Loki's musings on first and second life

Two Lives, Two Eyes Only

2010-02-20T12:00:00.007Z

It's been a while since I posted here. I humbly apologize but I guess I had little to share with the world :-) That changed when Ariel told me she was setting up a new exhibit. She's a friend so maybe I'm a little biased but still she must be one of SL's most creative and respected artists. An exhibit of her work is always a joy for the eye and a thought provoking experience.

So, without further ado ... BE THERE !

Art by Ariel

2009-06-06T13:47:00.006+01:00

This Sunday at 2pm SLT a new art-gallery is opening inworld: Benzaiten Gallery. I had the privilege to see the place earlier this week when I stopped by there to put up one of my own pics. I have to say Fingers Scintilla and Ariel Brearly did a great job putting together a wonderful collection of SLArt by people like Stephen Venkman, Kimberly Mirabeau, Nephie Eerie, Joy Fellini, Senna Conoret and many others. It goes without saying Fingers and Ariel put up some of their own work too. The place they made has a nice cyberpunk feel to it that reminded me a little of the Cannery Gallery. So if you have no plans for Sunday join us for the opening of this beautiful new gallery. It will undoubtedly be a big hit.

SLURL to Benzaiten

Another worth-to-see is Ariel "busy bee" Brearly's temporary exhibit at the RavenLynxx gallery. As an artist Ariel has really made a name for herself with her very personal style. It is at the same time emotional, whimsical and full of symbolism. At times it refers at the great surrealists like Dali or Delveaux In my opinion Ariel is one of the few SL artists to escape the SL stigma. Even though her work is generated in SL it escapes the SLArt label and is just plain and simple digital Art. Amidst the pictures of pretty avatars and SL landscapes on Flickr her work really stands out. The favs and comments on her stream make it clear it touches a nerve with many.

Some of her best work is now presented at the RavenLynx gallery and it is a pleasure to see all these magnificent works together. The exhibit opened last weekend and will run till the end of July. Don't let this chance pass you by and go see this fantastic exhibit.

SLURL to RavenLynxx Gallery

Survey

2009-06-04T19:16:00.005+01:00

Picture by Ganymedes Costagravas

A while ago I took part in a focus group about morals, ethics and emotions in SL vs RL organised by a student from the university of Ghent who is doing a study on the topic. It turned out to be an interesting evening. I even found me a new friend. Based on this group talk and a similar one held at a later date a survey was made to gather data for the study. So, if you are or have been active in SL please help Katleen and fill out the online survey it will only take a few minutes. The project's website where you can find the survey: http://www.survey.gendersquare.org/

Also check Gany's blogpost on the subject.

Schizophrenia

2009-04-14T19:07:00.007+01:00

I finally caved in and made myself a Facebook profile. I'm not exactly a private person or terribly shy but I have always been weary about posting personal details online. It often flabbergasts me what people post about themselves online. All that data will be there forever for everyone to find whether it be a possible employer, a creepy stalker or a new girlfriend. Face it we have nothing to hide but in some cases our oppinions or style may work against us. Loki has always given me a chance to be present online without revealing my RL identity. If you Google my RL name you get about 133 hits and 90% of those refer to someone who happens to have the same name. Run a search for "Loki Popinjay" and you get 2600 hits and there is no one else by that name.

The only thing bugging me now is the schizophrenic situation of having two completely separate online identities. On the one hand I wouldn't mind sharing some aspects of my SL life with RL friends or the other way around but it's near impossible or at least a lot of work to do it selectively. If I link both I do it for everyone and I'm not sure I want that. Somehow it would spoil the liberty Loki enjoys so much and I guess it would also take away part of the fantasy and mystery that has always been part of the SL and in general online experience.

Of course I have RL friends who know about SL and I have SL friends who know a lot about my RL. There are even those who are friends in both RL and SL. I think for now that's how it will stay.

Moving

2009-02-07T18:38:00.007Z

Due to circumstances I wil not be online as often as you, my friends and readers are used to. For the next month or so my only access to the net will be a 3G modem with a data limit of 4Gb/month (unless I want to pay through the nose for extra volume). Compared to my usual 25 to 30 Gb a month you can imagine it will hurt.

an old pic but thought it was fitting

This also means that any SL activity will probably be almost non-existant and because of it I guess my Flickr stream will come to a trickle at best for a while. On the positive side of things, it may give me a bit more time to post here.

All of this is because it takes Telenet, a local cable provider, a MONTH to reactivate an existing connection that was deactivated. To add insult to injury, the place already has cable television and a telephone connection via cable from Telenet. Why does it take so long ? They claim they have to physically be on the spot to reactivate internet access. To do what, turn the modem back on ? I can do that for them thank you very much. If they said two days to sort out the billing and add the modem to DHCP I'd think it was slow but acceptable, but a MONTH ?? I guess it's about time they got some competition ...

Oh well, it's only a month but I can't say I'm looking forward to it ...

Rancor @ uqbar. media art culture ARENA

2009-02-01T14:50:00.006Z

Cienega Soon is showing some of her fantastic artwork at the uqbar media art culture arena. I went to have a look there yesterday when the exhibit opened and was blown away not just by the gorgeous pictures but by the way they were presented. An awful lot of work must have gone into these displays.

Now beauty is one thing but art is about so much more and I must say that especially "Rancor" really touched me. This is art that speaks and grabs you by the short and curlies, an aspect so often overshadowed by the quest for aesthetics in SL Art.

From what I can see the exhibit is only open until tomorrow so get your asses over there before it is too late !!

Announcement on her Flickr stream

Go there straight from here

Happy New Year

2009-01-01T18:13:00.005Z

Let me start by wishing you all a fantastic 2009. I hope you all manage to make some long fostered dreams and wishes come true in the year ahead.

Just before 2008 drew to an end I got a very nice prezzie in the mail. The catalogue of the Firenze exhibit arrived.

It turned out to be an impressive 300+ pages of very nicely printed SL images and I have to commend the organisers for keeping their promise to send it to all participating artists for just the shipping cost.

Guess I could bitch about the fact they managed to attribute the only one of my pictures that made it into the book to someone else but hey, I can live with the nice pic that was wrongly attributed to me ;-)

As for New Year's resolutions; I promise I will shut up about Firenze on this blog from now on and start doing a bit more writing about other aspects of SL again. Promised !

More SL Art in RL

2008-11-11T14:49:00.008Z

My friend Ariel Brearly was asked to submit Little Red one of her pictures for "Synthetic Masquerade" a RL Art exhibit taking place at SomeArts gallery in San Francisco's Bay Area opening on November 6th and running till November 26th. She also pointed me to a youtube video about the exposition.

I have to say I liked what I saw. It seems to be a nice mix of pure SL Art, and virtual wold derived or inspired art with a focus on the avatar as a representation of ourselves. The RL exhibit is mirrored inworld giving you a chance to visit it too and that's a very nice touch.

At the inworld exhibit I found a notecard with this statement from Capn Kurka, the curator for this exhibit:

As technology becomes more prevalent in our everyday lives, much of its impact on how it affects us psychologically goes mostly unnoticed. One of the few ways technology allows us to mold how we perceive ourselves (and how we want to be perceived) is expressed through the creation of an avatar for either a game, virtual world or website chat.

Current studies show that by the year 2010, seven out of ten people worldwide will have control of an avatar.

The works included in this exhibit will show the public many different ways artists perceive an avatar and no doubt many of the works will be a creative reflection of deep personal desires and fears along with concepts of beauty and ugliness.
The word “Avatar” originally came to mean "an embodiment, a bodily manifestation of the Divine. Since 1985, it has come to mean “a computer representation of a user.” Since the 1992 novel SnowCrash, the term Avatar was used to describe the virtual simulation of the human form in the Metaverse, a virtual-reality version of the Internet.

Some avatars are animated, consisting of a sequence of multiple images played repeatedly. Other avatar systems exist where a pixelized representation of a person or creature is used, which can then be customized to the user's wishes. Flat GIF based avatars are readily found in most chat room based websites.

Do visit whether it be in SL or RL, it is sure worth a look!

Slurl: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Jamville/170/119/23 (and teleport to the main gallery)

Firenze, the aftermath

2008-11-08T12:09:00.019Z

Earlier this week Frank Koolhaas, curator of the Rinascimento Virtuale exhibit in Firenze, organized an in-world meeting to talk about the catalogue, answer some questions and catch some impressions. I will not detail all that was said since it ended up a fairly long meeting but let me try to summerize what was said.

Frank explaining

First Frank briefly introduced the whole project (quotes are edited for clarity):

Frank Koolhaas: this is a project to read on different levels. The first level is the exhibit at the museum. The natural history museum of Florence is one of the most important in Europe, and the building where the exhibit is hosted is the section of anthropology. The reason why we chose this location is the following: first of all giving a strong legitimization to SL art, hosting it in a great museum and then creating a relation between anthropology and this new kind of art. it's not just the art of a social network but an art conceived as a social network and that's completely new. It was made in Florence, the cradle of the first Renaissance. This way, we could suggest that these people, these artists, are the interpreters of a new Renaissance.

Then we have another level: the catalogue. It's glamorous, filled with art, conceived like a work of art by Cristian Contini (Grocon Emoto) It's also a document about SL art, a way to show all these great artworks to the ones who don't come in RL.
There are images but also texts. The texts...a crucial point because there is something to say. I firmly believe that here in SL there are many talented people, some very creative people. And doesn't matter if they began to be artists yesterday.

About 25 avs turned up for the meeting

He then gave the word to Asian Lednev who actually did the design of the exhibit. He put firm emphasis on what a unique chance it was to use the antropology section of the museum of natural history because of the juxtaposition of the old culture and this new digital one. The crowd didn't dispute this but critical questions were raised as to how the SL work was actually displayed in the museum. Some were very adamant it was even degrading how some pieces had been treated.

The discussion went on with Bettina Tizzy making a few points and asking a few very pertinent questions.

Bettina Tizzy: I want to preface by saying that I appreciate all your hard work, Frank, and the work of all the others who were involved in creating all manifestations of this exhibit. My concerns are as follows:

1) For the opening night, many SLers traveled hundred if not many thousands of miles to be there. They were
a) Not informed that there would be a catalog nor that it was not ready
b) Not informed of peripheral events such as the booth that appears in your flickr stream
c) In fact, they weren't informed of anything other than a very very cordial greeting by Frank, and that was nice

What they did find, is the larger blown up pics on the floor ... leaning against the installations. There were some thumbnails, but no explanation that these thumbnails were identifiers for the images portrayed in the videos.

I appreciate the concept of SL art being exhibited in an anthropology museum. That is a good concept. However, the implementation was was [so] poor, that it shamed me. I do understand that later, over the course of a few days, the larger images were raised and placed above the showcases. I have worked with many museums in my life and I realize how VERY VERY hard it is to work with them. However, I think that the association of anthropology and SL art could have been realized by working with the museum in another space, but under the "auspices" of the museum. Since you were obligated to work within the confines of what was already there. As I was saying to you in conversation earlier, Frank... I think that part of the problem here is that you did not convey some of these important things to those who had spent a small fortune to be there and placed their trust in you. Communication is a good thing.

Bettina, Cienega, Kynne & myself

Bettina went on to state that her main fear is that SL Art would become trivialised and that was the reason for her concern with the images she saw from Firenze.

The meeting went on for a good while longer but I think the main points had been made by that time. One thing noteworthy is that Bettina revealed they are working with some of the top publications in the world, even though she couldn't reveal details yet. She sure got me curious :-)

Personally I think the concept of a recognised cultural institute especially an ethnographic museum hosting digital art is a great one. It looked to me however the practical limitation of the place made it really difficult to truly integrate the SL artworks resulting in work standing on the ground or on top of high display cabinets. The SL works were added instead of integrated and that is a nice opportunity lost in my view. I think this was also the reason why so few works were actually shown in printed form. Asian argued it was a matter of poor resolution of the pics but I'm afraid to say that doesn't hold water knowing the kinds of sizes most people sent their pics in.

A pic by Mecca at the exhibit

I think another reason why people felt let down was the fact so many pics were invited for the exhibit. Asian mentioned about 150 different artists. Seeing I was asked to send in a selection of 22 pics (and from what I heard from others some had a lot more). That would make at least individual 3300 pictures and most likely a whole lot more. How can you expect to show such an amount of work ? Maybe a more discriminating approach would have been favorable or at least would have left fewer people somewhat frustrated.

As Bettina pointed out the communication wasn't really clear either. I assume some of that has to do with the language barrier. I've seen a lot of blogs and online articles in Italian leading up to the event but very little in English. Because of that I think the perception of the whole event may have been a fair bit different in the Italian community as compared to the rest of the world.

One last thing: I still feel proud to be part of it even if in a very small way. Unlike some others at last week's meeting I am not going to scream blue murder over the way my work was treated. I still don't consider what I do Art with a capital A. Time and the RL art critics will tell what future SL Art has. In that respect this exhibit was a first and something has been set in motion even if it wasn't perfect or what we had dreamed of. I certainly don't regret travelling there if only for the wonderful people I met. Thank you Frank / Mario for inviting me.

About the exhibit:

- it is still open until January 7th, 2009
- it consists of (according to Asian Lednev)* :

150 artists
46 printed works
13 plasma screens
30 electronic picture frames
46 printed curtains

About the catalogue:

- It's been said that the catalog will be available to all participanting artists at shipping cost
- Regular sale price will be around 30 €.
- it is not sure when it will be available as it is still being printed.
- thumbing through the whole in-world version of the catalogue at the meeting place I was a little disappointed to find just a single one of the pics I submitted.

* I can't say these numbers correspond to what I remember seeing while I was there for the opening evening

Fun in Firenze

2008-10-26T18:56:00.013Z

So Mylena and I are back, back from our trip to Firenze that has left us with some absolutely unforgettable memories. We arrived in Italy on Sunday evening after spending two days in a lovely hotel in the Vercors region in France. There we had a lovely 10 course "menu de degustation" accompanied by a wine tasting on Friday evening. Saturday we spent an afternoon picking mushrooms under the watchful eye of a local guide and mushroom expert. We ate what we picked that evening and it sure was yummy. We had a good giggle with one of the other hotel guests who looked like she was an avatar that somehow escaped SL. All through dinner she wore a white woollen hat, fingerless gloves, a leather jacket with metal studs and big ass boots that looked like they were made from an awful lot of prims.

She even had prim lashes !!

Arriving in Firenze was a bit of a shock. We made a little tour around the old center on Sunday evening and found it to be absolutely overrun by tourists and all in all really dirty. It must have been a Sunday thing however because when we walked the old narrow streets from piazza to piazza on Monday things had been thoroughly cleaned up. Being very curious we also walked past the Museum of Natural History where the exhibit would take place joking it would be too funny if it all turned out to be an elaborate hoax. But sure enough the big Rinascimento Virtuale poster adorned the facade of the building.

Not a hoax after all.

Tuesday we spent on touristy stuff. Walking around, visiting the sites but all the while at least my thoughts were with what would happen that evening. A little after six we were at the museum. At first I heard nothing but Italian around me in the crowd that had gathered in the courtyard of the building for the opening speech. I was disappointed not to see any familiar faces. I was starting to fear no one would show up. Then all of a sudden I heard this guy being interviewed by some reporter spell out his SL name An-dro-me-ga Vo-la-re ... Yay, found one ! While saying hi to Andro I heard "Hey Loki !!". Turned out to be Track Hax who was talking to no one other than Nyla Rossini and her husband. We went on to have a look at the exhibit and there they were; Silver, Keiko, Luther, Pilgrim, Raul, Khamudy and Angie. It was really like meeting up with old friends and meeting a few new ones.

ltr Kham, Raul, Nyla's hubby Matthew, Nyla & Andro

I'll be short on the exhibit itself. Let's say it was a nice try but there was not that much SL-Art on display and clearly set up not too interfere too much with the normal collection of the museum resulting in pics being on the floor leaning against display cabinets or pics being almost two meters up on top of cabinets. A setup made of a number of those picture display frames was a nice idea but most of them stayed dark or displayed the setup menu. In the end everyone gathered around one big size monitor displaying an endless stream of pics while once in a while someone would go "hey that's yours!" or "Yay, one of mine". There were a few viewing booths set up to show some machinima. All in all a bit of a disappointment but the company largely made up for it. I'll probably write about the exhibit itself in a later blog.

One of Ariel's dreamy pictures on top of a display cabinet

After we'd seen what was there we decided to go for drinks but first went to pick up Hio at his hotel. Contrary to popular belief he is not actually green in RL but apart from that Hio is Hio. We ended up at an Irish pub on piazza della Signoria chatting, laughing, teasing, gossiping and generally having a great time. If someone listened in on the conversation they must have thought we were completely nuts with all the "woot" "lol" and "Yay" going on. We ended a really great evening having a late dinner at a nice restaurant barely big enough to seat all thirteen of us. You should have seen the waiter's face when Keiko wanted ketchup to put on her fettuccini bolognese ... priceless !

Strike a pose! Or was it hop on a poseball ?

Wednesday was a day of more sightseeing and touristy stuff which I won't bother you with. On Thursday we met up with Silver, Keiko, Luther, Pil & Kham again and strolled through Firenze, had a very good late lunch on one of the countless terraces and did some shopping. Sometimes RL can be so like SL only the food and wine are better in RL, in Italy anyway. More great food that evening when Luther prepared us some delicious pasta dishes at the apartment where they were staying. I picked up a few bottles of wine and a bottle of limoncello and we spent the evening chatting about everything and anything sitting outside on the apartment's little roof terrace around a couple of candles. A wonderful ending to an exciting few days.

ltr Luther, Keiko, Nyla & Pilgrim

It was really funny to see how we all got along so well and without any awkwardness about actually meeting for the first time in RL. I guess you can role play as much as you want but in the end the real person behind the av always shows through so in a way you really know the people even if you have never met them. It really makes me want to meet so many others I met in my time in SL because how ever much fun SL can be, nothing beats sharing a meal with real people.

I thank my lucky stars I got to meet all these lovely people.

Track, it was good to see you there. You should have tagged along on Tuesday.
Andro, it was really nice meeting you and it's a pity you couldn't stay longer.
Nyla, I still hear your wonderful laughter. It was great to meet you and your husband.
Angie, I love the pictures you took with my camera. I'm sure we'll see more of each other in world after this week.
Pil, Don't think we've seen each other in world all that much so far. So great to get to know you a bit better. Hope things went well in Portugal.
Raul, I can see why Gany loves you to bits. It was my privilege to meet a great guy like you.
Kham, what can I say apart from "I love your mind" héhé. Great meeting you too.
Luther, man that pasta was great! Hope to see more of you in world.
Hio, pity we didn't get to talk a bit more, still, it was really great to meet you!
Keiko, you sweet thing, it may sound a bit odd but I love you to bits.
Silver, meeting in person after all this time was wonderful. I sure hope it was a first and not a last. See you in world soon!
Mylena, thanks from the bottom of my heart for a wonderful trip.

Now let's all think long and hard for the next excuse to all meet again ;-)

Firenze here we come !

2008-10-14T14:14:00.003+01:00

The countdown has begun. Three more days and Mylena and I will be on our way to Italy. I wrote about "Rinascimento Virtuale", the exhibit of SL art in Firenze, in an earlier post. It opens on the 21st of this month. Well, the route is planned, the hotels are booked and we'll be arriving in Firenze on Sunday. I hope to attend the vernissage on Tuesday but I'm still waiting for confirmation. I sure hope to meet the organisers and Frank Koolhaas in particular. It sure looks like they have been doing a great job. I promise I'll write more about it when I'm back.

There is of course also another dimension. This exhibit is the perfect occasion to meet a few people I have known for a good long while but never met RL. I'm putting it mildly when I say I'm really excited about that. I don't know how many will be there but I hope there will be plenty. It would be so much fun if we could all get together and tell SL stories, whine about flickr drama, exchange tips and tricks and all of that without even touching a keyboard. What a novel idea! Anyway, if you read this and are going there too please leave a comment or let me know. I would hate to miss the opportunity to meet you too ;-)

Take action Linden Labs

2008-09-01T13:20:00.003+01:00

After all the commotion of this weekend regarding my exhibit at the Cannery I have taken down the exhibit as a whole. I was not prepared to alter the picture and just taking the one down wasn't an option, the zodiac as we know it has 12 signs not 11.

A lot has been said and discussed and I would sincerely like to thank those who offered their support or contributed to the ongoing debate.

I think however it's time to draw a few conclusions. What all this has shown me is that Linden Labs have no clear rules on what is tolerated and what not. Add to that the fact they are both judge and jury and we all have a problem on our hands. I am still convinced my picture is NOT "broadly offensive" yet a Linden (Harry) in all his wisdom decided after a complaint it was. This is not acceptable! Either there are clear and well defined rules and it's just a matter of applying the rules or they deliberately keep the rules vague but in that case there as to be a DEMOCRATIC way to decide whether or not a violation of TOS has been committed.

The way LL operates now is, in my view, a recipe for disaster because it allows individual people to settle personal differences or even just enforce personal views by means of launching a complaint with Linden Labs. This type of situation has throughout history led to gross cases of abuse and a lot of suffering. Being banned from SL is not exactly the same as being sent to Siberia or find yourself forced into a re-education program but just the same something should change: either we get clear rules or a REAL form of appeal in case of a complaint.

Related links:

http://www.vintfalken.com/virgins-are-broadly-offensive/
Thanks Vint!
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=29384057023&ref=share
http://www.avatarsunited.com/en/groups/second-life/worldwide/the-world/linden-lab-say-excuse-to-loki-popinjay
Thanks Nadine! An apology would be nice but I don't count on it.
http://shoshanaepsilon.blogspot.com/2008/09/what-does-broadly-offensive-mean.html
Thank you too Shoshana

Is Loki a pervert ?

2008-08-30T10:48:00.009+01:00

It's been a while since I posted here. That is mainly because I had little or nothing to tell you. Linden Labs changed that last night by sending me an e-mail that made me wonder whether to laugh or cry.

Dear loki Popinjay,

This email is notification of action regarding your Second Life account,
loki Popinjay, for violation of the Second Life Terms of Service or
Community Standards. The violation in question occurred on August 29, 2008 in the region of Cannery Rezzable.

Violation: Community Standards: Broadly Offensive Content or Conduct

Real-life images, avatar portrayals, and other depiction of
sexual violence including rape, real-life images, avatar
portrayals, and other depictions of extreme or graphic
violence, and other broadly offensive content are never
allowed or tolerated within Second Life.

Nude photo of young girl holding a teddy bear needs to be removed
immediately. Alternatively, you may cover up the nudity with photo
alterations.

Action:
No additional action is being taken at this time.

Appeal Process: The decision to suspend your Second Life access was
reached after investigation of your use of the Second Life software and
service. If you would like to appeal your suspension, you may contact
Second Life Support, in writing, at the address below:

Second Life Support
Linden Lab
945 Battery Street
San Francisco, CA 94111

You may also appeal electronically by filing a support ticket via the
support portal at http://www.secondlife.com/support/

Please provide relevant information that you believe would explain the
above violation. Linden Lab reserves sole discretion in considering
whether to take any action on a written appeal.

This is the picture in question:

'Virgo'

Now, you have to know this picture is part of the Avatar Zodiac series I made for SL5B where it was on display until the very last day. Without complaints. It's been on display at the Cannery for weeks now. Without complaints ... till now.

Avatar Zodiac at SL5B

Frankly, how stupid and narrow minded do you have to be to find this picture offensive? It is in no way meant to be sensual let alone sexual in nature and all "bits" are covered. Since it was meant for SL5B where strickt guidelines were enforced as to what would be allowed and what not I actually added some hair to cover a nipple.

Is it me who has the distorted view here? Ah well, guess that's what you get when you live in some "Sodom and Gomorrah" called Belgium where the government only this week bought a painting by James Ensor for the Arts museum in Ghent depicting not one but TWO completely naked girls for 2.8 million €.

'Kinderen aan ochtendtoilet' by James Ensor

What bothers me the most is the procedure LL seems to follow. Probably some redneck complained and LL takes action by ordering me to remedy the situation. Last I looked the correct way to act would be to check the complaint and if found correct at least give me a chance to defend myself. In this case I would be very surprised if the complaint was indeed checked and the above mail is surely not a question for my view on the matter. Even more so it states I get a chance to "explain the above violation". It is not even questioned if it actually IS a violation.

That said I don't like to be nailed to the cross for being a pervert. In my opinion this picture is not in violation of TOS. So I'm not taking it down until my time at the Cannery is up and I will protest the supposed "violation of TOS". Surely there must be a few Lindens with some common sense...

Oh, and to answer the titel: of course Loki is a pervert, just not this kind ;-)

UPDATE:

I just received this notice from Harry Linden:

Hi there,

Linden Lab has reviewed, at your request, a discipline action recently taken against your account.

Our investigation shows that the discipline was correctly applied.

If any further information is required, Linden Lab will contact you regarding this incident. Otherwise, please consider the matter resolved as no further communications will be sent.

Guess I was wrong about the common sense

Snippets on Friday 07/11

2008-07-12T13:22:00.008+01:00

My sincerest appologies for missing two weeks. What can I say? I was just too busy preparing SL5B and enjoying the music at the world's best rock festival last weekend.

Cannery Gallery

Always something happening at the Rezzable Cannery. When Vint Falken asked me to put up some work at the Cannery about a week prior to the opening I didn't really know what to put up. Having worked my ass off to get pictures ready for SL5B I had little else lying about and I didn't want to just pick some from my Flickr stream. With a week to go there was no time to make decent new ones. Contrary to popular belief I do have a first life as well.

Long story short: I decided to put the Avatar Zodiac up at the Cannery in a slightly different form. So those who didn't have a chance to see it at SL5B can now get their butt over to the Cannery. It's worth a visit anyway. There is also work to admire from Leou Aeon and the amazingly talented Andromega Volare and more to come.

Go there straight from here

Avatrait

Pestilence and Heroine are showing this month at Avatrait. On July 12th at 1pm SLT you can ask your questions make your remarques or just admire the art on the walls at a meet and greet with Pestilence and Heroine.

Go there straight from here

Artists Park

This is the last week to see the work of Petr Vanbeeck and Silverdrake Sparrow at the Artists Park. The show will close on the 19th. As of June 21st they will be showing ew, never seen before, one of a kind images again by Petr Vanbeeck & Silverdrake Sparrow.

Twilight Gallery

Belmakor Pintens invites you all to Twilight Gallery this Saturday the 12th at 1pm SLT to see six amazing artists put their work on display.

Didih Merlin
Ghostalker Wise
Hinata Ivory
Ilian Garrigus
Prad Prathivi
Vallys Baxter

Go there straight from here

Music

Riona Rimbaud is organising a huge music event on July 13th & 14th featuring Kiku Seitan, Cyberpiper Roelofs, Yan Etzel, Angelina Ozsvar, Cedric Renoir, Sinatra Cartier, and the multitalented Nephie Eerie.

The event is meant to raise funds for the fight against cancer so be there!

Go there straight from here

Avatar Zodiac

2008-06-22T10:58:00.006+01:00

It's that time of year again when we celebrate SL's birthday. This year I decided to participate in SL5B, the resident run event that accompanies SL's birthday. As always I got to work on it way too late but I'm happy to say that after a week of slaving I pulled it off. Seeing this years event is all about diversity and the different cultures in SL I went for a series of portraits.

Avatars in SL are people's way to express themselves and a means to indicate what community they belong to if any. They are incredibly diverse. It's a joy to see how inventive people are in creating their own 'persona' in SL. I hope I managed to capture that diversity.

SL5B opens on Monday 06/23 and will run for two weeks.

That said I think it's a pity there was a fair bit of controversy about this years edition. The whole thing is PG and a number of rules were issued about what is and is not appropriate to be shown. I really regret that and me participating in the event is by no means an endorsement of that policy. I sure hope that those who were refused at SL5B will find another way to share their art with the rest of the community.

Go there straight from here

No Snippets Today

2008-06-13T21:30:00.004+01:00

When I open my Flickr's contacts page it's been plastered with the same text-picture for a while now. Make no mistake I understand the outcry. What Linden Labs is doing at SL5B is giving in to a bunch of religious fanatics, right-wing moralists and overall narrow-minded biggots. So I do support Stephen's cause but I will not put the picture on my stream.

"Why?" you ask? Well, because I think that would be a bit too easy. For one those concerned enough to protest will still be a small minority and can easily be ignored by Linden Labs. For two because just paying lip-service to a cause has never changed anything. Three because I mistrust mobs rallying behind a protest sign. I prefer to make up my own mind and choose my own plan of action. Four because just saying "I don't like this" is not very constructive and five and maybe most important because this is part of a larger issue and focussing on this single aspect will oversimplify the larger topic at hand.

Essentially this is about accountability. Who is responsible for what... Are we responsible for our own actions in world or is Linden Labs? I would assume we are but I guess Linden Labs is not too sure about that and fears being sued over what people in-world do.

And really, it's not surprising considering we live in a society where lawsuits are the glib and profitable answer to our own stupidity. Blame someone else for the result of your idiotic behaviour; the lawyers will find the minor technicality to hang them up on and reward you, and themselves, with a boatload of money.

I'll admit Linden Labs' reaction and the way they communicated it is a tad unfortunate to say the least but I imagine they just trying to cover their own butts. With the influx of new avs and SL getting more popular the aforementioned biggots have arrived too and claim their space under the WindLight sun. I say don't blame Linden Labs for protecting themselves but take a good long look around you in RL and drink in what this world has become. LL is nothing but the messenger of bad news and they don't deserve to be shot. Blame them for their half-ass communication, for their poor resident relations, whirly-gig decisions and at a stretch for their lack of balls to stand up and resist. LL is treading the never-before tred grounds of a virtual society created, and, to a degree, mirroring real society. Unfortunately that very same society responsible for demonising a number of lifestyles is also responsible for making the $ king and let's face it, LL need their $$ to survive.

Yes, I sympathise with Stephen, his family and those who wish to protest but I'm afraid it's moot point. "SL is SL and RL is RL" is too easy a slogan. They are intertwined and this is a prime example. Want to change SL? Start with RL and no, I don't mean by posting a pic on Flickr...

Snippets on Friday 06/07

2008-06-07T12:11:00.005+01:00

First of all my sincerest apologies for missing last weeks snippets. Lack of time and lack of news combined made me skip a week.

Avatrait presents Hio

When you can announce someone and you don't even have to mention their last name you know you have a celebrity on your hands. This Saturday you won't want to miss the opening of 'The Bastard Side of Life!' featuring pictures by Hio Taringa.

Festivities start at 1:00 pm PDT. Fireworks start at 1:45 pm, Dancing with DJ Azu @ 2:00 pm and goes until 4:00 pm.

Twilight Gallery

Twilight presents the wonderful works of Anya Kivert, Azaiya Aeon, Beatriz Hayes, Danielh Dryssen, Elros Tuominen and Vivienne Cassavetes. This exhibit opens June 7th 1pm PDT. I'm sure that with a list of artists of this calibre it will be a "must see". Place to be is Aloha Oceans Estates 158,248,501

Firenze

This video was published yesterday to announce the "Rinascimento Virtuale" exhibit I mentioned before. I think it looks really cool and it promises the best for the actual exhibit in in October.

From the numerous Flickr comments it seems a fair number of people will actually be going to Firenze in person. I really look forward to meeting them as I am making plans to go over there myself. More news on that later ...

Interesting Links

For those interested in the history of OpenSim and the open source grid this is an interesting read by Danton Sideways about its history.

If you are interested in Marketing, social media and SL you should read what Social Media guru Kelly Feller from Intel has to say about it in her latest post at conversationsmatter.org

Snippets on Friday 05/23

2008-05-23T11:33:00.006+01:00

A fair bit of stuff this week. Seems like exhibits and picture contests are being organised left right and center these days. All the better I would say!

SL5B “Celebrating the cultural diversity of Second Life”

Each year, on the date that Second Life came out of beta (June 23rd 2003) SL's birthday has been celebrated with an art event everyone can participate in. If you want to be part of it this year you will have to hurry though. The SL5B-team will only be accepting applications until May 25th. This years theme is “Celebrating the cultural diversity of Second Life”.

You can expect to see the regions open for building on or shortly after June 1. The deadline for completing your builds is June 20. Gates open on June 23 and the event runs until June 30th.

At last years SL4B

Apart from the exhibit the team is putting together a retrospective of scenes from previous SL Birthday events. If you have movies or still images of 2004, 2005, 2006 or 2007 that you can share with full permissions, please drop then on Evie Fairchild, and include a notecard that explains which year the photos are from. If you have photos on a photo-sharing site, please send Evie a notecard with links to them. Once the photos are compiled, you may be invited to donate a voice remembrance to add to the slide show.

More info on SL5B on the Linden Blog
Info about SL5B on Vint's blog
Info about SL5B on Shoshana's blog
submit your applications for SL5B here

Cienega Soon

I said it before: I love Cienega Soon's art. A while ago she opened her own gallery at SL City of the Arts at Hyacinth Island. Two floors of beautifully colourful art and there is a wing reserved for invited artists. Definitively worth a visit! On top of that 60% of all sales goes to Bread & Jams, feeding the homeless.

Go there straight from here

Exhibit at Plutonia

My French speaking friends Sebcaen Ulysses and Gabrielle Sinatra are showing their remarkable pictures at Plutonia together with Hinata Ivory, Vayne Shan & Sypher Wyler.

Grand opening of the event is on May 24th at 12PM SLT

Go there straight from here

Exhibit at The Cannery

There is always something going on at the Cannery. May 21th an exhibit opened featuring the art of Marianne McCann, Raul Crimson, Stephen Venkman, Kimberly Mirabeau and Prad Prathivi. With names like that you know you're in for a treat. You can go and see it till June 12th.

Go there straight from here

Playtoy Centerfold Contest!

Jeza May announced yet another picture contest. Here is your chance to be the centerfold of Playtoy!! You can submit your work until May 31th and, who knows, maybe win the 2000 L$ cash prize.

More info on Jeza's Flickr stream

Avatrait picture contest

Over at Avatrait Corbet Howard's work is till on display. Part of the exhibit is a nice set and pose created by Corbet and used in one of his pictures. You can use it to take your own picture. Anyone who has taken a shot there can post it in the Avatrait Gallery pool thus entering it in a picture contest organised by Stephen Venkman. You have until May 31st to get your images in. The winner will be announced on June 2nd.

More on Stephen's Flickr stream

Go there straight from here

Work on display at Shoshanna's Gallery

I have put some of my work up on display (and for sale) at Shoshanna's gallery. I wrote about the gallery last week and last I looked there are still a few open spots. So, if you have no work on display in world at the moment or your av is less then 90 days old contact Shoshanna Epsilon in world and fill those empty spots in this beautiful gallery! Of course you can also just go and have a look at the wonderful pieces already on display.

Go there straight from here

Wonderland

2008-05-17T10:43:00.005+01:00

Early March I wrote a post about why I think Linden Research should open their server sources. I concluded: "I think Linden Labs basically has no choice but to open up their source. If they don't others will soon be competing to set the standard for an open grid". From the looks of it I may have been right even though the competition comes from a somewhat surprising source.

Santa Clara, California based Sun Microsystems, developpers of the Solaris operating system, Java and builders of high-end server hardware have been in SL for a good long while now. The sims they own are only partly open to the public. Some are Sun employee-only isles. I often wondered why they didn't use SL more as they are known to be big proponents of the "the network is the computer" adagio and SL fits that bill perfectly.

Java mascot Duke in SL

The answer is simple, they have develeoped what they call "Project Wonderland". It is described as a "toolkit for creating collaborative 3D virtual worlds." Sun's vision for this Java based multi-user virtual environment is to "provide an environment that is robust enough in terms of security, scalability, reliability, and functionality that organizations can rely on it as a place to conduct real business". This all sounds like music to my ears because let's be frank: SL is neither secure nor reliable and I have a hunch they are at the end of the ride in terms of scalability. Functionality? Everything in Wonderland seems to comply with open standards which will make interaction with existing tools easier. At the moment Maya is used for content creation but other tools like Blender, 3D Studio Max, Lightwave and a number of others are being looked into. Imagine how much easier life would be if you could use these standardised tools to create content ready to upload.

Even though it is still in it's beta stage (present release is version 0.4) Wonderland is not just an exercise. At Sun's Menlo Park Campus there are 19 physical buildings named MPK1 to 19. Now they have a new building: MPK20, built in their own virtual world. In this video Nicole Yankelovich (Principle Investigator for Collaborative Environments program at Sun Microsystems Labs) shows us around MPK20.

Watching this video you can see it doesn't look as imaginative or artistic as SL does but, that's just a matter of content. The core functionality is there and what's more it's all based on open source projects. Wonderland relies on these existing technologies:

Project Darkstar - provides the scalable, persistant server software infrastructure
JVoiceBridge - provides realtime immersive stereo audio with distance attenuation
Java 3D - provides the scene graph on which the 3D world and scene manager is built
Project Looking Glass - provides the 3D scene manager

So, could Wonderland be the keystone of the Metaverse? I don't know but it seems to me Sun steps up to the plate well prepared. Compared to SL, Wonderland is build on existing tried and tested open source technologies, it complies to open standards and since it's Java based it's completely platform independant. On top of that Sun has the resources and more importantly the in-house knowledge to address issues like secure authentication, content protection, compatibility with open document formats and many others. Unlike SL, Wonderland is not a stand-alone client-server application, it's embedded in an existing framework.

Did I mention I like Sun stuff ?

Even though they themselves seem to see Wonderland purely as a collaboration tool for businesses and educational puropses I think it's important that a big company like Sun recognises the fact virtual worls have an added value and deem it important enough to devote time and money to them well beyond setting up some sims in SL. Unlike LL's server code the Wonderland source is out there. Will someone pick up on it?

Interesting reads about Sun and its involvement with virtual worlds:

The Wonderland homepage: includes the Wonderland sources and a binary download
Wonderblog : a blog about project Wonderland
Virtual wolds at Sun: A blog about Sun's involvement in vitual worlds including SL

Just for the record: I'm in no way associated with Sun Microsystems other than being a Solaris sys admin :-)

Snippets on Friday 05/16

2008-05-16T20:34:00.004+01:00

A rather short one today. Mind you quality over quantity !!

Opening of the Gardens of NPIRL Delights.

Bettina Tizzy from the Not Possible in Real Life group and Rezzable have joined forces to set up an unprecedented art show. Inspired by a triptych by the well known Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch entiteled "The Garden of Earthly Delights" they build this show with the help of over a 100 architects, builders, coders and artists. The little I've seen of it so far looks very promising.

For more info I gladly point you to the NPIRL blog and gardens.rezzable.com.

Good news for starting SL artists.

Shoshana Epsilon has announced she will be offereing space in her gallery without any strings attached to avs who are 90 days or younger when they apply or have no art being displayed elsewhere in Second Life. (Flickr, etc, is ok) The art can be photograps as well as sculptures. It can be on display for as long as three months. More info can be found on Shoshana's blog. You can also contact her in-world.

I think this is a marvelous idea of hers since I can imagine it's not easy "breaking in" into the existing scene. I'm sure she will discover a lot of new talents through this initiative.

Good news for me.

Yesterday I got word from the organisers of the exhibition "Rinascimento Virtuale" (Virtual Renaissance) which will open at the (RL) Museum of Natural History of Florence, Italy October 21 2008 and will run untill January 7 2009. They selected 21 of my pictures to be displayed at the exhibition. Even though I'm a bit surprised at some of their choises I think it would be quite something to be part of a RL exhibition.

From what I've noticed 21 isn't a lot, some people have up to 114 selected which leads me to believe there might be another round of selections happening before the pictures will actually be displayed. I also don't know whether they will be printed, projected or displayed on screens, individually or as part of slideshows, it all remains to be seen.

Snippets on Friday 05/09

2008-05-10T06:13:00.004+01:00

Even though I had a fairly quiet Friday I didn't feel like writing and well, I'm sure all four regular readers of this blog know by now it's more likely to be posted on Saturday anyway ;-)

Koinup Windlight contest

If you had planned to submit a picture for the Windlight contest on Koinup but haven't done so yet you're too late. Submissions have been closed. Having had a look at the numerous pictures entered I must say I wish the judges, Vint Falken, Pastrami Linden & Torley Linden good luck. I wouldn't want to be in their shoes.

Psssttt.... just pick this one !! ;-)

Relay For Life

In June the Relay Raiders will organise a Photo/Art event for Relay For Life. For this Claudia Mantis is looking for help from artists to spread pictures around a sim. It will be some sort of contest but without a L$ reward. This year's RFL themes are Celebrate, Remember and Fight Back. You can use all 3 themes in your photo or only 1 or 2, whatever fits a great photo. The top pieces will be auctioned off at the end of the event.

If you feel like doing your bit to help fight cancer you can contact Clausia Mantis at ClaudiaMantis[at]gmail.com.

Friends Fighting Cancer RFL benefit Concert 2

Today May 10th some of SLs top live sim filling musicians will be playing in the stunning Bliss concert venue on the intersection of four sims so it can become the largest concert ever in SL! You can help raise funds to fight this horrible disease with your friends at this amazing 6 hour marathon concert. This event is an official fundraiser for RFL.

Live Artists:

* Freestar Tammas - 3pm
* Thumper Boucher - 4pm
* Kim Seifert - 5pm
* OhMy Kidd - 6pm
* Jackdog Snook - 7pm
* Shantu Selene - 8pm

Location: Bliss Garden Center - Plants Flo, Bliss Gardens (241, 10, 21)

Cannery Gallery

There is yet another new event underway at the Cannery Gallery. This time the place will be divided into 5 areas which artists can use to display their work - and sell it, if they please. Works will be on display for a whole month.

Even though those who already had work on display at the Cannery in the past had first dibs, the 5 spots were taken before I could say "euh"... Oh well, next time :-)

Avatrait

While frantic work is being done on the new Avatrait website the in-world Avatrait Gallery proudly presents Corbett Howard, the newest Featured Artist.

The opening will be on Saturday, starting at 1pm SL time. Festivities include the usual fireworks and dancing afterwards. Needless to say the place will probably be packed to the rafters again with everyone and anyone who has name and fame in the SL arts world.

Twilight Magazine

Last week I received the first issue of Twilight Magazine. Twice actually since the first copy missed a few pages, a small mistake promptly corrected. Editor and publisher Belmakor Pintens assisted by staff writers Milla Alexandre and Willow Caldera managed to put together an interesting read. In Belmakor's words: "Twilight Magazine is all about SL photography, finding and exploring everything it has to offer, and letting you know what it is we find."

Most all of the 28 pages are interviews with great artists. Some like the one on this beautiful "Smoke and Tears" by Ariel Brearly are about specific pictures.

Others are about series of pictures or just general interviews with the artists like the ones with Sebcaen Ulysses or Gabrielle Sinatra which I both enjoyed reading very much. There is also three interviews featuring galleries.

All in all a very interesting effort and I'm really looking forward to the second issue. You can sign up to get your own free copy of the magazine at http://www.twilightmag.com/

Being Creative

2008-05-04T15:26:00.003+01:00

Last night the winners of the "Stiletto Moody Contest" were announced. The single picture I entered made it to the final round of 20. Alas it was a case of "close but no cigar". Frankly seeing the other pictures (even ones that didn't make the final cut) I'm already happy to have made it to the final.

Collin Savon got first prize with Mia Olivier and Ryker Beck taking second and third respectivly. Of the three winners I think I like Ryker's best because in a very cheeky way hers showcases the shoes best. That said, both Collin's and Mia's are gorgeous pictures as well. This morning I had another look at the pictures currently on display at Siletto Moody. Another one I really liked was that of Cienega Soon, it's a delightful burst of colour and light.

As much as I like fiddling with pictures in Photoshop or making poses for them my oldest love is probably video. Seeing as my RL diploma states I'm a "master in the audiovisual arts" my fingers have been itching a trying my hand at machinima (honestly, they should hang whomever came up with that word). I haven't worked with video for a couple of years now but I finally took some time to figure out the whole process of capturing in-world video.

In a way it's funny, it's like learning to walk all over. The whole capturing process is new to me as is the labyrinth of formats and compression techniques. The only thing familiar was the editing. It was fun to start up Premiere again even though it has definitively changed quite a bit since I last used it. Anyway, without further ado, my very first little experiment. It may not seem like much but it was the first hurdle I had to take. There is a lot left to learn and figure out.

There will be more and better to come I'm sure :-)

Snippets on Friday 05/02

2008-05-02T13:55:00.007+01:00

The Artists Park

Wyatt Benoir has announced the re-opening of the Artists Park with a gala this Saturday May 3rd at 2pm. The first to exhibit at the new location will be Ryker Beck. She will be selling ten exclusive, never-before-seen pieces at the show! 50% of all proceeds will be donated to Relay for Life. The fantastic DJ Nexeus Fatale will be spinning the tunes.

Knowing Ryker I'm sure there will be quite the crowd there. I for one will be stopping by for sure.

Go there straight from here

Update ! I got word this morning that, and I quote "Until further notice The Artist's Park Opening is postponed due to equipment problems and artist booking."
The opening should be soon anyway. I'll keep you posted.

Stiletto Moody

Also on Saturday the winners of the Stiletto Moody picture contest "Picture Your Moods" will be announced. I got an invitation for the Gala Awards Night. Whether or not that means my picture made it to the final 23 out of the 416 submitted I'm not sure. I guess we'll see tomorrow...

I'm still sorry I couldn't get my drag picture finished in time to submit it :-)

Windlight at Koinup

For those interested in SL photo contests there is still time to submit your work for the "Koinup Windlight Contest" until May 7th. All Second Life Citizens are invited to take part in this contest and submit their "windlighted" photos! The Contest is brought to you by Koinup, Torley Linden, Pastrami Linden and Vint Falken. Some of the coolest work already submitted can be seen here.

With 3 times 20 000 $L to be won I guess it's worth a shot. More info and the rules on Koinup.

Growing Pains

2008-04-18T18:51:00.004+01:00

Cindy Kesey wrote another great blog post venturing into the subject of SLove & SLex (no I don't do the trademarking stuff). Although I agree with her conclusion that cheating on your RL spouse in SL is more a symptom of an already flawed marriage then a cause I think there is more to it. Albeit true in some cases it is too easy a conclusion as it relies on a few givens I'm not so sure of.

Given one: the notion of eternal romantic love.

A marriage, even in the legal sense, is a contract, a contract that will hopefully be beneficial for both parties. Looking back at its historic significance one could debate the merits of such contract in this day and age where women no longer depend on their husbands to provide for them and their children or where the careful planning of strategic weddings to keep family fortunes together or alliances intact is no longer a real issue. Still, you don't have to look far to find cultures where, to this day, it is absolutely normal for parents to decide who their children will marry. Anyway, whether it be now or in the past, marriage and romantic love are two different things all too often confused in our western culture these days. Fact remains though that no one wants to grow old alone or be alone period. So I do believe a marriage can last forever but I am not convinced the same goes for romantic love.

Given two: getting caught with your pants around your ankles in SL is just as bad as it is in RL.

Hate to burst your bubble but it isn't. If I simply count the *hugs* & *kisses* or variations thereof I have received in my time in SL they by far exceed the number of RL hugs and kisses I've received in RL to this day. Face it: they are a convention; a way of expressing you like a person for lack of other, more subtle signals we have at hand in RL where a look can say more than a thousand words. I won't push it as far as to saying that doing the "pixel polka" is meaningless but to compare it to RL sex is selling RL short.

Given three: there is such a thing as a perfect marriage.

Need I say more ?

Now, if you accept above givens are not as factual as they appear in the first place what is the problem with SL relationships? Why do people still get their knickers in a knot over them?

What I do see is that SL in many ways acts as a magnifying glass for emotions, fooling a lot of people into seeing things that simply are not there. I believe it has a lot to do with the limited way in which we can express ourselves online. It leaves no room for subtlety and forces us to be very explicit to avoid all kinds of misunderstandings. By doing that the message sent becomes a very powerful statement. The reaction will be equally strong and the ball starts rolling... Looking at it from the outside and comparing given conversations and/or interactions with RL ones can be very easily misinterpreted. You can not compare a RL relationship with an SL relationship because the whole frame of reference in which they exist is completely different. Trouble usually starts when people start mixing up the two and start judging SL actions within a RL frame of reference or the other way around. I guess the main question is where you draw the line between the two because the are inevitably intertwined and most certainly related.

This is not an exclusive SL thing. I've seen the same issues in chat rooms many years ago. It will take time for people to learn to put things in the right perspective. If you look at how teenagers, who grew up with all this technology, have made a whole new frame of reference that includes both online presence and physical presence I think there is hope for the future. In the meantime we'll have to deal with the growing pains.

On a side-note: I'm no ogre, so yes, I left out some of the grey in between for the sake of argument ;-)

Snippets on Friday 04/18

2008-04-18T18:11:00.003+01:00

Yay, made it on Friday again!

4 Woman's Perspective

Jeza May, Kade Klata, Seide Tripp, Aya Liotta are putting together an exhibition that will open Saturday next week. Judging from their respective Flickr accounts I'm definitively curious.

DisTorSioni PeRceTTivE

What started as an idea for an exhibit of work by Hio "Force of Nature" Taringa and Sole Krams has expanded into an Italians only exhibit. Dates are yet to be determined but it should open early May. I hope there will be pizza and Chianti served ;-)

Melodious Source @ Rezzable Cannery

Yesterday "A Different Light" went out at the Cannery. It would have been nice if it had gone out with a bang but no time for sadness since today "the Source is within" opens at the Cannery featuring the wonderful art of SL artist Melodious Source and some of what she calls her "sources". Everyone familiar with her work knows this is most surely a happy occasion.

Snippets on Friday 04/11

2008-04-12T15:00:00.009+01:00

As usual on Saturday :-)
Looks like it will be a busy evening! but first:

RC 1.20

Last Thursday we all had the pleasure of being handed what will probably go down in history as the worst ever SL client. Numerous people reported huge bugs in RC 1.20. Some have problems with "snapshot to disk" like Mylena Aquitaine reported (you can vote for the jira here). For others like Vint Falken the renderglow feature is totally borked and I'm sure the list goes on. The LL blog reads like a todo list these days.

Apart from the bugs there is the new user interface formely codenamed Dazzle. It is clearly desined by someone who is either blind or working in Redmond (which is probably even worse). As far as I am concerned it's hideous. Who needed a new UI in the first place? Give me back the old look!

I'm sure it's not easy to test new releases on every single system / graphics card out there but I think it's about time LL starts using the wages of their trademark lawyers and UI fiddlers to pay for developpers and software testers. It may only be a release candidate but even at that it should never have seen the light of day.

More artwork exhibits

This evening Saturday 12th at 11am SLT you can go to the opening of the "Las Tres Gracias" exhibit featuring the works of Florence Babenco, Zonja Capalini & Ludmilla Writer. I'm sure it will be worth a visit.

Go there straight from here

Relay For Life Concert

Some of SL's top live musicians will be playing a benefit at the stunning Bliss concert venue on the intersection of four sims. It promises to be one of the largest concert ever in SL. If you want to do your bit to help raise funds to fight cancer, here's your chance to do it the fun way.

Confirmed artists (as far as I know):

Bara Jonson (manager Amanda Steadman) - 4/12 at 2pm
Maximillion Kleene (manager Kat Vargas) - 4/12 at 3 pm
Edward Kyomoon (manager Bomsey Munro) - 4/12 at 4pm

Time : 2pm - 5pm SLT

Go there straigt from here

Fashion Show at Nex-Core

For those of you who are interested in fashion there is Nex-Core's "Ivalde Fashion" this evening.

Last reminder

Good luck with it Sho !!

Go there straight from here

Business in SL

2008-04-05T14:25:00.002+01:00

Last Wednesday while I was at work out of the blue I got a 1580 L$ payment from Shoshana Epsilon. When I asked her via mail what it was for she referred me to a note card she had given me in world. Reading it later that day it turned out to be a rather sad message.

Those of you who follow this blog or know me will be aware I had some pictures up at the Rezzable Cannery exhibit "A Different Light" curated by Shoshana. First of all she announced the exhibit is drawing to a close. Not the end of the world of course, it's the way things go. What made me really sad was the rest of the message:

"My apology is due to the lack of logistics on our part that prevented other things from happening.

a) There is no RL book. I know I promised it, but I was not given the opportunity to put it together. Last I heard, Vint was two weeks from finishing it. She was working on it, but she’s been pulled off to do other things. Contact RightAsRain Rimbald to get information on it.
b) There is no show sponsor. In the last show, RightAsRain found one. If there was one for this show, I haven’t heard of it.
c) The voting system is up, and has been for about 6 weeks. That and any sales are the only possible income from which you would get any monies. RightAsRain is the only person I know who might know how the financial situation is standing and how you would get your share.

My job was to get art and artists. I had your help to have classes, and I thank all of you who participated.

An apology that is just words is useless. As part of my apology to all of you for the lack of support, I will be converting $100 into Lindens and dispersing it to all artists. I want to thank you for your time, your effort, your talent, and your trust in me as a curator. I apologize profusely for having failed you.

-- Shoshana Epsilon"

I have to say I too was expecting a bit more from Rezzable as far as "A Different Light" was concerned so I understand Sho's disappointment. This whole thing put me in a bit of an awkward situation though. I find myself in the middle of a disagreement between people I consider friends. So I'm not about to chose sides or point fingers but I'll try to look at the bigger picture.

I think this dispute or incident, for lack of a better word, is unfortunately a bit symptomatic of small RL businesses in SL. The mix of volunteers or barely payed employees and the people who hope to actually start something is not always easy. Add to the mix the fact communication is not as easy as it is working with colleagues face to face and you know it will get rocky at times. That said I think the main problem for these start-ups is focus. Take Rezzable as an example: what is their aim ? What do they stand for ? I'm not too sure... I guess the uncertainty about where SL in itself is going makes it difficult. Will SL be the metaverse of the future? Is it merely a start that will soon be replaced by competing technology ? All these factors make it difficult to rely on SL as a target for business. I think it's safe to say that if at this time you want to start something, involving SL, and I don't mean a clothing shop or the likes, you're probably better of regarding SL as just a part of the whole social media scene, dividing efforts between SL and all that surrounds it. I for one am not convinced SL presently offers a sufficiently mature platform to invest any of my euros in a business relying on it.

Snippets on Friday 04/04

2008-04-05T14:14:00.004+01:00

A short one again...

Ganymedes Costagravas

Last Sunday I attended the opening of Gany's exhibit and saw it was good :-) Go have a look it's worth it!

Codebastard Redgrave

After Gany's opening I went to the party Codie was organising to celebrate the opening of her Boudoir Rouge. I'll spare you the juicy details but I can tell you it was a lot of fun.

There was also a photography contest featuring Mizz Codie as the sizzling model. First prize went to this red hawt pic by Mylena Aquitaine.

Congratulations to her. A well deserved win if you ask me.

Pssssttt ... if you happen to see Mylena in world today wish her a happy RL birthday ;-)

Asset Servers

2008-04-01T20:47:00.005+01:00

In my "Snippets on Friday" post of March 21th I pointed out there were some fears LL was going to obsolete the asset servers and replace them with a distributed database hosted on the sim servers.

Reading comments and talking to people about the isssue I already got the impression this scenario was rather unlikely. Today that was confirmed as Tess Linden was kind enough to reply to an email of mine with this statement:

"Our cluster of Isilon asset servers are not going away with this new
release. We are not adding distributed databases on the simulator
hosts. We're adding small distributed web services in front of our
central *database*, which is different from the central asset servers
and different from distributed databases on sim hosts. This would allow
requests to the database to be cached more coherently.

The current architecture will begin to hit the limit in terms of
scalability and this is a large effort to try to maintain that, to bring
better experience to the residents."

Thank you Tess for sheding some light on the issue.

Tess is a Software Developer at Linden Lab working primarily on the distributed server components. She's been at Linden for 2 and a half years.

Snippets on Friday 03/28

2008-03-29T14:19:00.005Z

I guess everyone was too busy discussing Linden Lab's changed trademark policy or adjusting blogs, Flickr streams or whatever to comply. So lean pickings this week...

Gany showing at Kirkness

On Sunday March 30th at 11am SLT you can attend the opening of "Male SL-Photography of Ganymedes Costagravas" at the Kirkness Art Centre.

I don't know what will be on display, but knowing Gany's work it will most likely be real eye-candy. Congratulations on this exhibit my friend. I will most certainly try to be there for the opening.

Go there straight from here

Confirmation

My announcement of last week that Shoshana Elpsilon will be showing at the Avatrait Gallery has now been confirmed with this wonderful poster. (I wanted to show it here but obviously the picture is protected) I can't wait to see what she has in stall for us.

Exhibition in RL about SL art

Both my friends Kynne Llewellyn and Ariel Brearly were contacted by Mario Gerosa, known in SL as Frank Koolhaas about a RL exhibit of SL art and asked for their permission to use some of their work. The exhibit is to take place in Florence, Italy, from Oct 2008 to Jan 2009. It will be organized by the Festival della creatività (website in Italian) in the Museum of Natural History and Anthropology.

I'm very curious to see how this will pan out. I don't know who else was invited but by asking Ariel and Kynne Mr. Gerosa sure shows he's got great taste.

More on Mr. Gerosa at SLNN.com or on his own blog.

Snippets on Friday 03/21

2008-03-21T17:55:00.004Z

Can't believe I actually made it on time this week.

Sad News

This is all that's left of the Magma Art Group sim.

For reasons unknown the owner, Omurtag Milev, has closed down this place that saw some great expositions in it's short existence. I for one will miss the place. Good luck in your future endeavours OM!

More Sad News

I always knew Katharina Malthus is a smarty. She posted a pic on Flickr dealing with her concern LL is moving the asset databases away from the central asset servers to smaller distributed databases on the sim servers. There is no doubt in my mind it will not help solve any lag problems if anything it will probably cause even more asset problems. As she states in her comment this is still not officially confirmed. Let's keep our fingers crossed...

Good News

A cute little birdy told me April's exhibit at the Avatrait gallery will be dedicated to the art of talented Shoshanna Epsilon. Definitively something to look forward to. I actually posed for her last night with my friend Kynne Llewellyn. Can't wait to see my bare butt grace the walls of the gallery ;-)

More Good News

Multi talented Nephie Eerie has shared with the world some of her musical work. You can now listen to her tunes on http://www.thesixtyone.com. If you do, make sure to register and give her songs a bump she deserves it.

For those of you who don't mind a download she still has two of her mixes online. I'm listening to one of them while I'm writing this as I often do :-)

Snippets on Friday 03/14

2008-03-15T11:24:00.005Z

In keeping with tradition: a day late...

Ladies First

I've seen a number of initiatives announced for this weekend. One that certainly drew my attention is this one:

Seeing some of the names this is going to be something you absolutely shouldn't miss!!
Sorry for stealing your picture Silver but I couldn't have done it better and after all it's for a good cause ;-)

Looker

Compatriot and fellow blogger/flickerite Looker Lumet is showing his pictures at Portucalis until the end of March. I haven't had the time to visit myself but I'm sure it's more then worth a visit.

Go there from here

Windlight presets

We all love Windlight right? There are a few presets you can use as a starting point for your own experiments in the environment editor. Thanks to a tip from Kynne Llewellyn I found out omnipresent Torley has made a collection of extra sky and water presets available. I haven't had time to play around with them but Mylena Aquitaine has.

Doesn't get more Torley than this I guess :-)

There is a zip available with the preset xml files you can manually put into the correct folders and an executable. A word of caution though: if you use the executable make sure to change the install directory to the Release Client during the install because by default the files are put in the obsolete Windlight client.

Thanks for letting me use this picture Mylena.

Download the file here.

Opening Pandora's box ?

2008-03-08T12:40:00.007Z

For a while now I've been wondering what route Linden Labs is going. Rumours have been around that the server code would be open-sourced but until now that hasn't materialised. Would it be a good idea? Unlike some others I do think it's a good idea. Obvious benefit of opening the code is more people will look into it and fix the bugs and security holes that exist presently. It will also allow for a breath of fresh air when it comes to new features. Most of all it means the SL-grid can grow and evolve. In my opinion 2007 was the year LL suffered from their own success. The grid has become laggy and unstable,riddled with bugs, security holes have left it open to griefing and DoS attacks and it looked like LL was scrambling to put out fires left, right and center but was never able to get control.

Many times the analogy has been made between this stage of development of the grid and the early days of the web. At present the grid is a privately held project with limited resources and limited space to expand. Imagine what could happen if those limitations were lifted. It could lead to the grid being an international network with sims all over the place. Sounds like the World Wide Web reinvented in 3D to me. It doesn't mean we all have to start running our own sims, but we could if we wanted to. More importantly, those willing to invest their money, ideas and creativity into a next generation www could do just that.

Maybe LL could follow the path the likes of Sun Microsystems, Novell and RedHat have taken. They split off an open source branch (open Solaris, open SuSE, Fedora) and take whatever good comes out of it into your their own relaeses. You could imagine LL taking a similar route: free open-sim server code for everyone to tinker with and use but unsupported by LL and server software sold and supported by LL. Sims based on LL supported servers could have a closer integration with the Linden owned grid.

Of course there are concerns. Some argue open sourcing the server would make the grid unsafe since it would allow owners of sims outside the Linden Lab controlled part of the grid to steal all content from whoever enters their sim or use it to plant malicious code on your pc, or ... the possibilities are endless. That is probably true and it will definitively be a challenge to find ways of solving those problems but it doesn't change the fact that the practical problems disappear in the shadow of what could be. The Internet as a whole has never been a safe place; there will always be people out there looking for an opportunity to steal your credit card number, prey on your children or make your life hell just for the fun of it. I believe the benefits outweigh the risks.

I think Linden Labs basically has no choice but to open up their source. If they don't others will soon be competing to set the standard for an open grid. I think LL owes it to itself to be the true pioneer of a really open Metaverse. They will probably never be able to keep control of the SL-client, nor do I think they intend to, but their server software can be the foundation of things to be that are far greater then what they could achieve all by themselves.

Snippets on Friday 03/07

2008-03-08T11:52:00.006Z

Just a few short announcements this week since I'm writing on something else.

Magma Art Group

This weekend will see the opening of a new exhibit at the Magma Art Group by a man we all know and love: Stephen Venkman.

I'm curious to see what he has prepared exclusively for this exhibit. Grand opening on Saturday 03/08/08 from 11:00am till 2pm slt time. Hope to see you there.
Go there straight from here

Avatrait

Last weekend the Avatrait presented this months artist on display: Daequix Scarborough. The opening was definitively a resounding success.
Go there straight from here

Rezzable

Rezzable have enlisted the services of Vint Falken who actually traveled to London last week to meet up with the folks at Rezzable HQ. It seems a new exhibit is in the making featuring the art of the most talented Melodious Source. Looking forward to it!
I'm curious to see what else they have up their sleeve :-)

Snippets on Friday 03/01

2008-03-01T16:14:00.005Z

I thought about making this "Snippets on Saturday" since I'm late again, but then I'd probably have to make it "Snippets on Sunday" next week. Deadlines are just not my thing I guess.

I have been to a few events this week and had a lot of fun doing so.

Bloggers Party

The SL Bloggers parties are rapidly becoming notorious. Last Sunday a crowd gathered at The Cove where GoSpeed Racer hosted this months get-together. It was good to see that apart from the usual suspects a number of new faces (to me anyway) showed up.

The nice thing about these parties is the fact you can actually have a half decent conversation with the people around you. Whimsical banter flying around and clever wisecracks are no exception. If you like to yell "WOOT" or howlzzzz your lungs out these parties are probably not your cup of tea.

Links to a few other accounts of the event and pictures:

Dinosaurs extinct

Last Thursday the Rezzable sim Legends was spectacularly closed when a Greenie spaceship and a large meteor hit the sim trashing the dino skeletons that were there. Rezzable put up quite the show for a whole bunch of avatars who gathered to see the event.

It's nice to see that Rezzable doesn't sit on its laurels but has the courage to change things. The skeletons were very nice but now it's on to new and even better. I'm curious to see what they will come up with.

Names

I can't remember what led me to do so, but last week I checked what last names are available for new avatars these days. I tried a few first and last name combos I thought were funny and sure enough most of them were taken. A lot of those names seem to be taken very soon after they become available. Checking the names in world reveals a lot of completely blank profiles. If you're not going to use the name why register it? Are people name squatting maybe or picking up the good ones for possible alts? It's a pity we will probably never bump in to the likes of Not Telling, Too Short, Onmymind Georgia, Tape Gaffer, Mumbo Gumbo, Fujitsu Siemens, Her Hotshot or Nota Troglodite.

I also noticed some names turning up as unavailable but who don't seem to exist in game. Two examples are Laurence Llewellyn (as in Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen, BBC presenter) and Bob Morane (comic book character). I wonder if LL "reserves" some names. Maybe they just want to avoid copyright hassles.

A few of the ones that were still available and I thought were funny are: Vraiment Dufaux (French for Really Fake) and Quitethe Hotshot. Overall it seems like the good ones are taken though.

Seems Vint has just posted something about names as well. Must be true great minds think alike :-)

Snippets on Friday 02/22

2008-02-23T14:52:00.003Z

I should have known not to make any promises. Second week of snippets and not only am I a day late I barely have anything to write about. Still, here are this week's snippets...

Sebcaen showing at Wild Vertigo

Aeleen Demina has a beautiful gallery on the Wild Vertigo sim. Right now she's showing work by Sebcaen Ulysses. I had a look around and I have to say there are some stunning pieces there.
Since I know Seb's work from his Flickr stream I'm not surprised. Pay his work a visit it is well worth it!
Go there straigt from here

Art with a Heart

Shoshana Epsilon let me know she has some of her works on display at the Angel Dorei Art Museum. "A Celebration of Women" is an exhibition of works by some of the most talented women artists in SL. This show is presented in support of The Making Strides Group /ACS - breast cancer awareness and education. Please join them and celebrate Music, Art, Hope, Stength and the women in your life!
Beautiful work and an opportunity to contribute to a worthy cause, what more incentive do you need?
Go there straigt from here

Another great read

Cinderella Kesey wonders on her blog whether we all need a SLcoach in our second lives. As usual it is a well written and thought provocing piece you really should read.

I've taken my Xanax now can I call you in the morning? Love your style Cindy.

That's it for this week folks. Hopefully I'll have more for you next week. If you have anything you'd like me to include in the snippets just let me know and I'll consider it.

Snippets on Friday 02/15

2008-02-15T18:45:00.005Z

I'm going to try to post a bundle of short messages, announcements, trivia, whatever might be of interest on a weekly basis. It doesn't always have to be the more serious stuff right?!

Shamless plug
When I showed someone a few of my pictures on Flickr I didn't think it would lead to this: http://www.my-nightstand.com. Remains to be seen now if SL skin can compete with RL skin :-)

Mecca exposed at Magma

My dear friend Mecca Merosi is showing her art at the Magma Art Group sim. If you ask me it is well worth a visit. Her work is luscious yet tasteful, beautiful and somewhat provocative. The opening of the exhibit last weekend was a hoot I can tell you that much.
Go there straight from here

Kim at Avatrait
Kimberly Mirabeau, well know in the SL Arts community for her exquisite SL pictures has put up her work at the beautiful Avatrait Gallery. It will be on display till the end of the month. Don't miss it!
Go there straight from here.

Forum thread
It seems that after I posted a pic of Bourque Rau, someone I met at a live gig at the Hummingbird Cafe, if became topic of conversation at this forum.

See, now everyone can leave their comments here ;-)

In the Mix
Check out Eidur Kappler's podcasts. If you're in for some nicely mixed Kandish Vocal House be sure to visit her here. I really liked this months mix.

The art of making money of "SLArt"

2008-01-17T00:30:00.000Z

SLART, SLART, SLART

There I said it three times. And maybe I shouldn't have. Aparently someone by the name of Richard Minsky has trademarked everything from Slart over SLArt to slart. How crazy can it get?

This issue was first pointed out to me by my friend Gany after he was approched in world by an av called "ArtWorld Market". He put a few things together and sent out this notcard:

Hi all, this is an IM I woke up with:

================ the IM ==============

[1:09] ArtWorld Market: Hi Gany-- Your profile Picks with the heading SL-Art contains "SLart SLArt ". This infringes the SLART trademark and must be removed. SL-Art and SL Art are ok.

=== I didn't save my own text at this point, since between her 1st and 2nd message I had my moms RL birthday party to celebrate (it was today and my grandparents came of for a BIG lunch), but I said that I didn't use "SLART" as a search entry, and that "SLart" or "slart" should have nothing to do with her "SLART", and that I used it since that was the word people would be using when searching for SL-Art, or people making it. On top of that, I even pointed out to her there's a SL resident named "Slart Flanagan". So... go figure what she would want him to do... anyway, here's her reply to me on what I wrote ===

[10:29] ArtWorld Market: (Saved Mon Jan 14 15:25:35 2008) Thanks for gettting back to me, Gany. SLART is a "Standard Character Mark" which means slart (no caps) or any mixture of caps and lower case letters, or any font or style are covered by the trademark. If people are searching for SLARt, slart, SLart or any other version usiing the SL search feature it is the same. SL Art or SL-art are ok to use. Others have used it and have stopped when it was pointed out they were infringing on a trademark. Here is an examplpe: http://virtualartpedia.a.wiki-site.com/index.php/virtualartpedia:Community_Portal .
[10:37] Ganymedes Costagravas: fine, I changed it to SLArt and SL-Art. Tho I think it's not right to claim a trademark of a word that is a known and practically has become a standerd used term for SecondLife Arts, or something that will be a very often used search entry for SecondLife Arts.

============= Epilogue ===================

Now, I personally didn't know that "SLART" or "slart" or "SLart" or "SLArt" are all falling under that trademark, hell I didn't even know there WAS a trademark in it, and lets face it, wouldn't you use it as a search keyword when you make a topic in your Pics area on the profile, when you want to try to make some money by making SL-Art pictures?

Now I don't even know if this trademark is for real either, but I do know that whoever is behind it is actually trying to make it worth their while. I found at least one blog that was asked to change its name or enter a licensing agreement. The blogger seemed to be ok with this and actually states here: "As an artist in my First Life and a promoter of the arts in my Second, I fully understand and respect that someone who establishes a trademark on something–whatever it is– needs to protect them tooth and nail."

I'm sorry but are Gany and I the only ones who thinks this is ridiculous? SLArt to me is a common term that refers to all sorts of art(sy) work originating from SL or existing in SL. Who has the trademarks for "Rock and Roll", "Pointillisme" or "Baroque"? Same thing no? SLArt, however you write it, is a word, just a word, and if I want to use it I will. No silly money-hungry "entrepreneur" will keep me from doing so!

Anyway, I'm on my way now to trademark all variations of "SLex" & "SLove"... May as well make it worth my while too. Nah ... just kidding .... ;-)

PS: thank you Gany for letting me use your notecard!

UPDATE:

It seems Vint is on a crusade. I'll gladly join in. If you want a full permission copy of the T-shirt I made just ask. Feel free to hand them out to anyone! If you could make them available in world on a permanent basis even better!

I would love to see Flickr plastered with pics of people wearing it :-)

Sue me Richard !

Dreaming of a journey

2007-12-31T18:16:00.001Z

At the start of the new year we make our resolutions for the coming one. Sometimes we have to let our fantasy soar freely. Doing just that I've been thinking about how it would be to take a few months off work and go off on a journey to visit a bunch of the friends I've made in my time on SL. Wouldn't it be lovely to be able to travel from city to city all over the globe and spend some time in RL with all those wonderful people I've met online? Off the top of my head I can think of people in Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy, France, Portugal, UK, US, Canada, Brazil, Singapore and Australia I would love to meet. Imagine what an adventure it would be. Of course I would keep some sort of journal of my whereabouts and share my impressions. I'm sure it would be an interesting read.

Pondering on this I started wondering about a few things though. I've met a few Belgian SL citizens in RL and it was wonderful to get to know them on a different level. But what if some people would not be comfortable with the idea of giving up the relative anonymity. Maybe for some the step from SL to RL would be too big. Who would want to meet up with this odd bird from Belgium let alone accept him into their home or spend time with him? Who would want to show me their town and a little fragment of their life? Would people turn out to be what I imagined them to be? How would things be different once I got back?

The more I think about it the more I would actually love to do it. I think it could be a very interesting experiment. Unfortunately unless I start playing the lottery and win the big bucks it's not going to happen. Apart from that it would of course not be easy to just pack up here and leave my RL behind for a prolonged periode of time. It never hurts to fantasise though.

Happy New Year to you all. May 2008 be a year full of inspiration, love & friendship.

The Naughty Eleven: SLex Invitations

2007-12-25T11:10:00.001Z

Once again I got tagged by my dear friend Vint. Eleven questions (I noticed the list has been growing, seems Veyron added number ten and Vint added number eleven) this time about who I would want to have SLex with for various reasons. No a very Christmasy subject but a bit of fantasising never hurt anyone, not even on Christmas day.

I have to admit it was more difficullt then I thought at first to come up with names because inevitably you sort of wonder how people will react to being nominated as a potential SLex partner. If you're on the list, don't worry, in most cases I wouldn't have even thought about you in that way if it wasn't for this list ;-)

Name the avatar that you would most like to have second life sex with for…

1. … their avatar: This one is easy. Luna Zolnir has one of the most beautiful avs I have ever laid eyes upon.

2. … their mind: that's a tough one. I actually have two nominees I can't choose between. Silverdrake Sparrow is a long time friend and definitively fits the bill but even though I have still to meet Cinderella Kesey in world I have been very charmed by her writings.

3. … their poetic/mystical/creative spirit: Nephie Eerie without a shadow of a doubt.

4. … their social success/success in SL: I'm not too sure how to interpret this one but I'll go with fashionista extraordinaire and jewelry designer Caliah Lyon.

5. … their libido: Tricky one because you don't want to nominate someone because you consider them oversexed. I'll pick my dear friend Jaxi Morrison because she is someone to whome SLex comes natural as in "it is just a fact of life".

6. … wanting them to go against type for you. That is, if they are normally a top, you would want them to be your bottom, if they are straight and you are same sl gender: From her pictures I take it Gabrielle Sinatra has a bit of a submissive streak but she can be my mistress anytime.

7. … and you would go against type for this: I'm no neko lover but Vint wouldn't have to ask twice.

8. … and you would most want to do a nothing-but-sex week with, who you are not currently having sl sex with: See questioon 9

9. … and you want a threesome, which two. They don't have to be from the above list, but can be: Ryker Beck & Keiko Morigi and can I please combine this one with question 8 ??

10. … "The forbidden," the one that, you'd like to publicly confess to, but the consequences would be toooooo awful. Examples would be your best friend's partner, a professional contact, someone you know rl who is here… Someone who you want, but have never been able to confess it too. Don't post… Just answer with whether they are online right at the moment that you post your answer: not online

11. … nostalgia reasons: Shiloh Minogue

Now who to tag? I'll go for Ryker, Cinderella, Jaxi, Luna & Joonie

Merry Christmas all!

Second Rez-Day

2007-12-23T19:15:00.000Z

December 23rd was my second Rez-Day. Yup, Loki is two years old now and my god how different SL is from that first day I walked onto the grid in my playdoh skin and white T-shirt. When I arrived I was all alone there. These days new avs rez left,
right and center. I remember feeling very helpless, moving around was difficult, moving objects even more so. Thankfully I'm not easily discouraged. On my first night in SL Sophia Willberg taught me how to use poseballs to dance and together we danced the night away. I was hooked.

Later on I met this really nice lady whose name I have sadly forgotten who gave me a load of boxes with invaluable inventory. I spent hours sifting through furniture, clothing, gestures, animations, sextoys and all those others amazing things I now owned. Since I needed a place where I could rez all the stuff and some privacy to do so I set up camp at a sim called Hedonistic Retreat where I found a small empty hut to use as my home.

From my base camp I started roaming the sims. One of my first regular hangouts was a place called Sexcapades. Sounds a lot more corny than it really was. First and foremost it was a place where people gathered and where I met a lot of nice and interesting peole. The place later moved and changed it's name to Heaven Above the Clouds which, as far as I know, still exists.

One of the people I met there was Shiloh Minogue. She became my first real friend in SL and later on we extended that to RL. Together with her I discovered poseballs were not just for dancing. Since she couldn't stand the playdoh skin I was still wearing she bought me my first "real" skin; a very expensive one from Dragonfly. Even though I don't see her in SL all that often these days I will get to meet her IRL in the near future. I'm looking forward to it.

It was also around this time I discovered making snapshots of people and giving them a copy is a great way to start a conversation. Unfortunately uploading snaps costs $L so I had to find a way to make some Lindens since I had set myself the goal not to just buy them. I noticed a bunch of people walked around with really badly made tattoos and I was convinced I could do better. Guess I was right. Doing only custom jobs, saving myself the hassle of needing a shop and all that, I was able to bring in enough to get around. I even got ambitious and started making a skin. I had no clue where to start and tutorials were few but with the help of GLIntercept I got myself a few samples of how it was done. Lazy as I am I still wear the one skin I ever made (yes, I know that it's cheating but I only used it for "educational use").

The Hedonistic Retreat closed down and I lost the place I called my home for the first few months. Not that I really needed it, by now I was hanging around wherever the SL winds blew me and my friends list grew steadily. Through one of them, Unrulie Childs, I met Lily Fizz who offered me to take up residence on a small plot of land next to her humongous castle at Bloody Falls. I accepted and though I was seldom home I had myself a nice cottage for a while and all for free. Thanks again Lily !

It was only when I found slprofiles.com and made myself a profile that my friends list started booming. I met so many people there I stil call friends today. I would love to list them all here but I would inevitably forget someone and I just don't want to do that. I'm sure you all know who you are! The "Thank you Yo and Jaxi" party, the activities for "Relay for Life", the inevitable drama, they all forged bonds. Even though some have left SLP by now for various reasons, for me they will always be linked to those days.
Some of them I found again when, being a bit unhappy with the maximum size I could post my pictures on SLP, I started an account on Flickr. It meant a second wave of new friends; creative people who pushed me to explore the boundaries of my own creativity and technique by the stunning work they produce, getting me in touch with the vivid SL photography community in world.

This trip down memory lane is of course but the tip of the iceberg. So many good laughs, disappointments, true heart warming moments, deep conversations, silly drama and exciting adventures remain unmentioned but I just can't list them all. On this occasion I would love to thank all of you out there who mean or have meant something to me. You guys have made SL in the past two years a good place to be. After all, it's the people who make SL what it is, always has been like that and it's not likely to change.

A day and a half later...

While I was sorting out some pictures to go with the above text I got an IM to mail from Mecca asking me if I could log on since she needed a profile pic of me. Struck me as odd since only last week she made a series of 80 pics of me. Upon logging on and tp'ing to her place I was greeted by a whole bunch of friends. Turned out Mylena had secretly been organising a party for my rez-day and what a party it turned out to be... I will not go into detail but the first incriminating pics have already surfaced and I'm sure more will follow.

All I can say is I had a blast. It felt so good to be surrounded by those I love and genuinly feel part of something bigger.

An incredible "thank you" to Mylena for organising it, thank you Andrew for the sporks, thank you everone for being there and an extra special thank you Semi and Nephie for your wonderful music. You guys have no idea what it meant to me.

UPDATE:

Thanks to Bella & Adhemar for the footage! Great job :-)

A Different Light

2007-12-04T19:22:00.000Z

The Cannery opens its doors again on Wednesday, December 5th at 4pm SLT for "A Different Light". Curators are once again Shoshana Epsilon and Vint Falken. Featured artists this time around are: Andromega Volare, Isolde Flamand, Kimberly Mirabeau, Marianne McCann & Mylena Aquitaine. I'm happy to say yours truly will once again have some of his work up on the walls of the Cannery too. The new exhibit kicks off with a party starting at noon SLT on the 5th. I'm looking forward to seeing you all there.

A lot has been said and written about the the Rezzable Cannery Art Gallery. I had three pictures up at the first show and I have to say I never had any problems with the way Rezzable or those associated with it treated me or my work. Maybe that is because I don't take these things too seriously. Take the contract that got a whole bunch of people's knickers up in a bunch. Sure the original wording was vague and didn't really provide much protection for the artists but hey, everyone tries to get the best for themselves out of a deal and to Rezzable's credit it has to be said they did adjust it. The new version does take some of the concerns in account.

Months ago I wrote about the fact it's communities that make SL such a great place and not companies with their shiny clean sims where nothing ever happens and I expressed the hope that over time the two would intertwine. I think what Rezzable is doing is a good step in that direction. They are not there yet but the Cannery is slowly starting to be associated with a group of people, a community and that is a good evolution. A lot more could be done still and like I told RightAsRain I think Rezzable itself needs a face or some faces that can represent them. People with roots in SL who can be the center of a community and carry it. As curators to an extent Shoshana and Vint play that part but I have a feeling the distance between them and Rezzable is too big for them to really represent Rezzable. It's not their job either, on the contrary, being curators they should have some independence in order for them to maintain their artistic integrity.

Rezzable is not a charity and so in return for the given opportunities Rezzable expects something back. I think that is absolutely normal. Give and take is what makes the world go round. For some this seems to be pure blasphemy. I don't see why. If you want to be a patron of the arts, go ahead and spend your money on a sim and give the artists free reign to set up as an SL museum. Galleries on the other hand both in SL and RL are not museums, they sell art for the profit of the artist and the gallery. Why would it be any different in SL? What IS a problem in SL is the fact digital content is easily copied thus making it more difficult to manage. A RL painting is a single piece and it's easy to determin who owns it. For an SL picture it's a lot more difficult. If I mail a high rez version of my finished picture to Shoshana she now has a perfect copy of the work she can do with as she pleases outside the mod/copy/trans scheme inside SL. Does that mean I'll make her life difficult by insisting I will not give her a texture unless inside SL and only with limited rights? Of course not. I trust her with my work. Just like I would have to trust a RL gallery owner if I let him exhibit my work.

Hope to see you all at "A Different Light" and thank you Shoshana and Vint for including me once again. It's truly appreciated.

Oh ... and I so hope Nephie will play the opening party!

Damn, I'm IT ...

2007-12-03T20:24:00.000Z

Seems a few people were bored last night ;-) Both Ryker and Joonie tagged me and invited me to participate in this "8 random facts about yourself" thing. Lazy as I am (random fact number 1) I copy 'n pasted the rules from Joonie's blog:

Here are the rules:

1) Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
2) People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
3) At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
4) Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.

One thing the rules don't clarify is whether these fact are supposed to be about me, Loki, or about the puppeteer who pulls my strings. So I decided to follow the same route Vint took on her blog post.

Now for the tidbits of info on me:

1. As already stated: I'm a lazy bugger. I could probably make decent Linden$ if I would make the effort to make, market and put some tattoos and/or skins up for sale but I have to admit that apart from a little shop with old stuff I could never be bothered

2. I did make my own skin. The face is based on a picture of Keanu Reeves. Don't tell him if you know him. He might not like what he sees. I'm still thinking about making a female skin. I once got started on a freckled one but I'm still waiting for someone to send me her pictures to make it just like hers.

3. I never owned land on the grid in the nearly two years I'm around in SL. At one point I had a cottage in the shadow of a great castle. Lily, a very nice lady allowed me to live there for free.

4. I love making snaps in world. So much that when I'm with a group of people I'm usually not really good company since I'm so busy making pictures I completely lose the thread of conversation. Sorry folks! Mind you ... WindLight may have fixed that for me though.

Four things about the puppeteer:

1. He lives with one two-legged and four four-legged companions. The four-legged crew is made up of the cat twins Castor and Pollux. The latter is very unhappy at the moment because he's confined to a large dog crate after being hit by a car. One of his hind legs is pretty badly damaged, especially the knee, but he had surgery and is recovering. He may limp forever though.

Castor on top.

The other two are the Irish wolfhounds Faelan (1) and Dwynfal (3,5).

2. He drives a bright yellow Lancia Delta just like this one:

3. He has never paid for a single piece of software on his PC.

4. He's just as lazy as I am.

Tagging eight others at this point seems a bit difficult since everyone I know has already been tagged, if not multiple times. It has to end somewhere I guess... and hell, I told you I'm lazy ;-)

Flickr Antics

2007-10-31T18:05:00.000Z

Joonie Jatho just sent me a mail asking if I will ever blog again. Thank you Joonie. Of course I will. I know it's been a while. I guess I have been spending way too much time in photoshop and on Flickr. As a result I have used up my 200 pictures that come with a free account and I'm rather proud of most of them so I don't really want to delete any. I'm left wondering if I should go for a pro account but something is holding me back. I'll get to that later.

It's a funny world, the SL community on Flickr, and rather addictive. I have wondered why people, myself included, would spend so much time making, processing and posting pictures that will most likely be forgotten the next day. Is it the calling to produce true art, to express ourselves in a creative manner or is it the stream of views, comments and favourites we hope to get and with it the appreciation or even adoration we gain from our fellow flickerites? Maybe after all it's just an ego thing. Or part of it is anyway.

It would explain the extensive commenting and the virtual pats on the back that are constantly exchanged. It is a given that the more you comment on others the more comments you get back. The more comments you get the more you are loved, no? I guess it's like with every other community site whether it be Flickr, MySpace, SLProfiles even SL itself, we want to belong, be part of it. This does introduce some strange phenomenons though.

It's rare to get a "real" comment on a picture. What do I mean by that? A real comment in my opinion is just what it says it is, something a person wants to say about your work, good or bad. Not that I think all the "Gorgeous picture" or "Stunning work" compliments are not real but in all the comments made on my pictures there is just one in which the author states how she thinks the picture could be improved. Thank you Luna! That took courage because it's "just not done". In a way it is sad since we could all learn from each other if we had Luna's courage.

I know, there are groups you can add your pictures to just for that specific purpose, but that's not what I mean. I'm not saying every picture should be thoroughly dissected and evaluated, I'm just looking for some honesty. Usually the honesty is translated into "I don't like it so I will not comment".

Another strange phenomenon I've noticed is the tactics people use to get their pictures noticed. Adding it to a bizillion groups for example or adding a thousand tags or making sure you post it at a certain time for higest visibility. I caught myself doing it. I'm just as guilty of it as the next guy. All of that so I could belong and that brings me back to the pro account. I could easily get one. The cost isn't exactly a problem but why would I need to add hundreds more pictures? Why would I need to get my fix of comments on a neverending stream of pictures? Maybe I should stick to my 200 picture limit and only add pictures I think are really worth it, replacing an existing one. By doing so I would protect myself from the temptation to enter the rat race for pats on the back and I can go back to work on the pictures that really matter to me regardless of the comments.

But that's just a thought because if I started replacing older pictures I would lose the evolution in my work. It is most certainly there and it would be a shame to erase it. After all it is very nice to see how people's work progresses and changes or takes new turns. The endless creative possiblities was what sucked me into it and is what I still enjoy. I suppose I will just have to grow a spine and resist the temptation of picture vomiting and underhand tactics to get them noticed. The comments that matter will probably be there regardless and and I'll remind myself it's not supposed to be a popularity contest when I see 20 favourites appear on the next mediocre picture.

Sorry to say, but ...

2007-09-04T22:03:00.000+01:00

I've been reading some posts and comments this evening here and here and here and frankly I felt I had to add a little something...

Prok, you bitter old hag (and I mean that in the most endearing way), you are loosing it aren't you? Wake up and smell the coffee, SL has changed. It's no longer the little playground we had all to ourselves 2 years ago. Business has moved in, hordes of new av's are roaming the sims and there are just not enough experienced residents around to help them find their way. A lot of them don't care about the politics and possible social impact the metaverse could have. People like Vint do!

Now, before I go on I have a confession to make that is important for the rest of my expose. I'm European, a friend of Vint Falken and some of my work graces the walls of the Rezzable Cannery Gallery. I'm just stating this so you can label me properly. (are you still reading ?) In my defense I can say I've often had a good chuckle reading your stuff in the past.

I have seen the mud going back and forth on both your blogs and I'm afraid to say you really missed a few points. I'm not going to bother with the whole rating, google ranks, en what else stuff. What I want to point out is your obvious lack of empathy and ill will to see things as they are. Take your "Vint’s blog is, again, as anyone can see, about fashion, and about her own builds". That's bullocks. It is not because she illustrates her blogs with original material it is all about "her own builds" whatever you mean by that. If she writes about Open Sim it is because she realises it is the next step in a larger metaverse and when she writes about "some html on a prim" (sic) it is because she sees the possibilities it holds. Mean time you whine you have "nothing to click on at Rezzable" which proves to me you missed the boat. That was Command & Conquer.

You complain about the style in which the Cannery was built but you fail to see the fact a company has actually given residents the possibility to set something up they might otherwise not have been able to. I for one prefer that over another Nissan, IBM, etc sim where I can click on stuff only to get info on how wonderful their stuff is. Style is per definition debatable. What makes Rezzable different is the interaction between a company and independant residents and that is an evolution I applaud even if the execution isn't perfect.

Another thing that bugged me in your comments is the whole US versus the rest of the world thing. English is the Lingua Franca of the industrialised world at this point, but your own legislators had to push a law to make it the official language of the US because the Spanish speaking community in your own country is booming and is expected to outnumber the native English speakers soon if it already hasn't. Oh, and let's not forget a quarter of the worlds population speaks Chinese.

Your statement that the whole (sexual) ageplay thing came from Europe is beyond the pale and I will not even dignify it with a reaction. Or maybe just one, to point out the proven fact that the concrete reaction against sexual ageplay indeed came from Europe, even if charges were recently dropped by the Dutch state prosecutor. The fact people emigrated from Europe to the US because of religious persecution bears no relevance when it comes to SL; those days are long gone. In fact anyone who lives in a country where creationism is openly advocated should shut up about religious zealotry anywhere else. Anyway, all I have to say about this is that, being European, I'm personally offended by such faux rhetoric.

Now last but not least, you call people amateurs as if it were a disease. Amateurs are by definition people who do something because they enjoy it or believe in something. They don't do it for the money. That spirit is what produces the best SL has to offer. I'm an amateur and proud to be so.

My opinion, no more no less. And no, I don't want the discussion to be continued overhere.

Turbulent times

2007-08-24T21:31:00.001+01:00

These seem to be turbulent times. In the last few days two of my friends told me independently they and their significant other are splitting up. The situations are rather different though. In one case my friend, let's call him Fred, decided to leave because his long time girlfriend Ginger admitted to him she fell in love with someone else. In an other case my friend Eve's husband Adam is about to leave her because she confessed she "knew" someone in the biblical sense. Wait a sec ... didn't I say the situations were quite different? Well, in Ginger's case the proverbial green grass on the other side of the fence is a RL person in Eve's he is a Second Life avatar.

So is there a difference? After all, the net result is the same; two couples who have been together for years are about to split up. Does it matter whether Eve fell for an avatar and Ginger for some real life person? I think it does for a number of reasons. When we fall in love with someone we're always on our best bewitching behaviour to convince the other party we deserve a chance with them. How much easier is it to hide behind a flashy avatar than is to hide behind your toothpaste smile? I would say a lot. Sooner or later inevitably the smile will show some cracks but you can hide behind the av reasonably comfortably forever unless and until you decide to meet up in person. In SL there will always be a larger degree of wishful projections about the other party and their feelings even though it rarely feels that way.

Now there is also the matter of sex and adultery. Here I think things are a lot less clear. What is worse, Eve looking at pixels exchange bodily fluids whilst having a racy conversation or Ginger going out with her friend for a beer, holding hands and exchanging dreamy looks knowing all too well what they both rather be doing? I think the clue is in that last bit "what they would rather be doing", because basically that's what it is in both cases; the expression of a longing, not the act itself or lack thereof. Both Eve and Ginger respond to the social rules of their environment and we all know those are a lot more liberal in SL than they are in RL. Ginger is held back from the next step by her own morality and/or social constraints whilst for Eve there is no next step but to take things out of SL into real life.

That's why, if I was in Fred's shoes, I would probably leave as well. Ginger has decided she wants to devote her love to someone else. If I were in Adam's shoes I wouldn't and I know that for sure because I'm still married. Eve explored some fantasies and satisfied her curiosity in a limitless fantasy world. Don't we all fantasise about that new and exciting stranger at one time or other or of indulging in that kinky thing we would never even contemplate in RL? SL provides the sandbox to experiment with those fantasies. Does that mean you want to give up on an existing RL relationship? Of course not.

Fantasy and creativity are what makes us human and sets us apart from your average chimp. SL gives us the space to experiment without fear for consequences other than a better insight into what makes each of us tick. Consequences usually arise from the fact many can't deal with the newfound freedom or because of judgemental people that don't understand the nature of SL. So does experimenting make us adulterous? Of course not.

Right now my heart bleeds for Fred, Ginger, Adam and Eve although for different reasons.

Now before you shoot, I respect the fact we are all individuals, situations vary and a multitude of factors can come into play. Human emotions are not an exact science, I see that all around me on a daily basis. SL provides us with a unique chance that, if used wisely, can help us gain an insight into aspects of ourselves that might otherwise remain hidden.

My opinion until proven wrong...
may it never be ;-)

SL vs. RL Promiscuity Index

2007-08-04T15:34:00.000+01:00

After reading Vint's blog on the SLex / RLex ratio a while ago in which she tries to catch the differences between people's Sl sex life and RL one in a formula, I was left with the feeling some things in her math didn't add up. Math is not my thing either, but being a bit bored today I started thinking about it. Since it doesn't always have to be serious stuff, this is what I came up with:

A sort of "Promiscuity Index" so to speak...

(RLA -216) / RLP
-------------------- = PI
(SLA x 5) / SLP

where:
RLA = your RL age in months
RLP = the number of RL sex partners since your 18th Bday
SLA = your SL age in months
SLP = the number of SL sex partners since rezz-day
PI = Promiscuity Index (I wonder is someone is going to turn up with 3.14 *grins*)

Now let me explain why I think this is a more accurate way of calculating or if you want more indicative of the differences between yourSL sex life and your RL one. First of all there is the fact that her calculation doesn't take in account we are more or less active during certain periods of our lives be it in RL or SL. At some stages in both our RL and SL we tend to experiment more. So I thought I should divide the time we are sexually active by the number of partners over that time in both lives. To compensate for the fact you can be active inSL from day one and not so in RL I decided (rather arbitrarily I'll admit) to deduct 216 from the RLA thus starting the count at 18 years of age.

Another thing that had me thinking is the fact that there is a difference in pace between SL and RL. Face it, what is the average life span of a relationship in SL? So based on my experience I set the value at 5. Meaning the pace of life in SL is imho about 5 times faster than in RL. I agree it's debatable and any good arguments to change this value are more then welcome.

What do we get out of this? I think it makes for a nice comparison of your promiscuity in SL as opposed to RL. Let's look at an of course completely fictional example:

A male 42 years old has had 15 sex partners since he was 18. In SL he has had 5 since he rezzed 19 months ago.

That makes:

(506 - 216) /15
------------------- = 1,02
(19 x 5) / 5

The conclusion in this case would be that his promiscuity in SL and RL are fairly the same.

index > 1 = RL promiscuity < SL promiscuity
index < 1 = SL promiscuity < RL promiscuity

This says nothing about the frequency of SLex or RLex. I guess if you would like to hazard a guess at how often you've done it in RL since you turned 18 and the number of times you engaged in SLex in SL you could replace RLP and SLP by those values but I'm not going to venture there :-)

On a side note, this equation also solves the problem Vint had with her calculation that could lead to an illegal "divide by 0".

I'm as always curious to hear your thoughts and reactions!
And your Indexes of course ;-)

PS In case you were wondering, no, it's not me in the top picture ...

Easy depth of field for SL pictures

2007-07-18T22:00:00.000+01:00

It was Bella March's latest blog posts on renderview and an aside about the "depth" option in the snapshot tool that got me wondering about the possibilities of this option when taking pictures in SL. Maybe I'm kicking in open doors here but what at first seemed a rather useless option, apart from using it like Bella did to create a very powerful effect shot, all of a sudden made sense. I'm sure I'm not the first to figure this out, but I have never seen this trick mentioned before. A few Google searches revealed nothing either so here it goes...

SL shots lack so called "depth of field". In RL you focus on something and the elements in front of your focus point and behind it become increasingly unsharp as they are further from the focus point. How blurry they become depends on a number of factors that are not really important here like the focal lenght of your lens, the aperture etc. What does matter is that applying some blur to the background of your pictures brings out your main object and feels more real.

Making a decent blurred background can be a tedious job if you do it the traditional way as explained very well in Vint Falken's tutorial by making a mask. Not anymore...

In the snapshot interface select what Bella calls the "Matrix view" i.e. the "freeze frame" option and also select the "keep open" option. Now make your composition and save your picture to disk. Before anything else change the selection "color" to "depth". Save this gray-scale picture to disk as well.

The rest of the story is Photoshop editing. Open both bitmaps in Photoshop. Use control-a to select the whole "depth" picture and and control-c copy it. Now go to the actual colored picture. If you're lucky enough to have CS3 duplicate your background layer* and convert the copy to a smart object (right click the layer for the menu). In the layer thumbnail you should now see the smart object icon. From the filter menu select blur > Gaussian blur and apply a generous dose. In your layer appears a smart filter thumbnail. Click it while holding down the alt key. This will open the filter mask. Simply press control-v now to paste the "depth" image into the mask. Click back on the "background copy" layer and bingo, you used the depth image to determine which parts of the picture will be blurred and which not and how much they will be blurred. You can play with the brightness and contrast or the curves of the filter mask to optimise the effect or you can even get a brush out and make some manual adjustments.

If you don't have access to CS3 you can do it another way. Again open both the color version and the depth version of your picture. Start by inverting the depth picture by hitting control-i (or go to the top menu image > adjustments > invert). Select and copy the inverted depth picture as before. Select the color version and make two copies of the background layer. Of the three layers you have now select the middle one and apply some degree of Gaussian blur to it. Now select the top one and drag it down to the bottom of the layer box to the little icon looking like a rectangle with a circle in it to add a mask to it (or from the top menu select layer > add vector mask > reveal all). The top layer should now have a white thumbnail next to the regular thumbnail representing your pic. Click it while holding the alt key and use control-v to past the depth pic in your mask. There... two ways to get the same effect.

However, there are some drawbacks. The "depth" picture doesn't pick up on transparent objects so they take on the blur of what's behind them and there is the fact it doesn't account for foreground blur. On top of that the grey areas in the mask are actually partially transparent so the sharp smart object or underlying layer is showing through to some degree which gives those areas a somewhat haloed look. Nevertheless I'm sure it can serve its purpose as a quick way of enhancing a picture.

as an example:

This one...

... plus this one ...

... makes this one :-)

I would love to hear your comments and suggestions on refining this technique and I'd love to see your pictures created using it.

On a side note: sorry for the somewhat messy layout of this post, the template was not intended for tutorials :-)

* I like to keep the original background layer untouched so I can always go back.

My date with an Australian fire fighter and more.

2007-07-16T19:43:00.000+01:00

Got your attention didn't I ?! No, I'm not coming out of the closet. This particular fire fighter is actually a very nice and bright young lady. Ember is the girl I bid for and won at the auction for Relay for Life I wrote about earlier. Because we both have busy schedules and are in opposite timezones it wasn't until last night we finally went on our date. I put on my tux and took her dancing and although that may sound a bit boring I had a great time. I guess it's the company that counts and they don't come any sweeter then Ember. I hope we can do it again sometime.

Upon logging off way too late for a Sunday night I found a rather strange mail in my inbox.

Dear Loki

I am really sorry to send you this unannounced. I am looking for some kind SL enthusiast to do me a big favour and your terrific blog suggested that you might be be that person ... it also, of course, gave me an email address.

I am also an SL enthusiast - not as experienced as you, though. It is a boring story (to do with my Internet connection being by proxy) but my system now automatically blocks access to SL. I am missing the fun of exploring SL but mostly I am missing chatting to my two best friends in SL and they will be wondering where I have got to. Please would you be kind enough next time you're in SL to send by IM two messages for me? I would be so pleased and grateful if you would.

I'll write them out below so that you can simply copy and paste.

I'll understand if you do not feel that you can do this for me - but either way I'd appreciate a very quick reply so that I know where I stand.

Thanks Loki and apologies for bothering you. Have fun in SL !!

(messages and names removed since that's no ones business)

Being the good soul I am and not entirely immune to the flattery (hey, he called my blog terrific... ) I logged back on and found both ladies online, sent them their messages and mailed my mystery mailer their replies. In a way it felt really good doing that. If for some reason or another I would be cut off from friends in SL I think I would try to find ways to get in touch too.

Which brings me to a topic I talked about with a friend a while ago. She and I met online over two years ago and became "e-pen pals" (for lack of a more apt word). At one point she stopped responding and since all I had was her e-mail address there was no way of finding out why. For all I knew she could have been in a car accident or ill or mad at me for some reason. It goes without saying I was worried to say the least. Thankfully, after not hearing from her for several months she resurfaced and explained why she had been silent for so long. I told her I had been worried something might have happend to her. Talking about it we both agreed to make sure that if anything happened to either of us we would make sure the other was notified. It's a small thing to take care of but it could make such a difference if something bad really happened.

SL & traditional media

2007-07-08T20:37:00.000+01:00

Second life is a hype in the traditional media, here in Belgium anyway. Wouldn't it be lovely if they also knew what they were talking about?! A while ago I read a column in a respected computer magazine in which an editor of the games section got all upset because someone had the audacity to compare Second Life to World of Warcraft. He ranted that there are no red light districts in WoW and SL is a non-game and the two shouldn't be compared. Fair, that's his opinion, after all it is a column. Unfortunately it was also very clear from the article that he had never even been in SL.

Now, whether SL is a game or not and whether or not it can be compared to WoW, I don't really care. What I do care about is the general tone used when traditional media report on SL. It seems that whereas a year ago SL was sniffed at as something novel and potentially interesting, these days it seems to be fashionable to reduce SL to a playground for perverts, nitwits without a social life and gold diggers. Everyone is entitled to their opinion but they should be based on something. More often than not I read articles written by journalists who actually claim they created an account and had a look around. Based on that they decide SL is only about getting laid or making Linden dollars. What about events like SL4B, beautifully crafted sims like Svarga, communities built around SL like secondlifeprofiles.com, the vibrant blogsphere related to SL, the creativity of people posting in world pictures at Flickr, the friendships forged in world?!? That's the Second Life I've experienced and got to enjoy in the past 19 months.

Anyway, such sloppy journalism is not what I would expect from generally well respected magazines and newspapers. Honestly, I still have to read the first piece written by someone who has actually been in world for a decent amount of time. But maybe there is a glimmer of hope. Dutch writer and poet Ilja Leonard Pfeijffer has published a book about his adventures in SL. Born there in October last year as Lilith Lunardi (yes ladies and gentleman, sorry to burst your bubble but the big-boobed bombshell is a guy with a moustache) he has written a number of short pieces about SL that are now bundled into a book. I'm really curious to read it and to see if his take on things shows a bit more nuance. From the pictures of Lilith Lunardi on Flickr I'm afraid it might be more of the same but until I get my hands on the book he has the benefit of the doubt.

Not so happy-go-lucky

2007-06-23T12:42:00.000+01:00

I should not be writing this. I should not have the time to write this. I should be on my way to France for a weekend with friends and family. I'm not. I'm home, hungover and angry with myself for way too much whiskey last night. As you may have guessed this one is not about Loki. It's about the man behind Loki. Most of the time we are a lot alike apart from the looks and even there, some similarities exist. But, there are difference as well.

Last week was a rather turbulent one. I think I've managed over time to make Loki a nice, easy going, creative, somewhat flirty guy who lives his second life to the fullest. Last week however the differences between us blurred. Loki became the angry and melancholic drunk I sometimes am. I have always tried to keep that side of me away from him since it's a part of me I don't like and I don't particularly want to bother others with. Last week it shone through, bright and clear.

In a way I guess it was inevitable. We can pretend, we can disguise, we can make believe but in the end we are who we are. Loki is part of me, the better part I hoped but as it turned out he wasn't immune to my own bad spells. It's rather ironic it was actually SL spilling over into RL that brought all of this on. I always thought I could keep both lives nicely separated, but as many before me I have to admit now I couldn't.

For those of you who met with Loki's darker side I want to say I'm sorry. To all the rest who probably don't have a clue what I'm talking about I'll promise to clean up my act and make Loki the happy-go-lucky guy he always was again so hopefully you will never have to deal with me.

Making a difference

2007-06-14T19:32:00.000+01:00

Last Sunday I was auctioned off at a date auction. It was organised to collect linden dollars for Relay For Life by Friends Fighting Cancer, a group associated with the slprofiles website. This same group has organized several other activities in the past raising money for cancer research. So far they collected a whopping 722,000 L$ (about 2500 US$).

Now I'm not a big fan of this kind of incidental fundraising. I prefer to make donations to selected organisations on a regular basis. It gives me more certainty the money will be used for what I want it to be used. However, this group has managed to sell their cause with so much enthusiasm I couldn't say no and I don't regret it for a moment.

In a way it is incredible and heartwarming to see this aspect of SL. The contrast with the often painted picture of a meta verse full of perverts of every possible persuasion couldn't be greater. Here is a group of people who spent considerable time and effort to raise money for a worthy cause while others like me spend their time writing silly blogs about nonexistent SLelections and all they entail.

I'm actually not all that happy with my previous post and thinking about the whole RFL auction added to the uneasy feeling. Even though I tried to make a few valid points about democracy I guess most of it was nothing but more SLelections bs. Guess I was trying a bit too hard to contribute to something I should have ignored. Maybe it's time to change my tune and do something a bit more valuable as I originally intended to do? What I mean to say is; it's too easy to be just a bystander, commenting on what is going on and not put your money where your mouth is.

So I would like to call upon all the blogging would-be-Governors and whoever else for that matter to come up with ideas and suggestions to help the people of Friends Fighting Cancer carry their total to that magical number of 1.000.000 L$. Let's do something that actually makes a difference for a change. Surely it can't be that difficult?!

In world donations are always welcome of course! (all info can be found here)

SLelections vs. true Democracy

2007-06-08T14:50:00.000+01:00

SLelection fever seems to have the blog sphere and by extension SL in its grasp. Blogs are buzzing with swollen rhetoric and candidates are crawling from under every rock. Idle promises are made and it even looks like the first smear campaigns are on their way. Contrary to popular belief and even after some heartfelt pleas I for one will NOT be running for office. Not only am I far too lazy, I will not do so because I think the whole idea is flawed. I hear candidates ranting and raving about democracy while they actually want you, the voter, to install a dictatorship. What else can you call a system where one person, being the governor, holds all the power? In addition, the way this story unfolds, this proposed SLelection is not about ideas; it's about personalities, inflated egos and exaggerated media attention, not unlike a lot of RL elections in fact. Why would we accept the same flawed system in SL that is forced upon us in RL? At least this time around we have a choice.

I considered campaigning against SLelections if they were to be held or even start a guerilla group to overthrow the governor once elected, but since that would be a rather negative attitude I will propose a positive alternative.
Thinking about it and brushing up on my political history I concluded that in all western countries politics are governed by a conflict model, majority against minority. I fail to see how this can be considered truly democratic. The only true democratic model is a consensus model. Keeping this in mind I would like to see a "Counsel of the Wise" put in place. Now this is true democracy! This counsel could debate the issues at hand and organise referendums to hear the people's voice on the matter. If by any chance an actual decision would come out of this at least it will be well thought through and supported by most.

Of course the question of how to put together the counsel is a tricky matter. Since we all respect our elders my proposition would be to invite the 100 oldest active avatars to take a seat in this esteemed new institute. Since we can't really force them to take up their mandate they would have to be at liberty to appoint someone they feel worthy of taking their place. I'm sure the collective wisdom and experience of these 100 will bring a wind of change and prosperity to our beloved SL and could be a major force in forging the future of SL and its community. Let SL show RL the way to a better world.

I'm sure that you, my dear reader, will be convinced by now this really is the only way to go, so now we can put aside all the hype, end the propaganda, bury the personal crusades, stop the soapbox politics, turn off the printing presses and start looking for the 100 Chosen Ones.

Someone will have to lead and moderate this esteemed counsel. I'll humbly volunteer to preside it.*

* I'm convinced this is a conditio sine qua non. ;-)

Who's afraid of Linden Wolf ?

2007-06-04T23:47:00.000+01:00

An awful lot has already been said and written about Daniel Linden's by now almost mythical blog post "Keeping Second Life Safe, Together". It came in reaction to a German TV report about child porn and sexual age play on the grid that raised more than a few eyebrows. I don't intend to rehash all the points made and questions raised already, but I do wonder what Linden Labs hoped to achieve with this blog post. Clearly they must have anticipated a lot of residents would be outraged and opposition would be fierce. The announcement was also deliberately vague. Who is going to define "broadly offensive and potentially illegal" in a metaverse that spans continents, countries, cultures, age groups and so on?

So I wondered "why did they do it and why this way?" Legally the statement by Daniel has no meaning and even then, according to what law? US law because they are US based? What about the rest of the world? Of course, by posting this blog they can say they tried to do something but still it doesn't hold water. At first I thought they were just trying to buy time while an army of lawyers was examining their options, but to me it's more and more clear they just can't regulate everything. Out with the lawyers... Did they do it to escape a bad rap in the press? I don't think so, there are far better ways to do that. Then why?

I think a perverse and frankly broadly offensive game is being played. It's called "scare tactics". It goes like this: first you make a vague statement people can and will be punished for certain actions you don't define properly. Next, watch how people who don't want to lose land, money, friends, whatever start to steer clear from what they think might be interpreted as "broadly offensive". Now ain't that grand! You don't have to tell people what they shouldn't do anymore. They will do it for you. So what's next? Close a few sims, ban a few people and make sure you properly reinforce the whole idea? I call that scare tactics and an easy way out to say the least.

Apart from this being intellectually very unfair, it is also a very dangerous game as it will not affect those die hards that will continue to peddle truly illegal content. They will just be a little more careful but in the mean time Joe Blow's innocent kinky fun is ruined.

Thank you Linden Labs.

My advice? Don't give in ... enjoy SL as you always have.

Legal Issues

2007-06-01T14:57:00.000+01:00

This morning someone pointed out an article in a blog post that got me thinking. It's about a guy who apparently found a way to get his hands on land in SL well below the market price. Not sure how he did it but anyway, Linden Labs found out and his account was terminated for violating the TOS. Nothing special if the guy hadn't been a lawyer and didn't take LL to court over this and won his case. This could have far stretching implications and proves once again Linden Labs have but a loose grip on what they started. You would think that by now they would have had an army of lawyers going over their business and the potential pitfalls they face.

In view of the recent hoopla about age play and child porn in SL, what is the consequence of the TOS being declared not legally binding and LL faced with potential claims of those who find their accounts suspended or terminated because of violations against the TOS. I can't see someone caught with child porn taking LL to court, but age players, consenting adults?

Seems to me like it's time for Linden Labs to get their ducks in a row and take a clear stand on a few grey areas if they don't want to end up swamped with court cases. Apart from that LL is already taking flack in the RL press, at least here in Europe. Stories about virtual rape, child porn and more give SL and by extension people in world a bad reputation. I for one am not happy about the fact all questions I get from people who were never in SL are about the aberrations and excesses. Don't get me wrong, SL is a great playground and as far as I'm concerned anything goes as long as we're talking consenting adults but SL is so much more and it's a shame that never gets highlighted.

Related links:

www.second life.reuters
www.prnewswire.com
Bragg's website
The verdict (.pdf)

UPDATE: Posted 6/29/2007

--- Posted by Robin Linden on Linden Lab Blog ---

On June 28, 2007, Linden Lab and its Chief Executive Officer, Philip Rosedale, filed their response to the complaint of Marc Bragg in the federal district court in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, denying Mr. Bragg’s allegations, and asserting counterclaims on behalf of Linden Lab against Mr. Bragg for computer fraud, breach of contract, and other claims, arising from certain activity that led to his being suspended from participating in Second Life.

Not-a-meme #17: State Thy Groups

2007-05-26T12:24:00.000+01:00

Ok, I'll humor you Vint. Here it goes...

Archan

This used to be the place to go if you really needed a good laugh. Playdoh noobs discovering sex balls is a hilarious thing to observe.

Cuppycake Gumdrop

Friends of probably the craziest woman I ever came across in SL.

Design's by AZULL

I like the lady, not sure about the designs ;-)

Fool's Paradise

Loki Fool's live music place is a very nice place to hang out. She always has talented people on her stage and she manages Nad Gough, one of the funniest performers in SL.

Hummingbird Cafe

Dimi and Leira's stage at Menorca. THE place to be for good music.

Ignorance is Bliss

Sinister Undertone's friends group. He's the better half of a dear friend of mine. Not sure why I'm in this group though. Could have something to do with access to their place.

PSST

Should nix this one since the group no longer exists. We made this group when preparing a surprise party for the admins of slprofiles.com. PSST stood for "Party Secret Slprofilers Team" :-)

Public Sex Commission

The Heavens Above the Clouds group. It used to be a fun place to go. Despite the name it had little to do with sex. Sure the poseballs were there but it was more of a meeting place then anything else. Haven't been there in a good long while. Wonder is it still exists.

Ready or Not Vip's

I'm not a club person but since a few of my friends worked there at one point I ended up with this one.

Rhythm Collective

Another live music place. Think we've got a theme going on here?

Second Life Bloggers

... what can I say ...

Shiloh's retreat

She is my oldest and dearest friend in SL. I'll retreat with Shiloh to Shiloh's retreat anytime :-)

SL Belgium

Oh well, why not be a little patriotic.

SL Belgium V.I.P.-Club

See above

Slutty By Nature

Someone once convinced me I had a golden future as a male escort and made me part of her group. Never had a single customer. Not that I ever made an effort ;-)

Strangefates

More music...

The Bloody Resort

For a while I actually had a roof over my head. Lilly Fizz was kind enough to offer me a small cottage in the shadow of her huge castle. I lived there for a month or two free of charge. The place was converted to a mall. All that's left now is the impressive castle.

The Hollows

Really can't remember where this one came from.

The Stage

Even more music.

I guess you could say I'm not big on groups. I absolutely dislike group IM spam. Most of my groups are there for reason of access to places or announcements of music events.

Sometimes 2 + 2 = 5

2007-05-22T11:52:00.001+01:00

About two months ago I was talking to Mecca, a dear SL friend about the SLprofiles.com site where we met. It's a profiles site backed by a fairly active community that has been building up momentum over the last few months. Almost inevitably we ended up talking about Yo & Jaxi, the couple who actually started and run the place which must be a considerable amount of work. We decided that with SLP's first anniversary coming up it would be nice to do something to thank them for their efforts. After all, they have given us a fun and convenient way to stay in touch and share even outside SL.

We agreed right from the start it would have to be something carried by the SLP community so we sent out a whole slew of messages to those most active on the site. A committee was set up, plans were made and discussed. All that resulted in a big surprise party in SL with two live acts, a video presentation, fireworks, a present for Yo & Jaxi, donations made in their name to Relay For Life and SLP T-shirts for all. It was a blast.

Now back to the title. All of this would have been possible if only a handful of people had taken it upon themselves to organise all of it but what made this special was the joint effort, the clash of ideas and opinions. Granted the end result may have looked a bit eclectic in style but I don't think anyone there even noticed and it was so much more then just "a party".

These days companies set up shop in SL. Nice polished buildings with slick textures on fancy sims. Professional work. Looks great but where is the soul? I'll prefer the community effort anytime. It may not look as perfect, but it reflects the SL spirit that much more. Personally I think SL is losing that spirit little by little. As SL grows and draws the attention of commercial interest groups I fear it's inevitable.

Thankfully there will always be places on the grid where intelligent and creative people get together and come up with crazy, brilliant or right out wacky ideas and projects. Hopefully some of those will eventually spill over into the commercial venues and if that happens who knows what the future has in store for SL.

SL Drama

2007-05-17T17:56:00.000+01:00

Ok, so what's the most discussed thing in SL if you forget about Vint and more recently child pornography? No doubt in my mind it's SL relationships and all the drama they entail. On a daily basis I read testimonials from people who fell in love, made friends for eternity or feel they've been lied to, cheated on, abused and worse. People who then turn around and pour their, often wounded, heart out for all to see. What is it with SL and this emotional exhibitionism? I have my ups and downs and those who know me will notice, just like friends in RL would. If I had a really crappy week I may even post something about it, but still it will not go beyond what people around me in RL would know.

Sure, we all know the absence of physical presence creates an environment in which one can remain anonymous and enjoy the relative safety it provides so people are more likely to confide in others. We also need to fill in the blanks this absence causes which makes people project their wishes and expectations onto others but still that doesn't explain it. The same was true in text chat and although it had it's share of drama it was never like SL. I wonder if it could have something to do with the fact we primarily rely on our eyes to interpret things and we subconsciously replace the blanks with what SL shows us thus projecting the pretty/sexy/feminine/masculine/well dressed/etc. av onto the real person behind it causing us to be attracted to them.

Throw in the fact you can, more easily then in RL, hide the less desirable sides of your personality and I guess it could explain why people all over SL fall head over heels all the time. Unfortunately reality catches up sooner or later for one of the parties involved and what was perceived as very real suddenly is nothing but a fantasy and a new drama is born.

I'm sure there are other reasons as well, but the addition of a visual aspect that fools our judgement for a while accounts for a lot I think.

Locked Out

2007-05-13T22:17:00.000+01:00

Forced by circumstances (my main pc died on me and it will take some time to get it fixed) I had to abstain from SL this weekend and will probably have to do so most of next week. I find it hard not to be able to log on and talk to people I've come to consider friends. Most of them know by now why I'm not around and I'll be back as soon as I can, but still it annoys me. Thankfully there are alternative ways of communicating. Bug your friends with mail to IM messages or through SLprofiles is always an option but it isn't quite the same as actually being there (come to think of it .. if you have never seen the movie "Being There" go and rent the DVD... NOW!).

That said it did give me the time to think about what I want with this blog. I got some thought provoking comments on the previous post and found TianaMeriman's blog because of it. I think I'll be writing a "Woman in SL part II" soon. If I find the time that is . I don't know how some people do it. Maintain a first and a second life, jobs in both, relationships in both, blog about all of it *shakes head* ... not sure I can.

woman in SL

2007-05-11T23:45:00.000+01:00

Ok, so it took me a while to get started. Honestly, if it wasn't for Vint twisting my arm and the fact I can't spend much time in SL due to computer trouble, I might have just deleted this blog. Then again, I read something earlier today that puzzled me and got me thinking. It was a heartfelt cry from someone who just found out her longtime SL girlfriend is in fact a man. The comment list was full of echoes of woman telling her the same happened to them.

Emma, a very dear friend of mine recently had exactly the same happening to her. She is bi in RL but never came out of the closet because, according to her, the place where she lives is a little anal about these things (go figure). Anyway, she found SL and fell in love with a pretty girl, Anna, she spent days and nights talking to (and I doubt it ended there). Since they didn't live all that far apart in RL after a while the inevitable question was raised whether or not they would or should carry their relationship over to RL. The idea was prodded and poked thoroughly but never materialised. Enter in SL Anna's RL boyfriend who starts hitting on Emma and asking her questions about Anna. After a while Emma did the math and confronted Anna with her suspicion; namely that pretty boy and Anna were one and the same. Anna confessed to being a man and walked away leaving my friend heart broken.

These stories leave me with a couple of questions. I can see the lure of being able to make some quick Linden $ as a dancer, model or escort using a female alt, but how can you string someone along well beyond the point where real feelings have started to blossom. Who can be that cruel? The often heard "SL is SL and RL is RL"-excuse is only true up to certain point. You would really have to lack any empathy not to notice things have progressed beyond SL. On the other hand I guess empathy is a typically female skill.

What also puzzles me is why so many woman in SL seem to start relationships with other woman. The number or girl/girl couples in SL is a few factors higher then in RL. Why is that? I have wondered if it has something to do with the fact woman are maybe more imaginative and susceptible to suggestion. I don't want to stereotype but I can't come up with an other explanation. Speaking as a man it is almost as if we are obsolete. At a stretch we're almost second rate second life citizens. I can't say I like that. Not only do we always have to take in account every pretty lady could be a guy in disguise, those of us being honest about our gender are often kept at a distance by the ladies of SL. Maybe that creates some sort of vicious circle.

I'd love to hear your opinion on this so by all means leave your comments.

Oh, all names mentioned are fake for obvious reasons.

and yet another blog was born...

2007-04-02T16:35:00.000+01:00

Now let me use this first post to introduce myself. I'm Loki Popinjay, a Second Life resident since December 2005. I've been wandering through sims, meeting people, making friends with some of them and over time I have seen SL grow from a few hundred concurrent users to what it is now. I have to admit it sometimes is a puzzling place where people can look and behave very different from first life. It's those differences that make it so intriguing. Why do people behave in ways they would not even contemplate in real life, why would people like to run around looking like a fox or with cat ears and a cat tail? Even those who, at first glance, seem perfectly normal often display unexplicable behaviour from time to time. So many aspects of this wondrous world still haven't gotten a satisfying answer. Not for me anyway.

It's these questions I want to write about and hopefully I'll get some answers out of it.