, like many such tales a very black/white view on the Dark Side. This is unfortunate as the meeting with the shadow can be crippling in its paralysing effect. It also provides an excuse for giving up. In a previous post I try to highlight this.


And... in defense of the Dark Side ..... let me ask:

Without laziness would you not be a stressed-out workaholic?
Without pride wouldn’t you be a door mat?
Without aggression would you get stuff done/ be heard?
Without imperfections wouldn’t you be a total pain in the butt?

....and your friends love you...IN SPITE OF... or, maybe because you are as imperfect as them.
So, your shadow isn’t something to antagonise over, you can have plastic surgery if you hate your big nose, but your shadow you just have to learn to live with.

*spooky music* ........ under the carpet swept the dark things grow, they don’t die by being repressed.

...so, explore... make a really bad alt to explore your badness.......

This is a psychic laboratory, if you want/dare to use it like that.

:)))

2,147,483,648 meters high

Wizard Gynoid hit her head on the ceiling in her latest exploration of outer space, this after our combined attempt (well, I was just a hanger-on) as pictured above (photo courtesy of Wizzy) in a post that attracted much interest.

Setting off from Deep Hole, White Lebed's sim, (White Lebed: "you need to go into a deep hole to find the new heights.".....very Jungian statement, that).... she ascended to the max height possible (2,147,483,640 m) which White said was 2 power 31, a max for binary search with C and C+...... ..none of which I understand...but hey....that's fine by me.

Wizzy said "I was hoping the ceiling would come out in a wardrobe in M Linden's office in San Francisco."... now that's a plot for a machinima if ever I heard one.... and intimated that she may start Virtual Geographic, a group dedicated to exploration....
This is Wizzy's second major expedition, her first being archeological in nature when she visited the first part of the grid to have existed, at Da Boom..... photo here.
"I'm sitting on what is called The Great Zero. Da Boom was the very first SL sim (and hence its number is zero). This parcel is at the coordinates of 0,0 on the first sim, hence it is the very first parcel of SL - The Great Zero parcel is only 4 meters by 4 meters and only holds 3 prims. Unfortunately, the autoreturn is set to 5 minutes."




This little blog has gone from strength to strength this last year, the most popular posts being my ones on "The Psychology of Virtual Existence", and, I will be continuing with more of the same as it seems there is an interest in a Jungian take on life as we know it. This is a pioneering that is, I believe, of major importance. There is no other possibility to examine your psyche from "outside" in the way we can through VWs.

In other major news.....Facebook, what a bunch of fools....lol. Mass genocide continues with avatars being systematically eradicated from their "real" world. Someone commented that "the integrated personality" was the future stating that the idea that you could operate under a pseudonym was a thing of the past. Well, great... because Zuckerberg believes that privacy is a thing of the past, that means we should all bow down to his world-view..... I don't think so, sonny.....

Join Transworlders, or Koinup....sod him.




...and.....had a great dance at UWA after the Decomber round of their ongoing art competition....it was a great event, again...congratulations to all concerned... see their blog for details..... here. Igor Ballyhoo being the overall winner.

My show at Pirats recieved much acclaim...thanks.... and two blog links....... Juanita and Lanes List with more than 150 people visiting on the opening day.

My next piece is gonna be at Erato at the weekend, Sunday, at Sabrinaa's "Steaming Hot" show....will blog details nearer the date.

I missed the Big Wedding of Misprint and Selavy but wish them well on their upcoming divorce, scheduled for 10.10.10.. I hear it was the social event of the month.... and 9 days is quite a long marriage now-a-days. Hope they are both on the pill, no more inventory babies, please, it's sooo sick.

More Jung soon...

:))

Elvis, Jung, Hercules and soror Nishi.

I have been interested lately in the Persona ... which could be defined as “the mask of the actor”, the face we show to the world, covering our more intimate, confused self with a deflective surface.... like most peoples Facebook profiles.

To meet Dr. Jones in his consulting rooms is appropriate, being introduced at a party to Dr. Jones, is not. The professional mask here out of place, and sanity is very much about wearing the right mask at the right time.

So..... it is this issue of “real” names that I mentioned previously that has got my brain stirring. There are suggestions in the comments on Massively’s post that “real” names could be displayed above avatars like group tags, like Dr. Jones at the party. Now, while I would be considered mad to wear a soror Nishi 'tag' when I am not inworld, the above suggestion is not considered as the stark-raving madness that it actually is.

[..and here, to be perfectly clear, I am not talking of the thousands of people who link their avatar names to their RL names in some normal manner, but those who use their RL photo on the first page of their profile and/or make their avatar look like their RL persona, make their houses in SL like their "real" homes.....that sort of thing.]

“Possession can be formulated as identity of the ego-personality with a complex.
A common instance of this is identity with the persona, which is the individual’s system of adaptation to, or the manner he assumes in dealing with, the world.” (Jung, The Archetypes..etc. all subsequent quotes, also.)

He goes on to outline those “celebs” who believe and live their own “press”. He links this to greek mythology and the poison-soaked shirt of Nessus which Deianeira gives to Hercules which he cannot remove except by throwing himself on a fire.

“One could say, with a little exaggeration, that the persona is that which in reality one is not, but which oneself as well as others think one is.”

Not, being such a greek myth geek, I had to think of the King, Elvis. Being “the King” 24/7 rather than a real person would be enough to kill anyone, being a possession by the persona, (and probably his power-complex).

“In any case, the temptation to to be what one seems to be is great, because the persona is usually rewarded with cash.”

Now the problem that frustrates me in my previous post is the belief, which is wide-spread, that a Facebook Profile (or personna) is “more real” than a SL Profile.

The persona, is a pure work of fiction too.

The main difference is that there are more people on the RL grid than the SL grid. Democracy is a dictatorship by the mass and therefore, what the mass wants/believes is what the minority have to endure, no matter how insane it is.

There is an obvious discomfort (fear) for many in this particular form of role/mask that sends them runnning for their persona to clothe their nakedness.

If it is so difficult to let go of the “real” “self” and enjoy the mask that an avatar provides, like the ‘mother’ mask, ‘daughter’, ‘lover’, ‘entrepreneur’ etc. then the question for me is ... why?

I have, increasingly, the idea that my original (two years ago) assumption may be correct... namely that, like the early colonialists, shaken to find themselves in a totally new culture/world, they superimposed and suppressed the ‘native’ culture and created their own cultural ghetto. This allowed their personas to roam free with no need for the type of change (throwing themselves like Hercules into the rejuvinating fire) necessary to step beyond their small fictional, manufactured “real” world.

RL is for most of us a limiting construct, the rules written by others, and our history.

VWs are a wonderful opportunity to expand our concept of identity.... another mask, or masks, to play with, to enjoy and experiment. Immersion is dependent on a degree of 'suspension of disbelief'.

The secret is surely to enjoy each world for what it has to offer (e.g. Botgirl), rather than trying to make them as similar as possible.



:))

Real Names.... yukk.

Well, Massively has a post on a (hopefully) random remark by our beloved leader concerning "Real" names.

"So, what’s ahead in 2010?.........
1. Experience improvements that attract more new Residents, get them acclimated and part of the social fabric of Second Life:............
The ability to choose either real names or fantasy names in Second Life."

This, a quote from the New Year address by Linden Lab CEO Mark Kingdon.

Now, it never surprises me that people come up with stupid ideas, what always surprises me is the way so many think it would be such a great idea..... the comments are shocking (at Massively).

I had a very nice person I met say to me, just a few weeks after joining SL, "Hey, I can actually see your front door on Google Earth....". Now, I had been quite open, obviously, about my RL, but it sent shivers through my soul. I do not want anyone, really, fan or fanatic watching my front door. Are people really so stupid that they think a total honesty policy is better than a little privacy?

Is it so difficult to step out of one's everyday personna? Is my name, address, date of birth and the general boring "facts" of my life what makes me who I am?

I am always interested in following a thought to its logical conclusion as the "thin end of the wedge" principle often applies.... in this case, will I be required to submit DNA samples to the Lab in 10 years time??

...and... in 10 years time, will I be having conversations with John Smith2063, Lois Rabinowitz5783 and Jo Han4517294...?..... pleeease....

Who can believe that 'reality' is more interesting than fantasy?
Who thinks that a duplicate RL is gonna enthral thousands of new users?
Who pays money at the cinema to see a documentary when a fantasy film is showing next door?

Well, the same idiots who think life will be 'safer' in SL if everyone knows my 'real' name (a pure mental abstraction my mother came upon) rather than the name hundreds of people current use for me.

It is such a frustratingly stupid concept, that "what people want" is a photocopy of their "real" lives. Duhhhh!!
.....and equally frustrating that so many agree.....

So, there are people who say...."well, SL is big enough for all sorts of users"..... that is naive. When you are ruled by a dictatorship/junta/whatever..... then the leaders have only to decide 'ooo, that sounds like a good idea' for the mass to control the minority.

Democracy is simply a dictatorship by the mass.

"Power talks, idealism walks."

Data mining is THE business of the 21st Century, and Facebook has fallen, the Lab next?

Transworlders may be my ticket out....

.......... there will hopefully be an Open Sim where us sane people can hide from the "real" idiots.



:((

Pirats Show

Ok, so I have got 5 new trees to show you if you'd like to see.

just pop over to Pirats tomorrow, you can't miss em, I wouldn't think... here

IM me if you have any trouble.

:))

A New World Record

Wizard Gynoid has rezzed the highest prim in Second Life.

Today we started our ascent....the aim....to find out how high we could get and to record this historical exploration for those who will, no doubt, take inspiration from these bold adventures.



This is Wizzy rezzing the worlds highest prim....




...and me watching....





so....how high were we...??





... wizzy's final prim was rezzed at..... 1,000,042 meters above sea level.





By this time our eyeballs were rattling around jn our helmets and we had the most terrible shakes (which started at 200,000 meters... but... unphased, we had time to dance a little salsa and take some snaps before we descended.

We made sure we came down in stages, not wishing the decompression to blow us apart into atoms....and started to feel less jumpy at 500,089 meters.....

Once again Wizard has proved herself an intrepid explorer, and I was grateful to be asked along for this press coverage..

I would advise against a beauty show up there, as you don't really look your best at that height.


:))

ColeMarie and the art of machinima

Now, firstly, my little lappy hasn't got the power to do a good machinima, and secondly I have yet to learn how to do it....but....

I have been mostly very disappointed by the "poor video" syndrome. It seems to me that, with few exceptions people haven't realised that machinima is different to video. Cole understands this.

It is a different medium to anything else.

Cole's stuff has now Style. ...not a style, but Style.... there's a big difference. You can recognise it as a Cole piece.

So.. another glorious offering .... excellent.

:))

A good start...

Well, it was less than an hour after I wrote the words...."A movie like Avatar has a more powerful effect than we currently can envisage.".....

......Wizzy turned up at the sand pit where I am working on a Norwegian Stavkirke...(a sort of post-and-beam wooden church common in Norway , built a bit like a ship)....looking very different to how she is normally dressed..:)) and, slightly inspired I went off shopping. There are a number of shops now offering avatars and clothes which have been inspired by the movie, and a whole new sub-cult of Na'vi's.

I am all for this divergence from the strictly human-based avatar, although I have not yet practised what I preach, being more human than I would like to be, but I guess I will find my niche eventually.

....and within minutes of this event, ColeMarie sent me this link to art21...sort of underlining my words (the ink was still wet)...
"I do think, and, as you know, I’m an optimist, that the art of SL will start to have an effect on the RL art world more in this coming year. We saw the start of this already this year and that will grow. Art magazines and media in general are always looking for the next big thing, and we are that."

...so...if you fancy adding a few comments to this ladies' piece about SL, I'm sure it will be noticed..

:))