sororNishi

Well...I moved...

2011-09-24T01:38:00.000-07:00

If you have been directed here from some kind persons blogroll.... I've moved.

Please be so kind as to click... here... my new server is in Iceland and fueled by 'volcano power' ... so ..check it out.

Thanks
:))

new post

2011-08-27T15:31:00.001-07:00

here.

new post on SLCC and policy on sorornishi.is

2011-08-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

New post on sorornishi.is about SLCC and policy.

publish and be damned...

2011-08-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

Well, altho it's still a work in progress I've just published my new website.... here.

check it out.

:))

All Quiet on the Western Front

2011-08-14T01:34:00.001-07:00

Yes, I've been a bit slack on the blogging front this week....but not really...

I'm in the process of building a new blog on a personal hosted domain and expect to finish next week when I get back to my own computer as currently I'm working on an iMac deep in the Kentish countryside surrounded (at times) by cats, rabbits, deer, badgers, moles and buzzards. I was woken this morning by Phil the pheasant shouting at some ungodly hour...

On the SL front, the big news is Rod at SLCC promising to polish more.... good, polishing and clearing the pizza crumbs out of the servers would be great, after all, Viewer 3.0 hasn't rocked anyone's world. Inara Pey has a good report ...here. Personally I am not much of a conference person though I have been to a few in my time, I enjoyed the socialising but Rod could have blogged everything he said, it would have been more available, maybe.

The Evil Google+ has attracted more and more press Wizard has a link to a few posts in her Drama Blog including a link to the new NetPolitik by Miso. Rod did seem to understand the privacy issue in his speech, which is just as well remembering how annoyed the WoW folk got when a change was attempted over there.

Great image by Botgirl ... here. ....and a story here.

...and on the subject of names....the stupid Display Name idea has turned sour as most of us predicted it would. It's a shame companies are so reluctant to admit they got it wrong (even Coke had to) and I guess SL will never go back to two names, or even three in the registration...but a good post on that ...here.... by Avril Korman.

Anyway, I'll get back to building a website and weeding inbetween ..... god...code is a nightmare...

Have a good weekend.

:))

Country Life 2 ... Back at Home

2011-08-09T09:33:00.001-07:00

Quite sorry to leave this house in the country and go back home, but very glad to have my own computer and my wonderful bed. Nothing quite like home.

This is a new flower border that we planted up in April out at the house in the country... (not my house ....if you missed my previous post)

...and this is it 4 months old. It will hopefully bulk out over the next 3 years..... if the rabbits can be kept away. It took most of the winter to remove 60 years ivy growth from the walls, but well worth it next year when the clematis really start to take off.

Back at my desk for a few days now before heading off to another country house to look after the poorly cat while the resident family of humans is away in Sri Lanka... strange sort of thing to do, (not going to Sri Lanka, house sitting) but it makes for a free holiday for me.

This next one starts on Saturday, and the house boasts the slowest internet connection this Millenium... oh well... patience is a virtue they say, tho in this case it's a virtual virtue.

:))

London Calling.

2011-08-09T06:01:00.000-07:00

I don't live in London anymore .... I was thinking of the song...

From Jeff Hobb's account of the Peasant's Revolt

"The Peasants' Revolt of 1381 is one of the most dramatic events of English history. What began as a local revolt in Essex quickly spread across much of the south east of England, while some of the peasants took their grievances direct to the young King, Richard II, in London.

The revolt began in Essex when locals in Brentwood reacted to an over-zealous poll-tax collector. From Brentwood, resistance to tax collectors spread to neighbouring villages, while across counties such as Kent, Suffolk, Hertfordshire and Norfolk, armed bands of villagers and townsmen also rose up and attacked manors and religious houses.

It was the rebels of Essex and Kent who marched on London. By 12th June, the Essex men were camped at Mile End, in fields just beyond Aldgate, and on the following day the Kentish men arrived at Blackheath. Incredibly, neither the government nor the city of London authorities seem to have been prepared, although the king was moved from Windsor to the Tower of London. During the next few days, the different bands of rebels from Essex and Kent were joined by some of London's poor, and they set about attacking political targets in the city. They burned down the Savoy Palace, which was the home of John of Gaunt - Richard II's uncle, and probably the most powerful magnate in the realm. They set fire to the Treasurer's Highbury Manor, opened prisons and destroyed legal records."

They went on to burn Chiswick, Clapham and Twickenham.

I am not on any 'side'. I am not 'for' the riots. I am simply remembering that riots have been around for as long as the rich tax the poor and, in doing so make them poorer.

The Church and State as main agents of taxation has changed slightly, it is now State and Corporations, but the effect is the same, give a person nothing to lose and they become dangerous..... and desperate.

Now, this is, of course, only one side of the story.

There are plenty of people who lived and live in poverty who would never harm another, or another's property. They have an inbuilt 'moral' guidance system that disallows them to damage others in their frustration. The Church, for all it's hypocrisy, probably helped somewhat to curtain destructive instincts within society.

What happen's though when the highest authority in the land robs neighbouring countries, i.e. Iraq, Lybia, of their oil in a blatent show of "the end justifies the means'?

What happen's when the corruption of politicians and police is front page news?

What happens when their is no genuine 'feedback' from the public to those in power as democracy is turned into a Reality Gameshow?

Well, I think that any guiding moral compass gets chucked out of the window. The idea that the poor should be the Salt of the Earth and maintain moral standards higher than those in authority will obviously be seen as a mug's game by some. Anger is bound to rise.

The stuff stolen in the riots is poor compensation for the dignity, emancipation, freedom that those involved feel they have had stolen from them, but, for a hour or two in the frenzied heat of crowd hysteria, they were empowered.

Might does never make it right, and the end never justifies the means, but when those in power set such a poor example it seems somewhat ridiculous for them to get on their moral high horses and take no blame whatsoever for the anger and frustration.

Time to look at both sides of the (growing) divide I think.

:||

Google+paranoid.... not really...

2011-08-07T11:09:00.000-07:00

Ok...so I know it's easy to seem a bit paranoid but there is more than sufficient reason to worry about Facebook and Google+...

A recent article reveals that social media are regularly used by law enforcement to target individuals in the name of homeland security and emergency relief details here.

...and recently installed face recognition software on Facebook (where if I remember right I was asked if I would include permission to apply this ability to photos of friends) will eventually lead to anyone being able to access a whole load of personal information, including your social security number from a simple photo of you taken in the street... details here..

This leads to a heightened ability to steal identities (not to mention stalkers) again, details here.

Now... it is totally stupid to say, as some have recently, 'I have nothing to hide'... duh!! .. your address? credit rating? your bank account? whether you live alone or not? details of you health? past relationships? where you buy your underwear? .... there is a limit as to how much information any of us want available online.

This is not a scare story, this is today, now. As Google+ insist on real names now, the time will come when real photos will be insisted on too... because? Because the information is worth money.

Forget advertising revenue... that may pale in comparison as Google+ may have, as it's main income source, the law enforcement agencies..... maybe not today, but soon.

:((

Culture Shift ? ... unlikely

2011-08-05T02:04:00.000-07:00

One of the three main definitions of the word Culture by Wikipedia: 'The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group' is the particular Culture I want to muse about here.

A culture evolves often around a group of users and has the effect of tying them together as a loose sort of social glue. The most apparent to us in everyday life is a shared dress code or subset of the native language, slang and jargon connected to music/youth culture. Many of us know people who modified their personality when they were youths, punks, rockers, new romantics etc etc... and they hold onto a vestige of this group identification into old age. It has been assimilated into their personality. They regard it as a part of 'who I am'.

Culture across even larger groups has even less tendency to change than this. I still see young punks with flamboyant cock-comb haircuts in London, 40 years after they first appeared....(on young people). Culture has an inbuilt inertia, as every type of culture aspires towards a Tradition, which seems to be the 'next step up' from a culture.

I have been thinking about this in relation to nicknames, nyms, handles because of the obvious attempt by G+ and FB to stop this practice of naming oneself.

I have not been able to determine the first historic use of a nick name though in musing upon the question it struck me that leaders, children, Gods and the Devil in particular may have been some of the first to have acquired nick names as the power of the Name was not to be used lightly. In Norwegian one also says 'a precious child has many names'.

Army buddies, work mates, lovers, leaders are all subject to the rather intimate renaming process of being given nicknames and some of these can stick for a whole life and be adopted by the person concerned if they add something to how that person is perceived i.e. status.

Short-wave radio users are a group of people who thrive on the use of Handles, it is a major part of the culture which has spread to people who ring in to radio stations with traffic reports and, recently, the Internet. These names are unique which is one of their obvious advantages.

The use of nyms by the first set of internet users is based, I believe, partly on this historic culture of radio handles, and has this cohesive effect of tying together pioneers in a new medium. The added security advantages are obvious and well documented elsewhere.

As I stated earlier culture has an inborn resistance to change. So the current attempts by a few people to change this are likely to have a problem, ... or three.

One problem is that their motive is purely to make more money ... that has no intrinsic moral or financial benefit to me.

Secondly, their security is not being put at risk.

..and lastly, but probably the most important is the fact that this ability I have to rename myself in a style and fashion that relates to the culture I aspire to is a freedom that I am unlikely to relinquish for the projected benefits of joining G+, or FB.

My parents named me, being pressurised into using my parents choice of name is always going to appear like a retrograde step on my continuing path to Individuation and is doomed to fail.

:))

Country Life

2011-08-04T11:05:00.000-07:00

I'm sitting at a posh desk in a library in a huge house in the country; I'm house sitting for rich people.I do this on occasion for a couple of couples of my rich clients when they shoot off round the globe and have so much stuff they are worried about getting nicked that they get me to be Object Sitter.

Minding objects is OK, the responsibility is just about right for me...i.e.. not too great.... and the place is well supplied with alcohol, food and hunting scenes on the walls, or at least those that don't have huge portraits of unknown dead people.

The couple I'm stuff-minding for a some of my nicest clients and their country ambitions are kinda cute seeing as they are both townies at heart.

Although I have no idea how many bedrooms and TVs this place has, I do know the computer is rubbish. Firstly its a PC with Vista installed, and, worse than that is the keyboard. Mac has probably made the greatest contribution to mankind in the form of their keyboard, it is pure genius and I recommend anyone who hasn't, to get one. The difference between my Mac keyboard and this is like the difference between a wheel barrow and a Ferrari .... except this one would be no good for horse manure.

Anyway... as you will see, no effort has been spared in slowly tapping out these few words, just so you know I am not gonna be silenced by Medieval Technology...

In other news...well...lots of drama as usual and now, to make matters easier for us, Wizzy is doing a Drama Watch on her blog ... here..... that should be interesting.

Anyway... catch up later in the week when I have had time to aclimatise..

Oh, yes, the photo doesn't have much to do with me except I helped serve the 30 or so horse riders with scotch and port and nibbles before they went off pretend hunting ... (not a Meeroo in sight).

It's another world...

:))

Lion OSX , Imprudence and Windlight.

2011-08-03T12:26:00.000-07:00

Well, bit of a Mac users post... for those that have, for better or worse, upgraded to Lion.

Now, those that use Imprudence as opposed to the V2 series of viewers, there is a little problem with missing sky files... All seems well with the latest Firestorm if you do a clean install, but there are 8 'missing' sky files from your Windlight skies if you use Imprudence.

Full instructions on the small changes you need to make are ..here... thanks to Esbee Linden.... to repeat them briefly (sorry everyone else)... go to Contents/Resources/app_settings/windlight/skies and change the following..

A%2D3AM.xml becomes A-3AM.xml 
A%2D3PM.xml becomes A-3PM.xml
 A%2D6AM.xml becomes A-6AM.xm
l A%2D6PM.xml becomes A-6PM.xml
 A%2D9AM.xml becomes A-9AM.xml 
A%2D9PM.xml becomes A-9PM.xml
 A%2D12AM.xml becomes A-12AM.xml
 A%2D12PM.xml becomes A-12PM.xml

...and that will sort you out.

Other people are having more serious problems, because Lion is not yet supported.... as reported here.....and the SL forum...here..

"Maybe if you hadn't sacked half of your dev team the client would work. Unfortunately this seems to be becoming the normal state for Second Life. OSX Lion is a major release and frankly it's embarassing that you don't 'support' it yet. It's been available for months to devs this should have been covered." Trinity Dechou quite rightly remarked....

They have had 18 days to fix it.... so far.... even if they forgot it was being released.

:))

Democracy of Incompetence

2011-08-02T08:54:00.000-07:00

The quality of incompetence is not strain'd,
It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven

...and in true democratic style it falleth on those with huge Meeroo businesses and anyone else that gets in the way.

LL have gone one stage better than Google+ and banned people with Names Like Griefers..... and in doing so highlighted another problem with Real Names... i.e. Cock-Ups if your RL name is the same as a griefer.

..... So...the problem with security is that it is only as good as the moron controlling it....and 'there's the rub'.

Now, I understand that like the Super Congress, outsourcing bad decisions can get the shit to hit someone else's fan, but, those people are responsible for your business.

Your business is only as good as it's weakest link. The weakest link is going to be someone who never goes into SL and has no idea how it works....so...outsource the garbage collection by all means, but... security, no.

For those of you that haven't read the details... Tateru is as usual the best source.... while Skylar suggested a death watch.... "every minute X Meeroos starve to death", which I assume (not hope) they do if they are unfed. This could resemble one of those Great Extinctions, what with Horses and Bunnies being in Court currently, ( a place LL might find emselves too).

Crap rightly points out that the Top Money People in SL should really not have their accounts handled by fools and I think they should have them protected like the US government protects the rich. It makes good economic sense, the poor are, after all, financially-unwashed collateral damage.... like Google+, Washington and LL could give a damn, but the rich you have to take care of.

When you go to bed tonight the cries of thousands of starving Meeroos may fill your thoughts but, don't worry, it is on The Linden Conscience that these poor dead animals lie.... it's the Boys who will have to quake in the face of Meeroo Karma.

....also...some advice, don't change your name to Roomee or Reemoo, it's probably a cause for a ban.... must be against one of the zillion ToS clauses.

Now, back to discussing alternative ingredients for the Wizzy and Miso BBQ....

:))

Brinda Allen

2011-08-01T12:57:00.000-07:00

I just heard yesterday that Brinda is unwell in hospital and I'm sure there are others that would like to join with me in wishing her a speedy recovery.

Brinda of Benares fame is best known for her warm and caring community which she has built up through love and kindness at Benares as well as through her blog which is how I first met her. As a lady who always has time for new people and friends in need I am sure her karma will send her very shortly back to us.

We look forward to having you in our midst again.

Get well soon.

Namaste.

:))

Creative Power

2011-07-31T10:20:00.000-07:00

Ok, this is for those who won't be making it as far as InWorldz....just to give you a taster.

Best in full screen and HD of course.... turn the soundtrack down if it drives you potty.

:))

Party at Creative Power build.

2011-07-31T02:35:00.000-07:00

.

It was a great night, with good music from Megan Cline that got everyone up and dancing... lively chat and good humour.

Megan the mega DJ.

Sorry if I missed anyone...(I am sure I took a photo of Bradd...but it has since disappeared...spooky)..... we all missed Jeri Rahja who's computer had burst into flames and so was unable to come.

I hope people will return and have a better look... camming around isn't quite the same experience as there is a bit of a soundscape that alters as you move around the build.

...anyway...all in all a good time..

:))

InWorldz new joint venture.

2011-07-30T11:40:00.001-07:00

By now many of you may have heard of the new joint venture that Inworldz has entered inot with a company providing server services....

A bit of further clarification...

Tranquility:

"In June the InWorldz founders flew out to San Diego to meet with our host Cari.net. Cari.net is the company that handles our servers and internet connectivity (there servers here: http://twitgoo.com/2d26aq ..your home)

We were invited to meet the entire Cari.Net staff and management personnel. Our reason for going to San Diego was to firm up plans to form a joint venture. We've always had a really great working relationship with the people there. You can not ask for a better internet host. They've always understood our needs and been able to meet and exceed our demands.

This joint venture takes that a step forward. It means that CariNet, INC and InWorldz, LLC will be working together to further the success of the InWorldz platform. It means that CariNet, INC and InWorldz, LLC as a TEAM have a direct interest in doing whatever they can to make the virtual world platform work.

CariNet, INC has access to hardware and platform services that without this JV, InWorldz would not have access to. These services will allow us to scale out the grid to growth demands as well as use the best in class hardware available to make sure your virtual experience is top notch.

To summarize, this means that CariNet, INC eases our concerns and need for the hardware and connectivity and allows InWorldz to focus on the grid and related software."

Elenia:

"We are very much an independent company. Cari.NET's interest is the technological side of things, so let me expound on that a tad

While we were out there, both companies keep a very close tab on what tech is out there, where things are going, and have a good pulse on their individual business models. Over the last two years we've dealt with Cari.NET, I can personally say I've watched them grow and learn based on our business needs. Things they originally didn't understand, they dove into, and learned, and then able to help us further from that. It's been a mutual growing experience for both companies.

They have zero interest in running our business or diving into our business model we've set up. Will they offer advice they see from a technical standpoint that can help us increase profits? Definitely, which is good news for our residents as we watch our grid grow, we can do our best to keep our costs down, thus passing that on to you, our residents. This will keep up with the growth and scaling, and making it a viable platform for every single user.

It also allows us access to hardware and other tech goodies that makes Tranq swoon (or drool, depending on your point of view) that you'll start to see us testing out here very shortly. These are things we would not have had access to in the past, and we're already able to take advantage of, as you'll see in the coming weeks we start testing those things.....

As well as we'll be able to use more reliable platforms, add more redundancy, use technologies that make managing the grid easier, use technologies that make updating adding and removing servers easier. All things that maximize your time and stability in world."

Probably not a lot more I can add to that...

Server limitations have held Second Life back for years and such things as lag and sim crossings will never be conquered in SL because of the server structuring. InWorldz will now have such a huge advantage that it's success is almost guaranteed.

Great News.

New Sim Show InWorldz.... and party

2011-07-29T10:24:00.000-07:00

For those of you who don't know and for those of you with poor memory (like me) ..this is just a gentle reminder about a new build I have finished in InWorldz.

There will be an opening tomorrow (Saturday 31st) at 12 noon (pm I am told) with Megan Cline DJing some very good dancie numbers for a couple of hours if you want to come over and cut a rug.

The sim is called Twisted Isle and can be searched on the map, or just IM me.... for those of you who haven't been to Inworldz before, you will, of course, have to register an account (totally free)...here. ...don't you just love a form that asks you not to use your real name!.... and you may want to arrive a little early to deRuth ....you will be helped by a (team of) mentor/s.

I'll be there for quite a few hours and any inhabitants of the southern hemisphere will, of course, be welcome for a preview/postviewing at a time to suit. The sim will be there for a while.

There is a shop there which sells all the stuff I created specially for the sim and it's for sale only at this one location. The funds generated there will go towards the tier of this and sister sims which will, eventually, make up an art collective sponsored by Jeri Rahja.

If you are expecting to see my more typical trees and flowers you will be surprised as this build is a bit different to my previous sims... I have called the sim Creative Power and posted some ideas earlier about it.

I hope you enjoy it...

Be there or be elsewhere.

:))

The Art of SaveMe Oh.

2011-07-28T08:54:00.000-07:00

It seems about time for me to reacquaint those of you who either haven't heard of SaveMe and those who have, but only by default.

I did a long interview with SaveMe a while back.... here.....(December 2009) ...and I think it would be good now that hysteria and witch hunting have caused some to lose all rational thought to re appraise the role I am convinced that SaveMe plays in our art community in SL and in InWorldz.

Performance Art, according to wikipedia (here) is a concept which is open to debate..."Performance art is an essentially contested concept: any single definition of it implies the recognition of rival uses. As concepts like "democracy" or "art", it implies productive disagreement with itself.". That means that at its heart there is disagreement and debate as to what Performance Art actually is. This also applies to Art in general.

"From about the mid-1960s into the 1970s, often derived from concepts of visual art, with respect to Antonin Artaud, Dada, the Situationists, Fluxus, Installation art, and Conceptual Art, performance art tended to be defined as an antithesis to theatre, challenging orthodox artforms and cultural norms." [all highlighting is mine]

Now, one particular type of performance art was valued by the Dadaist and Neo-Dadaists and it was called Art Intervention...
Wikipedia has this to say.."However, unendorsed (i.e. illicit) interventions are common and lead to debate as to the distinction between art and vandalism.[1] By definition it is a challenge, or at the very least a comment, related to the earlier work or the theme of that work, or to the expectations of a particular audience, and more likely to fulfil that function to its full potential when it is unilateral, although in these instances, it is almost certain that it will be viewed by authorities as unwelcome, if not vandalism, and not art."

The little boy who told the Emperor that he was clothed only in his Ego would have been a sort of aesthetic whistle blower, and he is held up as a sensible sort of a chap.

Now...in this era where people who pickle sharks and other farmyard animals, or use their unmade beds when they have run out of ideas for a show are now famous, renowned and celebrated. It would appear to me that Art Intervention is needed now more than ever. We are blessed with our own fearless SaveMe and she should be appreciated for her courage.

"...but she interrupted my Opening"... well, ban her...how difficult can it be? Your mute button is your friend if you get bored with someones drivel...

There is nothing mean spirited about SaveMe> I have spoken to her at length and find her warm and caring but allergic to BS and pretension. The Serious Artist is gonna tend to attract SaveMe like a moth to a flame, and if you haven't got a sort of tongue-in-cheek attitude to your own art...well...SaveMe will have.

There are numerous famous cases of Art Intervention, Duchamps urinal being the focal point for a few. The submission of a urinal as an art piece was in itself a critical statement of an august art body. Pissing in it (Brian Eno) seems as logical as the two guys who jumped into Tracy's bed....

I am amazed that not everyone is an Iconoclast. I cannot imagine how you can strive to be an artist and not be iconoclastic. As I wrote before (and it was of course misunderstood by some) there are no rules for artists, or there shouldn't be. If we can't turn everything upside down and piss on it then we are too hampered by tradition and custom to really break free from the cultural norms we were born into.... poor us.

Now... to this current witch hunt... I spoke to Igor a couple of months ago and he said ...It is difficult to know why I log on every day I think some days I am just wasting my time.... (or words very similar to that)... and...this is a feeling which we all have at times, and the reason why we need to have a break from one time to another. This state of mind has nothing to do with SaveMe ..... Igor is not frightened by SaveMe, Igor can give as good as he gets.

I have had several occasions, recently, to note the higher proportion of drama queens in SL than in InWorldz. This seems, subjectively, to be the case. Maybe being Ruthed is a positive experience in that we are brought down from our High Horse and made to realise that in Life we are all beginners.

SaveMe is cool, and amusing, and if you can't see that, well, that still doesn't give anyone the right to call for her expulsion from SL ...

....calling her a terrorist is like being buddies with George Bush. Shame on you.

:))

I hate this more than Google+

2011-07-26T14:47:00.000-07:00

8 months I think since the Boys strangled Avatars United like a mangy ca,t they are now about to plaster us over any mobile phone/device you care to use in a poorly designed and ill thought out Social Media Attempt.

It's this page that has people jumping up and down especially.... it means that all your friends can see what any one of your other friends posts on your stream...

Now...some people have friends that don't get on...so this is VERY PUBLIC. .... and not everyone wants that.

The JIRA is here. .... not that anyone pays any attention to a JIRA, that we found out ages ago... you might as well talk to your hamster for all the good it will do...

On the Notifications page ALL the boxes are checked by default... meaning....every time one of your friends posts anything you will be notified inworld and by email.... yukk... make sure you get that changed.

...and... almost the worst thing....instead of LIKE which FB has...we have the ability to LOVE..... please...I mean... love? really? Excuse me while I barf.... Cringe factor 9 at least.... (let's reduce the english language to a shadow of it's real potential so I can LOVE someones comments....omg.... only an american company would even suggest anything like that.)

"oh D a r l i n g I LOOOOOVE your comment on my profile"... really? honestly? GET a LIFE!

So....the reason I hate this more than Google is because I don't see how I can leave.....I will investigate further, and, be assured ...if I can, I will.

:((((

PS. .. boring 80's graphics too...they really need a designer who isn't 30 years out of date.

.

Google + ...DOA?

2011-07-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

The number of people who have had their accounts frozen is growing day by day and Google thinks it doesn't need to worry about it. However, suspending the odd avatar from VWs is one thing, but when you start on Press celebs ...watch out!

GrrlScientist has a major piece in the Guardian about how all her Google account has been suspended because of her name. Now, unlike me, the Guardian has readers in the thousands, maybe tens of thousands, and the word is.... basically, if you thought G+ might be better than FB...forget it.

Now, I would think that any social media has, by necessity to be, potentially, global. G+ has turned itself into a selective minority group of people, which, as Tateru pointed out (re. Avatars United), just not good enough. She has written several good posts on the subject since.... but, the point I was interested in was that if you can't have all your friends using ONE social media it isn't gonna work. Now, assuming that at least some of your friends have 'Handles' or 'nyms, (not their wallet names) then you are basically stuffed if you thought G+ was the one for you.

G+ will, it seems, be the place for a small selection of middle class groups of people who think the rest of us are all weirdos.

Now, Bradley Horowitz, from Google did no favours to himself or his company in the stance he took in his recent reply...here... the only concession he made was that people will now be given some warning before they are kicked out.

His words..."we’re looking at ways to improve the signup process to reduce the likelihood that users get themselves into a state that will later result in review." sorry...but these people didn't get themselves into A State, you did.

He also claims that suspension from G+ will not result in the suspension of your other Google services... this is plainly untrue from what I have read. If you have a strange name, even if it's your RL name, you will be suspended... e.g. Crap who's RL name looks like two christian names..

It is now obvious that this policy is financially inspired, OK.... but blatant greed often kills off common sense, and Horowitz has lost his marbles here.

.... to start off a new product by alienating huge numbers of people and believe, as Horowitz does, that this is all healthy discussion is so mistaken as to be disasterous and why I believe G+ is DOA.

:||

Sim Crossing ... how it should be done....

2011-07-26T08:06:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Mera for bringing this to my attention.

A great demonstration of why we were all getting so excited about Phlox in InWorldz a few weeks back when it was first rolled out across the grid.

Tranq and Legion have really set the bench mark with the new script engine, one which LL will never be able to compete with. Never? Well, as far as I understand LL shot themselves (and us) in the foot when they decided to have servers in different states servicing adjacent sims .... that, as I commented at the time, is never going to work.

Balpien Hammerer is the genius scripter of this vehicle, I believe....

...well, whoever it was it shows why I believe InWorldz is gonna steal the show .... PhysX next....

:)))

A Week on the Net

2011-07-24T03:11:00.000-07:00

While I've been engrossed in putting a machinima together of my new build, Creative Power, for those that won't make it as far as Inworldz next week, I have had my eye on the latest bits and pieces around the interweb.....

Obviously the local news is dominated by Mesh....(no comment) ... and G+, still, the latest being that Crap got suspended even though he was using his RL name... bizarre... and a post by Botgirl has the G+ hierarchy saying "The online world hasn't captured that natural human experience. We think our software begins to do that." ....that had me in fits of laughter. I was told last week of a new shampoo "respects my individuality" and of a "5 door hatch-back that rewrites all the rules", so I guess software that "captures the natural human experience" shouldn't surprise.

The saddest thing is that these people begin to believe their own hype .... as do all politicians.

Washington is currently the target of a large Twitter campaign by people who have discovered that they have, for once, a voice... #fuckyouwashington is the tag. This is exactly the sort of thing that governments fear, as, although it might be cool to watch a revolution in an Arab country, no-one wants their own population deciding to speak their collective mind with no control.

This latest piece of kit that Washington has ploughed $70 million tax dollar into is the sort of thing that could backfire. The NYT reports about a "stealth wireless network" machine that could bypass the Internet, giving free access to Freedom Fighters (Freedom Fighters are terrorists that Washington approves of). Now, it strikes me that as our home hardware becomes more and more like servers, the day could dawn when we could all bypass censorship and control ... bring it on!

On a more local note Nordan Art celebrated their first Birthday in SL last night. Flora has done so well with her gallery, I think, ... it's the right mix of size and artists to make it a very friendly place to show and view.

She has also published a magazine to go with the event .... here. I tried to tp over there but the sim was full. ... so... I popped over to InWorldz and went to a Meet the Founders party where, yes, all three founders were cutting a rug , taking time out from code to say hi to whoever wanted to say hi back. Nicely arranged by Tiggs...good idea.

It seems like Aurora is coming good after a while when I heard nothing about it much ... I guess all that code-crunching is like pushing an elephant up the stairs, a spiral one at that (stairs not elephant). A report here will keep you up to date. Interesting concept, namely, that somehow, you don't take your inventory with you when you Hyperhop, but just a 'reflection' of it... and, although I have no idea what that means, it could be like a UUI of a UUI...??? One worth keeping up with.

All these things pale in comparison with the tragedies which unfolded this weekend. My soul weeps for Norway.

Amy Winehouse, in an almost stereotypical soul singers demise, is a talent who will be sorely missed.

The feeling of helplessness we feel in the face such major events is a part of being human, but, maybe, inspires us to use each day we have to the best of our ability.

:||

A Date For Your Diary

2011-07-22T14:08:00.000-07:00

30th, that's next Saturday at noon....

InWorldz...

I have been given a sim by Jeri Rahja and I've created a build based on my ideas around Creative Power...

Live music details and a reminder will follow...

:))

Ode to Mesh... Fit the Fourth

2011-07-20T15:54:00.000-07:00

Inspired by a recent post by Inara Pey concerning mesh which is imminently upon us...

...and which we are told... "Uploaded objects may be destroyed or broken permanently, and may no longer work after the full mesh deploy in August. If you move rezzed mesh objects from a new mesh-enabled version to a sim running the current release version, they may be destroyed or broken permanently – and this includes vehicles and attachments."

Fit the Fourth, [The Hunting of the Snark].

" 'But oh, beamish nephew, beware of the day,
If your Snark be a Boojum! For then
You will softly and suddenly vanish away,
And never be met with again!'

"It is this, it is this that oppresses my soul,
When I think of my uncle's last words:
And my heart is like nothing so much as a bowl
Brimming over with quivering curds!

"It is this, it is this--" "We have had that before!"
The Bellman indignantly said.
And the Baker replied "Let me say it once more.
It is this, it is this that I dread!

"I engage with the Snark--every night after dark--
In a dreamy delirious fight:
I serve it with greens in those shadowy scenes,
And I use it for striking a light:

"But if ever I meet with a Boojum, that day,
In a moment (of this I am sure),
I shall softly and suddenly vanish away--
And the notion I cannot endure!"

.... this is based a little in Fact....

Natales blog tells us..."A current bug can render rigged mesh (clothes) invisible. In general if you come into an area wearing rigged mesh the avatars there can see the mesh. Those avatars that arrive after you, will not be able to see the mesh you are wearing. We saw some of that at the meeting.

Well, that's amusing....

Further..."You may notice that default mesh names used by the viewer use the name of a previously uploaded mesh. This is a bug in the mesh uploader. It is unlikely to be fixed before roll out. People will just have to be careful with naming and pay attention. Some time post roll out the problem will be fixed."

...and it goes on.... ARC will be corrupted, i.e. not reliable... sculpties linked to mesh may count as more than one prim... costs of 150L$ per mesh in upload fees may be reduced... just as well, as Inara reports "Uploaded objects may be destroyed or broken permanently, and may no longer work after the full mesh deploy in August."

...also from Oz ... "During this phase of the rollout, LL may alter the Prim count for mesh objects and cause objects to be returned to inventory – note this might be any objects on a parcel / the sim, not just mesh objects.."

Well, the brilliant idea of enabling a bug riddled feature on a bug riddled viewer on a grid with poor servers could be commented on at length... except... Crap has done it so well...here.

If you want to find out what you need to learn to do it properly Loki Eliot has this advice ... here.

I would advise against trying to read this, Artist Best Practices.... as I had to go lie down in a darkened room after I tried... it's advice, from the Boys, Rand Linden in this case.. "The attached PDF is a chapter from Havok technical documentation with advice and information on best practices for artists when setting up Havok collision objects and scenes. Following these recommendations will typically result in reduced Physics Weight for your in-world creations as well as improved performance and reduced lag."

I'm warning you...don't!! You may be an artist, and you may want to practice as best you can...but... it's a Boojam.

...... if I "softly and suddenly vanish away, And never be met with again!'... it'll be because I'm in InWorldz with sensible devs who sort out one problem before creating a raft of new ones...

"simples!"

":))

The Press.

2011-07-19T15:46:00.001-07:00

It’s a funny thing that the Murdochs have been getting so much press really. I mean, there is surely no one out there who didn’t think that the politicians , police and press all had their hands in each others pockets.... but, like the metaphorical MP found tied up in a seedy hotel, it’s the fact that they were caught that’s the point. Everyone knows it goes on.

...but we all get excited and “tutt” a lot.

The BBC launched a new programme today, pure fiction, about a rebellious young investigative reporter who takes on the evil elite and exposes their corrupt manipulation of power... this contrasts well with the real reporters who scavenge tho rubbish bins (garbage) to find scraps of news, or hack mobiles.

It’s a bit of an aside... and clearly I do not condone hacking in any form ... ("breaking someone's website, it's just wrong") ..but... the poetry of the hackers getting hacked has to seem like justice for some.. (dumb journalist who can’t read is cool too)

The phrase “he who lives by the sword...etc” comes to mind.

With the recent announcement that the army considers copyright theft their problem too, and the nailing of Aaron Swartz, combined with the enforcement agencies/Facebook collusion, things are hotting up.

I was reminded of Noam Chomsky’s take...

“...let me summarize. There's a standard view- rhetorical view, a standard view in rhetoric is basically that of Justice Powell -- the public ought to exert meaningful control over the political process, and it's the role of the media to allow them to do it. That's the rhetoric. There's a contrary view, which is that the public is a dangerous enemy, and it has to be controlled for its own good. And that contrary view is very widely held. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it's the dominant view among sophisticated commentators on political theory, going back to the 17th Century- democratic commentators. So we've got these two views counterposed.” (re. manufacturing consent)

Yep, that’s for sure.

Currently there is a major problem... there is, for the controlling elite of any country... too much press (via internet) freedom. In an amazingly brazen hypocrisy the US claimed it was gonna spend $30 million fighting internet censorship in [sic] repressive regimes, that was back in May.... while your Government (and mine), deciding that “ the public is a dangerous enemy, and it has to be controlled for its own good “ (to quote Chomsky) continued it’s steady movement towards internet control... mostly via subservient corporations, spurred on by business interests and quoting the terrorist/paedophile myth.

Well, I would imagine that there is no danger to small blogs like mine, I don’t have any staggeringly new information for you about the way the world works, and I would suggest that any really important leaks would get through in spite of any attempt to blanket quell...like with WikiLeaks ...

Now, that may just be because the Powerful have not yet closed all the hatches or it may just be that there are so many hatches that stuff will filter through.

In it’s death throws any Power Structure behaves badly, like a moral spasm before finally admitting defeat, (or, more likely, morphing into a new form) and, currently, the worse the Enforcers behave, the more desperate they seem.

Interesting.

:))

The Dragonfly Poppy, a new species.

2011-07-18T08:10:00.001-07:00

Yes another new product comes to the InWorldz market, well...on my island at least.

I've called it, as you see above, the Dragonfly Poppy. The petals I think I've managed to get near to the crumpled silk look of real poppies, and from the side they look like dragonfly wings, hence the name.

Some people have already started reading this blog on Wordpress..... which is a bit weird of me, I know...but the idea was to see if I could get better images by uploading at a higher res to Wordpress. They allow a 2048 upload tho I am not yet sure if the resulting image is improved.

Anyway...for a while I'm gonna post in both places as Wordpress also gives me a Google-free back-up.

Not sure what will happen...

we will see.

:))

Nyx, Elvenfolk and InWorldz

2011-07-16T03:19:00.000-07:00

Nyx Breen, along with Caren McCaw were both subject of an article in last month's Allure magazine which I posted here already. The article focused on the Steampunk sim "Courage". High in the sky over this build, however, is an amazing collection of builds by elves, wizards, drow and assorted, but similarly inspired, faeire type islands and towers.... it's called "Kingdoms".

Not all the builds are photographed here, and some are maybe better at midnight... this is just a taster...

I think all or most of the Elf orientated folk are represented here with a central tp point and info centre... at Courage.. the co-ordinates (SLurl doesn't work for me in Iwz)... 199,221,2217.... or just IM me, Nyx or Caren for an LM InWorldz.

The builders responsible are (hoping I missed no-one)...

Ferrators Montaya
moontan Valeeva
CheysuliLir Restless
Stand Starsider
Nyx Breen
Caren McCaw
Snoots Dwagon
Bebe Mahogany
Julia Hathor
Keira Alzael
Dannan Robbbiani
Ambiant Kukulcan
Rafaella Nightfire
Balpien Hammerer
soror Nishi

These are just a handful of the talented people we are lucky enough to have building in IWz, it's no wonder 40,000 people are now signed up.

Anyway... it really is a place to visit, especially for new comers who say they don't know what to visit InWorldz.... then they can jump off and fall a couple of thousand feet to the steampunk sim.... while getting a coffee. Well recommended.

:))

Internet Freedom, a reply.

2011-07-16T03:06:00.000-07:00

Well, I like to keep it balanced, and my previous post on Freedom of the Internet was a little downbeat.... (that can happen near the end of the week) ....so to compensate....

Spurred on and inspired by Miso I offer an inspiring piece of writing, as Miso says, for topical application...

A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace

by John Perry Barlow barlow@eff.org

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather.

We have no elected government, nor are we likely to have one, so I address you with no greater authority than that with which liberty itself always speaks. I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us. You have no moral right to rule us nor do you possess any methods of enforcement we have true reason to fear.

Governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed. You have neither solicited nor received ours. We did not invite you. You do not know us, nor do you know our world. Cyberspace does not lie within your borders. Do not think that you can build it, as though it were a public construction project. You cannot. It is an act of nature and it grows itself through our collective actions.

You have not engaged in our great and gathering conversation, nor did you create the wealth of our marketplaces. You do not know our culture, our ethics, or the unwritten codes that already provide our society more order than could be obtained by any of your impositions.

You claim there are problems among us that you need to solve. You use this claim as an excuse to invade our precincts. Many of these problems don't exist. Where there are real conflicts, where there are wrongs, we will identify them and address them by our means. We are forming our own Social Contract . This governance will arise according to the conditions of our world, not yours. Our world is different.

Cyberspace consists of transactions, relationships, and thought itself, arrayed like a standing wave in the web of our communications. Ours is a world that is both everywhere and nowhere, but it is not where bodies live.

We are creating a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice accorded by race, economic power, military force, or station of birth.

We are creating a world where anyone, anywhere may express his or her beliefs, no matter how singular, without fear of being coerced into silence or conformity.

Your legal concepts of property, expression, identity, movement, and context do not apply to us. They are all based on matter, and there is no matter here.

Our identities have no bodies, so, unlike you, we cannot obtain order by physical coercion. We believe that from ethics, enlightened self-interest, and the commonweal, our governance will emerge . Our identities may be distributed across many of your jurisdictions. The only law that all our constituent cultures would generally recognize is the Golden Rule. We hope we will be able to build our particular solutions on that basis. But we cannot accept the solutions you are attempting to impose.

In the United States, you have today created a law, the Telecommunications Reform Act, which repudiates your own Constitution and insults the dreams of Jefferson, Washington, Mill, Madison, DeToqueville, and Brandeis. These dreams must now be born anew in us.

You are terrified of your own children, since they are natives in a world where you will always be immigrants. Because you fear them, you entrust your bureaucracies with the parental responsibilities you are too cowardly to confront yourselves. In our world, all the sentiments and expressions of humanity, from the debasing to the angelic, are parts of a seamless whole, the global conversation of bits. We cannot separate the air that chokes from the air upon which wings beat.

In China, Germany, France, Russia, Singapore, Italy and the United States, you are trying to ward off the virus of liberty by erecting guard posts at the frontiers of Cyberspace. These may keep out the contagion for a small time, but they will not work in a world that will soon be blanketed in bit-bearing media.

Your increasingly obsolete information industries would perpetuate themselves by proposing laws, in America and elsewhere, that claim to own speech itself throughout the world. These laws would declare ideas to be another industrial product, no more noble than pig iron. In our world, whatever the human mind may create can be reproduced and distributed infinitely at no cost. The global conveyance of thought no longer requires your factories to accomplish.

These increasingly hostile and colonial measures place us in the same position as those previous lovers of freedom and self-determination who had to reject the authorities of distant, uninformed powers. We must declare our virtual selves immune to your sovereignty, even as we continue to consent to your rule over our bodies. We will spread ourselves across the Planet so that no one can arrest our thoughts.

We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace. May it be more humane and fair than the world your governments have made before.

Davos, Switzerland

February 8, 1996"

..and you know what, he's right.

:))

Enemies of The State

2011-07-15T15:53:00.000-07:00

A good 30 years ago the music industry was on it's knees as people started buying tape-recorders and taping music off the radio...things only got worse with the widespread ownership of computers....until the music industry and iTunes found a way to make money again.

Now it's the turn of Hollywood and the TV companies to tremble...but, never fear, the Marines are here....

In an attempt to increase the propaganda against Intellectual Property theft it now seems like the US Army is involved. Stealing images from, say, Walt Disney is now a military concern....

Sounds weird?

Well ... as reported via ars technica here........the recently published Department of Defence document "Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace" uses this logic....

Cyberspace is now a recognised military Domain.....and... ('therefore') ........ “Every year, an amount of intellectual property larger than that contained in the Library of Congress is stolen from networks maintained by US businesses, universities, and government departments and agencies," says the strategy.
“As military strength ultimately depends on economic vitality, sustained intellectual property losses erode both US military effectiveness and national competitiveness in the global economy.”

Ergo.... if you misuse Walt Disney's images you are stealing money from the US Military.

How wonderful for American businesses to have the full might of the US Military to back them up in their petty IPR issues.... that takes some beating.

[Hygiene is such a spooky word when the Army uses it.]

Currently there is no policy of sending a missile to blow up suspected hackers, like Israel does to suspected terrorists, but it's still early days....
In the future we could learn that if you download the wrong thing, they'll bomb you..... that's progress.

So glad some days that I live in a civilised democratic society...

:))

Seeking a Free Internet.

2011-07-14T09:46:00.000-07:00

I spoke to a woman today whose mother was ill but had ‘kept it’ from her children. I was a bit shocked at this level of ‘protective behaviour’ but got to thinking of how censored my life is/has been.

At school the information I was given was heavily censored as was the ‘news’ I got in later life from the TV and newspapers. I realised early on that anything important....I would be the last to know.

I can seek to ‘self censor’ a little less than I do, but, society demands a degree if one is not to be totally marginalised.

So, while I would of course love to turn the warplanes into butterflies above my nation, I know that the world is not a just or fair place. In fact, I have read, “in an unjust world, the only place for a just man is in jail” ... though jail society is hardly structured around justice and freedom, I would guess.

I have tried, where possible, without extreme inconvenience, to act in accordance with my beliefs but I still pay tax money to a Government that bombs innocents and buy products from corporations that pollute, corrupt and oppress. I have to live with that and get on with my life. The only thing worse than a bad conscience is a clean conscience.

The recent drive by FB and Google to get real names linked to accounts has had me puzzled for a while now. As an example... a friend I know has zero digital footprint. Google them and a name from 1812 is the only reference .... another has a name so common there are 57 million references on Google.

The name is not the issue I think. What is of interest, however, I believe is the FACE. With current face recognition software it is possible to compile a database of everyone. Granted that might take a few years, but, with FB and Google pics there must already be hundreds of thousands of people, maybe millions, who could be recognised at airports, city centres and ‘sensitive sites’. Big Brother, as I alluded to recently. ... and the photo links to the driver’s license, address, age...etc... quite a salable commodity.

The idea that government is going to allow it’s citizens the freedom to wander the Web with little or no control, accessing information that they wish to keep to themselves, does not take into account the paranoid nature of the Elite who hold power.

The Elite fear the Mob on the one hand and the Powerful Individual on the other. This is the basis of the politics of power.

Those still innocent enough to believe in the ballot box may believe we can vote to exercise our democratic freedom. Those of us a little more worldly-wise know that politicians are owned. How quaint it was of someone to say, after Obama had been elected, that Only In America could Anyone become president..... the truth being, of course, Anyone With $64,000,000 To Spend On Their Campaign could become president. That was not his money, that is a debt he now has.

So, what freedom I do have is purely in my wallet. I can, in a limited way, vote with my cash. I can spend my time where I choose. I can close my FB account. That freedom I do have.

... but a free Internet? ... yes, I do support the idea, it would be wonderful.

... but I am a little too cynical to believe it will happen in my lifetime.

On the other hand, I do believe that resistance is not futile...

:))

delivering a googly...

2011-07-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

I have it on good authority, backed by Wikipedia, that this is some dodgy ball delivered in the unnecessarily boring game of cricket... and that is what I did today ...to myself.. Doh!!

I got my knickers in a twist after reading an article about Google rebranding Blogger, the hosts of the pages you are now reading.... and (small) panicked. So...I thought I'd make sure I had an alternative place to write my musings and tried to start a blog on Wordpress....

Now...it took so long that I grew several years older waiting for stuff to upload and I still don't have a suitable format, but, of course, it's early days...

I then realised, while growing older, that I had panicked unnecessarily and that everything would be fine.... I am an established name, there's no problem.

There has been so much written on Real Names in the past few days that I hardly dare say anything for fear of boring myself to death. I wrote substantially on the subject back in January 2010, ... here and here.... and don't really want to get bogged down in it all again.

Tateru has a recent post here, and Botgirl has, with usual insight drawn a great comic.... here ...and here.....with part 3 promised...

What is pretty obvious tho is that this is a major subject for the Internet and, of course, Real Life, i.e. when I came back from Hong Kong I couldn't open a bank account because I didn't exist enough to prove I was me...[I didn't have Utility bills]...

It's funny when you travel to somewhere which is 'less developed' than 'the Western World', somewhere where people don't have, say, phones and electricity. People look at you, but ....really look, ... they listen to what you say, and, given a short period of time, they form an opinion of you which they are not afraid to bet on. We all used to have to rely on our wits and our senses, as we do in VWs. It makes absolutely no difference to me, or to any of us, how you dress in VWs or what your name is... if you are a dork, that will show eventually. period.

There is no real authentication of you or I as a person, there's just my experience of you and vice versa.

I've been called all sorts of things...

...simples...

:))

Social Media culled by soror Nishi

2011-07-11T15:19:00.000-07:00

Just deleted my Google+ account...
The real reason is just that I find it all quite boring...

Don't get me wrong, information is a valuable and fascinating thing, but streamed 24/7 through my computer it's a bit like surfing the internet without search. In fact, I feel like I'm being surfed.

Hundreds of pieces of data which other people seem to think is important flow like a river through my account. Why would I want to take time out to sift through it?

After a week or so I have 58 acquaintances .. so after 52 weeks that would be...over 3000 people dumping data on me.

Why would I want to meet friends on FaceGoo who I could meet in SL or Iwz? It doesn't really make any sense to me. If I can spend 15 minutes with someone in VWs why would I want to FaceGoo them? I don't really have people I don't meet either in RL or VWs, I've never been one to keep a constant contact with people I don't see...I sort of figure 'well, we'll catch up next time we meet'.

Then there's this thing about real names... I really hate real names of avatars, I mean, I don't know who any of them are! I get to know someone in SL, then they try to friend me on FaceGoo with their real names, like I should recognise them...duh!! I don't know anyone's real name...it's just an Avatar Alias (and, if I am told it, I forget it instantly). Why would anyone want a real name?

Twitter I find quite useful, like a message board, I can say hi or goodnight if friends are roaming free on the Interweb and they know my location ...useful.

Avatars United ... well, it's dead before it starts I would guess, I mean who would spend time on something that died already once? It was terminated by the Boys when they couldn't be bothered to keep it going..... and they aren't exactly know for their competence re. social structures. I could be proved wrong...we will see.

So, I must say it's a bit of a relief, one less thing I have to do daily, and one less thing for my mailbox... good.

Sorry, but it's just not for me, I have more important things to do and counting my ears is more interesting.

:))

A day messing with Gimp and textures

2011-07-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

I spent a lot of yesterday playing around with uploading stuff for Gimp.

The tex below was created using some new brushes I uploaded..

I went to DeviantART and joined up, I searched "GIMP Brushes" then downloaded brushes that I liked... this was mostly done with a couple of brushes by MyLastBlkRose, but I used a few...

...then... on to Guicon where I downloaded the Plasti-Wrap Plug in....here. If you need tutorials on how to do that, they are on YouTube..... in fact there are loads of tutorials on using Gimp if you need a bit of further education. There's always new stuff to learn....(same applies to Photoshop)...

Then I spent a little while messing with PlastiWrap and Emboss... I never use bump map in SL (or Iwz) anymore, it is just too crude, I do my "bump mapping" with emboss before I upload, I get a much better effect because I use a larger tex and then reduce to 1024. I seldom use smaller than 1024 anymore, but I often restrict the number of colours to 16 or 12 (posterise) and thereby make it just as fast to upload as a 512 with loads of colours.

Time to do another texture lecture I guess.

:))

Two Years inworldz

2011-07-11T06:41:00.001-07:00

Yes, I first opened an account InWorldz on the 10th of July 2009... and as I was very busy at the time with shows in SL and finishing off my RL tree I didn't get around to de-Ruthing properly until August when I built my first tree outside SL..

...and marked the occasion with a post marking the historic occasion... here... then I got the bit between my teeth and by 1st September had the startings of a forest....here.... hosted by the instigator of my move, Scotsgreymouser Janus, or Mouser for short.

This is Mouser, I remember she just sold her sim in SL and moved as soon as she heard Elenia had started a grid... and she said how much they needed trees and flowers in this brave new world......and nagged me over...luckily.

Now, two years later I no longer look like a bag woman as I have loads of shops to haunt... (it was difficult to get good hair and shoes in the very beginning..) ... and a better taste in skins, it seems...lol.

Anyway....hosted by Aliz we had a sushi party to celebrate the day and gathered at Aliz's new build which should open shortly, we hope, for light conversation before a lot of dancing...

I met Ahuva there, tho all the others were people I have known quite a while now..

Aliz who I have known for years and who was a wonderful host, the sushi was amazing...

Juanita of Treeline fame (and brill artist in her own right)... and friend

Lalo (great blogger) who is a complete convert to Iwz and has discovered the joy of building... we first met in 'comments'..

Miso, a fabulously creative artist and good friend...

Nur, scripter, good friend and v classy lady

Scottius, otterly amazing artist and coolest of dudes.

Wizzy, my sis, and geowizardly genius.

...and Zauber, bug exterminator, builder and my first neighbour in Iwz...

....and if I forgot anyone, I know I am dead.... many thanks also to those who sent their best wishes etc... a very cool night for me, thanks.. (big grins)...

So, now for the next two years.....

:)))

The Death of Mesh

2011-07-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

This is a total reprinting of a poem by Lilleth Heart from the SL Forum which is probably against ToS as everything is, actually.

I hope that Lilleth understands my reason for doing so is that it is so closely related to my last post about Prim Equivalence (PE) and the Cost of Mesh... here.

A poem by Lilith Heart – The Death of Mesh

I LOVE MESH.
I am mesh’s number 1 fan.
Give me an M …. Give me an E … Give me an S …. Give an H …. What have you got ….
MESH !!!!! YAAAAAY MESH !! Go mesh Go !!

But …
For me mesh is already DEAD with the current PE
For me a prim count of 500 is no good for a pretty mesh tree
How I hate the horrid sculpty
I really want to make a gorgeous mesh tree

Nobody will pay money for a mesh tree that’s 500 PE
Nobody will want my beautiful mesh tree
OH NO! Mesh is dead for me
All because of the silly PE

Only 3 sculpty prims equal my 500 PE mesh tree
This seems very unfair to me
I’m begging on hands and knees, make mesh work for creators like me
And get rid of that cruel and restrictive PE

No need for physics on my lovely mesh tree
Damn the physics it’s killed mesh for me
All because I make a giant mesh tree!
Oh lovely mesh tree, why are you 500 PE ?

Oh Woe is me …. Curse the damn PE
Oh mesh I love you … you make a beautiful tree …
Much better than any sculpty !
Oh woe is me … curse the damn PE
　
The current mesh PE calculations are so expensive, prim-wise … MESH IS A NON STARTER… DOA .. Dead on Arrival !

Mesh as is, is only applicable for the avatar clothing and accessories market, which have no prim limits …. Crazy stuff !

For all land based products, all landscaping items …. plants trees, furniture, houses … anything you rez on land that has a prim limit … SL mesh is basically redundant, because it’s too expensive prim-wise compared to scultpy equivalents
We need mesh most for the LANDSCAPE and ARCHITECTURE of Secondlife, for the grid itself. How the world looks is most important for the next phase of SL
.
Unfortunately mesh is not going to make any difference to how the world looks, as we won’t be able to use it in the world, on the land. We will only be able to wear mesh items because the PE for landscape items is too restrictive and expensive prim wise
The look of the Secondlife world is often compared to the latest 3D games and it doesn’t compare well. .We desperately need mesh to improve the look of the SL world to excite and retain new users.　

Please, please Mesh Lindens …. take another look at mesh PE and find a more usable solution so we can all help to make the SL World more beautiful.

Summary .... PE outrageously high ..... mesh is dead … DOA ….. Dead on Arrival ""

I can't really add to that... I could never sell a 500 prim tree, not even in InWorldz I would think, so, Lilleth, you are right.

...and my concerns were well founded.... I said.. "This is surely not because LL will make more money from mesh uploads......
Is it because upgrading the servers or the server capacity would cost LL money and the same effect could be achieved by reducing the current 15,000 prims per sim in a poor exchange rate with mesh.? ...(poor for me, good for LL).

500 prims for a 3 sculptie tree is as poor as it gets, I guess....

:((

Avatars Regurgitated

2011-07-08T10:14:00.000-07:00

AU .... from the dust of obscurity, reborn again.... well...I signed on and didn’t give any data... and it didn’t like that....but when I wrote “I am a private person” in my “about me” box...it finally let me in... I am the 11th member and have no friends.

Now, I think I was fairly rude about AU last time round, and probably will be this time too... it’s all part of the Boys new social media dreams.

Thing is ... there are always those people who want what others have got, you know, like buying a boat because their friends bought one (I know about this cos that’s what my step father did altho he hated the sea) ... and if you see FB and G+ and Twitter all making a fortune (potentially) well...you have those people who want one too, a social media site, that is.

So...having bought AU from some lucky swedish people and, after a fairly short time, sunk the whole lot, drowning everyone onboard ... well... it’s a relaunch!

Yay! or yay? ....who knows.

I had to go back and see what I said last time round, after all, hypocritical as I am, I don’t like to repeat myself.

I wrote the following on the 23rd September last year.... which I repost here in it's fullness...

"This is from my post of 31st of January this year....

"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!!"

Followed the following week by...

"Well, the big thing seems to be Avatars United this week, as I have more friends, suddenly, than I can shake a stick at, not that I would, of course,...... well....maybe one or two could do with a....

..and by the 18th February, just 19 days into my United Experience...

"Ok..well..I just cancelled my accounts... [Facebook and Avatars United]

I am sooo bored with them both.

I figure "social media" are a bit like a faxmachine...outdated. I would rather have an IM with one person in SL than 3000 "friends" on FB, and really...AU has absolutely nothing to offer.

There are privacy issues, but my data is being mined whatever I do online, it is naive to think it isn't, so it's not that that has prompted me, just boredom with an outdated , and not very social, social setting.

So, if you are a friend mine we'll talk in world..:... if you are a "friend"... goodbye, live long and prosper (if it suits)...

Avatars United is to be erased ... announcement here.

Now, it could have been Cockup Linden or Blunder who was in charge though rumours say Moron Linden was brought in specially as a vet, but the life just ebbed out of it.

Apparently some people will miss it... takes all sorts...

Now its taken 8 months for the Boys to trash something which some poor Swedish guys (well, poor rich guys now) took 3 years to build. Was it the dodgy graphix or was it just the totally obvious fact that SL needs a social media site like an octopus needs a 9th leg.

A good part of most peoples time online, (even if they live on some high altitude building platform torturing prims as a hobby) is spent socialising. Not one but many wise Educated Types have pointed out the fact that 'face to face' interaction on SL is a million times better than any other form of virtual socialising. I guess the Boys didn't know that as they don't really go inworld except for the occasional foray.

XXLMarketplace XLonMainstreet to be the next corpse?? Probably not, some people actually use it (apparently)....less laggy than the malls I guess.... but it is being refurbished. Why does that not fill me with hope... (rhetorical, so deserves no question mark).

Avatars United was fast (8 months), easy (no-one used it) and I, at least, find it quite funny...

Well, as they say in Swedish.. "hahahahahahahahahahaaahahaha .. lets go shoot an elk".

....and now, back to the present....

Well, it just goes to show.. (though I have no idea exactly what it goes to show)... 8 months alive, then 11 months dead...and wooo.. it's resurrected....

Will there be enough people who sign on? Probably.... Will the graphix improve? Probably not...Not sure why the Boys think that grey boring graphix is trendy. I have a tax return form which is better designed than that...

.... luckily InWorldz isn't afraid of a bit of colour... (new web site look)

So... I am soon on more social sites than is sane ... still Google+ will delete me soon, it seems, like Opensource.... he got culled for not having a proper name... (like Google is a proper name?)...

Social media.... it's like reading a book about life instead of living it.

:))

Oh Dear LL

2011-07-07T01:37:00.000-07:00

I've just read the latest offering from the Boys, their monthly update, and they really can't blog to save their lives...

There are a few things that Inara Pey has already touched on in her excellent post... here. Like the fact that we heard about the new Library Avis a week ago and that monthly news is always gonna be old news, and let's face it, old news is an oxymoron.

The new avis...well, what can I say? It would seem a bit hypocritical for me to criticise them really and I do welcome a wider range of non-human forms ... so I could just stay silent on the matter. ...but that's unlikely to happen.

The animal range I thought were probably gonna be fairly popular, after all some of my best friends are feline at times and I know great builders who are foxes.... (no dragons there I see) .... and well, we've all met a few robots in our lives tho the ones I've met have been very good builds... but.. cars?? In my 4 years in these worlds I have yet to meet a car. Maybe thats just my limited circle of friends, no balloons either.... oh well we are assured that they are:

" a heck of a lot of fun. " ... hmmmm

Anyway, all this is only a minor issue compared to the most cringe-making part of the whole embarrassing post, the report that chat lag is a thing of the past.

I am used to people making false claims, just last night I saw a shampoo advert on TV claiming that the shampoo would respect my individuality, so that doesn't worry me, after all advertising=lies, for the most part. Just sign on to any medium or large Group and you will find the truth out for yourself.

No, what really worried me was the Tone. The Tone is the sort of manner and style of writing you use in a blog or advert, the Copy, and the way it is delivered..... for example:

"Here’s a little something about that right royal pain, Group Chat Lag. You know how it is: you’re inworld, having a ball chatting with a group of friends, but the chat shows up with words missing or in the wrong order. It’s like a bad roommate, always hanging around and making a mess, interrupting your conversations and ruining your jokes! Some of your friends won’t even try talking while that loser’s around, knowing that their impeccable comic timing will come out looking like free-form poetry."

gulp

"We’d say that we’ll miss the old Group Chat Lag, but that would be a total lie. Instead, as the saying used to go: “door Don’t let the hit you in the butt on the way out.”

double gulp...

I have been lead to believe that the majority of users of Second Life are in the 30 to 70 age group, now, if that is the case, then the belief that offering them the ability to dress up like a car and then talk down to them like a 10 year old is going to endear you to your user group is so far wide of the mark that it is an embarrassment.

Cringe Factor 10.

I am certain that the person who wrote this, the Most Dreadful Copy of the Year, has never experienced chat lag....

....and finally... the increasing attempt by LL to pull people OUT of SL via FB, Marketplace... and now Twitter....

"And, don’t forget to hit Twitter — follow us @Secondlife and tweet using the hashtag #secondlife."

.... as Inara Pey so rightly says..."f you really want feedback and comments on what is happening, then give us the means to do so in as quick and convenient manner as possible.

By that I mean letting us us comment on your blog posts directly. It’s the way almost every other blog in the world operates when comments and feedback are allowed – so why not you? You used to at one time, but then you moved away from this approach, almost as if you were either afraid of what we might say, or didn’t want to hear what we were saying.

But the fact is, if you really want our feedback, you really should consider making it as easy as possible for us to do so, even if it does mean opening up your blog entries for comment once more."

Well, I guess it's just another labour saving device, i.e. laziness ... but it does seem that they don't believe in VW's as much as we do ..

.. oh....any bets on how long it will take LL to discover Google+ ??

:))

The Internet belongs to America

2011-07-05T08:39:00.000-07:00

I am extremely annoyed.... following the recent report of a British student who is being extradited to the US for providing links to unauthorised TV sites even though he wasn't using a US server.

The fact that he was using a .com address makes him a target for US prosecutors.

The full details are here...

Now, while the UK signed the stupid extradition treaty in the wake of the terrorist attack on the Twin Towers, it has been increasingly misused by both US and EU prosecutors for crimes which are in some cases extremely minor... (Guardian article .. here.)

I personally think that currently no country has the balls to stand up to the US Government and tell them to get lost, so this belief that the rest of the world should behave as the US sees fit will continue. The UK Government is the most submissive, pathetic, snivelling bunch of cowards in this context deluded into believing it has a "Special Relationship" like a pig in a sty that believes its Master does it's bidding, denying the existence of bacon... (not that I think any American is gonna smoke or eat me...might not be a good analogy).

The UK was big on world domination for many years, plundering and pillaging as we saw fit, and now it seems it is Americas turn to do so. That doesn't make it right of course.... but we wanna be in on the kill chewing the bones that get left behind.... political hyenas.

What disturbs me in this article is that the providing of links to a website that the US government doesn't like makes me liable for extradition..... because I use a .com site (Blogger). Now, I am under no illusion that the stuff I do here is of absolutely no interest to the US Government ... but... it is extremely easy to commit an illegal act by providing a dodgy (as defined by the US) link. That might be enough to cause an application for a visa to be refused, for example..... and it'll be on file forever.

The idiot involved in explaining this very dubious reasoning regarding links said that its like drug dealers...
"Barnett defended the decision to also go after linking sites: "I'll give you an analogy. A lot of drug dealing is done by proxy – you rarely give the money to the same person that you get the dope from. I think the question is, are any of these people less culpable?"... full article here.

Providing a link to a site that doesn't pay royalties to a US company is hardly the same as a drug dealer... one stops some super rich bunch of idiots getting richer, the other wrecks lives and kills people... not really a good analogy unless, of course, you want that emotive discussion. So...the deaths of thousands of innocent people in the worst terrorist attack the US has seen lead to an agreement between the US and the UK as an aid to The War On Terror... it's now paying off in $$$ .... I think that is disgusting....( I can do emotive).

How hard you can squeeze your Colonies?
Surely the Taxes which England imposed on the New World lead to a revolution, and one bunch of terrorists that the whole of the US celebrated a few days ago. If you continue to disempower and rob enough people for long enough... it back fires. The disempowered and hopeless are a dangerous bunch because they have nothing to lose.

I believe in karma, for nations too, and this continual greed which, after all, the global system is built on, will come back in some unforeseen way to haunt those that squeeze the hardest.

Every day is for the thief but one day is for the victim.

I am extremely annoyed....

:((

Google+ ... the new Big Brother?

2011-07-03T01:57:00.000-07:00

Well, just when I thought I would take a break from (not very) Social Media, Google+ hits the streets running... Wizzy, intrepid pioneer that she is has already signed up and, apparently sent me an invitation... rarer than hen's teeth...

...but... the whole invitation thing has been closed down temporarily due to "insane demand" ... hmmm ... mental people like me? soo...I'll have to wait a while before reporting fully back to you, dear reader....

I did ask Wizzy if I should have a social holiday, and her reply "this crap is hard work" had me splurting coffee over the keyboard... good one!

When Google tested this out a while back with their employees they found that exactly the same happened, namely that a much higher proportion of people wanted "in" than they had guestimated. Seems like it is a lot better than FB and we may well see the eventual decline and death of FB according to some... here .... after all FB is apparently "tolerated" in the same way as the IRS according to some survey somewhere.

For those that missed it a few days ago, I posted the link to Wired's very thorough post on Google + ...here..... all you need to know....right here...:)))

It has been simplified from it's earliest incarnation, but it will still take a while to find your way around, apparently. The ability to organise friends into various groupings would seem to be a great step forward, and the personalised "stream' of news called Sparks (above) could be as addictive as Twitter.... and there is video chat, too....Hangout (and hang up???)..

While it is great to stay in touch with people, you actually don't really want to stay in touch with the whole of the world 24/7, and having limited "Circles" of friends is decidedly a marked improvement over the constant babble.

....and, so far, it's a StoopidVille-free area...

Now, there have been a lot of contrary opinions about it all, and forums are bursting with Any Bigots views both for and against....

The Antis seem to think FB will simply steal the best ideas for FB and that Google will never grow fast enough, large enough to compete....

The Pros say that FB is crap and the Antis are stupid.... isn't discussion a wonderful thing.

Me, well...I'll wander over when they open the doors...but...Real Name? I should coco.... I read too much Miso to get sucked in to that....

....."improved Privacy" does not mean Privacy, it just means "better than FB" which is like saying Really Crap Food is better than Crap Food.... not much of a recommendation.

Big Brother has many names.

...and, really, I don't need an App to know who my friends are....

:)))

New Products for InWorldz

2011-07-03T01:14:00.001-07:00

This is my new Foxglove Orchid which I am more or less finished making. The flower prim is based on the shape of a foxglove (digitalis) hence the name... though I doubt we'll ever see a foxglove in RL with these colours.

It should go on sale soon on my sim soror Nishi Island.

Nyx Breen is doing a show of various elf-inspired floating islands on his sim, details to follow, and this group of floating islands (in Tree of Trees colours) I thought could be something someone might want on their own sim, so I have it/them for sale on my sim ... contact me for details....

Now, I'm not sure if I have mentioned in these pages that Nazz Lane has done a very competent interview with me on his excellent blog Lane's List....

...and I am sure I haven't mentioned Neph's post on the ecological advantages brought to her bog by the planting of the Telepathic Bog Lilly which is a more recent post... here. Dark Moon sim is in SL, and mentioned previously here.

...and....

.... have a good sunday..

:))

Future trends??

2011-07-02T03:55:00.000-07:00

It's becoming obvious to me recently that it is not LL that is going to make the biggest contribution to future steps in Virtual Reality.

I am very pleased at the fact that there is basically no news coming out of the Lab, no new shining toys, no stupid 'enhancements', as it seems like Rod has got the staff (those not involved in Mesh) scrubbing out the metaphorical toilets where years of clogged crud and limescale were allowed to accumulate by the previous twat while he sought Big Business as customers and deemed our criticisms to be 'whining'.

I recently linked to the new chip Intel is producing and hardware improvements are necessary it would seem before major new steps can be taken (good policy then for the Boys to get their house in order in the meantime).

The research and development going on which will allow 1000 or more avatars on a sim is also, eventually, going to be a game-changing factor.

...but will we ever sit like this in front of the screen?? ...not sure if I would enjoy that....(photo pinched from GadgetsGeekly ...here) which links to a much more comfortable concept below...

...also a pinched photo under the heading "sony is predicting a come-back for virtual reality"... here.

There is no doubt whatsoever in research and trials done in universities that this type of head mounted glasses or screen increases the feeling of Immersion (as we call it) or Presence (as the rest of the world calls it) by a huge degree.

Now while "3D" television and cinema are headache-inducing fads that come and go on a regular basis, a fuller or richer feeling of 'being there' induced by a screen you wear on your face has a great number of potential customers in Gamer cultures. We, a small band of Virtual Worlders, would benefit greatly from developments aimed at the gamer market.

So, hardware improvements are pretty core to the future of VW's along with broadband improvements, of course. While 1Gig services are currently only available in limited areas (and the whole of South Korea) ...it may not be too many years before this type of service is rolled out across the USA and Europe at an affordable price.

The increased broadband, new chips and headset could have us all in VWs while sat on the bus to work or doing the washing up.... tho I know many of you do this already via your phones, the experience would be vastly improved.

The only downside in this new utopian vision is the stranglehold the Big Boys (google, FB, etc) will have on the internet ... it'll be like living under an international dictator using terrorists and paedophiles as the reasons for restricting your access to ...well... basically, anything they don't like or doesn't pay.

Whether or not Holland, Sweden, Iceland and other enlightened countries will actually have the balls to stand up to The Patriot Act BS (as an example) and maintain net neutrality has yet to be seen. We may have to boycott US (possibly UK too) companies which would be very difficult as 'thats where the action is'.... interesting times....

:)))

Allure, July...

2011-07-01T02:48:00.000-07:00

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

This months Steampunk Edition....

Some photos by me.

:))

soror Nishi leaves FaceBook, again....

2011-07-01T02:28:00.000-07:00

Yep, after my first attempt failing (to leave that is) I just let the whole thing ramble on and then today, looking back on my last 6 months in Facebook I figured I had spent at least 80% of my Facebook time in disabling stuff. I never find anything interesting on Facebook and I don't find anything social about having hundreds of people call themselves friends either. I think I knew about 5% of my 'friends' and the rest were total strangers.

I really only need a handful of real friends, there's no status element for me in stacking up hundreds of people on my list. It has elements of when I was a teenager, I hated going to bed in case I 'missed something' and FB is a bit the same...get an account so that I am not missing out. Well, to be quite honest I don't think there was anything much to miss out on.

The secret with disabling your account at FB, and something I didn't know last time is...that you have to make sure you don't go to FB, or "like" on YouTube for 14 days after you leave... details here.

Now, Twitter, which I slagged off a lot in the beginning is quite enjoyable, its like inworld Chat, except, it mostly works, unlike Chat.

Netlog I joined because some French friends are allergic to the English language which, I thought, was fair enough...but... since I joined Netlog I have been contacted by a LOT of men who have, listed under interests only "women".... hmmm ...if your only interest in life is "women" AKA sex ... then you are a boring person and don't get any of my time. So, I've not been impressed with Netlog.... and my french isn't quite good enough to find out how to disable it....so I've just unclicked everything...

Posterous I have joined a while back and basically never used...well maybe once or twice, and LinkedIn has an RL fetish so I am not very impressed with that either.

News, and it's quite a long article, here, about how Google + is going to change social media and become the leader, overtaking FB as THE place to be. Very 'in depth' article and worth a read.

...and so... that is one less time-waste-nonsense I have to deal with.

...back to the tennis...

:))

Party Photos by Nepherses.

2011-06-28T03:31:00.001-07:00

Nepherses Amat took all the following photos at the party last night... including the new Wizzy av...

Which is just as well as my 1.23 viewer was playing tricks.... time for Firestorm methinks.

Thanks Neph.

:))

A Midsummer Nights Dream

2011-06-27T15:31:00.000-07:00

Well, the opening went very well. Attended by 50 or 60 literatti and glitteratti of the Italian art scene, dancing mediaeval line dances to the strains of the celtic harp, the atmosphere really became a bit magical and surreal... excellent.

Imparafacile (great photos) and Juanita both blogged about it and I was very happy with the outcome.

It'll be around for a while... details here.

Thanks to all concerned and all who popped in.

:)))

Friends

2011-06-26T23:54:00.001-07:00

International Miso Day was a great success, friends gathered just to have a dance, say Hi, give gifts and generally express a lot of warm feelings for a good friend.

It is, I am certain, the best thing to come out of the internet, the ability to meet people we would never have the opportunity of meeting otherwise. Having the ability to shapeshift leads us to disregard, for the most part, how someone appears and this makes us look beyond and through the biological avatar which is normally such a strong factor when we first meet people in RL.

The various mistakes LL manages to engender are simply another hurdle we willingly overcome to be together with like minded souls from all parts of the globe, and, if LL ceased operations we would use another platform to get together.

This is probably something which isn't really stressed enough to noobs....the gold of VWs is the people you meet.

It's a game where we all can be winners.

:))

New Show in SL

2011-06-26T01:52:00.001-07:00

I was asked to participate in a sort of travelling gallery , the brainchild of Simba Schumann and Storm Blauvelt. The idea is to have a gallery that can be rezzed on different sims as the occasion demands.... in Simbas words...

"Arte Libera In Sogno (Arte Libera in a Dream) is the third part of Arte Libera, along with The Gipsy Gallery and Il Giardino. It is a completely new space which will host particularly vivid and colourful exhibits throughout the Metaverse materializing in different places on different occasions.

Our journey starts on Monday 27th of June at Imparafacile island with a great artist inviting us to her personal Midsummer Nights Dream.

Celtic harpist Llanior Illios will make the event even more special by taking us ‘far away’ with her beautiful harmonies.

A year ago in the same sim we organised a gipsy party, now Arte Libera is happy to cooperate once again with the Imparafacile group in celebrating summer in a vivid and colourful way.

Finally let me thank everyone who has supported me in this new idea through their creative contributions: my Arte Libera partner Storm Blauvelt of course, also soror and other two artists particularly close to Arte Libera, Noke Yuitza and ErnestHenry Shackleton."

Well, I have a soft spot for the Celtic Harp (I once had a brother-in-law who composed for the harp, but that's another story...) so I would recommend coming along to check it out on Monday if you have time...

The SLurl is... here or just IM me.

It might get full so come early, I'll be there.

:)))

Belated Stuff.

2011-06-26T01:43:00.000-07:00

Well, you know how it is, sometimes you don't get round to it all and something has to go by the wayside. Unfortunately its been my regular postings which have taken a back seat this last few weeks... as Brinda says..."so it goes"...

Anyway...I have been popping around the metaverse in addition to having my nose firmly stuck in the TV watching the boys and girls in white strutting their stuff on the lawns of Wimbledon ...and what a mess they make of those after just one week. (not helped by people like Djokovic doing a spot of farming with his racket... guess he thought digging up the turf might help...)...

Anyway.... I did get to visit Selavy Oh's "Construct" again, it's found a home on Magoo, Mab's sim...

It started life as a 75 day residency at Humlab, Selavy making a new scripted piece each day (mostly) during her term there. It is now like a catalogue of what can be done with a script. There is probably no other build in VWs that shows such a range of scripts or what can be achieved. Selavy is probably the most 'leading edge' scripter we have.

More details on Mab's blog ... here. Selavy has another piece on Magoo worth visiting while you are there ...its at sea level and called Spherical Topography.

Its your last chance to visit FreeWee's huge build at UWA if you haven't already been. A very large project, Angry Gods will only be there til the end of the month, so, not long.... full details on FreeWee's blog .. here.

...and on the subject of UWA, Gingered has become the latest sponsor there, initiating her own monthly prize from funds generated by her DJing skills... she told me all about it as I cut a rug at Manamizic Tryjen (above) which I have posted before... (built by Trinny Mizin) that she wanted to pick her own winners .... great idea.

The UWA machinima prize pool continues to rise... now at $L300,000,.... that's what I call an endowment...

In other news....

As I predicted .....not all of the world will go along with America and UK on their attempts to strangle freedom of the Internet, and sure enough The Netherlands has announced...

"A broad majority in the Dutch parliament voted for crucial legislative proposals to safeguard an open and secure internet in The Netherlands. The Netherlands is the first country in Europe to introduce a net neutrality law. In addition, provisions were launched protecting users against disconnection and wiretapping by providers."

...so a good piece of news maybe we will all have to end up using Dutch servers... full story here.

...and an interesting take on The Cloud quite clearly seen as The Future by different groups of people...i.e. Google vs. Apple Cloud.. here.. Apparently a companies CEO and their Techies have a very different take on the importance of Cloud... Dell survey details here.

In other news... well my show on Monday ... small post to follow..

.....have a great day.......

:))))

Dark Moon.

2011-06-22T14:31:00.000-07:00

Nepherses Amat is a true Virtual World biologist in that she understands about virtual flora, or Flora Virtua Exotica as I have called it on many occasions...

Just as the importation of RL houses and cars can be seen as a rather pathetic attempt to surround new pioneers in a foreign world with items from the Old Country, like comfort blankets..... so too are the attempts to grow species native to RL in this environment.

Nepherses has sought out those native plants that will thrive and created an ecosystem which is in harmony, and now a greenhouse too..... as Nyx Breen has in InWorldz. Neph has catalogued the workings of the ecosystem here.... as I have posted before.

Indigenous is a great word.

...anyway.... This from Dark Moon....

"Greetings and Salutations Dark Moon Spirits & Visitors~

I am happy to report that my research team has complied an exhibition of some of the endemic plant life of Dark Moon's Bog. Please note that these plants have volunteered to teach us, and to stay here in the atrium for short periods of time so that Dark Moon guests can understand how important each plant's role is in the ecosystem. Please click on each plant, and the seed pod to learn more.

My research team is still investigating other life forms here at Dark Moon. Hopefully, we will know more soon!

Also note, we have recently found that the vibrational level of the loving plants actually increase psychic ability in avatars! Prolly humans too! So now we are proud to introduce Teresa John, a tarot reader of some renown. Teresa will be reading cards up on the mezzanine of this atrium periodically while the exhibition stands. Please contact her if you would like a reading"

and...about those readings....

"teresa John is one of the best Tarot Card readers in SL. Not only is she guided by The Goddess and God but she is Honest when she interprets the Tarot. Anyone can tell you what you want to hear. She will tell you what you need to hear.

If you would like a little light shed on your future and are interested in a reading the rates are as follows :

3 Card - 100L
Horsehoe- 250L
Cross - 500L

Send teresa John an IM or NC for an appointment and be ready for the truth to be revealed."

Well, photos of the atrium above...and the LM is ...here.

...and it's always a pleasurable place to visit and learn of how our world looked before the Lindens cleared the land of it's natural vegetation and overgrazed the land with goats .... leading to the sorry state of the soil today, poor sand and weak grass being all that will grow until nurtured.

A recommended visit.

:)))

Prim Mesh Equivalence.... the cost of a mesh.

2011-06-16T15:35:00.000-07:00

In a recent attempt to convey to those interested, Runitai Linden posted an explanation of how LL is trying to work out the cost of a mesh, or, in very simple terms, if you can rezz 15,000 prims on a sim, how many mesh will you be allowed??

As you read through it here you will find it is a fairly complicated calculation... but this paragraph stuck in my head...

“Given that Second Life has bad framerates and prims aren't exactly stingy about wasting triangles, it's wise to bias meshes towards the low end of that spectrum, say at 250 thousand triangles give or take 50 thousand. THAT is your visible triangle budget. In order for Second Life to have a prayer of running well in a mesh build, the meshes MUST display no more than that number of triangles per frame.’

Now, just how much, or rather, how little 250,000 triangles is.... consider the following post by Dain Shan where he calculates that 15,000 prims have 1,800,000 triangles. However.... not all of those are visible at one time...

By definition you would be able to see either 2 or 3 faces, so... that’s a third or a half... 600,000 or 900,000....

...but “ In order for Second Life to have a prayer of running well in a mesh build,” LL will make sure that the allowance is well within that 200,000 to 300,000 ‘budget’.

“ it's wise to bias meshes towards the low end of that spectrum”.. but for who? Yes we are agreed with LL that lag is bad... but... if I have been told once, I have been told 30 times that Mesh is gonna reduce lag.

Well, if the number of meshes per sim is reduced to a low enough level that will of course become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

In a later post, Drongle McMahon writes the following...

“3. (/me restrains himself) While discussion of meshes in isolation is very useful, it is my opinion that it is dangerous to ignore comparison with sculpties. The latter will be used instead of meshes if they are allowed, especially at 64m, without further restrictions. This is a very real problem for the uptake of mesh that threatens the resource efficiency and visual quality improvements that are otherwise offered. I will not say more, as requested.

PS. I guess the requested resp[onse tom the sculpty comparison is that a sim full of sculpties will not reach the performance required. So if people do fill up their sims with sculpties, that is their problem. We can't stop sculpties messing thins up, but we can stop meshes doing the same. That way people will eventually reject the sculpties?”

Now....before we get totally lost in the detail....

It seems to me, from these discussions, that I am getting more sculptie triangle for my Linden buck than I have any chance of getting using mesh.... and the idea is that it will be a positive thing if people reject sculpties and go for mesh.

This is surely not because LL will make more money from mesh uploads......

Is it because upgrading the servers or the server capacity would cost LL money and the same effect could be achieved by reducing the current 15,000 prims per sim in a poor exchange rate with mesh.? ...(poor for me, good for LL).

“So if people do fill up their sims with sculpties, that is their problem. We can't stop sculpties messing thins up, but we can stop meshes doing the same. That way people will eventually reject the sculpties?”

Now, I understand if Drongle is being misunderstood here, but it seems to me that putting 15,000 sculpties on my sim for $295 is a part of the deal, not me “messing things up”...??
The desire he has to convert us all to mesh because persistent use of sculpties.. “threatens the resource efficiency and visual quality improvements that are otherwise offered“ could surely be achieved by improved server functions.... anyway that’s tier.

So....to sum up... by restricting the number of meshes allowed on a sim “In order for Second Life to have a prayer of running well in a mesh build” LL will have less of a load on the servers than if I rezz 15,000 sculpties on my sim ... but... will I get a tier reduction if I convert to mesh? ...(smiles)...

In actual fact the uploading of mesh will be far more expensive than a sculptie. That is a prediction, not fact, but... logic dictates that when I upload a mesh, I am in fact uploading data on 3 different LOD (“level of detail”) and, for clothes, the rigging data too (how the clothes fit on the “skeleton”), that seems like a lot more data than a 64x64 pixel sculptie map...
..as this is pure speculation we will have to wait and see.

But, the question still remains, in my mind, who will benefit most from mesh?

Now the ecstatic fangirls are still spouting nonsense about Mesh, still oblivious to the fact that mesh can't be sized or flexible so the likelihood of it being used for clothes or hair is remote...2013/2014? and the most condescending of these posts from Gwyneth Llewelyn, but maybe I just misread the tone of the article... I apologise if I have in advance.

Anyway I just wanted to assure anyone who is in any doubt that my scepticism towards mesh is not due to the fact that I don't have a degree in Computer Science, or that I couldn't use Maya (if I had 3000$ to spend on software), I am happy to upload my Blender files as Collada instead of .tga. My scepticism comes from the past performance of LL when 'upgrading' the User Experience, the word Upgrading translates too often as Breaking.

I welcome any real improvement to the platform, but Runitai Linden knows, as we all do, that the first release will be buggy. After 18 months the V2 is apparently nearly usable, and by 2014 mesh may be a great feature... but fangirl hysteria (not a hypothetical techno fear) just inspires me to cynicism.

Meshy Christmas will more likely be a Messy Christmas.

:))

Creative Power

2011-06-14T07:51:00.001-07:00

Calligraphy by Shun Yu.

From a very young age I have been struck by the seemingly universal fact that, generally speaking, it is faster to destroy something than create it. ... alongside that fact it was obvious to me at an early age that the planet itself is being consumed.

The idea though that the universe is, in some way, in balance was a redeeming idea although I can not prove, through logical thought or even illogical thought, that this is indeed the case.

Art and the production of beautiful things are a different kind of consumption to the type of use I would label as destruction even though the production of an exquisite table from an oak tree involves an enormous amount of wastage. For me, on the positive side of the ecological balance sheet is the emotion (if that is indeed what the appreciation of beauty is) generated by a piece of art or craftsmanship.

In very broad strokes it could be said that the consumption of the planet’s matter is redeemed when that matter is turned into beauty. .... a sort of Sublimation of the Earth’s Substance.
Matter becomes Spirit.
Transubstantiation, as I have mentioned before.

The guiding force in this process, I find, is best summed up in these words...

“Creative power is nothing less than the detonating device in the evolutionary bomb....... It could be compared to the generative power of creation when the sperm enters and quickens the egg...... the primal directive that propels us into our destinies ...”

These words are taken from the I Ching (here translated by R.L.Wing,The I Ching Workbook. The Aquarian Press, Wellingborough, Northamptonshire).

Now the I Ching is not just another book, it’s been in constant use for at least 2,500 years both as an aid to divination as well as a philosophical text.... but these things I will not dwell on here.

The first hexagram in the book is Creative Power. The first words in this ancient text.
It is the Big Bang of humanity, of life on earth and of spiritual life.

It is the Alchemy of the Ancients.

Inspiration and the creativity that flows from that mysterious ‘visitation’ is the ‘eureka’ moment of us all whether we consider ourselves to be artists or not ... it’s that spark that makes us step beyond our given circumstances and create something new, something “better” .... as defined by us/me.... a subjective improvement.

As such I think the words “ detonating device in the evolutionary bomb” are not exaggerated.

Now, I have no illusions about how easy it is to forget this fact. We can sink into the sedimentary sludge of existence and watch, exasperated, as our bodies calcify into a living fossil while our minds scream out against our inertia. .... . but... it happens, by the Grace of the Muse, that one day, one moment, we rise up like the Hulk, turn green and shatter the chains that we bind ourselves with.
Inspiration fills us with Creative Power.... and we can conquer the Syrup Syndrome, propelled to new activity.

It’s just good to remember, when things are crap, that it could be today....

:))

Biodiversity

2011-06-12T09:55:00.001-07:00

A recent post by Lalo had me rummaging in my files for this photo which I make no apology for publishing again... seems like someone said there are too many humans in SL...

Well, rather than repeat the 1000 avatar project I just pulled out some old snaps while searching for the one above which is of Betty and I...

Now...some of them I don't even know the names of...but there's a fair Biodiversity in my past 4 years...

Some humans, yes, 'but not as we know it'....and I know I have missed out some gems, and some beautiful humans, but I don't have photos of everyone I met... so, if you aren't here....sorry...

I distinctly remember a hippo joining in on a building class I was in, Glyph as squid, Madcow, Jedda, well ... the list could get long...

...and a few nostalgic bits too...

..:))

Fiddling While Extropia Burns.

2011-06-11T05:13:00.000-07:00

Sometimes something gets said that really manages to say what you were feeling... poets and wordsmiths do, with words, what some of us try with shapes and colour. Botgirl has done that for me this week in her poem Extropia Burning..

"I've been looking for a new horizon
But all I see is Extropia burning
The dream of the Transhuman Grail has vanished
Merlin is a Meeroo
Camelot is Disneyland
I am adrift"

So well said.

Other news which you may also have read this week is that uploading mesh in SL will require you to get a Mesh Permit first after a short training course, and anyone who hasn't had their financial details registered with LL will not be allowed to upload any mesh....(Tateru's post)..... well, it is becoming more and more unlikely that mesh will effect most of us before 2012, possibly 2013...

...and when the world gets Disney I get out my Blender. No politics in Blender, just me and my imagination.

So...in the face of all this I just got on with making a new tree in Inworldz. ... and, to be honest, I don't really think mesh will effect what I do much. I may be wrong, it may be possible to seamlessly stitch together submeshes into a cohesive whole... but, it will be impossible to change the size, or mod it... so how useful will that be? How expensive will it be?... and the whole 'saving prims' argument is irrelevant in Inworldz anyway.

As Ener wrote so clearly in an earlier post, it's not what you got but how you use it.... and while I've been guilty recently of thinking I need Maya...in truth a pencil and a piece of toilet paper is enough...or I could draw on the walls.

I did think of a good name for this tree, but then I forgot it...hopefully it'll come back to me. When it does I'll put it on sale... but probably only in InWorldz, it's a NPISL build.

Some great news this week as Intel steps up to the plate, it seems, and may be the ones to lead us into a new era of Virtual Worlds with their possible huge increase in avatar numbers....details here.... OS may be the future.... how many meeroo's per acre is that?

....and a bit of fun.... here ... Llama Font (working on the basis that if you can't beat the fluffy pesky infestations of VW's.....join 'em)..... or cook 'em... (Miso's cookbook)...

...so...back to the lawn tennis at Queen's....

:))

A Week of Stuff.

2011-06-06T00:50:00.001-07:00

One of the best things to come out of VW's for a while, and I've been slow to blog it, unfortunately, is the 1000 Avatar book by Gracie Kendal. I am convinced this will be a classic and an historical piece of archiving which I would dearly love to own if my dentist and motorcarrepairingman hadn't mugged me this month.

Full details on Gracie's website ... here.... order from her inworld.

Apparently the login page in the new V2 is much improved, that has been balanced, this week, by the login page on the SL 1.23 using the worst photos conceivable. It's funny when Flickr has some of the most amazing images of SL imaginable that anyone managed to find such a bunch of sad stuff. Maybe it's another attempt to get me to change, which I will no doubt have to do, eventually,.... kicking and screaming...

I have spent the last few days when not watching The French Open (a big congrats to Li Na, the first asian woman, ever, to win a Grand Slam) on my platform (Tree of Trees inspired) making strange things for Twisted Isle which is coming along nicely...

I went along to a bridal fashion show in InWorldz (organised by Raven and Allure) to take a snap or two, and, altho not exactly my style, it was nice to see a lag-free fashion show, surely a first. Both in RL and VW's I would tend to shy away from the Virgin Bride meets Cinderella style, preferring white latex (only in VW's where my body is perfect) or Deviant Designs meets Lady Gaga (without the meat) ... just saying... video ...here.

If you are a Mac user the following security issue will be of interest, concerning the Malnamed Malware Mac Defender, more details ..here.

If you use Safari, make sure this box in prefs is unchecked.

The UWA is the news from yesterday... the FOC (foetid outer core) taking masses of prizes... in an extremely strong field.

Miso had a pocketful of prizes .. her Kandiskyesque piece wowing the judges... details on the UWinSL blog here.

Wizzy, was awarded a prize for her GeoThing, pictured here (below) at her joint rezzday with Miso (at Brinda's instigation.).

Not all the pieces get prizes, obviously, which is a shame because many of them are worth noting...

Gleman Jun's Acrobat... simple elegance.

Kobuk Farshore's piece What The Ether Asked of the Girl That Listened was one I would love to see in RL too...

While Spiral Silverstar's Zen Fractals I could live with, also. It has a peace which many anim smooth images lack.

So, in amongst a bunch of very strong work it is easy to overlook. for example, the interesting way which Cat Carfagno created a viewing space for a piece of prose... very sensitive I thought.

My overall impression was how advanced and mature Virtual Art is becoming.....and that leads me nicely over to the latest Machinima Competition....Art of the Artist. 230,000L$ prize money for the best piece depicting the art works that have been winners in previous competition rounds.... with the general exhortation "Create something that will take our breath away".. well I'm sure there will be a few entries..:)) .. full details ..here.

In other news... geeky hardware stuff...well..not sooo geeky... the new GoogleBook. This is basically just a "cloud browser"... A new concept for the future? where you don't load or maintain software on your computer, but do it on someone else's servers.... could be a bit like LL running your computer for you. Sound appealing?

On the Internet legislation which our fascist government has recently enacted... some better news. ... Internet acess is declared a Human Right. this is a small step forward, and we need a few small steps....

Finally, but not leastly... What to do with that stray Meeroo you find wandering lose in SL... More or Less Kranfel has the answer...

....final final word to those who can't take their head out of their apps...

have a good week...

:))

New... Allure Magazine

2011-06-04T13:01:00.000-07:00

Well, as some of you may have noticed, I've been a bit slack on the blogging front last week... and there's a reason. I've been doing some graphics ( layout and some photos) for the new InWorldz based magazine, called Allure.

I was called in quite late on the project and didn't manage to do everything I had hoped to (but will do for the next issues, I expect) but, as you will see, there are some interesting articles.......click to enlarge.

I would imagine that the interview with Tranquility, Legion and Elenia, the InWorldz founders would be of interest to quite a few.... and the work of PrEYEmal had me pretty speechless.(unusual)...

You can read the whole mag below if you are so inclined....

Open publication - Free publishing - More art

...and if you missed it in the mag...well...

...if you would like to contribute, or advertise, you would be most welcome.

:)))

This Blog....

2011-06-02T15:05:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

One of my regular readers has had trouble with these pages. He says that when he opens the blog it takes ages before he can scroll down the page.

Obviously I would like to hear if anyone else is having the same trouble, if it's geographical, or browser based...

Comments on the functioning of Blogger, and these pages in particular, are always welcome.

XXX

Mesh and Cash

2011-06-02T10:25:00.000-07:00

Well, we have now heard that mesh will start to be 'rolled out' on the SL grid from July/August. As the basic advice from top entrepreneurs is to get your product out into the market even before it works, we can expect a long series of complaints and fixes and etc etc so that September/October might be more realistic.

I was reading one of Maria's posts on mesh and followed a link to TurboSquid and searched trees there... one was $350, and far better than anything I could ever imagine making myself. It is 1.1 million polygons. Blender will make mesh but it looks increasingly like Maya and 3dsMax users will be the ones providing the best mesh.

Maya and 3dsMax cost around 3000$+ to buy.....so it's little wonder than no tree on TurboSquid costs less than 7800 L$, the top one mentioned above being ca. 80,000L$....(although, in reality, it would maybe be the only tree you could plant on a sim before crashing the whole grid...and could take a month to rezzz, I guess...) ...oh, by comparison, I don't think I've ever charged more than 2000L$, 500 -900 being my normal pricing.

I have complained before about the chickenfeed pricing of objects for sale in SL (Iwz the same) and the prices put on Art by the makers, similarly the wages offered by people who think that, because you are in VW's, you are prepared to work for silly money. So, it will be interesting to see if the costs associated with producing the top mesh content will actually make this less of a peanut economy, more related to RL pricing.... or will people simply not buy mesh??

I once paid 3300L$ for hair, and I was feeling very wealthy at the time.... thats probably the top item I ever bought.

Maybe the TechnoCommunists will make some free mesh trees and undermine the new mesh economy ...( they are a bugger to make with Google Sketch-Up)...

Now, as I've been busy I haven't kept you up to date with the latest SL blunders.... well.. it could be considered that the worst thing LL could do is to change their system of International Payment from one that works to one that doesn't work.... and I would have to agree that that is pretty bad....but...Client Data Leaks??....

...according to Inara Pey there are concerns about privacy and credit cards.... the possibility that DragonFish (the company now dealing, or nearly dealing, with International Payment), may have been compromised. It's only natural that such concerns come to the fore after Sony's spectacular breaches of recent weeks.

Now, her main point is that FJ Lined brushed aside the concerns, basically implying that it's down to spyware on the affected users computer, and behaving exactly like Tateru describes ...here... in a post entitled "you've got to take our word for it"... or to paraphrase "trust me, I'm an expert". The idea that any top company could have leaky security must be stamped out immediately it shows it's ugly head or a PR disaster could ensue.

The thing is, after having politicians lie to us for decades, and seeing the scandalous behaviour of top companies, saying "you can trust us"...isn't really good enough.

....and the way Inara has been attacked for suggesting such a thing... as Miso says "I'm only here for the LOLZ"...

The thing is...I have, genuinely, been getting a lot more spam recently.....and Indigo Mertel, who is a very reliable person (my email accounts are all a bit mixed up) I trust a lot.... and she's posted on the forum about this problem ...here.

well, it will, no doubt, all blow over...but a good PR machine could have helped...

What a messh. (sorry).

:))

Wizard Gynoid.

2011-05-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

Well, if you haven't been to see Wizzy's sim at UWA, you are very soon going to be kicking yourself.

This is just a tiny fraction of what's on show, and it all ends tomorrow...so go,go,go..

:)))

Scary Stuff

2011-05-28T02:45:00.000-07:00

While I was going to blog that the Death of Cock-up Linden had been exaggerated, the problems LL is having, still, in taking money off its customers pales into insignificance compared to the bigger issue of Internet Freedom.

It seems that the USA Government in particular and the French (shallow thinking) Sarkozy are, for apparently different reasons, wanting to get involved in internet regulation.

Like a ministry title straight out of 1984, [where the Propaganda Dept. is called Ministry of Truth] the US Government wants to be able to censor what floats around on the internet, exactly like China does..... The bill is named... PROTECT-IP Act.

As we recently saw with the WikiLeaks saga, the US wants to be able to crush news that it considers ‘secret’, the definition of that is, of course, down to the Government of the time.... probably Clinton and his floosie would have been considered Secret too.

All you can do is to actually get your act together and sign a petition for Congress....here... it IS important, probably the most important thing you will do this weekend.

The support this Act is getting is from, for example, the film industry.... companies who think that charging a lot of money for stuff is their god-given right.... so a true collusion of big business and Government is using a reverse ‘freedom’ argument.... i.e. we are protecting your freedom by restricting it.

The G8 summit was, thanks to Sarkozy, also debating the whole issue ... a good summary of the stances people are taking is given... here.

“You can't isolate some things you like about the internet, and control other things you don't." Zuckerberg, quite rightly, said.

The impossibility of you or I protecting our IPR is further highlighted this week by the discovery of fraud in China in relation to some of the biggest financial companies in the world... here... When very large companies are helpless against IP fraud, not even being able to protect their name, you and I have no chance.

IP is an illusion, one the West, in particular, continues to nurture so that software companies and others can continue to rob us blind, and Government, with their hands in the pockets of the multi-nationals, is using as a smoke screen for its desire to control and edit what you think.

I personally think that this will, if it goes through, further split the US and the Rest of The World, and hope some less fascist countries will host some of the larger internet search engines and media sites, taking them beyond US control...

.... if anyone is, really, beyond US control... (they automatically become terrorists when they are)....

:((

Linden Lab and Megaphobia.

2011-05-27T07:40:00.000-07:00

Now, I would define megaphobia as an irrational fear of megas. As we know it is inherent in some of the leading lights at Linden Lab, and I wanted to lay out a few ideas about the development of this syndrome.

The culture of an organisation is one that develops over time and has its basis in the collective history which that group experiences in its development. It can almost seem to seep into the walls of an institution as a widely held, accepted, “truth” even though it may bear no relationship at all to the facts, statistics or more objective data presented to the group.

It is widely held that a complete change of staff is the only way of combatting behaviour or beliefs that have been thus institutionalised. That obviously isn’t going to happen at the Lab, nor would I suggest it is necessary.

Sometimes, however, a clear presentation of the development of the syndrome is enough to awaken the sufferers to a realisation of their plight. ... this I will attempt.

Lalo Telling, in his very well researched series of articles on the history of the grid, tells us....

"Back before the land tier and prim limit systems were implemented, prims cost $L10 each. Any time a prim was rezzed, you "paid" for it. Conversely, when you took it back into inventory or deleted it, you earned $L10. It was also possible to delete full perm items and claim their prim value (possibly a permissions bug). During the first year of SL, some older builds, such as the mansion and the old Varney Boardwalk were being picked apart for quick Lindens."

Now, it may seem like that way of paying for your SL experience has long since disappeared but, in fact, anyone who pays tier still really, in essence, pays “per prim’. It’s just that with tier you pay for a block of prims...117 for a 512m2 etc etc.

So...there was, in the beginning, and still is a direct relationship between prim and LL income.

Take then the misguided idea that somehow a mega, say a 30x30, is robbing LL of the income they could generate from 9 x 10m prims....

The actual facts, however, are that if you own a 512m2 plot you are going to use all 117 prims anyway. ... and fairly fast in my experience, whether they are megas or standard prims.

This possible cultural dislike is enhanced, possibly, by the fact that the first megas were hacks, illegal, and therefore, basically, “Bad”.... like hackers.

The Myth of Lag is one that still remains even though I have used megas in large amounts on both SL and now InWorldz.... and originally I had a poor lappy to build with... I experienced no lag as a result of building with thousands of megas.

Recently we have been told repeatedly the following “Fact” about Mesh... it goes like this, basically,..... Mesh will reduce lag because... one mesh will replace many standard prims so there will be less work for the server. .. that is never paraphrased “one mega will replace many standard prims so there will be less work for the server.”

A simple blind spot in those suffering from this subtle disease. Selective logic.

There is also an idea which is a totally stupid one about megas, irresponsibly placed, overlapping a boundary line onto a neighbours property. In my experience a 10x10 poking through a neighbours wall is just as annoying, and more common, and it is usually resolved by the parties in question. This has to be one of the lamest excuses, and a poor attempt to hide a bad case of Megaphobia.

However, the irrationality of a phobia is not one that can necessarily be argued with, especially when institutionalised. Megas are bad, and the Lab has this as their standard “view”. [The use of the word ‘view’ in these situations is usually better described as “opinion unsupported by hard evidence”]

Now, none of these defense positions have any relevance to nanoprims. In InWorldz I can scale a prim down to 0.001 m, but not in SL; I can make a prim 99% hollow, but not in SL. There is no spurious ‘lag’ argument, or ‘overhanging prim’ argument, just pure neglect of your core content creators and builders. The code might be changed in a day, if there was the will to do so.... copy and paste from any of the OS sims. TPV’s would read it.

My major joy, however, with building in InWorldz is the ability to link a huge link-set sim-wide. The current SL restriction of 32 meters, for linking, is going to have to change in SL if meshes upto 64 meters are going to be allowed, or they will be unlinkable... a crap state of affairs, making mesh both expensive and useless in complex builds. Having to use Builders Buddy or similar every time you use a mesh will not sit well with builders, it’s a pain.

Now, back to megas ... I realise that my boycotting of SL8B and LEA is not going to change anyone’s mind, I’m just a D-rate creator and they will manage perfectly well without me...... but, the NPISL (Not Possible In SL) builds that I and others are working on in Iwz will, eventually, convince enough people that you can make better, richer, more complex stuff in Iwz ..... and that MAY get the Boys to realise that the mythical 100 Million Users will soon hear of a Better Grid if the gap between SL and Iwz continues to widen. If that doesn’t instigate some changes, some care of content creators and builders, some small advances in tools, then the Lab will continue to lose market share.

[heard this on the radio this morning.....You better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone for the times they are a-changing...]

So, my argument is this.... if you Boys can spare the time to make wobbly thighs, you can sort out this too. SL’s attraction isn’t all about sex...Duh!!

:))

Meeroo's warning and general blog stuff...

2011-05-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I had a dance last night to celebrate Alizarin's rezzday in InWorldz, which will be followed in quick succession by quite a few others I know.... now, it's probably right to say that Aliz took a bit of convincing in the beginning to try Iwz, but, after a while it all started to vome right and she now loves building here... I can't help thinking that Chestnut will come round after her initial problems, I know that for me, my fps is far higher in IWz than in SL, and altho there are rumours that Search will at last be fixed (I'll believe it when I see it... two years after they broke it)....SL has been behaving like crap the last week plus.

The chat at Aliz's rezzday, which Jeri kindly threw for her and where DJ Megan Cline was pumping out the tunes.....was...yes, Phlox, the new script engine which has been developed for InWorldz.... the whole grid was buzzing about it.

Now....this bit of film is enough to get builders interested....

.... more so than the 'news' that builders have been given permission to use megas at the LEA sandbox...ha!!...big deal...

see below....

16,000 prims on my little sim in InWorldz so far, all are megas, (some big)...all potential megas, I should say.... more than a thousand active scripts.... so I call BS on this idea that megas cause lag.

Giving builders 'permission' to use megas on the LEA sandbox was necessary or the place would be empty..... it's no big deal, what is needed is for LL to sort their brains out. Their's is the ONLY grid where megas are seen as a problem. There is some brain malfunction going on here.... time to sort yourselves out Boys.

...oh...and Meeroo's have arrived, The Next Big Thing...that is, for people who haven't had bunnies or horses or chickens... I did a blog about the breedables addiction as I had two good friends who got addicted, and very poor in the process.....

.... the sad tale of an avatar who has sunk into addiction can be found ....here... almost exactly a year ago....

Nothing changes, just new people getting conned in the same old ways..

... hope you have deep pockets if you fall for fluffiness...

More tomorrow..

:))

Jayjay Zifanwe

2011-05-22T08:26:00.000-07:00

Two years ago, it may be slightly less, Jayjay asked me if I would like to build a little something on the University of Western Australia's new sim.

Art was not really the business that the UWA was in, it was, and is, a university who decided to get a virtual campus for, no doubt, a mixture of PR reasons and because they could.

Today, Jayjay stood on stage and gave away 660,000 L$ as prize money to the best machinima entries in the UWA Machinima Challenge, their third.

So, any talk of sponsoring the Arts in SL, or of endowments is always going to have to, in my mind, measure up to what the UWA have achieved in two short years.

Jayjay is far to modest to take the credit for this, but, in reality it is he who has made this work. Sure he has had help from hard-working assistants and he has an enlightened board of people at the university who have understood his enthusiasm for this project, but, ultimately he has brought the threads together and 'sold' the ideas. He will, no doubt say that it is the artists who should be thanked for their talent and commitment to the project, and that is surely true as well, but, without a liaison officer, someone to transmit the ideas, the prize money wouldn't have been there and the whole thing could have faded instead of grown like it has.

There will be a full list of prizes and winners on the UWAinSL blog, and others will no doubt blog the results. I will simply post the machinima that was, in my humble opinion the best there. It took joint first prize and, within the rules of the competition, managed to bring the Clock Tower ( a signature piece of architecture at the campus) into the story without forcing the issue or simply as a token shot.

ERIC BOCCARA of the Netherlands' piece, called Juroney, was a deserving winner, and congrats to him for his hard work.

Expect a full list here.. once Jayjay has had a bit of sleep...

:))

New Start-up Blender File

2011-05-22T03:52:00.001-07:00

OK...for those of you who have been using my cherry-picking tips for Blender, here is the new start-up file for the latest Blender release......

Obviously you need to download Blender first....

soror new startup file.blend Download this file

Posted via email from soror Nishi's posterous

This is a 9 minute mushroom tutorial aimed at those who have already taken the Blender Is Easy tutorial but want to upgrade.

There are a few improvements that I noticed with the new Blender release.... one being the Smooth Vertices, which seems to be less fierce... and the sculpt mode has more preset brushes... oh, and there are more preset Views for those of us that dont' remember hotkeys and shortcuts....

As you will see from the final result the sculpting of the top of the mushroom didn't produce many lumps...oh well...

:))

Well Done Lindens, except for the sandbox.

2011-05-22T01:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it's not often I personally feel that I can congratulate a step taken by the Boys, because most of them are crap, however, the new international 24 hour billing support, although limited in cover is a real step forward and one they should be patted on the head for.

Toll-Free (US/Canada): 800.294.1067
Long-Distance (US/Canada: 703.286.6277

Local Toll-Free numbers:
France: 0805.101.490
Germany: 0800.664.5510
Japan: 0066.33.132.830
Portugal: 800.814.450
Spain: 800.300.560
UK: 0800.048.4646

Please press option 3 to get to Billing Support.

Since the UK office was closed along with the European ones, the idea of trying to stay up late to ring USA did not appeal much, not that I have needed to. The idea of having a local call centre is a bit of a comfort, even if its late in arriving.

Strange that I do not feel the same about the arrival of one LEA sim as a sandbox..... or maybe not so strange really. Although it sounds bad to suggest that 50,000 concurrent users can share one sim as a sandbox when every other grid provides 4 or so sims for a few hundred (concurrent) users ... I know that all 50k are not gonna end up in the same box...why??....well, this is the bit that annoys me...

For the last 7 or so years altruistic sponsors have been paying to provide us with sandboxes.... yes, paying to provide us with a facility that, by any standards of service, should be down to LL to provide. So, for Sasun, Art Mother, to suggest that she has worked hard to get this, the very most basic service, for us 'Artists' just makes me see red.

The fact of the matter is that LL want us to mentor incoming noob future-content-creators to make up for the ones fleeing to InWorldz where Artists and Content Creators are welcomed and cared for..... and, when you consider how much a sim actually costs Linden Lab to provide for our pleasure, it probably amounts to about 10US$ (obviously a guess) ...and, to be honest, I feel it is a disgrace.

It feels like someone has tipped me a penny after a few years work. I know that's not a perfect analogy but emotionally that is what it feels like.... and that's why I'm boycotting the whole farce.

It is not satisfactory for someone to say "well, it's a step in the right direction" because as I just explained it feels like an insult. ...and I have heard it said more than twice now... that we shouldn't keep harping on about a promise of 70 sims... I have seen written.... "...by a man who has now left LL..." ...a disingenuous statement considering he was not just "a man" but the CEO of Linden Lab giving a keynote address.

70 sims would have had me congratulating the Boys for their vision and balls....

... one sandbox... pathetic.

...and the Griefer Day.... I can't even go there......demented. I leave that for SaveMe to explain.

:))

Zombies Walk...

2011-05-21T04:00:00.001-07:00

...will this is what's happening in my neighbourhood... how's yours??

:)))

Rapture, Crapture Capture.

2011-05-20T12:28:00.000-07:00

Wizzy pointed me at this first... and it must be the best business plan ever devised in the history of the world, period.

Which world is the virtual one?

??

Transubstantiation revisited

2011-05-19T15:54:00.000-07:00

Many thanks to Hexx for composing this music especially for the build in spite of now being in employment...

hugs.

:))

on Service and Servers....

2011-05-19T08:39:00.000-07:00

Now, I had sort of planned not to write about LL anymore, for a couple of reasons....

The first reason is that Miso has put The Situation under her microscope and summarised it so well that really I need only to point to her post every time the Boys shoot themselves in the foot... I could even develop a short hand to signify a cock-up covered by Miso's post.... "Reply Part III"?...whatever...

The second reason is the rise in the number of fangirls who want to give me a hard time every time I criticise LL, I know they are all in denial, so I'll just wait til Sunday when they are all sitting on the Right Knee of God..... Peace on Earth.

...but I could hardly deny a friend a hearing. ... and JayJay is not normally so annoyed. Now, no one could accuse JayJay of being a serial complainer like me, but he has been trying to get LL to make it possible for Voice to cross his sim boundaries. He has been in contact with them about this problem for more than 3 weeks now. ...(just a side note here,.... LL has Voice crossing sim boundaries on their sims it seems...)

So...after being given the run-around for three weeks it now transpires that it just isn't possible .... now I understand that this is because some servers are in Dallas, some in DC, San Fran...and (spookie) Phoenix. [thx to @ChuckBaggett for the research] Now...for the signal/data to travel from DC to San Fran does not take zero time. This was a point that was made when we first heard of this plan back in 200X, and it lies behind the reason why LL will never fix sim crossings..... (or chat? in spite of renewed rumours)

But.. what has annoyed JayJay, and rightly so I think, is that he, as customer, was never informed of this when he bought the sims....and it is a basic flaw lurking in his University's Campus arrangement....

Miso's take on this that the servers are like 1Gb laptops (slight paraphrase) is a very good analogy. I had to upgrade. Everyone has to upgrade. The Savoy Hotel (I learned last night ) closed for 3 years to upgrade (cost £200million)... but LL won't upgrade, just get you to wear fewer clothes...and become short-sighted (64m)...Duh!!!

Anyway.... as JayJay couldn't blog it himself (his blog is taken up with Machinima stuff), I am happy to air his problem online .....and hope he will correct any mistakes I've made in comments.

...and mentioning Machinima... I must clarify that just because I am annoyed with the concept ..or the decisions ... of the LEA does not mean I hate everyone who has put in their hard work into trying to make a silk purse from a pig's bottom.... it's not personal... you aren't Mr/s Linden..... jeez ...XXX

...and just because I am boycotting SL8B as well as LEA doesn't mean I hate all Lindens either. I just don't like being told I can't use megas (for a start.. there are other reasons).... Don't get all personal, I can take it as well as dish it... relax. Without self reflection through criticism we'd all be as dumb as... Hmmm... [insert dumb persons name]....

In other news... well... Tateru has word from one of the Boys, Oz Linden, about the Most Hated Viewer In History... here. "If TPV's don't keep up, things will break".... that is his view... mine is : if you don't fix that bloody mess you call a viewer everyone's gonna migrate to IWz..... the idea that things break magically is a sort of schizoid view of life.... things get broken by people, or animals possibly..... but let's assume the Boys don't have a room full of an infinite number of Boy monkeys typing the 800,000 lines of code in the search for perfection.... (oh, and chat).... Who broke it, Oz?? You did.

So, otherwise, the weather is fine, and I'm off to drink a white wine spritzer and make a tree.

:))

The Reality of Virtual Art.

2011-05-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

I've been stewing and brewing on the topic of Art in VW's.

It started a while back after Man Michinaga posted a long but insightful comment on my piece about Sponsorship and Exploitation.

It would be worthwhile reading the whole comment, but, amongst other things he says...

"The issue is that artists who wish that Linden Labs would act as an advocate for them are looking in the wrong direction, not only because of LL’s mindset that the Residents are assets for free marketing, but that Linden Labs itself has lost a great deal of its ability to leverage credible PR for its content in the past years. "

"It’s not that we’re against Linden Labs; far from it. It’s that we understand that they don’t understand the art and festival world because they’re a software company, and high artists are a) not amateur assets, and b) don’t really care if they’re famous in Second Life."

Now, I hope I'm not taking this out of context, but it very closely resembled a conversation I had the day before with White Lebed where she said, as does Man, that to really promote the SL Arts there would have to be a concerted effort to connect to RL arts groups (Man's point) or do some seriously good PR (both Man and White pointed to this).

Now, add to this the obvious but necessary point that SL is a software company, (maybe not even that, they rent server space) not an arts organisation and it is rather obvious that it just isn't going to happen..... and so.... is the LEA as insignificant as passing wind in a thunderstorm?

But there is something that holds me back from fully endorsing the idea that the Arts in VWs need to align themselves to RL Arts (organisations), apart from the fact that there aren't mature or functioning groups that back Digital Art.

For, while everything that both White and Man pointed out is 100% true, I feel that there is another dimension.

Alpha Auer wrote a post back in 2009 (in NPIRL's great blog) about Art ... The Work of Art in the Age of Computational (re) Production, which I consider to be a very important piece.
In it she points to the way that RL Art has lost it's way and how Virtual Art has, to a far greater degree than RL Art, the ability to transform through play. Art in VW's has the possibility of instigating Behavioural Change, she relates how artist friends of her bemoan the fact that wearable art doesn't get worn ..... unlike Nekko tails in Virtual Worlds....

[is our fascination with Lady Gaga, Aladdin Sane, Mick Jagger etc. a desire to see this transformation around us?...(Johnny Depp as pirate could stay at my place permanently) ... of course, unlike these part-time transformations, avatars don't have to 'dress down' ... ever.]

In her piece Alpha mentions Brian Sutton-Smith, a man who believes that evolution itself is dependent on play.... not just a thing we should grow out of....but the instigator of change.

Now, I consider myself to be fairly bright, and I have been trying for two years now to envisage how someone in RL can walk in a soror Nishi forest. I have not found a solution that is possible with todays technology. Assuming therefor that I am not stoopid ... the following logical conclusions are that we are technologically pushing the limits of what is possible and this is New Art

So, if my experience of the Art World (business) in RL and Alpha's theory of the loss of meaning/direction (usefulness) of Art is a partial or complete analysis of RL Art ..... would I want to ally myself to Art (organisations) lost in this mess?? Does New Art need to align itself with the Old Fine Arts in order to promote it's own credibility? ... or is it just a question of time...

Are we just being impatient? This is a new medium.... and a body of work takes a long while to develop.

It may be Alpha. or some other commentator, who pointed out that it will be years before Digital Art is accepted into the RL Art community in the same way as, for example, photography has recently been accepted. I say recently ... photography was invented and used for decades before it became seen as an artform.

Then, today, I read this post by Botgirl and I also had a sort of waking up experience.

My waking up was to realise that, as music fills the air, not a segment of it... so does Art in VWs. There is nothing that isn't art. Very similar to my objection to the use of the word "Immersive" to describe a sim (i.e. show me one part of SL/VWs that isn't immersive) .... show me one prim of SL/VW that isn't Art.

As I wrote last year "Art in SL is different. There is no difference between Artist and Artisan in SL.
That means.... there is no difference between a great pair of shoes and some twirly rotating anim smooth sculpture...both are High Art."

So...the semantically inclined might say..."well, that depends on your classification of art..." Mine has, hitherto, been the "long, immense and deliberate derangement of the senses" [Rimbaud]...I haven't found a better one yet... and every prim fills that definition.

So, the question still remains, can we get some better PR? Do we need it?.... hmmm ... well, I know someone said that if you make a better mousetrap the world will beat a path to your door ..... and while I'm not planning a JFK "ask not what LL can do for you..." solution, I do wonder if we need to organise ourselves better, content creators and artists alike...

.... and do that thing we do so well....i.e. international, multi disciplined, collaboration.... on PR, not another piece of art.

:)))

New Blender...

2011-05-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

Just a few words for the noobie Blender users.....

Don't panic, if you were just getting used to the older Blender UI... they have come out with a new one.....but.... it's easy....

If you install the new version 2.5, and then want it to look like the one I had introduced you to... well you just open this file... in your new UI and the user settings will revert it to something you have just started to get used to, I hope.

Pheww... easy peasy.... still not sure about the colour combos...but I'm pretty sure they are Mod.

Will investigate further...

:))

Friday Feeling....

2011-05-13T14:58:00.000-07:00

... is not that my body is a temple, more like an eroded ruin...it's been a hard week.

Blogger made a big cock-up, and admitted to it which actually impressed me quite a bit... so you may have had trouble reading my previous post. I know Miso's piece "Miso and the Wolf" went AWOL for a while....

...in other news... made a new tree for UWA and, of course, anyone else that wants one.... not quite got round to putting it for sale yet.

It's called The Old White Pelican Tree....why?? don't ask, it's complicated.

...in other news I am helping Allure Magazine with some graphics and photos, hopefully.... it's a new InWorldz magazine and there's a lot to sort out for the first edition...

...in other news I am actually also going to put in a personal appearance in the film I've been providing content for ..... hope to see some first rushes in June.

There's been a few comments and posts on mesh recently... the rumour going round is that we will have mesh by the end of the month. This is incorrect. We will get an announcement by the end of the month.... and there's various stuff been leaking out, like there's still 400 bugs to fix and that the new mesh will break all old OS meshes.......and etc etc..

Mesh....well, the jury is out. It may eventually be the best thing since Display Names and Voice Morphing.... one thing is pretty sure, however, and that is that SL Viewer 1.23 will not be updated, so...time to try a new one.

....and ... continuing on a techy note started with a recent post of mine, here's another invention to look forward too... the future of broadband ... maybe..... here.

Finally... I love a bit of pure hypocrisy, don't you. This one is a gem. After the recent attempts by the USA government to stop Wikileaks, US government to spend $30 million fighting internet censorship.

You couldn't make it up.

:))

Nordan Art

2011-05-12T08:46:00.000-07:00

Better late than never, they say (mind you They say a lot of stuff, often crap).... I have wanted to post a little something about this show since it opened on the 7th May. Well, you couldn't have got in to see it anyway, it was too busy...

Firstly there's Shellina Winkler... she has an installation outside which resembles a chess board after a major earthquake. It's put together with the usual class and style you would expect from Shellina, a lady who knows about composition as well as torturing prims...

Inside the gallery are a few intimate photos by Paolo Tauber and on the floor above, work by Simotron Aquila. I particularly liked Insomnia2.

In the New Extension by Igor ..
[sorry Igor, nothing personal, but I have to rant again about stairs in SL... why oh why oh why .... we can fly....why do people keep on making stairs... great building...but I hate stairs, both in principle and in particular.... No fault attributed to Igor, here, he was probably expected to put stairs in....]

....anyway...in the great new extension by Igor...*smiles sweetly* ... is the most impressive work of Claudia222 Jewell (see above).

Claudia is extremely skilled in her use of Blender and a skilled texture artist too. Her work is organic, (as in .. like organs), humorous, dark and quite Sci -Fi. I haven't seen anything this good since Kaltusaran left SL....in fact, if I had found flora like this when I first came to SL, I might never have bothered making a tree at all...

I love this dark and brooding side of vegetation, and, because I seem to be unable to conjure up that part of my psyche, it is great for me to see someone else doing it.

Well, as you may have guessed ...I have to recommend a visit to Nordan ..... (I would always recommend a visit to Nordan... a well run gallery indeed)... it's on til the end of the month approx. The next one opening on the 9th July.

It's a Must See .... here.

:))

The Wizard

2011-05-10T11:52:00.001-07:00

Wizzy has probably the best show of geometrical art that you are ever likely to see in VWs on show from today at the UWA sim devoted to art.......here...at VIRTLANTIS.

Now, a full interview is also online at the UWAinSL blog... ... and Juanita has posted about the show here..... the official opening is set for Saturday at 12.

Wizzy has attracted a lot of interest in several worlds as she has a way of turning maths into a thing of beauty, or, in this case several things....... It's really worth going to see for the shear perfection of geometry.

These things could never be made in RL... the one Thingy is 7200 prims...and it took an enormous amount of determination to rezz the bloody thing... (insider gossip...Wizzy was v frustrated...:))...

Anyway, if you wait til the opening or pop along beforehand, you won't be disappointed.

:))

New York Agora Gallery, 12th May.

2011-05-10T11:39:00.000-07:00

A friend from Australia is showing at the Agora Gallery in NYC from the 12th.

Alison-Jane Rice is one of a few artists from Down Under whose work is featured...and I think she is very good and well worth popping in to see if you have a chance.

The show is a collection of work...

"Out From Down Under & Beyond: Fine Art from Australia and New Zealand presents the work of artists who delve into their shared geographical and cultural heritage to produce marvelous creations of strength and vigor. Exploring different mediums and adopting varying styles, each artist achieves something unique and remarkable for its vibrant and emotive power.

May 12, 2011 - June 1, 2011
Reception: Thursday, May 12, 2011

Gallery Location: 530 West 25th St, Chelsea, New York
Gallery Hours: Tues - Sat, 11am - 6pm

Recommended viewing...

:))

Tech stuff...

2011-05-10T10:12:00.001-07:00

Now, not being a real through and through geek I seldom get into posting stuff I don't understand, but I make exceptions.

The thing that has got me flexing my geek muscles is a recent post on the Tri-Gate Transistor courtesy of Ars Technica, (the post not the transistor). The transistor has been developed by Intel and promises a New Age in computer speed and power consumption...

"Intel claims that the 22nm tri-gate transistors switch between 18 and 37 percent faster than the 32nm planar ones (depending on the voltage level). Or, looked at from the voltage side, the new design can reduce active power by up to 50 percent."

...and....for non geeks like me, I have to compliment Jon Stokes for making a very difficult subject available to all.

The full article is here.

The reason for my interest is my ongoing Wish List where I have started to yearn for more... just more.

Now, I'm not so daft as to think I can have a better resolution before the average computer has grown a few more muscles, i know that we are, some of us, still struggling along with the 'normal' laptops and machines that are on the market at the moment. However, the day will come when we will smile when we think about 2011 machines with that same smile that grows when we think of our first (1980's?) computer.

16kb, was the first Commodore I think, or was it 64........ mine is 639.78 Gb...

/me smiles....

There's a list of dates... computer history....here. (1981...IBM joins the computer race by announcing the IBM Personal Computer on August 12, 1981, which runs the new MS-DOS operating system and has a starting price of $1,565.)

:))

Euro Phlox Test Party

2011-05-08T05:34:00.000-07:00

Well, it was quite a change at a party to be asked to increase my ARC, something I have no problem with at all.

The European guys and gals , feeling left out of the Phlox testing because of time zone considerations actually got to try out this new Script Engine in InWorldz.

So, forty people, wearing everything they could, dancing, collected at the 2nd Birthday Sim on InWorldz to see what Phlox could take....and then 3 horses rode by too...

These are the hard facts. I have a Quad Core Mac Desktop, (2.66 Ghz) so it's not an average laptop, but it has just the basic graphics card (Nvidia GT120, 512Mb) and is mid/upper end, but even so, there is no way, maxed out on Ultra, that I could have still been moving in SL....

I was impressed.

I guess, for most of us, that the times we are most likely to stress out the server is at a party. If we can party, all's well. Interestingly enough Chat didn't suffer either and... it was well tested.

All in all we were all pleasantly surprised and very thankful/impressed by Tranquility's efforts.

Thanks again InWorldz crew... when Physx arrives... wow... what a grid!!

:))

Weekend Fun at Raglan and The Shires.

2011-05-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

Raglan Shire hosts the wonderful Art Walk again from Sunday for the next three weeks.....here.... on two of the 7 Sims run by the Small People

There is a hedge boat, self-guided, which will take you round the sims, tho you may feel a little cramped if you are a biggie.

I have put three sculptures in the woods and had a wander down the hedgerow where a lot of 2D art is on display...

...and I have no excuse for republishing this photo of a budgie conga line from a disco a few years ago....

The following is a list of shops in The Shires with Stuff for sale for Small People...

DATE OF LIST: Friday May 06 2011 (8pmSLT) thru Sunday May 08 2011 (8pmSLT)

*All items on this list are spot-checked on Friday at 8pm SLT. The TSW Staff does not verify all the entries but randomly teleports to participating stores. If you have a question or concern about one of the entries, please IM Tia Macbain, Eleanora Newell or Misa Delight. Sale prices are only guaranteed until Sunday 8pmSLT . Thank you and have fun! *
***************************************

1.
STORE NAME: Tiny TAMA
STORE OWNER: Eleanora Newell and Fox Obviate
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heron%20Shire/100/202/22

2.
STORE NAME: Arizona's Fashions For Tinies
STORE OWNER: Arizona Noel
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Morning%20Shire/121/218/21

3.
STORE NAME: Greenwood Cave
STORE OWNER: Clowey Greenwood
SLURL: http://maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Morning%20Shire/112/215/21

4.
STORE NAME: Elefantabulous
STORE OWNER: Stainlessteelrat Solo
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Raglan%20Shire/127/120/41

5.
STORE NAME: Izo's
STORE OWNER: Izo Ryba
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Morning%20Shire/37/231/21

6.
STORE NAME: Lidl Audz Lidl Kisses
STORE OWNER: Audrey Fotherington
SLURL: ???

7a.
STORE NAME: TOTALLY TINIES
STORE OWNER:Clover Dezno
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Raglan%20Shire/140/239/23

7b.
STORE NAME: TOTALLY TINIES
STORE OWNER:Clover Dezno
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heron%20Shire/36/218/29

8a.
STORE NAME: MOUSEHOLE
STORE OWNER: Chow Wise
SLURL:http://slurl.com/secondlife/Haven%20Shire/96/219/21

8b.
STORE NAME: Tinies Rock!
STORE OWNER: Chow Wise
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Haven%20Shire/96/219/21

9.
STORE NAME: Maffle's
STORE OWNER: Maff Constantine
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Raglan%20Shire/21/172/37/

10.
STORE NAME: Druscilla's Whim
STORE OWNER: Druscilla Ferraris
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heron%20Shire/68/176/22

11.
STORE NAME: Cirrus Design
STORE OWNER: Liandras Jameson
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Raglan%20Shire/223/134/23

12.
STORE NAME: Tigpig Inc.
STORE OWNER: Tia Macbain & Dorian Longstaff
SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Raglan%20Commons/145/231/23

So....go shopping if you are small....

if you are big....

....and if you haven't already heard from Tateru's blog.... time for a little shopping at Celestial Studios who are closing down and moving on...

....and as the economy is reported to be improving ... pop along and fill your invent a bit more....

:))

Sponsorship and Exploitation.

2011-05-06T16:51:00.000-07:00

A great post by Honour McMillan yesterday left me feeling like I had, in my glib way, been a little unclear about my thoughts on my last post about SaveMe and Dan.

so....that’s easy to clear up, and, though Honour says she doesn’t have the patience for this discussion, I certainly do....and that discussion is...?? ...

When does ‘sponsorship’ of the Arts become exploitation?

This is certainly a subject which, after years of making art in RL, has come often to the fore. I have personally lost track of how many freebies I’ve done on thin promises and “great opportunities”.. and I am not bemoaning that, I continue to do freebies.

I fully understand that sponsorship by companies is often a two-way street, I wasn’t born yesterday.

What I do object to, personally, is when companies, and rich individuals, use Artists, (well me, specifically) without any payment. Unlike painting the Sistine Chapel, many artists are expected/offered work where they even buy their own paints and other materials.... like in SL.

So I feel that Dan’s outburst at the LEA opening is justified. LL has done nothing for artists for 6 or 7 years except charge them tier and now wants free machinima to use for PR.

Good... but I think the artists should be paid, when you consider how many millions of dollars the Lab makes each month.... what would a PR company charge them? What do their PR employees earn per month? .......No cash prize?

I know that it is often just a token payment, a prize, but it is a public recognition that the Art has a commercial value too.It's like bringing flowers to a dinner party hostess...sorta good manners.

LL=Cheapskates.

There are some people who seems to think that rules are OK. That’s fine. Many of what we now consider to be great artists, however, broke all the rules. Breaking rules is what changes the status quo, it’s what artists do ... well, those that aren’t merely going through the motions.

If we don’t put what little pressure we can on the established perception of art in SL and continually question the narrow-minded censorship of what is and isn’t permissible ... no one else will.. I don't really think there are many rules I would not question, push against and criticise, especially when it comes to Content in The Internet Age.

.. and the Linden’s aren’t gonna suddenly say......Megas are OK really, unless we continue to nag them.

Some recent blogging about SL suggests nothing has happened, and everything is fine. To read them you would think nothing has changed. I am not sure whether they are just in denial or so uninformed about the general decline of SL that they cannot see it.

72 sims lost this month equals another $250,000 per annum. Elf Clan’s move to InWorldz is a major event which Rodvik found out about through Twittering...too late...

The negativity which some of us have been tarred with is a natural reaction. Standing by while a leading tech company pisses it’s credibility down the drain could be fine, if I hadn’t invested time and energy through my artistic endeavours and financial support.

Well, I have, I did, and They pissed it away...

... So...yes, I’m annoyed.... v annoyed.

.... not negative.

:)))

An Unexpected Alliance at LEA Opening.

2011-05-05T10:36:00.000-07:00

The LEA event opening the Machinima Event went off with a little drama, SL style.

SaveMe Oh, probably the most controversial artist in SL, who I interviewed properly for my blog post on Koinup (not something I do much) entertained the troops with an impromptu performance as she often does when given (or not given) the chance.

She rightly states in her blog that really you don't need a fancy building to view something that looks better on YouTube, where there is no lag or crashing.

"Machinima has to rescue secondlife and Linden Labs. Now as a frequent user I am happy with every attempt to keep SL online but what did they invent?? A stupid event about machinima (NO NUDETY,NO VIOLENCE) (Oliver Stone, Al Pacino, Angelina Jolie and Kate Winslet must be banned in advance), An horrible building (who needs to be covered watching movies in sl?), 1000 seats were you are glued in according to the CARP concept where you can sit and shut up to see machinima that you can view 1000 times better on YouTube, Vimeo or AviewTV."

SaveMe got banned, art is only art if the Organisers say it is Art, I guess.... and let's face it SaveMe can push the envelope better than a herd of elephants.... so I think neither she nor anyone else was very surprised. She is the most banned artist in SL, I would guess.

So... all quite traditional so far.

Ole Etzel, a longterm creator in SL, could not of course show his stuff, especially Part Three of The Disease... (see below)...

Ole, along with Mrs Bones (who has a chainsaw, and knows how to use it) has been amusing me for years with his personal view of life, and death.....but.... similar to Nipple Gate, the incident with Rose being banned because of Susa... (and consequent comment by me)... Ole likes blood in his art....and that is not allowed. Like megas, there are rules.

Now, anyone who thinks they can promote the Arts and yet make sure no one breaks the rules is a bit daft. Art and Rules don't mix, they never have, and never will. Period.....as I wrote before in these pages..."The creative anarchy of the human condition is revolutionary and irrepressible."

...But... it was not for reasons of Artistic Freedom that two very unlikely people have become united in their dislike of LEA...

...an excerpt from SaveMe's blog....

Dancoyote Antonelli: did you know why we are on the same side?

SaveMe Oh: Maybe I become the Don Quichotte of SL

SaveMe Oh: tell me?

Dancoyote Antonelli: The director of user experience spoke

Dancoyote Antonelli: one Rhett Linden

Dancoyote Antonelli: and said how greatful he is that art is such good free marketing for Linden Labs

Dancoyote Antonelli: that was the moment we became on the same side

SaveMe Oh: They gave us the canvas, we had to bring the crayons ourselves, and now they want everything back.

SaveMe Oh: So fight along with me for freedom of expression on our own terms

Dancoyote Antonelli: I am with you

Dancoyote Antonelli: and now

Dancoyote Antonelli: we need a private channel

SaveMe Oh: Fear is also not an issue, the moment we brought in our crayons we start to be faster then them.

Dancoyote Antonelli: more on this later. Now LEA will try to kick me for my protest

Dancoyote Antonelli: it will be a big mistake if they do

SaveMe Oh: Make it difficult for them! Good luck as you have every right on your side."

May 4, 2011

Now, I have called this LEA effort Artists Endowment of the Lindens, and it is. Unlike UWA which, for the last 18 months has been awarding cash prizes to artists, known and unknown, and the many altruistic sponsors out there who donate prims and sims so that creators can create, Linden Lab has done nothing. Not a penny, or a cent has been offered. No sim has been donated, not even for Burning Life.

The thing about sponsorship is that there is, or should be, an element of altruism. Art should be sponsored for Art's sake, and the commercialisation of the LEA, i.e. it's use as cheap marketing puts me on the same bench as SaveMe and Dan.

Dancoyote Antonelli: shouts: Artists are NOT Marketing

For while Sasun can say...
"The LEA exists to help encourage and cultivate art and artists within Second Life, to foster community, creativity, and innovation among artists, and collaborate with existing art galleries and groups to help nurture their valuable participation in the SL arts."....

...it's all just words.... and I've heard a lot over the last 4 years....(previous Sasun)

16 months of dragging their feet, there's no 70 sims as promised, (link included for those that claim 70 sims was never mentioned)... just a large building, a game and a sandbox .. oh, and future plans for a welcome centre....

..big deal. I should be impressed??

:))

Mid week bloggery

2011-05-04T14:35:00.000-07:00

Yes, I know I have made a sort of promise to myself to stop taking the Michael out of the Boys, but I was slightly amused at the following suggestion which arrived in my Inbox today from the strange Sandbox publication from the Boys....

I was very glad that they have taken onboard all the suggestions that Phaylen and Toxic and Chantal had to offer in their recent (not so recent) podcast about how machinima is a vastly underused tool for positive SL PR.... Indeed the first actual action taken by the infamous LEA was to open a month of machinima ... then the sim crashed...(details here).

Oh well, it won't crash all month.

....anyway....under "hot tips" for places to see original content....at Number One... Treet TV

That's a really good recommendation.... for InWorldz, anyway, as the latest interview with Lady Sakai and Jim Tarber is a great bit of coverage on What It Is Like To Move To InWorldz.... so great bit of PR for InWorldz by LL...

The Interview is so good I can recommend it and the transcript on Jim's blog is well worth reading, I think.....especially if you are thinking about moving (as two friends have said they are today).. Paisley blogged it too...

....and UWA have launched another competition, this time a Photographic one, both in RL and SL, and featuring the Campus. There are, as usual, good cash prizes to be won....get all the info....here. This is again down to Jayjay promoting SL to his boss and getting SL included.

No prizes of any kind from the Boys, of course..only the following amusing advice. This... Did You Know?.... from the SandBox (how did I manage before they started sending out this??)

DUH!!

In other VW news, Open Sim has just released 0.7.1 according to Ener. ....who is a great source of OS news... with an interesting security feature (OS, not Ener).. permitting grid owners to disallow taking objects off the grid while still allowing Hyperporting (or whatever the tping between grids is called). So the security of the Hypergrid increases...expect a blog from Maria soon (guess only).

...and to all my Mac owning readers... what about the new iMac and VWs... well Trilo Bytes has blogged a few answers... here.

So ... that'll keep you 'busy' at work... have a good week...

:)))

Marketplace and 1.23 ... and other bloggery

2011-05-02T05:51:00.000-07:00

Transubstantiation at UWA is now finished.... this is Wizzy, JayJay and I hovering over the sim that housed the build. Wizard Gynoid is now going to have the next month for her Geometrical Thingies.... I'll keep you posted....

Avril Korman brought the news, here, that Marketplace is gonna have to change again. I really feel genuinely sorry for the retailers. This is becoming a regular feature of selling on Marketplace.

Seven months of problems...viz... The Boys say...

"Marketplace is currently experiencing delays in delivery and delays in order status updates on the Marketplace. Here are 2 situations you might see:

Orders on the Marketplace may still be in a “Queued”, “Undelivered” or “Being Delivered” state and no items have been delivered.
Orders on the Marketplace may still be in an “Undelivered” or “Being Delivered” state and items have been delivered.
In both cases, there is a delay: orders will continue to be delivered and Marketplace order status will be updated to reflect this, after a delay. We are actively working to fix this issue and will post an update when it has been resolved.

For those of you with customers who purchased multiple times, Linden Lab will refund the amount of your commission on refunded orders. The following requirements must be met for the commission refund to occur:
The customer has attempted to purchase the same item(s) in multiple orders after experiencing a delay in delivery and has asked for a refund on all but one of the orders.

As a merchant, the full order amount or purchase price of the item purchased more than once must be refunded.
Submit a ticket on the web as a “Marketplace/General Marketplace Issues” ticket. Please include the order number and item(s) that were ordered more than once, along with the copy of the entry from your L$ Transaction Log showing the refund or refunds.

We do apologize for these failures and are working actively to correct this and to prevent it from happening in the future.

Brooke
Update post is here.
Excerpt:
One other question that has come up concerns negative reviews received due to failed deliveries. Please flag the review using the link provided below the review comments, and these will be removed from your listing if the failure is due to a technical problem with the Marketplace."

Basically The Boys are going to change the way Inventory is handled.... not only to allow Direct Delivery (i.e. straight to your invent) but also because if you currently have more than 60k items in your Invent, you are lucky... seems like you won't see em all on any one login...but might get most of them some of the time...

So this new system will solve all the problems??? Well, what do you think?

I am, as I have said before, very against Marketplace and FaceBook for different reasons. They both, however, have similar effects in transferring activity from a 3D platform to a 2D platform, and this is my principle objection.

On a more detailed level... in it's attempt to make 5% (currently) on all sales through Marketplace Linden Lab has made it unnecessary for merchants to own shops and get people to come visit..... obviously if Search doesn't work, and tier is high, this is a financially viable solution for all concerned.....except....fewer shops means less land=tier and less activity inworld.

There is something slightly traitorous in backing 2D solutions because you can't solve Search and want the 5%.

Facebook is a little the same in that if you can't fix Chat, then promote a 2D solution...except obviously it's not a solution and there's no income involved...yet....( advertising will be the future idea, I guess).

The 1.23 SL Viewer has had another nail in it's coffin in the form of wobbly bits. Apparently 1.23 can't handle The Wobbles and so people show up wearing both Ruth hair and their own prim hair. This information courtesy of Tonya Souther here.... this from her blog...

"Dan Linden's comment on the LL JIRA describing the problem, VWR-25479, is telling:

Dan Linden added a comment - 27/Apr/11 12:49 PM
This is a known incompatibility with 3rd party viewers. We are not going to commit to fixing this."

...so...it's a known problem. Now, while the TPV's may try and fix it, LL is not going to..... and we have all had fair warning that 1.23 was gonna be phased out....so the time to change to Phoenix or Imprudence just moved one step nearer.

Mesh maybe just round the corner anyway....and that'll need Viewer 2.X... so it may be time to stop my recalcitrance, or, better still spend more time in InWorldz...YAY!!!

Games and the sexes ...the subject of an interesting post by Aaron P, here... Are Games Sexist....?? Gamification is another one of those words I hate, it seems grammatically acceptable to make a verb out of any noun.

Hmm... thinks...future blog posts maybe called....the Bunnehfication of SL..... the Cockupification of Marketplace.... and the Errorification of the English Language....[no....don't worry, I do have some self respect].

In other news....Alizarin Goldflake has a new build in SL, and in Iwz too, I believe... ....A Requiem for Fukushima.

You can read more about it here.

"Rather than my usual party for a new build, I am trying something different: multiple studio hours throughout May, so drop in at your convenience to see the build, ask questions, or just say "hi."

Studio hour #1: Saturday 110430, 2 pm PDT
Studio hour #2: Saturday 110507,12:30 pm PDT
Studio hour #3: Sunday 110515,2 pm PDT
Studio hour #4: Friday 110507,12:30 pm PDT
Studio hour #5: Tuesday 110531,2 pm PDT"

It fits really well in her japanese garden ... here.

...and I have to admit to being somewhat lax in reporting from UWA competition this month... but all the details are ...here.

Have a good week...

:))

Four Years of Soror Nishi

2011-04-30T02:30:00.000-07:00

It was four years ago, while showing some of my oil paintings in Lostwithiel, Cornwall, that I got to hear about Second Life and how I could try and sell my paintings online. I soon found out that, better than that I could actually create some of my attempts at portraying archetypal Jungian images, in 3D.

..and so began a long process of learning...

This first image, by the talented photographer Lem Skall shows the build I did for Orange, French Telecom..

...and his image of a sea stack I made on my own beach in Lifstaen...

...and the floating shop I built there where my trees and plants were for sale.

Mab gave me the first chance to do a whole sim of my work.. at Magoo

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..filmed by the talented ColeMarie Soleil

At IBM I had an exhibition, called Tree of Trees....and made this slide show...

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Then, earlier this year I made my first real machinima of the work that I had done in InWorldz...

I have been helping out with content on a proper film, Vlogger, but that will not be edited before June ... and it's NDA stuff, so I'll have to wait to tell about that...

My machinima of Transubstantiation is still awaiting some music, so, until then, for those who haven't seen it (it closes tonight, Saturday)...

..a few images...

...and now, courtesy of Jeri Rahja, Twisted Isle is my current work in progress over on InWorldz...

...this is the first glimpse...

You'll be seeing a lot more of this build when it gets somewhat nearer completion.

The future, well, I could do with better software, Final Cut X Pro comes out in June at a much more reasonable price.... and zBrush, well, I would need a little windfall for that. If the current worlds we create in don't provide a better resolution in the coming years, I may seriously consider Eve Online, even if I'm not BattleStar Hero material .... we need better graphics for the next step ... maybe .... old fashioned paper and paint work for me too.

I'm not gonna wax lyrical about Content Creation, the hours and energy I have put into 3D worlds more than eloquently expresses my love for the medium ...

...and the help, support and love my friends have provided goes without saying.

:)))

The Wedding

2011-04-30T01:01:00.000-07:00

Coffee and philosophy don't mix.

I nearly put my socks in the dishwasher this morning while making coffee as I was mulling over the Alchemical significance of The Wedding, specifically Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz....

On a more mundane scale I was pleased to see that Kate wasn't wearing a terrible creation like Diana's wedding dress, an outfit so poorly designed it could only have been worn in the 80's, but the Principle Bridesmaid Pippa was the best dressed person there... well, it's all a matter of taste [I feel strange agreeing with The mail on this]. My fashion sense isn't mainstream enough for me to even blog about it .... I'll leave that to the Normal People.

Nor was I musing about why Harry hadn't got a decent AO and walked like a noob ... I was musing on the trees.

For those of you who have escaped seeing the TV or newspaper images, the Abbey was decorated, in part, with trees...[eight 20 foot maple trees] to very good effect. The Tree, both Philosophical and natural was inspirational, instrumental, in the design of the load-bearing columns of this, and probably most, buildings..... but introducing them again into this most prim-heavy of structures was a triumph of the subconscious.

No matter what conscious reasons we have for employing an archetype in our everyday existence, the subconscious which is both older and wiser than the conscious mind is the instigator of design inspiration ("making decisions").

The act of bringing the Tree into the House has it's origins in pagan tradition, even preceding the Alchemical era, as the Tree housed gods in a pantheistic world view ..... still maintained by many to this day.

So, the whole effect was to stir both pagan and Alchemical images in a day devoted to the synthesis of prince and princess, watched by millions. The universal power of this archetype (the Royal Wedding) is confirmed factually by the number of people who watched it, by the power this still holds in the collective unconscious, and always will do.

It wasn't a day to explore the problem with the institution of marriage, namely that the Individual can get smothered by the needs/demands of The Couple.

The need for Antithesis to balance the Synthesis on the path to self-knowledge is a chat to be had after the Great Romantic Love PR machine is finished and gone to bed.

:))

Linden Lab Shake It Up.

2011-04-26T14:04:00.000-07:00

In an effort to convince the world that Second Life is a great place for intellectuals, artists and builders alike, Linden Lab today makes it possible for your thighs to wobble as much in SL as they might do in RL.

“We figured you don’t really need Chat or Search if you have great tits” said a spokesman.

Anticipating an influx of noobs with boobs the Welcome Areas were awash with thugs, as usual, and bloggers waiting to get this fresh flesh as it arrived.

Said one noob “now I have real boobs I will stay here forever and spend loads of money”, so that just goes to show... the Lab was right.

Nipple manufacturers, however, were not happy bunnies...” This is another business LL has wrecked” said one. [prim nipples won’t stay in the right place from now on].

Both concurrency, the economy, and and lag are expected to now improve, and the Labs share price took a bounce today as market sentiment greeted this latest technological innovation.

A Wall Street analyst put it this way..”well, it seems like the Boys have taken the technological lead again, no more second place for Second Life. This is a game-changer.”

Both the MarketPlace and transactions were off-line today for a few hours, after the latest rolling restart, while the tech guys played with their tits, an insider told me.....

....and I guess a boob joke is in order....

...but I really can’t be bothered.

:))

Pictures from a Party InWorldz.

2011-04-25T05:27:00.000-07:00

Well, I didn't manage to get good shots of everyone, some just turned out crap...sorry...

Mera, Birthday Girl, did manage better with her snaps...here..

I really enjoy going to spontaneous things like that. It was a great night. Witty banter, the stuff dance floors used to be filled with before people drowned out chat with those annoying gestures and sounds like farting whales..... [who thinks any tune is improved by the sound of a bullhorn ... (maybe a few exceptions)]... it was a great gang of people...

Thanks to Jim for the music.

Great way to spend a Fertility Festival night..... tho the rumours are unsubstantiated.....

:))