Gone Fishin'!

This is our Fishaversary dock!

I've been building it over the past couple of weeks in preparation for our participation in the 7Seas Fishing Fishaversary 2011 celebration this weekend. I used one of the trees that Wynx Whiplash made for the Shire that houses the treetop shops and adapted it to fit the 16 metre plot we have at our sim.

Come visit it!

Little Bee Visits Parallel Worlds

Little Bee Visits Parallel Worlds, originally uploaded by Betty Rogan.

My pal Betty Rogan is an amazing in-world artist and her snapshots never cease to amaze me. Here's another beauty. It took me ages to spot Little Bee though! If you're struggling, you might want to head to her Flickr page - she's added a note!

Poppin'!

Machinima is hard to make. Lots of people try it with varying degrees of success. Some those people get high praise for their work, but most don't.

So, in an effort to try and give some more people the much deserved recognition that I think they deserve, I've teamed with fellow tiny machinimatographer Pyewacket Bellman and started a sister blog to this one: Virtual Popcorn, the machinima review blog!

What gives us the right to put forward our reviews? Well, for one, we make machinima. We've gone through the whole process of casting, filming, editing, scoring, titling and uploading a number of films between us. Are they all the best you can get? In some opinions, yes; in others, not at all. Personally, I can look at every film I've done to date and pick faults with almost all of them. Sometimes you don't see these things until you're watching them as a neutral observer and that's what I hope we'll be here. We will criticise where we feel criticism is needed and we'll applaud where it's deserved.

I hope you'll follow that blog too and if you know of any Second Life-generated machinima that you feel deserves more exposure, do let us know!

Humbling

Hmm, this blog entry from Mr Crap isn't good.

I used to work in the retail sector which - in my experienced opinion - is probably far more customer-focused than any other sector of business. In retail, your customers aren't miles away on the end of a telephone line or a randomly-generated name in a chat box but RIGHT THERE in front of you, so your customer service has to be second-to-none.

I was proud of the fact that when my shops (I worked in several across a chain) got back their bi-monthly Mystery Shopper scores, they were always within the top 2% of the company. 'What was my secret?' colleagues would ask. There was no secret: I simply instructed my team to treat each customer they helped as an individual, meet their individual needs, treat them like a human being with a human query, not as a potential cash-cow. Some in retail would suggest that this didn't get results - i.e. sales through the till - as you'd allow people to walk out without taking any money from them; but they'd come back, I'd argue, and more often than not they did, because they knew that they could trust that team to help them.

But the key question should have been: how difficult was it to achieve this? And my answer would be: as easy as opening your mouth to talk to someone. Simple as that.

If the Lab can't find someone with basic human decency to treat people as their equals; but the fact is, the Lab is probably populated now solely by computer engineers or coders - who again in my experience have as much social approach as a twig with a piece of dog crap stuck on the end of it; if you're a coder, feel free to argue your point - and that is where the Lab will fall down.

Bottom line: helping someone isn't hard. It isn't a chore. And the reward it brings from doing it right is immeasurable.

Caveman Style!

Chaffro playin Caveman style, originally uploaded by Caleb Kit.

I decided that our latest live music performer to the Shire - WashedUp Sideways - needed some backing performers, so took to my drum kit to support him. I also roped karmagirl Avro into helping out on the bongos too!

It's Pre-Hysterical Month around Raglan Shire this month, hence the reason we're all dressed up as cavemen and a huge tar pit has opened up in the middle of the sim!

Insilico

A beautifully atmospheric machinima capture of the quite wonderful INSILICO sim, by my pal and master machinimatographer Toxic Menges. Go visit it!

MoM's Day

Wow, this looks interesting - the Lab's Linden Endowment of the Arts (LEA) is starting a Month of Machinima event from next month (on my birthday, no less!) which could prove useful in encouraging people to try out the medium.

It's nice to see the Lab actually acknowledging machinima again. Back in the day there used to be a nice - albeit small - focus on it, before the website got its dreadful Big Spaceship-led overhaul, but since then, it's fallen by the wayside. There's been lots of discussion in the past as to why the Lab took its focus away from it, but due to the diligence and perseverance of some extremely talented in-world film-makers it's proven time and again to be an extremely successful tool for promoting Virtual Worlds. It'd be nice for those people to start getting some proper recognition from the Lab!

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Beautiful Bunny!

A tiny fairy, originally uploaded by Aime Takaaki.

No, this isn't me in a dress, but Aime Takaaki as a tiny fairy bunny! I just adore the finish to this picture; a fantastic work of art.

Misa Woods

TSW 4-1-01, originally uploaded by misa delight.

Misa Delight takes to the fairways. Beautiful picture!