Second Chaffro

Happy New Year!

2012-01-05T03:53:00.000-08:00

Hello dear reader, hope you had a good Christmas holiday period and fabulous New Year break. As soon as I do something noteworthy in Second Life, I'll be sure to tell you about it! The cold chill of RL keeps my brain's creativity levels somewhere in line with the mercury in the thermometer. I'll do something soon, I'm sure.

For now, stay safe, stay warm, stay awesome.

Iron Waffle at 'Theatre De La Talent' 2011

2011-11-27T15:04:00.001-08:00

Raglan talent show, originally uploaded by Q aka dymoon (Qyhat Harbor).

Iron Waffle was a rock cover band featuring Zayn Till, Wynx Whiplash, Teal Freenote, Krull Quar and Etheria Parrott and was the last act billed on the night's Raglan Talent Show.

Podium Soapbox

2011-11-27T14:44:00.001-08:00

Tonight was Raglan Shire's fifth annual Talent Show as part of the Showvember month of activity. It was great fun, as usual, with about a dozen performers from the Shire groups performing various acts including singing, acrobatics, sketches, magic shows, etc. Once again - for the fifth year in succession - I was asked to MC the show; my talent clearly for being able to talk incessantly when required. It's a task that is both easy and difficult at the same time: if you've prepared a script, it's easy enough to just copy-and-paste your text; it's when there are gaps to be filled, to keep the show going that it can get tricky. Still, it seems I have a penchant to be able to say something when needed (whether it's the right or wrong thing). As I told one performer, I'm only the glue to join the acts together; if I fall together, I let them down more than anything.

But I did take the opportunity this year to read off a piece of text that I'd written earlier in the year; bizarrely, it was part of an obituary that I'd written about the number of real life losses that have affected the Shire groups over the past two years - the deaths of Stillpink Sandgrain, Daisyblue Hefferman, Har Dyrssen and Nitzrokk Saru, as well as the alleged loss of Jammers Inaka* - and the impact that they've had on those they were around online.

Here's my oratory from tonight.

Second Life isn’t just a game - it’s an advanced, real-time social networking experience. It allows us to immediately connect with people from all over the globe to share a vast range of interests.
We can converse with each other as easily and as efficiently - most of the time at least - as we can with someone in the same room. From these connections, communities grow. The Shires themselves have expanded over the past four years from up to 100 members of the Friends of Raglan Shire group within its first 6 months to well over a thousand fellows now.
And it continues to grow; our creativity, technical knowledge, warmth, and general friendliness have made the Shires a wholly enjoyable place to explore and reside in and the community - as a sum of all of our contributions, no matter how small you may feel you have contributed - has been the main reason for that. For me especially, and I hope for you too, it reminds us that we shouldn’t ever take the connections we make with one another for granted.
No-one person is better than the next; we’re all different and we all contribute in different ways. Whatever difference of opinion you may have with someone else, always be gracious, be helpful and kind and enjoy your time amongst your friends, neighbours and tiny acquaintances.
That’s always been the Raglan way and it’s made the community one of the strongest, most caring and warm-hearted in all of Second Life.

Then I introduced a group of basement kitties performing covers of Monkees songs whilst a hamster rode on a barrel around them. Never a dull day in the Shires!

*I haven't addressed the Jammers situation, and I don't know if I will here. I deleted my original blog post about her supposed death earlier in the year, not out of disrespect but that it had no relevance anymore when she turned up again. It's a contentious situation, and I appreciate others views surrounding it; all I'll say is that I find it astonishing that those who would say "if only I had one more day with this person to tell them..." can so easily turn that person away when they do return.

Scaling Back

2011-11-10T15:08:00.001-08:00

Adelebsen Isle by MarillaAnne

Despite not being especially prolific in terms of building over the past year (due primarily to the distraction of a RL house move), I've been able to rack up a fair amount of sales over the past few months - but never really more than enough to cover my rents. I've paid out for a shop space on Heron Shire (my main store), one on Raglan Shire, a houseboat on Heron Shire for (my wife) Kitti Dumpling, a home plot on Raglan Commons (despite still having my Linden home), a shop on Extrovirtual and a shop on Adelebsen Isle.

I've earned a bit in Second Life over the past five years, but never the kind of amounts that would pay for anything substantial in RL - I did cash out some L$ last year though to buy this for our wedding - and as exciting as that would be, I can't imagine it happening now. Sales in-world, especially for a niche market like tinydom, have slowly ground to a crawl over the past couple of years. There are good days and good weeks and the Tiny Swagtastic $50L Weekend offer has proved to be a great success; but the profits never seem to outweigh the costs and the majority of my sales actually come from the Marketplace - another example that goes some way to proving this point about the closing of ElvenMyst to be true.

So it was with a heavy heart that I decided I'd need to start scaling back on my costs, losing a couple of the Shire properties in favour of refocusing on the others. But another decision has sadly been made for me this week with the news that MarillaAnne Slade and Michmeister Slade can no longer afford to keep Adelebsen Isle running. I really liked what they'd done at Adelebsen Isle, and loved to explore around and see the blend of goods from both tiny merchants and more regular sized folk too; they were able to attract a good number of creators who I'd never encountered before, which is always refreshing. I just hope that both Marilla and Mitch find the energy and enthusiasm to stay around in SL for a while longer; it's one thing to lose a good sim, but quite another to lose good sim managers and creators.

I'm not giving up all in-world presence - far from it, I think there's still a great deal to be gained from having an in-world shop and I love kitting them out! - but I'm downsizing. I'm not alone in doing this; several others have had to adopt a similar approach recently, but I hope that the spaces I free up will be quickly snapped up by someone wanting to call the Shire home or make use of a shop space at the heart of one of the most endearing communities on the Grid.

UPDATE (11/11/11): Well, it seems Adelebsen has had a stay! MarillaAnne has announced that she has found a sponsor to keep the Isle alive for at least another three months!

Five Years On

2011-10-23T13:25:00.000-07:00

So this past weekend was my fifth rezday anniversary in Second Life.

Five years already? I feel like I've accomplished nothing.

But maybe because that's because when I close my SL viewer, I have very little to show for it of course; it's all there, on the Grid. But when I look back, I guess I've done quite a bit.

In those five years, I've owned land on the mainland and built a virtual zoo on it; bought half a private sim and transferred the zoo there, added a finely-detailed gothic vampire crypt and a island for tinies; upgraded that to a full sim and transferred the zoo there - then the biggest and most popular zoo on the grid - and built a forest designed for tinies; discovered Raglan Shire, went tiny permanently, moved there, set up a shop, had a SL-wedding...

Beyond that, I learned how to make machinima, which has been a great creative outlet; but most importantly, Second Life has allowed me to genuinely made a great number of friends, whose friendships extend well beyond the viewer. Without Second Life, my wife (whom I introduced to SL!) and I would not have had two of the guests we had at our RL wedding. Without it, we would likely have never traveled to Denmark to stay with one of those guests in return. Without it we wouldn't care for some people in almost every corner of the globe; I was genuinely terrified for the welfare of SL friends in Japan when their earthquake and subsequent tsunami hit; and I've shed real tears when told of the loss of SL-residents who I have never met, but shared an affinity with somewhere on the Grid.

I have long said that Second Life is the best and most advanced social networking tool available, and I still believe that. I don't care for the politicking; I don't really understand why some people feel they need to pick apart everything that Linden Lab does or says so fervently. Second Life connects more people from across the globe simultaneously than any other social network that I know of; I love being part of conversations between people in Australia, California, Holland and the UK all at once. I appreciate that some people invest huge amounts of their RL income into this virtual world and they want some good returns on that investment, and I have seen firsthand the Lab's level of service fall way short more than once. But it still doesn't change the fact that almost every day I fire up the viewer, log in and do something, whether it's to see the product of someone's imagination, hear a musical act I would otherwise never have heard before or talk to someone thousands of miles away and share a joke with them.

Here's to the next five!

Tiny MJ ala Karmagirl

2011-10-23T07:18:00.001-07:00

Tiny MJ ala Karmagirl, originally uploaded by Teal Freenote.

It's Shocktober and it's time to partake in another annual tradition - the Thriller dance off!

Peaches Latrell made the amazing Thriller-zombie animations a few years ago and since then, each year, dozens of tinies have come together at a predetermined time to dance in perfect synch to the spookiest pop tune of all time! Amongst the zombies, skeletons, vampires and mummies, here's Karmagirl Avro leading the way as MJ!

Keeba Tammas

2011-10-16T12:54:00.001-07:00

Keeba Tammas, originally uploaded by Chaffro!.

As part of the Shocktober festivities, Keeba showed up caged and bound Hannibal Lecter-style - but still managed to pull off an amazing vocal performance!

Through The Lens

2011-10-12T04:16:00.000-07:00

Snapshot of Through The Lens Of Dreams, taken by Pyewacket Bellman

Although the surreal majesty of Alien Isles has now departed the Grid, the brilliant creative minds of those behind it - Madcow Cosmos and Lorin Tone - have found a new sim upon which to collaborate and unleash their own unique brand of fairytale-esque craftsmanship.

Through The Lens Of Dreams is the name of their new art installation across the sim of Art Screamer. It's a rich assortment of Madcow's trademark wide-eyed monsters and toothy beings scored by a cacophony of Lorin's chirps and whistles, and again represents just how limitless Second Life can be for an imaginative soul. Arriving at a small floating platform and dropping down onto a cushion suspended in the mouths of giant caterpillars is just the first step you'll take on the incredible adventure that awaits: you'll find the vast grassy banks littered with a sprinkling of tiny blue flowers, through which hordes of cute cycloptic critters amble; the trees laugh from under their giant leafy hats as you wander past, each given their own distinct look and sound; the sky is filled with oversized insects and airborne pieces of fruit; giant bamboo-framed bikes ferry about miniature potted gardens.

Look up, down and all around to see this amazing work

Much of Madcow's work before now was through the careful assembly of cleverly shaped and lovingly textured basic prims but with his extensive use of sculpty prims on this build, his imagination has really run amok. Lorin and Madcow describe it as "an exploration of the transformative nature of dreams, where each new setting may emerge from the last and seems continuous while we're experiencing them." Whilst some dreamscapes tend to be more ethereal and less hallucinatory, this is akin to running through the set of an Aardman animation movie directed by Tim Burton. You can even take away one of Madcow's avatars as a souvenir.

The brains behind the operation

There are some slight issues; I'm not the only person to have gone over there and found a problem with sounds; not necessarily the sounds within the build but system sounds too, which after a while can become a little grating. Madcow and Lorin are both aware of it and they are looking to get the problems resolved, but they believe it's a server side issue. However, turn your volume and your draw distances down and it's a truly wonderful build, well worth visiting and exploring as soon as you can. I would imagine that, very much like a dream, it won't be around for long and when it's gone, will be hard to reimagine.

Reach Art Screamer at the following SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Art%20Screamer/127/150/80

Where Dat?

2011-10-09T07:20:00.000-07:00

Hello reader! I am still here, but on a kind of enforced-hiatus from Second Life exploring: I've been moving house in First Life - sheesh, not nearly as easy as right-click, Take - and was without internet access for about 16 days and now really just without the energy to do very much. But that will change over the next few weeks I'm sure.

However, after missing 95% of the recent Medieval Festival, I did find the time to pop over to the Shire and set up my room for this year's Shocktober Haunted Ride Of Horrors ride. Shocktober is the name the Raglan folk have given to the month of October, feeling that one day for Halloween wasn't nearly enough and dedicating a whole spooky month to it. It's all looking good, and I'm looking forward to seeing it all in action.

Eins-tiny

2011-09-08T15:21:00.000-07:00

The Greatest Theory known to Tinydom

This is a rather cool contest: design an Albert Einstein avatar.

It's being run by the IMRIC (Institute for Medical Research Israel-Canada) and is actually offering a real cash prize incentive, which makes a change from a pot of Linden dollars or Marketplace gift cards. Einstein's a pretty unique visual-looking character, so I'm hoping that this competition yields some great results.

Naturally, I felt compelled to get involved; I can't enter of course, as the avatar base I used for these pictures is made by Wynx Whiplash, but I made the rest! Still, I checked in with Dusan Writer, who is the in-world contact for this contest and this was his response: [06:41] Dusan Writer: Hahaha I love it!!!!!

Maybe I should enter after all...

Albert Einstiny

Hopping Toad

2011-09-01T15:36:00.000-07:00

The problems plaguing the managers of Grendel's Children aren't anywhere near resolved - in fact, they might be getting a whole lot worse. Toady Nakamura has posted a video of the kind of quality she's getting from the latest version of Viewer 2 (v.3) viewer and it isn't good.

She had to film this using her Nikon Coolpix because the 'hopping' of frames on her monitor meant that she couldn't use her screen capture program. So why not switch back to a viewer that will be more comfortable to use? Because Toady was told to upgrade to the latest release, as until she did so the Lab couldn't look into the problems she's been having with Grendel's Avaria and Avaria Tor sims, that both her and Flea have continued to request help with.

The problem that Toady has though is that the change in framerate for Viewer 2 makes it almost impossible for her to spend much more than a couple of minutes in Second Life now; the flickering leads to her getting headaches and nausea. Not exactly an ideal Second Life experience. This, coupled with the lack of support that she and Flea got from the problems with their sims, is starting to take its toll.

Toady's resorted to having to create a Jira to try and sum up all of the issues she's having, with links to her Flickr stream containing snapshots of what she has to contend with. I really don't see where the connection between what client a user would be using and the performance of a sim? Surely client performance is almost unique to every user, whereas a sim's performance will ultimately effect everyone on it, regardless of how they got there?

Looking After The Children

2011-08-30T03:00:00.000-07:00

A few blog posts have popped up over the past couple of days about the recent plight of Grendel’s Children.

Treet TV’s Saffia Widdershins has a comprehensive write up of the issues that Flea Bussy and Toady Nakamura have been facing for the past few weeks, which basically amounts to the fact that two of their cluster of sims have been performing so poorly that even after repeated requests to the Lab about trying to rectify the problems, they’ve decided that the best course of action is to dump them entirely.

I know for a fact that this isn’t a decision they’ve taken lightly - I’m very proud of the fact that I can count Toady as a good friend - and I know when she told me about the closures over the weekend that she and Flea were both saddened and angry that it had come to this. It seems the Lab had put in a fix to try and better performance on the sims, but the solution hadn’t lasted beyond a few days and wasn’t followed up on again; it was only when they announced their decision to off-load the sims that someone decided to take notice, immediately flying in to investigate and proudly informing them that performance had massively improved. “Of course it had,” Toady told me, “because there were only 6 prims left on the sim by then.”

It won’t be a massive hit for Grendel’s as a business but it’s a shame for them both as creators; not only do Toady and Flea want to give users a product range but an experience to go along with it, an environment as well-crafted and atmospheric as their avatars are. The sims at ground level are amazing feats of architecture that Toady, Flea and others work so hard at that it’s almost the the suppression of creativity that I feel most saddened about. I've filmed

Hopefully someone at the Lab - or Rodvik himself - will be alerted to the problems that are still haunting the business and, although too late for Grendel’s, does something to ensure that other clusters and communities (and ultimately, revenue for the Lab) don’t slip away unnecessarily or unnoticed. In the meantime, if you’re looking for somewhere to explore, teleport over to the GC store and then find a way outside and hurl yourself down to ground level!

Twilight of Summer

2011-08-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

Hello dear reader! Apologies for a general lack of update of my virtual self, but truth be told, I haven't really done very much this past month, except pet some Meeroos and hang around the Raglan Shire pool! I'll be sure to find more creative motivation soon I hope.

Piece of Pye

2011-08-05T00:39:00.000-07:00

So August's Month of Machinima entries have been posted; I entered (again) but wasn't accepted (again). Not quite sure what the criteria for inclusion is; maybe my movies just aren't up to scratch. Anyway, someone who was included was my good buddy Pyewacket, whose AM Radio film made the final eleven! Check it out.

Achamo Paine

2011-08-04T04:14:00.001-07:00

Postcard from Second Life., originally uploaded by achamo.

I've only met Achamo Paine - a Japnese tiny - a couple of times in all of my time in SL, but I've followed her Flickr stream for a while and it never ceases to amaze me.

I love seeing the postcards she puts up, and the quality of them is amazing. She makes such a wonderful use of depth-of-field and light and shadow. It's great to see different parts of the Grid through such a good pair of other's eyes!

I would thoroughly recommend adding Achamo to your Flickr contacts.

Reblog: The Shifting Face Of Virtual Reality

2011-07-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

Magistrate Till pointed me to this blog post by Wayfinder, a member of Elf Clan, that makes a rather lovely mention of the Raglan Shire, and more specifically the residents who inhabit there.

Spaceship Spotting

2011-07-17T10:15:00.000-07:00

Someone filmed Linden Lab CEO Rod Humble - aka Rod Linden - when he jetted into SL8B around the time that Songbird was preparing to go on stage. See if you can spot anyone hanging around, staring at him...

Reblog: A Crack In The Veneer

2011-07-17T03:09:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting little piece by One Rhiadra about Raglan Shire. Disturbing too. I'm not for a moment suggesting that One is wrong to address the situation she has here, or that she's wrong to post it - far from it, I think it's a wholly brave and worthwhile post. But the core part of the article is potentially damaging to Raglan's reputation and community.

Raglan Shire is a PG sim; always has been and has always abided by that. It's not the only tiny community around, but it's by far the largest and I would argue the one with the most longevity behind it (there were some other small tiny communities before, but many have since disappeared); but I think that one of Raglan's biggest strengths is that it so welcomes diversity from all walks of life for people who just want to have fun in Second Life. People who want to escape drama, escape persecution for their thoughts, beliefs and choice of lifestyle, to be creative, silly, laugh and log off each evening with a smile on their face. As long as someone can bring that into a PG-environment, well in my book, you're welcome to stay for as long as you want. It's not up to any one, two or group of individuals to say how one should live as long as your day to day behaviour towards one another meets the requirements laid down under those PG guidelines. But that really boils down to good manners, and nothing more.

I can't understand these dissenting voices (either in SL or RL for that matter): so what if someone's gay? So what if someone's of a certain religious standpoint? So what if they're of a different colour skin to you? Are they nice and polite? Probably. And how is their lifestyle affecting you from going about your day-to-day business? Chances are, it's not. PG doesn't mean 'treat your guests and residents like they're six-year-olds.'

I recommend that you take a look at One's excellent piece here: What is Innocence?: A Crack In The Veneer

Hippie Hippie Shake

2011-07-16T01:41:00.001-07:00

Ready for Wootstock!!!, originally uploaded by Aime Takaaki.

Aime is all dressed up and ready for Raglan Shire's annual Wootstock festival, a weekend of live music and DJ sets. More information and a run-down of performers can be found at the Raglan Shire blog.

I love the retro-feel of this picture though. It's perfect for the event!

Forever Unknowable

2011-07-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

The sim of Unknowable is still out there on the Grid, but the Alien Isle that it once was is no more.

As I mentioned a couple of weeks back, Judi, Lorin, Madcow et al can no longer afford to maintain the Isle so I decided I'd try and make a machinima-postcard whilst I still had the time. It's not my most advanced work - I only filmed for about 20 minutes to get a dozen or so shots. The soundtrack is probably more advanced than the filming process; here I used twelve different sound samples overlaid with each other to give the score a slightly ethereal alien sound. I hope the AI crew like it; it's difficult to capture the majesty and the detail of such a sim, but then that was (and still is) part of the fun of exploring - these experiences are unique to everyone and we all see or discover different things.

Bye Alien Isles. I'll miss visiting you but I'm pleased that I did and that I filmed you.

Tinytanic

2011-07-06T06:20:00.000-07:00

During the course of a conversation I was having with a fellow tiny a little earlier this morning, I learned that tinies were banned from the Titanic sim. Unpossible, I hear you cry! Nope, apparently not; after immediately teleporting over, I was greeted with a blue dialogue box quite implicitly stating 'Child avatars/tinies or animal avatars are not allowed'.

Shocking! We're usually welcomed with open arms, allowed to roam and play and spread joy to wherever we go - but not aboard the Titanic, it would seem. I decided at that point that the best course of action was to inform my fellow tinies in the Friends of Raglan Shire group of what I'd discovered, in an attempt to ensure that they were properly educated and didn't accidentally stumble onto this sim and find themselves on the receiving end of a boot. Many of them were equally as stunned and perplexed by my claim and demanded to be teleported in to see the evidence for themselves; so I grabbed another half dozen.

In an effort to try and understand why we may not be allowed to explore this quite incredible and lovingly worked build we clambered aboard; initially to the bow in the hope of recreating a "I'm flying Jack!" moment, before deciding that the ballroom was where we needed to be. After all, we'd all dressed up for the occasion and took to the dancefloor to show off our moves. I even managed to grab a few snapshots as a momento.

I appreciate that some sims and communities strive for accuracy in not only their builds but also trying to achieve 'the feel' of a place or event, but categorically saying that certain avatar types aren't allowed does seem a little blinkered, in my opinion. This whole expedition came about because I'd been told that a friend of mine had been ejected from the Titanic sim when she turned up as a tiny to watch one of her favourite performers do a live show there; that kind of behaviour doesn't benefit anyone, not the resident, the performer or the reputation of the sim. Besides, us being there didn't seem to bother anyone - admittedly, of the 11 people there, eight of them were tiny - and besides ignoring the request of NOT being tiny there, we acted in a wholly respectable manner.

Besides, if the Titanic sim was really striving for accuracy, the sea level would be at its highest level possible, the ship would be wedged into the ground and the build covered in sculpty limpets. I'm just sayin'.

Extra Terrestrial

2011-06-30T06:22:00.000-07:00

As the end of the month draws closer, I'm reminded that one of my favourite sims will soon be gone from the Grid.

Among the hullabaloo of the closing of The Lost Gardens Of Apollo - which is also sad, I did visit there on many an occasion in my first twelve months in-world - here's a gentle reminder that Judi Newall and Lorin Tone's Alien Isles homestead Unknowable will soon be confined to the Second Life history books too.

I love Alien Isles; it's like Svarga on LSD. Designed and put together by a number of brilliant people - many of whom I feel blessed to have made the acquaintance of over the years - it's everything a sim should be for me: big, bold and colourful; unlike anything you've seen before or likely to see again; demands exploration both above and below the waterline, but most of all represents perfectly the creativity and grandeur that can be achieved when several like-minded people come together and want to share their imagination with others. The prime contributor to the construction it seems was Madcow Cosmos, whose extra-terrestrial flora bursts up through the seas to create an incredible series of interactive platforms. Madcow's creations have also extended to the 7Seas fishing crate on the Tron-esque fishing dock; many a tiny has sat with me trying to catch the amazing range of aquatic-themed shoulder pets, rods and avatars that the AI team offered.

Saffia Widdershins has a piece on the Isles' closing, but really the best thing to do is find an hour in your day to go and explore this most wonderful sim while you still can.

Linden Lab seeks company spokesperson

2011-06-29T14:11:00.000-07:00

Tate Runino's reporting that the Lab are recruiting, for a job that probably ranks up there with 'Environmental Spokesperson for BP'.

I think the best person for this job should go under the name of Mouthpiece Linden, wear a slightly rusted, occasionally-sparking Robot avatar and have a Twitter account that every other day posts a Tweet written entirely in Binary code. It's the safest way to keep throwing the residents off and stopping them from getting too irate with a real person with genuine human feelings and emotions.

But good luck to whoever gets it. Ideally, the best person for the role should be someone who understands the back-end systems and can properly and respectfully communicate any problems in layman's terms to residents - yeah I know, it's an oxymoron.

Linden Lab seeks company spokesperson

The Poultry Report: New "Linden" Avatars

2011-06-29T12:53:00.000-07:00

Uccello Poultry has written a small feature on a host of new Library avatars that the Lab have dropped into folks' inventories. They look pretty cool! Loco Pocos creator Damien Fate has reportedly had a hand in making one or two of them, which is nice to see; Damien's a great content creator and the Loco Pocos Island sim was a masterpiece that wasn't around nearly long enough for people to enjoy and appreciate.

It's also quite refreshing to see the Lab give new residents a non-human choice of starting av too and allow people to embrace and explore the more whimsical aspect of Second Life. Here's Uccello's report, with pictures!

The Poultry Report: New "Linden" Avatars

Songbird Sings

2011-06-25T07:11:00.001-07:00

Songbird Sings, originally uploaded by Chaffro!.

Raglan Shire's own Songbird Sorbet took to the SL8B Main Stage on Friday 24th June, to perform an hour long set. I believe the avatar count at the stages reached 105 at one point, many of which were Shire tinies!

Rodvik Linden visits SL8B Mainstage

2011-06-23T16:33:00.001-07:00

Rodvik Linden visits SL8B Mainstage, originally uploaded by Daniel Voyager.

Pyewacket, Toady and I met a Linden Spaceship tonight at SL8B. Name looks familiar from somewhere...

Ringmaster

2011-06-23T10:22:00.001-07:00

Ringmaster, originally uploaded by Chaffro!.

Here I am, in attire usually reserved for Shocktoberfest, when I dress a spooky Ringmaster; the SL8B circus plot is a good enough excuse for me to wear it now though!

SL8B

2011-06-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

So the Lab's SL8B will open to the general public from 10am SL time on Monday 20th June, and if you give yourself a couple of hours to take a wander around the sims given over to it, you'll be in for a treat.

I did just that this past Sunday afternoon, guided in part by the SL8B MegaHunt by Octoberville which is great for encouraging you to look around more than a single plot of interest and actually cross sim boundaries and loved seeing what others had created. Now, I'm sure some more rampant, more politicised and more critical SL-bloggers will spend much of the next two weeks finding whatever fault they can with the concept and/or the execution of the event, but if you look at it for what it actually is - a celebration not just of the platforms' longevity but also the diversity that the residents bring to it - you'll find yourself treated to a wealth of creativity and talent. Sure, some builds are less polished than others, but what they lack in fine detail they more than make up for in fun, which for me is what SL is all about.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the theme of this year's event is 'The Magic of SL'; for the Raglan Shire plot I took a more literal interpretation of the theme and helped set up a fun little circus-cum-carnival style plot replete with things to sit on and jump on. It's all been very well received by the visitors it's had so far (limited at time of writing to fellow exhibitors) and having had a look around, I've seen many others have chosen to do something similar; but I've been occasionally reading some of the official SL8B blog and was blown away this post especially about how magical SL has been to another resident in a completely different way.

There'll be the critics, of course; an office-type build about the joys of LSL won't be to everyone's taste but for some, it's exactly what they're looking for. And I am pretty sure that the harshest critics will be the ones who have teleported in, flown across two sim boundaries, have racked up no more than twenty minutes of searching and declared it a waste of time. These types of events may only offer up a very small cross section and highly condensed picture of what's out there on the Grid but it does serve to remind me that whatever one may read or hear about 'the state of Second Life' by some of those who feel they are more qualified to write about your experience than I am, that SL is actually very well populated by a large number of very passionate and creative people who want to encourage other residents to explore and discover all that if offers. That discovery doesn't take much to do and you come away from it - or at least I did - feeling that Second Life is a platform that is still very much loved by its users and on a daily basis brings at least a touch of magic to someone's life.

Ride

2011-06-20T03:59:00.001-07:00

Ride, originally uploaded by Aime Takaaki.

I love this picture! Aime does it again!

Popcorn Art

2011-06-19T11:28:00.000-07:00

I've been involved in not one, but TWO SL8B plots this year. I took the reins for building not only the Shire plot, but also got to build a plot with my pal Pyewacket to promote our Virtual Popcorn blog!

For me, tinydom is one of the most magical things I get to see in SL each day; the idea that these biped critters can make all these wonderful things and reside in a landscape of pure whimsy is something that never fails to raise a smile and I love the reaction that my tiny movies have especially to non-tiny residents. So it's this route that Pye and I have chosen to go down: showing off how much fun the magic of tinydom in SL is, rather than what we have set out to do with our blog, trying to bring some of the less-seen machinima to the masses (all six followers so far!).

I have a problem with plots with buildings on them; I'm not for a moment suggesting it's wrong, but for me, walls suggest 'KEEP OUT' rather than 'Come In', so I decided the best way to showcase them in this kind of set-up was to build a drive-in cinema, rather than a walled theatre. We've got a big movie screen set up at one end and several amazing 1-prim 'Toadsters' (named by and after their creator Toady Nakamura of Grendel's Children) parked up in front of it. The cars mostly accommodate tinies, but there is a car for the longer-legged resident to sit in. Pye has compiled a playlist of about 20 tiny machinima films that a viewer can sit and watch and hopefully see the magical lives we see every day!

Mrs. Bones: The Raglan Film Fest 2011

2011-06-18T06:28:00.001-07:00

Mrs. Bones: The Raglan Film Fest 2011, originally uploaded by Mrs. Bones.

A wonderful little montage of shots filmed at the Raglan Film Festival by The Bones!

And Cut!

2011-06-13T05:16:00.001-07:00

I hosted our second Raglan Film Festival last night! We had 10 new tiny-centric machinima on show, and with over 40 tinies in attendance, it was another typically raucous occasion! You can see the films in question in this thread at the Raglan Shire forums.

Unlike most other machinima events, the RFF is more of a celebration of tinydom and the fun of the community than a contest between film-makers. In fact, my real motivation behind it is to show others how achievable it is to make machinima, in the hope that others give it a go.

The only real criteria for film-makers is that their film must include at least one tiny but because of the lack of limitations, it means that we always end up with a real mixed bag of film styles and lengths. Some people prefer to have hordes of extras in their films whilst others prefer to have just themselves or perhaps one or two others. Because of Raglan’s constantly changing environment with each new event, costumes and sets are virtually built for a film-maker to just grab a camera application and shoot!

It was a shame that there was no real support from the wider machinima community though. I’d been given – and utilised - a number of platforms to promote the event and I’d given away notecards to dozens of people, but even those most enthusiastic about it initially didn’t even find the time to show up for the event, let alone film anything. That’s fine; their loss, in my opinion. However, there was one person in attendance who’s been to a number of machinima events and festivals and was kind enough to tell me that they thought that the RFF was one of the best they’d been to. I put that down less to my hosting and organising skills and more to the audience, for whom the night was really for. In any walk of life, over time you can become complacent to the wonder and the joy of what’s immediately in front of you; sometimes putting it on film makes you see it from a different perspective and reminds you how awesome a community you inhabit!

poutineLife

2011-06-11T02:52:00.001-07:00

poutineLife, originally uploaded by iliveisl.

TINYDOM RULES!

The Circus Rolls Into Town

2011-06-06T03:42:00.000-07:00

Goodness, it's been a month since I last blogged? Sorry - that's just me being a lazybones!

I've been busy in-world though, especially over the past week: it's SL8B time! Second Life celebrates its 8th birthday soon and as usual, I determined that as one of the leading tiny communities on the grid that Raglan should have a presence here again this year.

This year's theme is 'The Magic of SL': now, almost everything that tinies do is magical in one way or another, so adding to that, we've decided to roll a little circus onto our plot at the sim Electrify. We have a HUGE merry-go-round made by the supremely-talented Marion Questi and Martini Discovolante; we have a tightrope; we have balancing acts; we have balloons, caravans, trees, tents - we even have bouncy pie trampolines! We've already had a number of visitors come and play and that's just fellow exhibitors! The sims officially open to the public on June 20th, so I hope that you, dear reader, make some time to come and see what we've cobbled together!

Then, you can come and visit the SECOND plot I'm working on, with Pyewacket to promote our Virtual Popcorn machinima review blog! More on that once I stop being distracted by having to pet Meeroos. Sigh.

Honour Bestowed

2011-05-06T08:00:00.000-07:00

The other night at the Month of Machinima event, Honour McMillan was kind enough to send me a virtual hug (whilst I was on the warpath because of the lack of tiny seating at the event arena), which inspired her to make a return visit to Raglan Shire. I happened to be wandering around the Shire when she visited - read her lovely blog post about her trip!

MoMmy

2011-05-05T13:30:00.000-07:00

Here's an interesting post - not by me, I hasten to add, but some thoughts from Soror Nishi: An Unexpected Alliance at LEA Opening.

As for me, I attended the opening night of the inaugural Month of Machinima yesterday too. I'm disappointed in myself that I didn't consider entering anything, but so pleased that Daveypup Nirpaw got his Karma Kong on the shortlist!

It's nice to see my favourite creative medium getting some long overdue exposure and recognition. But it's an interesting question: who exactly does this benefit? The Lab? Almost certainly, when used correctly; they have no direct input in any of the films, either creatively or financially, yet will take the credit for allowing the films to have happened. But is that so bad or unheard of?

Consider this: Pirates of The Caribbean - Disney film, Johnny Depp film or Gore Verbinski film? Well, actually all three but you can almost guarantee that if you ask Joe Ordinary, he'll probably tell you it's a Disney film. What input does Disney have in the finished product? Well, yes Hollywood is a different animal admittedly, but overall their input was probably minimal once the cameras started rolling. Their logo will still be all over the film, the posters and the press material, and they'll take the chunk of the money it brings in - so does that mean that the talent behind it suffers? Not at all. In this case, the Lab just acts as distributor to your film.

So consider the Lab as a film studio, and where does this leave the film-makers? Will they get any reward from this, either financially or artistically? This situation can be turned round by the machinimatographers themselves, as long as they're not putting their efforts into ranting about it. They can market themselves, exclusive of the Lab's efforts. The right thing for the Lab to do would be to not only give these film-makers a forum, but support these creators beyond that and make sure that if they (LL) are using residents' machinima as marketing material, that they will make sure that credit is given where it's due - and if that's a financial credit, and a creator earns from the work that they've created, the Lab should support that accordingly too; after all, they will ultimately benefit without taking a cut of any earnings but from the free exposure they're already taking. That will be the thing to watch, not picking apart someone's sentences.

Artists should use these opportunities to do just that. Use the stuff you create as a portfolio and use it to find other opportunities, if that's what you want; but don't try and tear it down just because you're not involved. At the end of the day, it'll be what you the creator puts into it that'll make it successful; a film studio (or in this case, the Lab) can dress up any old piece of junk and promote it, but an audience will still see it for what it's worth.

Gone Fishin'!

2011-04-27T14:58:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-26T12:23:00.001-07:00

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'!

2011-04-24T03:09:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-17T13:13:00.000-07:00

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!

2011-04-16T10:26:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-04T15:27:00.000-07:00

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

2011-04-03T11:33:00.000-07:00

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!

Beautiful Bunny!

2011-04-03T03:27:00.001-07:00

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

2011-04-03T03:21:00.001-07:00

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

Misa Delight takes to the fairways. Beautiful picture!

Hip Hop Fox

2011-03-09T04:13:00.000-08:00

A couple of years ago, I made a video for a medley of Parry Gripp tunes. One of the 'sequences' within that video was a spoof hip-hop sequence with Shady Fox, where he played the rapper part whilst three scantily clad young women danced behind him - pretty much like 95% of hip hop videos usually are, and I always wanted to expand on that idea.

So, this past weekend, I once again roped Shady in to film, alongside two scantily clad young women and a couple of guest stars. I filmed from two static camera positions, taking just under an hour to film it all and about 4-5 hours of editing work. This is the result.

Wyze Gicasso is an unsigned artist whose tracks I found when looking for some music to use. I didn't want to use an established artist as the video might've been muted by YouTube if there was any dispute. I did send Wyze a message asking him to take a look and if he didn't like it, I'd take it down; however, he replied saying that he liked it!

An Otter Award Ceremony

2011-03-08T02:01:00.000-08:00

Photo: Red carpet at Tiny Film Festival 2010 © Teal Freenote

This past weekend, I announced a date for our second ever Raglan Film Festival!

Last year, we had the Festival of tiny-oriented machinima just before the Oscars; this year however, I've been bogged down with dealing with an RL move of house, so couldn't commit to anything sooner until we really knew what was going on. However, I've now set a date for Sunday 12 June 2011!

More detailed information is on the Raglan Shire forum page here, but essentially, it's a festival (rather than a contest) to celebrate the joy of being a tiny in Second Life. Last year's event had about 10-15 films in total, a list of which is here and it was great to see how different people approached using different tiny avatars.

It's really open to anyone, and of any ability level. Toxic Menges gave me the chance to share some information about the event at this weeks' MachinimaMondays meeting, so hopefully we'll see some interest from machinimatographers from outside of the Shire too; and as an added bonus, EVERYONE who enters a film into this year's event will walk away with a Golden Otter prize as a reward!

The Echelon SFX

2011-03-03T05:57:00.000-08:00

I occasionally attend meetings of the group Machinima Mondays, a group started by two of my favourite machinimatographers, Toxic Menges and Chantal Harvey. The meetings are a chance for machinima film-makers to get together and share work, advice, solutions to problems and, if a Linden is there (as there was this past week), a chance to offer suggestions for a more-dedicated machinima viewer, or what elements would be useful to have in a viewer.

This week, I actually feel like I contributed something of use! I was able to share the link for my last piece of work (my Echelon Effect video) and talk about it. Some people asked whether I was using Space Navigator (a type of mouse) and had a really steady hand; however, I did explain how I'd done the single shot zoom effect using the SL viewer's Debug menu.

It was actually a tip I found from Torley Linden's video tutorials on YouTube - and if I could find the video again, I'd be posting a link to it now! Basically, what you do is change the time it takes for your camera view to switch back from a zoomed position or point back to its default position above an avatar's head.

To change the time, first you need to activate and open the Advanced menu on the viewer, by pressing Ctrl+Alt+D and then go down to Debug Settings; this opens the Debug dialog box.

In the command bar, you'll need to type zoomtime; this should then present you with a time option. By default, the setting will read 0.400 - that's the time it takes to go from a zoomed point back to default, less than half a second. For the video I shot, I knew the soundtrack ran to just under three minutes, so to give my video a bit of breathing room before the music started and just after it finished, I set my zoom time to 180.000 seconds. However, take note: before you change the zoom time, you should have already zoomed in on something (using, for Windows users at least, Alt + Left Mouse button), as if you then try and zoom after you've changed the zoom time, your new setting will already apply.

So, you've zoomed in on something and changed your zoom time? Now, to activate the zoom, I tend to use the Esc button. First, you'll need to click away from the Debug dialog box (as long as your zoom point is fixed using Alt+Left mouse button, it shouldn't be a problem); just left click on something nearby. Turn off all windows by pressing Ctrl+Alt+F1, and then hit the Esc button twice - the first hit will close your Local Chat bar, and the second will activate your zoom. If everything goes to plan, you should then have a slow zoom (depending on what time you changed the zoom to) neatly back to above your head. In the video I shot, I wanted the camera to come to a natural stop but obviously didn't want to include myself in the shot, so I triggered an animation that would hide my avatar underground, without changing my avatar position.

It was nice to hear several people had learned something new from my explaining this, and they vowed to then go and use the effect in their own projects. I use it almost all the time in mine; I think the results it creates make a really nice touch.

If you're interested in learning more about Machinima from the people who make it, join the group and come along to Machinima Mondays. The meetings are held - unsurprisingly - on a Monday at two different times to cover as many time-zones as possible. It's either a small (virtual) world, or I know a lot of talented people, because almost every week I meet another tiny at one of the meetings!

Short And Sweet

2011-02-07T01:56:00.000-08:00

I made a new machinima!

I needed to make something just to get me back into the creative flow of things; it's been a year since I did some machinima work, and although am not short of ideas, often find my ideas becoming so big and running away from me, that they become unmanageable, and I discard them. So I needed to change tact.

I got permission to use Flea Bussy and Toady Nakamura's amazing Avaria sims for filming, but didn't want to do anything too demanding. I just wanted to do something quick and easy, so found a good spot, ramped up the Draw Distance and Zoom Time and came up with this. The music is by a guy professionally known as The Echelon Effect, who I'm a really big fan of. He's been turning out some wonderful lush post-rock electronica soundscapes for a while, and I've been wanting to use his music for a video project for ages. This piece was just the right length to make this film work.

NB: The video screen looks small here, because it's widescreen. Best viewed full screen or on YouTube.

Dog Biscuits

2011-01-10T23:35:00.000-08:00

I’ve spent the past few days helping a friend (who I actually struck up a friendship with through Twitter!) set up her new shop/business in-world.

Jenicca Gothly sells dog treats at her stores on Clos Normand and Port Babbage – but with a bit of a twist. These aren’t treats for virtual dogs, but actual REAL dog treat biscuits that she makes from her home and sells online.

The treats – of which there are currently three varieties – all contain natural ingredients. Jen makes them from home and sells them through an Etsy site, but being an avid SL-resident, she figured she could try and market them through whatever means were at her disposal. She’s rented two shop units so far, both on Victorian-era themed sims, so needed a shop interior that matched. She’ll be the first to admit that she’s not the best builder (but then neither am I), and by setting up everything she needed – signs, mailboxes, décor, etc – had run pretty close to her prim limit. I helped by tweaking a few bits here and there for her, building a new counter, finding some low-prim vintage-style furniture and just straightening a few wonky pictures.

How does it work then? Well, you just buy up one of the boxes in-world, send Jen your address details etc, and that’s it. Shipping and handling is included in the in-world price. The boxes (in—world) cost about L$2000, so you need to have invested some money into SL to get them, but I thought it was a really clever and secure way of handling payment!

I really like what Jen’s achieved so far, and I hope her business venture is a success! Woof!

New Year

2011-01-10T23:33:00.000-08:00

It seems like 2010 was the least productive year for me in SL so far; I felt like I didn’t really make much or do much, other than use it to socialise and catch up with friends from each corner of the globe. I adore SL in that respect. For me, it is the best social networking community – it’s real-time – the MOST real-time social-network I believe is out there - it allows voice chat and it allows you to share creativity. Linden Lab needs to realise this, rather than waste time trying to unnecessarily develop more online social content. What they have here is unique and precedes a lot of other social networks, and it should be marketed as such, not trying to copy what’s followed.

I really want to do more in-world this year. Last year, RL took over, and probably understandably – I got married, for one! That took a lot of time, planning and saving and I was very fortunate to be able to cash-in and use some of my SL-sales to be able to pay for our wedding cake toppers! We (me and Nat a.k.a Kitti Dumpling in-world) rounded out our Second Life-connection by having two of our tiny friends - Mutley Latte and Josephine Planer - at our wedding too!

So, I hope to have turned out at least two pieces of Machinima by the time the year’s out, have organised at least one event for Raglan and made at least six outfits. They’re my Second Life New Year’s Resolutions!

I'm Still Here!

2010-10-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

Apologies to you, loyal reader, for not updating this blog in six weeks! All of a sudden I had a real life wedding to attend - MINE! It kinda took up a lot of my time.

What virtual world stuff have I done since then? Well, not a great deal, unfortunately. I added my opinion to a comment a Linden made here, which I thought was pretty bad; but then in my experience, web developers have almost always been anti-social misfits with no real idea of how to properly address another human being.

Avatars United closed down. Silly move. Sure, it wasn't being used to its fullest potential, but I'm sure it could've been. To me, it had LOTS of potential, and I have a whole stack of ideas of how it could be developed; but I'm sure someone being paid a lot more money had better ideas and saw that the only recourse was to obliterate it entirely. What a waste.

I've also missed most of Raglan Shire's Shocktober Festival too (the Halloween-themed month) due to RL commitments; but most of all, I've missed hanging out with friends. Hopefully I'll get to catch up with some properly soon.

Medieval Looms

2010-09-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

It's the FOURTH Medieval festival this month on Raglan Shire!

I'm proud to say that I remember the very first one on the Shire. It was held over a weekend, I believe, and took up the area that is now known as the Silicube. Over the years it's grown to now take over the whole field - where the square is, surrounded by Artisan tents and the like - and a grand castle. I made outfits for the first one. Thankfully, due to the fact that the style I made hasn't changed since it went out of fashion over 300 years ago, they still look good these days!

This year, I've tried to contribute my commemorating the tinies favourite festival (for many, at least) by making a huge tapestry. I've been taking pictures of medieval tinies individually and then arranging them on long panels. I've then applied a canvas-style effect over the images, chopped them into sections and uploaded them, to stick them back together into one long tapestry. I've managed to photograph 133 tinies - one of whom appears twice (in different outfits) at my request, because I didn't think many people would be interested! I might still add more yet. I've put it up for display in the castle, and have had lots of requests from people to buy copies of it. I may sell the textures rather than the prims, and then folks can make sections if they want.

I'll donate the proceeds to the animal funds that we're currently raising to go towards our continued adoption of a tapir in the States and a giraffe at London Zoo in the UK. Zayn is also hoping to raise enough to be able to donate to two secondary charities that work with animals on a more general basis.

I might have some interesting news regarding my 'Le Squabbit' machinima movie too soon. I don't want to say too much at the moment, in case nothing happens. But...watch this space!

Emerald Warrior

2010-08-22T08:57:00.000-07:00

In light of the fact that the moderator of the Modular Systems blog - the words of wisdom from the Emerald Viewer team - can't be bothered to approve or disprove my comment on their admission to launching a premeditated attack on another blogger, I've posted a screen grab of the comment, and copied my comment below. It goes:

I’ve never used your viewer. A lot of people I know have used it. Apparently it has some ‘really cool features’, but never having used it, the only ‘really cool feature’ I’ve ever witnessed it the chunky multi-coloured Edit particle beam, which I can live without. However, those I do know who’ve used it have complained repeatedly that with each successive update, the viewer has become more and more unstable and unusable, so they’ve switched away.

I don’t know what you did, who you targeted, what happened, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t care. However, based on what I’ve read, I will say this: get your fucking act together. You’re harming the credibility of not only yourselves but every other self-serving basement-dwelling script-babbling software engineer who IS working to do something better for themselves and others. You can hire all the ex-Lindens that you want to try and bolster your credibility, but if you can’t even get past something as petty and as fruitless as this, you may as well give up now.

Goodnight everybody!

In an (un)related side-note, I visited the Emerald Point sim last night. I was in conversation with two friends in IM just before I went, and was flitting between chatting to each of them and reading about someone trying to investigate the story of their blog attack who kept being booted from the sim. I told both of my friends I was heading over there, and there'd be a strong chance that I'd be kicked offline. I was force-crashed three times in 10 minutes of being there. Coincidence? No way. These Emerald people are griefers in sheeps clothing.

Dear Uncle Phil

2010-08-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

Dear Philip,

I watched your keynote speech not with especially great interest, to be honest, as I came into it with a crippling amount of pessimism about the state of the company and its future given that you’d laid off a host of other people just the week before. Still, you have to admire me for still wanting to see it, right?

My review would be: mixed bag. I heard you talk about stuff that was all a bit too techno-jargon for me and I heard you mention some things I could understand. However, I do still have some issues I’d like to address…

I’ve been in Second Life for approximately 47 months, and have been a Premium Account holder for approximately 46 months. I’ve purchased L$ during my time too, so I’ve given you a fair bit of my own money over the years. In that time, I’ve built things for little or no financial gain, and I’ve taken the time to help others build things; I’ve designed sims and I’ve helped others design sims; I’ve had a blast making machinima, and seeing what kind of reaction my approach to mini-movie making has had; I’ve made contacts with people from all across the globe, I’ve made genuine friends, some of whom I’ve then had the great pleasure of meeting outside of Second Life – some are even coming to my forthcoming wedding! – and I’ve suffered genuine sadness at losing some of those friends along the way too. I’ve done and experienced quite a bit that I should be very appreciative of the Lab for, as without SL, these things would never have happened.

However, when I hear that you want to put the focus on new sign-ups, it pains me Philip. It really does.

Of all the things I’ve done to enhance for the Second Life experience and promote to others, where is the return of the appreciation? Where is the love, Philip? I’ve been paying for your support, so where is it? Maybe you’re not a fan of my machinima – it’s OK, a lot of people don’t like Coldplay or waffles (I call these people ‘the crazy folks’); maybe you don’t have a tiny avatar and therefore think that your tall avatar look ridiculous in the tiny outfits I make. I can’t figure it out! I still suffer with lag. I still see log-in issues, I still see inventory issues, I still see transaction issues on a weekly basis. If these are going to be ongoing issues, come out and say so, so I’ll stop clinging onto the belief that these things are being worked on.

Of course you want new people to come in-world, that’s completely understandable. I worked in the retail sector for a while, and I appreciate that Second Life is (in part) a product, and you need your customer base to continue to grow if you want your company, your business and your revenues growing – that’s Economics 101.

And I can appreciate you wanting to get the experience right; if I was a new customer about to walk into an amazing looking new store with fancy flashing neon signs and sexy music playing out over Bang & Olufsen speakers, I’d be thinking, ‘Wow, why didn’t I come here sooner?!’ But if, on the way in, I hear someone on the way out muttering about how bad it’s getting and getting worse in there, I’d be stepping into that store in a very different frame of mind.

You said in your SL7B speech: “So going back to those basics and just trying to make this thing work for all of us is what you can expect to see from us next.” No offence, but in the time you said that and now, I haven’t seen a whole lot of improvement. So why are you working on new stuff already? Are you seriously telling me that everything’s fixed?

I know it’s hard to please all of the people all of the time (especially those scripting geeks; sheesh, trying to please them sometimes seems to be as infuriating as trying to turn a lion into a vegetarian), but have some appreciation of the paying customer base. I don’t consider myself one, but some of the longer-term residents do have some very good ideas that should be looked at and addressed. However, I do know that most of those ideas are based around improvement of the general experience, not how it looks. You seem to be focusing on giving new users a fancy new pair of shoes to walk in; however, when you’re asking them to walk down the same muddy, puddle-ridden, debris strewn road as the rest of us, having shoes with the springiest of steps or the whitest of laces won’t make an ounce of difference.

Regards,

Chaffro

Childish Behaviour At SLCC

2010-08-15T04:31:00.000-07:00

So it's SLCC this weekend. I'm not really sure what it is, but I get the impression from looking at the website that it's like a fan convention for Second Life, put together by residents, but endorsed by Linden Lab.

Philip went. He announced that they were shutting down the Teen Grid. I'd like to think that at the same time as that bombshell was dropped, a dark silent figure right-clicked and Touched Blue Linden's virtual grave and set a fast rotation script off.

So this probably means that the main grid will now become populated by teens who talk in 'txt speak', hassle you for money a lot more and generally think they're cleverer than you. Word up, kids: you're not.

It also means that kids will be walking freely amongst groups of adults, unsupervised, having conversations with adults unsupervised and generally being open to everything that already goes on in the Main Grid - unsupervised. I'm sure (read: hoping) that LL are planning some protocols to safeguard underage residents from the potential dangers of online grooming, but it hasn't taken people long to realise the dangers already. My pal Toxic Menges worked for Habbo, a social networking world specifically aimed at teenagers and was quick to point out some of the problems she had to work around via a series of (always interesting) Tweets.

Another big thing that got mentioned was 'meshes'. A whole bunch of Lindens were laid off the week before SLCC too and Qarl Linden was one high-profile casualty of the latest round of redundancies (perhaps deflecting from the fact that up to ten others had also been given their marching orders). Apparently Qarl was the person who made sculpties possible and was working on or towards bringing 'meshes' in-world. I've no clue what they are or how meshes work, so I can't comment on that, but better educated geeks tend to rave about them, so I'll assume they are a big deal. However, the fact that they were talked about at SLCC almost seemed to indicate that someone at the Lab had actually listened to the outcry of residents upon Qarl's departure and sought to calm the mob. Or maybe I'm being optimistic. It's a shame that another obviously incredibly talented person has gone. Sculpties are good fun to play with, and they have certainly helped shape (no pun intended) SL in a far more creative way.

Anyway, I lead a bunch of tinies - Escape Unplugged, Patience Littleboots, Clover Denzo and others - to the SLCC sims on Saturday night, just before speeches were about to resume. We hid beneath the stage before climbing onto the tables and riverdancing to the audience below. We'd done three dances before a moderator told us all to leave the stage. In retrospect, maybe he'd seen us earlier and thought that although it was the most entertaining thing that had happened there all weekend, three dances was enough.

Flip Linden

2010-06-26T13:06:00.000-07:00

This past week saw M Linden step away from Chief Executive Officer duties at Linden lab and Philip Linden (aka Rosedale, Lab co-founder) step in as interim CEO.

Some have seen this as a blessing, worthy of Grid-wide parades and celebrations. I, personally, haven't been that enthusiastic.

Why have people been celebrating? Because M Linden has parted ways with the Lab? Seems a pretty shitty reason to throw a party; a man's just lost his job. Regardless of the fact that he may be able to step into another high-profile position fairly easily, being told that you've lost your job is something you don't ever really want to hear - unless you're a suicide bomber, perhaps.

M Linden was never widely accepted by the SL-community, for reasons I'm not exactly sure why. I don't follow the politics and ins-and-outs of a company based thousands of miles away from me, I have my own life to be getting on with (by the way, that's not a sleight on hardcore SL-bloggers at all, just simplifying the fact that I don't really care); but for some reason, he immediately seemed a bit detached. Maybe it was having the M prefix - meaning that his name couldn't be brought up in Search, and therefore made him seem distant and inaccessible. Regardless of whether he ever saw an IM, Philip Linden's profile was always on-hand to rant at via IM.

M Linden lead an increasingly-large team of Lindens to pick-up things like Avatars United, XStreet, SLim...and do very little to the actual platform that all of these things supported. Despite some early signs of promise with regular blog posts about the status of the Grid and efforts to fix things like group chat and general lag, nothing really improved. We all just became a little more accustomed to it.

I spoke to another Linden on the day that the changes were announced and he was genuinely sad to see M Linden go. "I had some good conversations with M," my Linden friend told me. "And despite what people think, he did get Second Life." Unless you worked in the same office, I can't see why you'd have any reason to object or challenge that, so I won't.

And so Philip Linden is back. Huzzah, people cry! Um, really? I started out in SL in the latter part of 2006 and by the time Philip Linden stepped down from his original CEO position, lag had gotten worse from the time I joined, an excellent customer support was beginning to dwindle and people were already beginning to look at other virtual world platforms.

So, I'm generally unfazed about the whole thing; I'll admit to directing people towards blog posts about the rumours of a switch-around before it was officially announced, but then I knew some other people would be more interested than I was/am. I'd like to believe the hype of a 'second coming' but I'm more concerned that it might be the rapture.

SL7B

2010-06-18T15:42:00.001-07:00

Wow, another year rolls around so soon? Doesn't seem like 5 minutes ago we were setting up for SL6B!

SL7B (Second Life 7th Birthday) kicks off next week, and as usual, Raglan has a plot, and I was lucky enough to be able to design and co-ordinate the build for Raglan this year! The theme is Unexpected Collaborations: it seems a strange theme, very open and therefore good for some really creative stuff to happen, but I find SL a wholly collaborative experience already. At Raglan, we collaborate with each other for every event held; we all come from different corners of the globe, all have very different lifestyles and yet we're able to find a common ground and common language to make things happen. Without collaboration, we wouldn't achieve anything. Surely it should be the same for any resident? Well, yes, that is true, and the SL7B Wiki does actually support my belief too, but it still seemed like a strange title to me.

Anyway, with that in mind, I decided that we should do two things: 1, celebrate the awesomeness of tinies and 2, highlight how contradictory the theme seemed (to me, at least - I can't speak for the Raglan community as a whole, or my fellow builders). And how best to do this? By making tinies the be all and end all of all Second Life.

Our build is a 'power hub', powered by a couple of interactive hamster wheels and a conveyor belt that feeds waffles into the Grid. It's kitted out with big mechanical gears and computer terminals. We've also got some 'control flowers' that Misa made up, where we can access the infrastructure of any sim at any given time and fix things on that sim - for example, fix lag or clear griefer debris - at the flick of a switch. We also have a network of TinyCams dotted around the Grid where we can keep an eye on whats going on and where, via a live feed of CCTV images fed back to the power hub.

Well, not really - but that's the general idea!

It all looks great, and much thanks to Misa Delight, Panacea Pangaea, Dagmar Klaar, Bree Himmel, Shadow Marlin, Luna Twilight and Etheria Parrott for their assistance and ideas in helping us get this build together! Another collaborative effort, as we'd have expected.

The only downside to the whole thing is, is that (some of) the moderators seem to have developed a God complex over the course of a fortnight. It appears that some residents have been given the task of moderating the sims (I can't remember of that was the case last year too?), so they've come along and picked on anything that might cause even the slightest bit of upset to the Lindens; I guess the ones who are left must be feeling uber-sensitive at the moment.

We (at the Raglan plot) were told we had to change our textures, with no clear reason why ("check the rules!" we were told. I did - nothing about textures in them); deadlines were changed at the drop of a hat; rules were talked about that never seemed to appear in any of the number (and there were a LOT) of notecards that were sent out. Poor Noramyr of Extrovirtual had all of her stuff returned to her - BY A LINDEN at the behest of a resident moderator! - because her build looked unfinished, leaving her just six hours to get something set up properly. I can appreciate that the mods are trying to manage a large number of plots over just a two week build period, but come on - you've had a year to prepare for this, surely the rules can't be that different from last years? And if you're a mod and someone says Hello to you in open chat, at least have the decency to acknowledge them with a cursory greeting rather than ignoring them.

Same time next year then?

Lindens Lost

2010-06-12T02:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve been reading a number of articles this morning about Linden Lab’s mass culling of over 140 employees, including the potential phasing out of the UK office (based in Brighton) and other international areas such as Germany.

I use Second Life a lot; at least six days a week. I go in, do my thing, chat to friends and enjoy what I can from it (which is usually the company of others). I can’t really offer any more to the stories about Black Thursday that the more hardcore Virtual World bloggers have already written; I can only offer my own opinion, based on my own experience over the last several years, so I hope this blog posted doesn’t get noted or bounced around Twitter, because the VW snobs will only be down on me telling me I don’t know what I’m talking about. So, pre-empting any that might stumble across this, this isn’t coming from a tech-side, or even business-side argument. This is my opinion, based on what little I know.

More astute, educated or controversial observers will say (and have already said) that it’s the beginning of the end; I don’t want to agree, because I love the community that Second Life has allowed me to become part of, but I can see how they be drawn to that conclusion; the sight of any company slashing over 30% of its workforce within a single 24-hour period is never going to be pretty nor fill you with optimism. I do hope it’s simply a case of taking eight steps back before shuffling forward again, whatever the ultimate aim. It’ll be difficult though; even though residency seems to have stalled with the maximum number of online residents never really at any more than 75-80K users, that’s still four times as many as it was four years ago, and now with a substantially smaller staff to support that.

I think it’s a real, genuine shame that people such as Blue has gone; he was a frequent voice in the Friends of Raglan Shire group, very quick to offer assistance to the 1000+ people in chat with any operational problems they had or solutions they needed. He and Tiggs Linden’s helpfulness (the latter of which has survived the cull, despite reports to the contrary) harkened back to a time when I was a noob and needed support; back then, instead of plucking a ticket off of a virtual reel and waiting to be served at the deli counter, Lindens would actually be IN-WORLD (what a novel concept!) and would zip from sim-to-sim showing residents what they needed to do to fix their problems. My first experience of such support was when I’d lost a transparent object in the branches of a tree; Ethan Linden turned up (incidentally, as a Wynx Squirrel, my first ever experience of a tiny!) and promptly fixed the problem before zipping off again. It was that personal approach that made me feel valued as a resident; a feeling that I’ve long since lost. Blue and Tiggs came some way to doing the same, and I’m sure some of the Raglan residents felt very valued to be in conversation with a Linden, fixing their minor gripes.

Pink Linden hadn’t been at the Lab a great length of time either, but had had to face some serious resident vitriol over the XStreet changes (and fired on the deadline day before new migration to the new Marketplace? Poor timing.) and in retrospect, had held her own really well, in my opinion. As a tiny Wynx bunny, she’d also shown up to a couple of impromptu Waffle Day parties we’d held on the Shire for the Lab and had always demonstrated a kindness, a warmth and a fun attitude that only tinies can demonstrate.

There are many others on the list who I didn’t know as well, but whose names stand out for me, so I know that they must have had an influence on my Second Life in some small part. For them all, I am very sad. They’ve lost their jobs, and I’m sure their treatment has also tempered their approach to using Second Life themselves. If you got fired from Starbucks through no fault of your own, would you go back and drink their coffee? Maybe, but I bet it’d taste more bitter than you remembered.

What’s the answer? I don’t know, I’m just a casual blogging-bunny. I kinda wish that some financially secure, independent educational establishment (for example, the Open University in the UK) bought out the Lab, reinstated the old school developers and community managers across the world (Claudia Linden first in line please) and gave the platform more of an emphasis towards learning. Learning isn’t confined to increasing one’s academic knowledge within a specific subject matter, but can also be applied to wider cultural, theological, political and artistic development. The commercial aspect could be allowed to stay, but it might give the Grid a better long-term future. At the moment, it seems to be the case of adapting to current market conditions in order to preserve an end-of-year bonus for several key individuals.

As for the announcement that M (which I think must stand for Money) Linden wants to develop a web-browser based version of SL, I can understand why. Look at the success of Farmville (just look at its success, not necessarily the game itself which to me resembles something like ‘Charlie Brown At The Farm’ on an N64). It’d give a lot more people an opportunity to get in-world, although it could also open the doors for any number of idiots/lunatics/weirdoes to drop by – presumably, they’d only be allowed to access certain sims or certain features? But who’s going to support the Grid now that the focus of an international community seems to be being eroded and the ones who are left seem to be less-product orientated? As one of my good tiny pals noted, “I think Geo Linden, who couldn't work a dance ball, still works for them? What that about? He must empty trash cans for them because he couldn't work SL, which should tell you something. Just sayin’.”

We’ve left our fate in his hands. Or trash can.

All Quiet On The Western Front

2010-05-14T04:07:00.000-07:00

It's been ages since I blogged properly here. Not a great deal to report, really. Sci-Fi Month in Raglan went pretty well, and now it's time for Art Walk! I spent a good two hours the other morning wandering around and taking in all the amazing pieces of art on display; I think I spent about $8000L on art. I should really set up a gallery.

I did open up another branch of Funny Bunny, on adjoining Shire-sim Extrovirtual. EV is a brand all in itself, thanks to Noramyr and Wynx's hard work at creating the best tiny avatars. Noramyr recently renovated part of the sim and has set up a marketplace area, where shops are now available to lease. The market place - as expected - looks amazing, and I hope the input of tiny creators can help give EV the recognition, traffic and sales it so richly deserves.

Linden Lab recently announced that they were planning an overhaul to XStreet, but introducing the Second Life Marketplace, which promises to be more customisable, and more shopper-friendly. Details have been very scant, so we'll have to see just how customisable 'store fronts' actually are and how easy it is to use and manage. Annoyingly, although they haven't entirely dismissed the idea of their ~~stealth taxes~~ listings fees they announced last year (to great dismay from, er, everyone), they have said that it's not something they're going to be following up just yet. Which means that I know need to re-upload all the details of the items I took off of XStreet last year, in preparation of facing having to make a massive payout to cover the fees.

Note to self: must do something interesting to blog about...

Second Life Rube!

2010-04-30T02:42:00.000-07:00

Achamo Paine made a Rube Goldberg machine in Second Life! AND THEN caught it on a beautifully rendered video!

Tinies In Space

2010-03-19T03:32:00.001-07:00

I made an outfit! The first in ages, it seems. It's a Space Marine-style armour/explorer outfit, in preparation for Raglan's upcoming 3rd anniversary Sci-Fi themed month.

There are three variant colours - blue, red and silver.

The Linden House

2010-03-07T03:16:00.000-08:00

I got (another) e-mail from the Lab the other day, reminding me that I qualified for a Linden home (I've been a premium member of SL for a while, initially when I owned a half-sim size piece of land). Curiosity got the better of me, and within a couple of clicks, I'd been sent a Landmark from Governor Linden to a place on the sim named Fern. So, I went over later that day, and to my surprise, it's actually rather well done.

When you go to register for a house, you're presented with four options of homes; these are contained together within different themed regions: Elderglen (a fantasy-fairy theme), Shareta Osumai (a Japanese-style theme), Tahoe (chalet-cabin types) and Meadowbrook (I guess it's like a California beach-house). Of those choices, I figured Elderglen would be the nicest option for me, so plumped for that. I was then presented with a choice of 4 house types: Abbot's Haven, Elven Treehome, Shire's Heath and Wizard's Retreat. Obviously, I went for the Shire's Heath style!

The houses are quite densely packed together on the sim, but far apart enough so that you can chat without encroaching on someone else's conversation. Elderglen is nice, with the homes within the region surrounded by giant mushrooms, trees, wishing wells and fairies. When I got into mine, I found that it's a single room house, with a nice little roof garden; however, at each of the region's infohubs, there are complete texture packs that you can pick up for fre, allowing you - as I did - to add dividing walls inside to give yourself some other rooms.

There is also a control panel built into the house, that rather niftily allows you to customise your house textures. Clicking on the control panel takes you to a webpage within the SL-website, specifically for your house. There, you can choose from a number of different colour and texture options, hit Apply and then a few seconds later watch your house start to transform.

It seems a nice little retreat (the sim next to Fern is uninhabited, so I took the opportunity to turf up the grounds on my Raglan Ranger motorcycle!), but ultimately, it feels that - despite all the wonderful work that's gone into the look and general ambience of the sims - the place is a little soulless; and there is nothing the Lab can do to change that. The soul of a sim comes from it's residents, of whom so far I've met one, an elven woman. It's a nice idea to give Premium members this oppiortunity (essentially reintroducing the First Land initiative from a few years back), but I can't help but think that new Premium subscribers might get the impression that SL can be a lonely and somewhat isolated experience. I'd have liked to have seen more Lab-sim owner interaction perhaps; for example, the Lab could attach a sim to the Raglan cluster (but retain ownership and maintenance of it themselves, although managed by the adjoining sim's owner), open it up to Premium members who want to live amongst a tiny community, abide by the rules of that sim and give them access then to a host of activity and people. It's a complete generalisation of an idea, I know, but it would help create a bit more of a community atmosphere. Despite my neighbour having the same taste in house as me, their 'Love 1' and 'Love 2' poseballs suggests they don't necessarily have the same kind of approach towards this virtual world.

MMIF

2010-02-18T07:53:00.000-08:00

The MaMachinima International Festival takes place this weekend, and I'm part of it!

It's a seven-hour long showcase of over fifty (yes 5-0!) machinima films, and my 'Le Squabbit Et Les Admirateurs' movie will be part of the proceedings, kicking off hour two, hosted by Pooky Amsterdam. The event was put together by Chantal Harvey, a keen and experienced machinimatographer herself, and is the second event of its kind. The first was held last year to such great acclaim that Linden Lab have offered Chantal and her team the use of not one, not two but FOUR sims on which to host the event. I went exploring there a little earlier, and wow, what an incredible build!

The layout means that all four of those bridges converge at the points where the four sims meet, meaning that the potential audience can be four times bigger. And the really cool thing about this event is that as well as being an in-world festival, there's also an opportunity to watch the whole event streamed at a RL venue in Amsterdam! It looks set to be another amazing event and full credit to Chantal for even getting this far with it!

Find out more about the event here at the MMIF Official site.

As much fun as it looks set to be, and I will attend at some point, I will miss the time when my film gets shown. It clashes with the time that Raglan prepares to celebrate Stillpink's recent passing, and we're holding a New Orleans Mardi Gras-style funeral parade for her, as well as unveiling a permanent memorial to her.

Speaking of whom, here's another chance to post another machinima I made, this one featuring Stillpink; she's the pink bunny with the bright pink hair!

Stillpink Sandgrain

2010-02-15T14:57:00.000-08:00

A fellow tiny, Stillpink Sandgrain passed away on February 14 2010 after a long battle with cancer.

She was a good buddy. We didn't meet up every time we were both on together, but I took great pleasure knowing that she was online and might (and would!) drop in unannounced at any given moment! Her energy would have you thinking she was a teenager enjoying their first day in SL. And it was infectious.

The last proper adventure me and Stills shared was in November 2009. We spent an hour or so sneaking around the houses on Cirano. Biggy houses, but not just any biggy houses - Linden houses! We got busted by Alexa Linden, but she was nice enough to invite us in, where we both aired our grievances about XStreet.

Then she was gone for a while. I understand she really fell ill towards the end of 2009, with Akay Utu (Tea Gupte's RL partner - Stillpink was Tea's RL mum) telling me that they didn't think Stills would see out the year. To her credit, she did, and then made a few more appearances online just after New Year.

Now, I'm sad, because I won't be able to have the same type of fun I did with Stills for a long time to come. But when I do see her, I hope we're given the chance to go and sneak into someone's house in Heaven! I'd like that. Stills, make sure you go house-hunting up there, but don't go sneaking in without me yet!

The picture above was taken when Stills introduced me to Bryn Oh's sims. I caught her at just the right moment. To me, this image typifies what Stills represented: someone cute, full of light and fire, lighting up every room she ever graced. A blog post has been posted here at Raglanshire.com.

Otters Are Golden

2010-02-08T07:11:00.000-08:00

I hosted the Raglan Shire Film Festival last night; was great fun, and I was really honoured to have lots of tinies in attendance but also to have a couple of machinima veterans in Pooky Amsterdam and CodeWarrior Carling come along and watch the show too.

I debuted my latest - 'Mummer's Dance' - with Songbird1028 Sorbet, which was very well received. I picked up two Otter awards - for Best Film (Over 4 Minutes) and the Audience Award, for which I shall be eternally grateful. Songbird was also voted Best Actress for her work in this film (based on the fact that she had so much to do!), and a lot of people were mightily (and rightly) impressed that she sings too!

The overall line-up of films was fantastic. I'm so proud that the community were able to really get their paws and claws into trying some machinima, and the pay-off was that they were all well-received. There was a nice variety of music, shorts, remakes and original stories in there. For a few people, this was their FIRST attempt at machinima, both in terms of filming and editing, which is just amazing. Great job Shire!

And The Nominees Are...

2010-02-02T18:29:00.000-08:00

Looking forward to the Film Festival at the weekend! The theatre has been built, the seats have been cleaned and fresh popcorn is popping in the machine! Last September, in an effort to try and get some more people just trying to film some machinima, I announced we'd hold a festival just before the Oscars to celebrate tinies on film. A lot of folk were immediately enthusiastic about it, but once the New Year hit, and I began chasing folk up about it, it became obvious that that enthusiasm had waned over the Christmas holiday period, and there didn't seem to be that much on offer.

But I've been pleasantly surprised over the past few days. Some people have been able to turn out little 2-3 minute clips in a matter of a week. They've been asking for advice and tips, which I've been more than willing to help with as best I can; and I've been genuinely pleased to see some of the things people have come up with! I've also been sourcing judges to look over groups of videos (split into certain categories), so that we can award a few of the filmmakers with their own golden statuette - the Otters!

However, it was never about giving out prizes. It was just about encouraging people to have a go; and they have, and for that, everyone will be rewarded with a host of brilliant and cute tinycentric movies. I'll also be showing off my new machinima on the day, keeping it tightly under wraps until the event itself.

Avatars Unite!

2010-01-30T03:53:00.000-08:00

Well, I've spent the last 15-20 minutes looking across Avatars United, and so far it seems little more than MySpace for virtual world characters.

Still, that didn't put me off from signing up! There seems to be a frighteningly lack of security or verification though. I can't see where it wouldn't have allowed me to sign up as Chaffro Linden if I had wanted to (in retrospect, that might not have been a good idea, but still). I understand that Linden Lab have given this site some blessing - either by buying it, or just acknowledging it, I'll investigate further - but I'm becoming a bit of a sucker for social networking, despite the problems it can often bring. I've actually made many new genuine friendships from Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and SL. Not just 'online acquaintances' either, I've spent time with these people in real life and continue to maintain those connections.

If you do sign up, as me as a friend! This is me!

EDIT: OK, it turns out that the Lab have acquired Enemy Within, the development company behind Avatars United; hence the massive upsurge of interest over the past few days.

It's a strange beast. To be honest, there seems as though there's little to actually explore within the site. Presumably it's meant to serve as a virtual world info-hub; I can import RSS feeds of blogs I follow (which, if they weren't virtual world related, would be pretty pointless). Like Facebook, you can send gifts to your friends and contacts, but they're going to cost you 'coins'. It also costs you coins to upload a custom background; if you don't want to invest any real-world money into the site, you're stuck with a choice of three or four. The 'upside' is, is that if you choose to have your background public, you can sell it (but only reaping back a lowly 7 coins per purchase, and there might be a sales limit per background).

Hopefully the Lab will start introducing some cross-network potential; and I'm hoping someone will come up with a Twitter-functional application, to allow shouts to appear on the Twitter timeline or Tweets to appear in your shout box. That could be interesting.

I wonder how long M Linden would keep people on his friends list then!

Traffic Signals

2010-01-23T02:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I received an IM from a long-time friend in SL. He asked if I had some time to come see him and his SL/RL wife. I was running late for work anyway, and had to offer my apologies. "Why, what's up?" I enquired. He replied that he and his wife might have to leave SL permanently; not at their own accord, but because Linden Lab are on the verge of suspending their accounts indefinitely.

Why so? Because traffic at their shop site is high.

So, they must be using Bots right? Well, yes and no. They do use a couple of bots, but the majority of their permanent visitors are actually real people hanging out in a place they like. Bots are definied as 'non-human controlled agents', or scripted agents. Essentially they'll be accounts that someone has set up for the express purpose of just hanging around somewhere, in an effort to increase traffic (footfall) numbers at a particular location. It means that if someone were to search for a particular place - let's say in this instance "clothes shop" - and filtered their results by wherever has the highest amount of traffic, that shop would appear nearer to the top of the list. This is known as gaming traffic, in that its not real.

To quote Linden Labs: "'Gaming traffic' is purposefully having avatars on a parcel that is listed in search for long period of time for the purposes of increasing your traffic score. Whether their is a human behind them or not, if their purpose seems to be to inflate traffic then it is considered gaming traffic. If there is a genuine purpose to being there (like a model) then that account needs to be registered as a scripted agent so it does not count toward traffic figures."

So basically, even though you could actually be a person hanging out in a clothes store you love, with other like-minded people, and are rewarded by the store owner for your support in trying to help their fledgling business grow and develop in SL, you have to turn yourself in as a drone? Not quite, but that's the underlying threat relayed to this particular situation. Another question that was asked was, is the key definition concerning traffic gambling because you're paying people to be there? No, according to the Lab. The key definition is the avatars are there for the purpose of increasing traffic and for no other reason; but surely a model, modelling clothes is promoting a service, not just pushing the numbers up? "They can be models and you can use models and compensate them however you wish," sayd LL. "They just need to be registered if you do."

"If it is an avatar that is in the parcel listed in search for long periods of time, for whatever reason, it should be registered as a scripted agent so it doesn't count toward traffic", says the Lab. However, they followed this up by saying "if they have a legitimate purpose to be there other than increasing traffic, then registering so they do not count should not be an issue."

So, if you register yourself as a NON-scripted agent, you're fine then? Presumably. But if you don't, and somehow you're determined to have spent a particularly long amount of time on one sim alone, you'll be accused of being a Bot and threatened with having your account suspended.

I spend most of my time on the Raglan cluster. I could be logged on for 10-14 hours on any single day sometimes. What would happen to me if I didn't register myself? How am I tracked? And how would I ever know I'd have to register until I was threatened with suspension?

And what's the big deal with traffic anyway? The formula for determining traffic is so obscure, its bound to be manipulated every which way, even if it takes bots of of the picture. And I've been around SL long enough to know that if I'm searching for something, I tend to ignore most of the top traffic ranking places because they either won't cater to my needs precisely, but have used keywords to their advantage; they will probably be so overwhelemed with people I won't be able to move for lag; they'll probably be managed by people who are only interested in claiming they have "The Number One Jazz Club/Nightclub/Fight Club/Book Club" and not really care about their offer.

A better system that says one individual pair of feet on a sim within any 24 hour period counts as 1 traffic point. Failing that, why not have places listed in Search by votes? Vote for the quality of a sim, vote for its craftmanship, vote for its content, vote for its community, its layout, its music; if any of these things are worth a vote and good citizens want to share the experience they've enjoyed and allow SL to flourish with beauty and wonder, they'll visit there often and vote on it. That seems a lot nicer and a lot fairer. Quality wins - and therefore, so do we.

2010

2010-01-04T03:48:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year everybody! 2009 was a fabulous year for me in-world, for a number of reasons, but none of it would have ever happened without the support, co-operation and challenges provided by others. Many thanks to ALL of you who I have crossed paths with over the last 12 months; I hope I was able to enhance your in-world experience to the same degree that you enhanced mine.

Ex Street

2009-11-24T13:01:00.001-08:00

This blog, when I first conceived the idea, was supposed to chronicle the exciting things I discovered around the grid; instead I find myself once again Linden-bashing. Which is just as entertaining.

Colossus Linden announced last week that he and the rest of the team responsible for managing XStreetSL (from this point on to be referred to as XSt) had devised a brilliant and watertight new pricing system for listings on the virtual e-commerce site.

Until now (well, actually for another 30-60 days) XSt has been a free listings service. Anyone who had created any content that could be used within the Second life Grid – be that textures, scripts, prim builds, sculpties, hair, clothing, even Island files – could list these creations for free on a giant, searchable online marketplace. It started out as a private enterprise - (called SL Exchange, or SLX) but last year Linden Lab threw a big fat dirty cheque down in front of the creators, who in turn eagerly handed over the keys to the office to the Lindens.

The idea was that you could list your stuff to save residents the time of trying to figure out how to use the easily manipulated Search facility within the viewer, teleporting all over the grid and finally trawling through vendors trying to find exactly what it was you were after. And it worked brilliantly. I have purchased many things from XSt over the years, from vendors who I may never have found in-world. Because the listing was free, many vendors actually relied on XSt to manage an income, being unable to afford shop rentals or find a suitable location that would guarantee them optimum footfall. You paid a small percentage fee in commission, but I never kidded myself that ‘free’ meant 100% free. Someone somewhere would have to pay to maintain the site, maintain hosting, etc. And if those enterprising people made $1L profit (after all of those costs) out of each sale I made of a $50L, so what, I thought, well done to them.

But then The Lindens got hold of it (primarily so that they could have the revenue, rumoured to be around $1million USD). It didn’t matter that they were already a multi-million dollar company, they were still going to charge commission, to a maximum of 5% for those nice costly items. They set about changing things. Just small things at first; they tried to make it look like they were doing things to help merchants and customers alike by integrating the Marketplace within the main SL website. They’d send out e-flyers (if you were lucky, just once. Unlucky folk would get two or three of the same promotion mailed to their Inbox). We’re making it better, they claimed!

But there was a problem; some pesky folk were listing items for free, but charging $0L for them. Some folk were throwing out low-free priced marketing tools. Some folk were giving away stuff because they were kind. Obviously, trying to take a percentage of nothing meant that the Lab made, er…nothing from each of these sales; yet the customer would still walk away with something useful in their pockets.

Some merchants objected to this; if someone else gave away for $0L that was similar to something that they’d made and were selling $250L, they had obviously lost out on a sale. Not really true; for example I, as a customer, have spent a good deal of time before looking for a carefully-crafted and lovingly textured house build than some free slap-dash affair. Nonetheless, The Lindens took these objections on board and decided that because they shared a common concern (i.e. they weren't making enough money), that they’d try and do something to rectify this issue. So, they held a meeting. Well, actually, they decided to discuss it as part of their regular office hours meeting.

Office Hours are times when Lindens decide to log into the Grid. It’s only a couple of hours a week so undoubtedly they can tolerate sitting with their buttocks and teeth clenched for that amount of time, listening to the concerns of a carefully-considered cross section of residents. Only, they’re not; because usually the only people who attend office hour meetings are people with an agenda, a point that they (the Residents) feel the need to try and hammer home to the people (the Lindens) who actually have the power to change something. Heck, the tinies of Raglan Shire are guilty of doing it! For three weeks in a row when Group Chat was shot to hell after an ‘update’, they turned up en masse to protest the lack of action to resolve the problem. Happy days!

The XSt issues were considered so important that they were discussed across three separate Office Hour meetings (no fanfare given to any). Colossus Linden reported that thirty-five (yes, 35) residents attended the meetings to help round out the proposals. Except not 35 at each – thirty-five IN TOTAL. That’s about 0.0000035% of the total population of residents. A fair cross section? Not really, is it? And as there was little fanfare given to what actually is a very important issue for a great number of people, unless you were regularly checking to see what was happening in those meetings, many people would have just taken them for granted.

The plans (as they stand) now amount to LL charging anyone who lists a free item (of $0L price, guaranteed return of, er $0L) a staggering $99L per listing per month.

Anything over $1L will now cost the seller $10L per listing per month.

Oh, and you’ll still need to pay that commission. A minimum of $3L. So don’t even think about putting those freebies up to $1L – we’ll still be taking $3L of each one you sell, they’ve said.

So, if (like me) you have 41 items listed, it will now cost you $410L per month to list all of your items. You will need to make about a minimum of $450L per month to come out with any profit, after commission. And then instead of coming out with the $427L you used to, you’ll now walk away with a paltry $17L. I consider $450L in revenue a good month for me…

Paraphrasing, the Lindens’ reasons for these taxes are: it will help the marketplace easier to search through; the marketplace will be less cluttered; customers won’t be directed towards freebies and those who are trying to make some money will finally be able to make money.

Well, in some regards, they’ve succeeded already. Thousands of items have already disappeared from the marketplace, pulled from the listings by disgruntled merchants who have already anticipated that they absolutely cannot afford to cover the new costs. I myself have reduced my offer from 41 items to a mere 11, and have made a point in my listings’ descriptions to tell anyone looking why there isn’t as much there as a week ago, throwing an SLURL in there to direct people to my in-world offer for good measure. I’ll probably see how well I sell over the next 30-60 days and see if I can make enough to cover my first month in a listings fee culture. Then I’ll pull the rest down.

There are so many better ways that the problems with XSt (which have only intensified, in my opinion, since the Lab acquired it) could have been resolved. Arrehn Oberlander has pointed out just a few in this post, which seem perfectly logical and easily achievable. The assessment of the reaction of the Lindens is also spot-on; they’ve become defensive and have blamed the merchants posting all those freebies and not properly managing their inventories for allowing XSt to become the mess it is. Um, what? I used to be a manager for a popular chain of coffee shops; I didn’t demand that customers pick up their crumbs or drink every last drop of their beverage before they left. I let them in, they paid me for a service already. That’s it, job done. Whatever they leave behind becomes my problem, so I deal with it. If that means throwing it out, so be it. Free items - heck, anything $10L or less - could easily have their own listings section, seperate from the higher priced stuff.

I felt myself fortunate that Colossus Linden took the time to reply to an IM I sent to him in-world; I expressed a huge concern that merchants who make niche items for a niche market (I make musical instruments for tinies: small market within a small market) would be driven away from XSt, and possibly be driven out of business altogether. Unfortunately, his response amounted to “we’re not trying to drive out nice merchants” and an even less useful “why not put your prices up?” Well, it might not have been your intention, but without thinking about it, that's precisely what is happening. That doesn't help me; I can't guarantee I'll sell something at $250/300/400L, so what chance is there that it'll sell at twice that price? How does that help my customers either? I'm not stupid, I price my items in line with what I think they're worth. If I charge a customer over-the-odds, what benefit does that have for them? Nothing: we both lose.

When the whole Homestead sim fiasco was announced a couple of years ago, it also resulted in a massive resident backlash, that the Lindens seem to be genuinely shocked about and reacted to. Back then, they compromised. They admitted they’d made an error by not garnering feedback from residents beforehand and revised their announced policies. However, this time around, there seems to be no retractment, no amendment and no concern towards residents. The only concern seems to be making enough revenue, propping up the loss felt from downgrading Premium subscribers so that the Lab can look forward to a healthy end-of-year bonus. It's another turn for the worse for resident faith in the Lindens. Personally, and I know this also goes for several others within the Raglan community, I couldn't trust any more than two or three now.

Happy Thanksgiving M and the rest of the Linden Mafia (which does not necessarily include all Lindens); thanks for nothing.

All Burnt Out

2009-10-24T10:18:00.000-07:00

Burning Life kicked off this week. Myself, Karma and Misa have spent the past 2-3 weeks setting up the plot and getting everything together for Raglan Shire's prescence, entitled Shoots Of Life.

Our plot is adorned with scorched-bark trees in a desert wasteland. From the branches of the trees hang pictures of fun and activity amongst the Shires supplied by many different members of the Friends group. The pictures are 'shoots', with a double meaning; they are 'shoots' in a literal, photographic sense, but they also double as tree shoots from the branches, the springing up of new life from the desolation of the surroundings. It suggests to those who may be disillusioned with one way of life can always find solace and a new way of life with another, tiny one.

It looks great, in my opinion. It's not over the top, but subtle. It's involving, but not in-your-face. Misa did some cool freebies for us to give away and others also helped out by supplying letters that spell out RAGLAN SHIRE around the sides of the plot. Despite only 3 people being allowed access to the Burning Life sims before the activity started, we've been able to make it a community event by having tinies from around the cluster submit pieces towards the set-up of the plot and Jane 2 McMahon has been hosting stories around the campfire in the middle of our plot; on the opening day, several of us sat around and discussed how and why we chose to adopt a tiny-lifestyle.

It only lasts a week. It's a shame, because there is so much to see and explore, but it also serves as a fantastic testament to the brilliant creativity that virtual worlds offer. I am pleased to be part of it, albeit a tiny part.

JOUST: The Movie

2009-10-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

Zephyr Pennell asked me to make her a video based around the amazing jousting system she and her staff at Lone Star Ranch have devised. I was only too happy to help her out, but as I thought about it, and watched some practice runs happen, it seemed that the crux of a joust happens with a split second: the hit. Factor into that that Second Life would invariably be lagged due to the number of people around, the number of scripts in operation, textures rezzing, sounds etc, it seemed less and less plausible that I would be able to do the system justice on 'film'.

I grabbed the opportunity to take a few shots of people at the closing event of Raglan Shire's annual Medieval Festival. The Joust has become an integral part of the festivities and I felt that if I didn't grab something then, I'd never really have the opportunity to get stuff for a while. To me, what made the event wasn't just the joust itself but the participants: what they were wearing, the range of outfits and colours, the types of avatars and their armour. So I used that as the basis for these two little videos. I edited them as though they were teasers for some medieval-themed epic, such as A Knight's Tale or...er, some other medieval film about jousting. I hope Zephyr likes them!

[I also hope Zephyr likes the Lone Star Ranch logo I put at the front of the film too. I tried to get a texture sent over, but couldn't get hold of one, so made up my own and tweaked it a little in GIMP. Was pretty pleased with how it turned out, despite the fact that I edited it so that you only see it for 2 seconds!]

I called one the Green Teaser because the word JOUST is coloured green at the end, and the other Gold because I coloured it gold!

Movie Making Madness

2009-09-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

Today I announced that Raglan Shire would be playing host to a tiny-centric film festival in February 2010.

On Sunday 7 February 2010 – precisely one month before the Oscars! – the Shires will host the first ever Raglan Shire Studios Film Festival!

More and more clever filmmakers are turning their hand to creating some wonderful mini-movies featuring tinies, and who can blame them? We’re a constant source of fun and entertainment and despite our obvious physical limitations (no facial expressions, for example), we have proven that we are able to portray a whole host of roles, from dramatic to comedic.

As such, we’ve decided that it’s way over time that we showcased the amazing movie-making talent that we have around the Shire in our very own festival early next year.

So why are we telling you now? Well, film-making often takes time (not always, but often) and we want to give everyone who may even like to try and do something plenty of time to practice how to do it and try and make something. What you shoot is entirely up to you (except for a couple of rules below), as long as it’s entertaining and creative.

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How’s it done then? Well, I use Fraps to shoot my films. There is a free download option (which I still use), which only shoots 30 seconds at a time and leaves a name watermarked on the screen (you can see it in most of my films!), but it serves its purpose.

http://www.fraps.com/

You’ll edit your film using whatever editing programs you can; I use Adobe Premiere Elements, and throw in titles, credits, effect, soundtracks or whatever you think works.

Then you’ll upload it to the web. Some good examples are already on YouTube, but you can use any video-sharing site you like. Vimeo is good; I know Blunt uses ATOM too.

If you know of any other filming or editing tools or applications or video-sharing sites, please detail them below and post any URLs that folk might find useful.

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The exact details of HOW we’ll do all this have still yet to be worked out. We do want to have a panel of judges who will view and rate some of the films, and decide who wins what in certain categories (listed below), but we’ll have a few categories that members of the general public can vote for too. We’ll let you and your crew make posters to promote your film, and give up some hoarding space around the Shire nearer the time for you to display your posters on too!

Categories (so far) include:

BEST DIRECTOR (overall, of all entries submitted, judged by panel)

BEST FILM (between 2–10 minutes in length)

BEST SHORT FILM (no more than 2 minutes in length)

BEST ACTRESS (most alluring performance by a female tiny)

BEST ACTOR (best performance by a male tiny)

BEST ART DIRECTION (best use of Windlight effects, locations or creative scenery)

BEST MUSICAL FILM (serving as a video to a specific tune, e.g. Fuzznutz)

More categories may be entered later.

Winners of the categories will win some L$ and also a special gold-plated Academy of Raglan Arts & Sciences Award for Creative Services, which is a pretty long-winded name; I think they look like my pals Bo and Mutley, so we’ll just call the awards the Otters for short! Maybe we'll figure out a way to have the films available throughtout the week, and have a ceremony on the 7th to award prizes etc?

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The rules – so far, this is not an exhaustive list and may be added to or amended as necessary - are as follows:

1. You MUST be a member of either the Friends of Raglan Shire group or the Artisans of Raglan Shire group to enter the contest.

2. Your film, when completed, must be uploaded to an online video-sharing site, such as YouTube or Vimeo (or others) and must be able to be linked for play in-world.

3. Your film must be finished and uploaded, and details of it submitted to the organisers (TBD) by Sunday 31 January 2010, one week before the festival. The organisers will then watch all videos and begin a judging process.

4. Your film must feature AT LEAST two tinies. The tinies that feature in the film do not have to be members of either of the Raglan groups.

5. The film content must be PG, in line with our community guidelines. No explicit language or text (e.g. subtitles) will be permitted. Any films containing either of these will be barred from the festival.

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That’s it for now. We will continue to add to and amend this post as required, so do check back often. Please feel free to post comments, links, tips or anything else that might be useful below this post, so that we can make this the best in-world movie fest EVER!

Should be good fun, as long as we can get plenty of entries...that's why I've given folks 4 months notice!

Engagements In The Fall

2009-09-17T04:05:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's a cold day. I guess Summer is over. At least I had one great week of sunshine; however, it was in April, and it was in New York. Oh well.

It's been a few weeks of relatively little output again in-world. I don't know if I'm stuck for ideas again or just lacking the patience to start something. I did set-up a new store on Raglan Shire, moving my treetops vendors down into a larger ground unit on Bo's old Otterwise plot, next to Tiny Inc. (Bo has just downsized); I even continued my philanthropic import/export crusade by giving up a few prims for a hatchie named Carla, who has made a couple of cute little bits and was desperate for an outlet to sell them in. I was more than happy to let her take a corner of the shop for her stuff.

I am slowly putting together a new machinima video for Songbird Sorbet, to accompany one the songs she recorded a while agao, and now sells as part of an album in-world. She's a fab singer, and I'm really working very hard to get this video absolutely right. Am using a lot of effects, both in-world and in post-production, many of which I haven't tried before. This does mean it's been slow-going, because I don't want to make any comprimises - I want it all to be as good as my ability allows. Time will tell. It's a long song to shoot for, but so far, what I've done, I'm very pleased with. I intend to have it done well before Christmas, but at the rate I'm shooting, it may take that long!

After this is done, I have a couple more videos I need to work on; one for Zephyr at Lone Star Ranch to serve as a promo-style video for joust system, and the other another movie-trailer style piece. I'm very excited about both!

However, despite my inactivity on the building/creating front, I have managed to become the topic of conversation in group chat this past weekend, without actually being in-world. Me and Kitti (Natalie, my RL girlfriend) went to Paris for the weekend, and after 20 months of dating, I felt this was the time to go to the next level: I proposed to her last weekend and she accepted! Very happy! And we have both received a number of very lovely congratulatory messages, and I will take this opportunity to thank everyone for them! It means a great deal to know that such a small action by one person has had such a big impact on so many.

Heavy Hearted

2009-09-02T07:32:00.000-07:00

The reality of how attached one gets to someone else simply via communicating in the exchange of messages typed on a keyboard to someone else out there has come crashing down on me again this week.

Two very long-standing in-world friends, Jaid Marsi and Hiero (he'll forgive me for not even attempting to spell his whole name!) have announced their intentions to leave Second Life. I cannot express properly how much this has pained me. Jaid helped me out so much early on with her most wonderful pictures that we used for past issues of the Shire Times newspaper. Their pictoral adventures in their guise as Fox & Wolf have never failed to amuse and have captured the essence of being tiny in a largely-biggy world absolutely perfectly. They have been sources of inspiration, both directly and indirectly - it was Jaid who asked me to make the Emergency Waffle Case! - to myself, and dozens of other in-world photojournalists and artists.

They have been wonderful supporters of Raglan in so many ways and personally in a million more. I have been genuinely saddened by their decision and I sincerely hope that they do look to other avenues of online networking to allow me to be able to stay in touch with them. They have come to a joint decision that suits them both (and in many ways is perfect for their legacy, as they were inseparable), but for reasons which are wholly personal to each.

It's made me feel really lonely. I don't know why. Every day I log on, I am surrounded by genuinely friendly and caring people; but recently, a feeling of isolation has come to haunt me. I can sort of put it down to a few reasons. Panacea refuses to speak to me these days, for reasons unknown to me. I used to get on very well with Pan, but she has distanced herself quite intentionally over the past few weeks. She was a good source of advice and help, as well as someone to banter with, and I miss that interaction a great deal.

I have upset Bo and Karma too, by speaking my mind over a recent issue around the Shires. I know both of them were hurt by my reaction; I kinda wish I had expressed myself more properly to indicate that I too had been hurt by the matter, but it didn't come off like that. So, partly my fault on that one, but I had my reasons for venting my frustration in the first place. Amazing how having someone just walk away or zoom off on their bike as soon as you get within speaking distance of them can feel like they've just drawn a knife across your throat.

There are probably dozens of other people I upset on a day-to-day basis. If any of them read this (doubtful - I don't know anyone who reads this! Ha!) then I do genuinely apologise if it upsets you, but it's just how I am sometimes. It is NEVER my intention to hurt or upset anyone. But I know only too well after this week that emotions in a virtual world can run just as strong, and yet can be just as fragile, as they are in a real one.

Medieval Fest III

2009-08-28T00:01:00.000-07:00

The third medieval festival kicks off in early September on Raglan Shire. The square and the castle have been set out, the dunk tank has been dusted off and refilled, and my vendor has once again been thrown out into the Wares tent. Astonishingly, the Rennaissance outfits I made 2 years ago have undergone very little modifications over the last couple of years. I was really pleased with how they turned out originally, and have stuck with the design since. Folk still seem to like them; I always sell a few each year. I guess outfits for the guys are always pretty limited at the best of times.

My friend Bo has volunteered to run a treasure hunt this year (ha! silly Bo!) and asked Artisans for goodies to act as prizes. I managed to knock out a medieval herald's trumpet at the suggestion of Xavian Starsider, found a nice fanfare and asked the ever-brilliant Etheria to make an animation to go with it, which she managed to do within an hour - I'm always blown away by how quickly and perfectly Etheria is able to do these things - and that's it, done!

Have been SLOWLY putting together another Machinima based video, this time to act as the music video for ones of Songbird1028 Sorbet's songs (album out in Funny Bunny store in Heron Shire, amongst other places!); it's slow, partly deliberately. I really want this to turn out well. I did some sound effect editing last night, that I was really happy with. So far so good; I've edited a minute's worth of footage in, and it's only the lead-in sequence to the song! It's gonna be epic, but I'm looking forward to putting this together.

Have also been asked to do another video promo for Lone Star Ranch's Zephyr. She's a lot of fun and a very sweet and generous person, and it will be a real honour to do some work for her. Just need to find that 'angle' on which to base the video.

I've also taken up a new ground level shop on Raglan Shire too. Zayn opened up a square with 5 classic Raglan shop units in that look great. Have got some fab neighbours, and am looking forward to making that area a real success.

Phew. No wonder I feel tired!

Musicality

2009-08-11T06:47:00.001-07:00

Heee! This doesn't feature me, but it does have some pictures of a bunch of tinies playing some instruments I made. Wonderful!

Click here for the Nation of Victoriana article

Blatant Advertising

2009-08-11T06:22:00.000-07:00

I caught up with Wynx Whiplash the other day, sporting a brand new avatar she was working on. I'd been wanting to showcase a new avatar for her in the form of an advert for a while, and here was a perfect opportunity. This was filmed, edited, uploaded and presented in an afternoon. Am pretty pleased with it.

Tiny New Wave

2009-08-04T11:27:00.000-07:00

So I finally cobbled together a machinima project that's been swimming around my head for a while. It took about 4-5 days to film (on and off), and edited it as I went along. It's called 'Le Squabbit Et Les Admirateurs', which basically translates from French to 'The Squabbit & Her Admirers'.

The Squabbit in question is Karmagirl, who spends most of her time as a cross breed squirrel-rabbit (squirrel head, bunny body), hence the 'squabbit'.

If you ever seen a French New Wave movie (Jules Et Jim, Breathless are two good examples), you might understand where this is coming from. Personally, I just can't get to grips with them. It's all a lot of unrequited passion and despair, and despite the often jovial stuff that's going on, there's always an underlying sense of dread about them. It's like the cinematic equivalent of a bull-fight; no matter how wondrous and balletic it might look at that particular moment, you know it's not going to end without bloodshed. I've studied film academically, so I have a lot of respect for the contribution to the medium that the pioneers of the French New Wave made; I just can't bear to sit through their movies a lot of the time. Maybe it's an 'era' thing, who knows...

The narration is a sound clip I found online. It sounded suitably ludicrous to use, and the accordian music was suitably stereotypical. The subtitles absolutely DO NOT relate to what is being spoken. My understanding of the French language is minimal at best. I know enough to get by, but not enough to translate this. So I made up the subtitles; which in a way, is a bit new wave, I guess...

Happy Birthday Jin

2009-08-02T06:17:00.001-07:00

One of my good SL-friends, Jin Barbosa is enjoying her birthday today; I won't reveal how old she is! Although I don't get to see her as much in SL these days, Jin - and her partner (RL and SL) Bo - will also hold a special place in my heart. They are two of my oldest friends and have been a valuable source of support and friendship over the years. Happy Birthday Jinjin!

1000

2009-07-18T03:40:00.000-07:00

Today marks my 1000th day since I joined SL. In that time, I've helped run a zoo (which relocated twice and got bigger with each move!), designed gardens and landscapes way beyond my capabilities in real-life, I've been big, monsterous and finally tiny. I've settled into a niche community whose ideals completely fit my own and am surrounded by people who make me laugh, smile, emathise, sympathise and challenge me every day. They are a great bunch of folk, and I am blessed to have found them.

Have had a fairly productive couple of weeks. Made my treasure chest, then tweaked a few bits to my pirate look. Have also just finished another musical instrument, have just finished another superhero outfit, which I plan on getting out for sale in the next day or two, and have helped out on a few custom jobs too. I'm much happier being busy and creative! I'll post pictures of the goods when I've, er, made the pictures!

Also helped throw some bits and pieces together for an impromptu party on Raglan Shire, for Linden lab's quarterly Waffle Day. Nice to see some Lindens hopping and bopping on the Shire. Blue Linden (and now Darv Linden too) is a Friend Of The Shire and Pink and Alexa are often (if not always) using Wynx-bunny avatars. It would be nice to see some of those bigger names exploring the Shires every now and then. We threw out an open invitaion to M Linden, but alas, another Waffle Party no-show from him. Come on M, unleash your inner tiny!

RL sees me without Kitti's company for another 7 days; she's away for 10 days, and I miss her lots already.

Yarrr!

2009-07-09T04:36:00.001-07:00

Pirate month around Raglan Shire starts on July 18, and I managed to find the inspiration to throw together a wearable treasure chest!

But saw today SuperMoose has officially closed down MouseMart, which is a real shame. I actually found tiny stuff at MM before I discovered Raglan. I know Wynx had a hug prescence there, and it was a real good start for a lot of tinies a couple of years back. I hope Moose manages to sort it all out; good guy.

SL6B

2009-06-10T05:24:00.000-07:00

I made a chainsaw recently. It uses a very cool little animation-pose that Azelle Mavendorf made, a cool script that Catten Carter made and I threw in a sound effect I downloaded from the interweb. I am like a building leech; all of the important bits were made by other people! I suck! [However, I did make a cool lightsaber that changes colour when you touch the beam; it was really well detailed, and as I threw myself into making it, only took me an hour or so to build. Then I surprised a lot of people by giving it away free to my Funny Bunny group - FREE SWAG!]

Anyhoo, I have had literally minutes of fun going around with my chainsaw, chopping into the sides of folks buildings and around forests, etc. Then I popped over to the sims that will be used for SL6B (Second Life's 6th Birthday), ready to cause some unwanton destruction; but it looks as though someone beat me to it.

I can only describe the texture that LL have used for the land as though someone has dug up a field, then scorched the earth and then scattered manure across it. It looks like a really bad Glastonbury festival after 8 weeks of trampling. It's bad.

But in a strange way, that's good. Raglan Shire is a beautiful, lush cluster of sims, adorned with wonderful fauna and flora - which is what we're hoping to recreate inside the huge drab looking warehouse we've built for it. We could've built a magical-looking palace to hold our satellite Shire, but we thought a dirty metal can would fit better with LL's vision, whilst serving as a great contrast to our own.

Chatterbugs

2009-06-04T12:27:00.000-07:00

So, since last weekend, Friends of Raglan Shire group chat has been throwing up a bug when, pretty much, 99% of people try and reply to something that someone's said, or it throws up an error not allowing anyone to say anythign at all. Basically, with the excpetion of a few disjointed sentences bearing absolutely no relation to the previous disjointed sentences in chat, it hasn't been working.

So someone forwarded me to this link, which is kinda like filing a ticket to ask someone to look at something. People then get to vote on it, presumably to determine whether or not Linden Lab bother to try and work it out or fix it. I've voted on a few before, but there has never seemed to be much interest in most of the JIRAs, so I'm often astounded that anything ever gets fixed at all. Apparently, this group chat bug has had 500+ votes at the time of writing, so that seems like it's a pretty big deal to a lot of folk.

I've also read some JIRA comments (you get to rant under the query - yay!) that have featured replies from Lindens. So they must look at them; after all, how else are they going to know what to work on in between hourly snacks? And despite the wealth of protestations posted on this JIRA alone in the last few days, how many replies have been posted by a member of Linden Lab?

None. Nada. Zero. Zilch.

No-one has either got the testicular fortitude to stand up and say "I'm working on it" and take the fan-blown excrement straight in the face or the courtesy to say as much.

I'd like to now point you to a post I previously made in this very blog about how LL just spout BS all the frickin' time, depsite their assurances that communication was "a top priority." Hmm, sure. So when a method of communication goes down, you dilly-dally about, running around in circles in your office pointing at the next idiot, right? Or do you actually try and do something about it? Because so far I haven't seen any of the latter to assure me that any of the former isn't going on.

Just because YOU can't communicate with residents, Mr Linden, doesn't give you the right to stop your hundreds of thousands of residents communicating with each other.

Much Ado About Nuthin

2009-05-26T09:25:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been nearly three weeks since I blogged last! What a lazy toad I is!

This post might be better served if I had something to show for the past fortnight's inactivity, but I'm afraid it's been pretty much that. Not a lot going on at all. Watched some ballet on Raglan Shire, watched a gig there too, paid some rents on some shops, and generally ambled around. I have actually been working on the Shire Times newspaper, looking to get another edition of that out in the first week or so of June, so that's something, at least.

My staff on the Times has reduced to...well, me. Many of the regular contributors are off doing their own thing (in RL and SL) now, so I'm pretty much having to jot everything down myself. Qyhat does her fashion piece still, but everything else I'm stitching together myself. That makes it hard. And often a bit depressing. I'd rather have other folk writing stuff, not because it's easier for me (it isn't - I still have to proof read and edit everything), but because it serves as a community voice, not just my voice.

I've been wondering where to take the Times, to allow others to take a more active role in participating, but it's difficult to know exactly what to do. My best option at the moment, and the one I'm now implementing is that instead of bi-monthly, it will become a quarterly publication instead. That gives me at least 6 weeks in between each issue before having to think about the next.

Now, back to writing. Oh wait...

Tired

2009-05-09T08:28:00.000-07:00

Phew, flying those timezones really takes it out of you! At least, that's my excuse.

So since I returned to SL from the US of A in RL, I haven't done a great deal, but thought I'd blog to be honest about it!

It's Art Walk month in Raglan, and I helped Kitti Dumpling get her selection of pictures set up on the Raglan tree gallery. Her pictures look good, if I say so myself. I made a fancy bohemian top hat based on a stovepipe hat I'd seen at a very exclusive clothes shop in East London; so far I haven't done anything with it other than give it away to a couple of folks. I also managed to find a rather splendid (if prim heavy) new art deco-themed building to serve as the office for The Shire Times. I wanted somewhere to double as a movie studio, but I'm a) out of prims and b) unable to get my fancy new TV bought for me by my buddy Bo to work; or at least play my YouTube clips. Oh well!

As much as I'd like to have submitted something to Art Walk, the fact of the matter is, I don't actually have anything to submit. I keep going on and on about how I want to do this or that in terms of art, or sculpture, or whatever, but never seem to get around to doing it. I'll make more of a concerted effort this year, I hope.

Once I settle back into more of a routine, I'll find some inspiration to do something extra, no doubt. For now, ART!

Redux!

2009-04-18T17:06:00.000-07:00

Wild West movie got a slight makeover...kinda! I added some 'old-film' style effects to it!

Looks pretty cool! And the stuttery footage (caused by SL being laggy) now doesn't look so out-of-place!

Submitted to CNN's iReport too. Nicole of iReport e-mailed me when I submitted the Parry Gripp video to say how much they liked it, but because of the music, they'd have difficulty using it. Hopefully, this time around, there won't be any problems!

RL holiday in a day. 10 days out of world. :(

Wild Wild West

2009-04-16T04:20:00.000-07:00

New movie time! Hooooo!

For Raglan's two-year anniversary month, we played Cowboys & Injuns - kinda. The square became a dusty Wild West street. I have shot this in bits over the last week or so, increasingly concious that I have an RL-holiday coming up that will keep me off-world for a fortnight, so it started to become a bit if a rush job. But overall, am pretty pleased with it.

Tinies Live

2009-04-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

So, yesterday in group chat, some folk were getting very upset about the suggestion that Linden Lab could be trying to phase out tiny avatars. Jack Linden's name gets bandied about in the article. Lots of tinies get worried.

Now, being the upfront trouble-maker that I am , I don't see why you should mess about waiting for a Linden to tell you what's what. You go and ask them. So I did. An IM to Jack Linden saying "are LL considering banning tiny avatars?" And this is the reply I got.

[10:40] Jack Linden: (Saved Wed Apr 01 17:29:56 2009) good lord no.. why would we do that? is this an April Fools joke perhaps?

So there you go, tinies. We're safe.

Machinima Artists Guild

2009-03-30T22:44:00.000-07:00

Visit Second Life Machinima Artists Guild

Hehe, check this!

Lowe Runo invited me to join the Second Life Machinima Artists Guild (this is my profile page there!). It's a group of Second Life Machinima-ists, and a whole bunch of talented folk. Hopefully I can pick up some tips to improve from there.

I also managed to find a great piece of music for my planned Wild West video, so will try and get going on that ASAP. I'm gonna miss the latter half of the event due to RL holiday (Big Apple, woot!), so have to have something done within the next fortnight!

I also kept meaning to get around to posting this blog post from Vlad Bjornson at Shiny Life, who offered some very lovely words about my Coldplay video a while back. Thanks Vlad!

Extrovirtual Video Promo: Tiny Wings

2009-03-27T15:11:00.000-07:00

I recently collaborated with the Queen of Tinydom, Ms Wynx Whiplash herself to create a video promo to advertise her new product project - tiny wings!

Due to a claim by Warner Music Group that they own the copyright to the 158-year-old piece of music The Ride Of The Valkyries, the video would be muted if uploaded to YouTube, hence I had to put it onto the vastly-superior Vimeo, and embed it for you here too.

Thanks to Arizona Noel, Shady Fox, Xandra Bracken and Karmagirl Avro for their help in taking part, and a HUGE thanks to Wynx for her generosity! I hope it was worth it. I kinda like it; it turned out to be a lot more difficult to film and edit than I originally envisaged. I'm gutted that I can't get it to my YouTube channel alongside my other stuff in this form, but I might consider trying a different piece of dramatic music: Holst's Mars, perhaps?

Burrowing & Tunneling

2009-03-18T04:45:00.000-07:00

Holy mo, been a while since I posted an update, it's making me look slack!

Well, what have I done...it seems a lot, and yet nothing (Or at least very little) to show for it! Have had an inspiration of the superhero-kind of late, and have been trying to make some costumes. Expect to see some Fantastic Four outfits, my Thor costume, a Tiny Wasp and a slightly improved Hulk outfit all out soon (paws crossed).

I managed to catch a few key MG events, but the sims were often so laggy, it was all I could do to stand still and focus on one thing. I managed to grab a few Machinima shots of various folk dancing, and a few floats that were in the parade, but I'm losing focus on an 'angle' in which to edit it. I have a horrible feeling that it's going to end up being a project consigned to a drawer on my PC until another day.

An event I am looking forward to filming is the upcoming Wild West month that Raglan will hold as part of their 2nd birthday celebration. That might allow for something more cinematic, and a little more slow paced than the MG video demands. I also plan on filming some 'TV adverts' for a certain in-world creator, which should be fun to do.

Aside from that, have whiled away some time doing some fishing. I'm having fun with it, and the Artisans of Raglan Shire have turned out some great customs for Heron Shire and Raglan Shire. Grab a rod, grab a chair on the fishing dock and take 20 minutes out of each day to just wind down and fish!

Getting Bigger!

2009-03-04T13:42:00.001-08:00

Magistrate Zayn approved the design of a new bigger shop unit for Heron Shire wharf this week! I have now managed to get my stuff more spread out amongst the vendors, thrown out a few more vendors and basically had a tiny up. Looks pretty good, I am happier with it now, and will actually make stuff to sell, not just waste time doing then throw in the bin.

Visit my Heron Shire shop here: Visit Funny Bunny

Also made and opened a new store at Enktan's Tiny Outpost. I was semi-aware of Enkythings mall, and it seems to get some great traffic. Enky has done a great job of putting the new outpost together, and even let me construct my own outpost store. The second day or trade, he saw 12 bots hanging around my Lucky Chair there (with the Tiny Vampire Hunter Belt in it), so just to annoy them, I moved the chair to the other side of the shop!

Visit my Wilcutt shop here: Visit Funny Bunny

Rizzo also asked me if I had a Leprechaun outfit. I did, but the one I made last year sucked. But Rizzo's asking inspired me to do a better one, which I did. It's out now, ready for St Patrick's Day on March 17.

And I recently modded my popular aviator jacket to fit Loco Pocos avatars. Damien Fate has opened up a boutique at LP Island, which is doing a few folk some great business - which is an outstanding testament to not only their work, but also Damien's - but I need a minimum of 5 saleable items to set up there...so now I need to figure out which I can adapt!

Fat Tuesday

2009-02-25T15:25:00.000-08:00

Mardi Gras has happened in New Orleans, but it's still to kick in on Raglan! Happening soon though! Hooooo!

And I made another outfit for it. A dixie-land inspired blazer and boater suit. AND I made a new top hat for my Lucky Chair! Voodoo-themed! AND I've started building a shop unit for Enktan's Enkythings Tiny World units. AND I made an acoustic guitar for this weekend's music performer! AND I came up with an idea for the music performers that our resident booker, Teal Freenote, has agreed to adopt! I'm just a production machine!

And just for Summer, here's the Wastelander Soldier picture!

Apocalypto Tiny

2009-02-20T11:20:00.000-08:00

I finally made a new outfit! First piece of clothing I've made in months, I think. I have a long standing admiration of all things Steampunk (having first visited Babbage when it first started up and being exposed to some incredibly beautiful, detailed, whimsical and downright astonishing builds). I was inspired again by visiting the fab Eladrienne Laval's little shop on Raglan Shire and seeing her steampunk-tiny outfits and decided I should do something along the same sort of lines. However, it quickly became more 'Wastelands' than 'Babbage', so I settled on that. A 144-prim jacket for desert-bound tinies. I also modded a helmet and collar for the Tiny Inc puppy too. I rule!

And struggled for an hour in GIMP trying to figure out how to layer text for a Mardi Gras sign. I suck.

Awards Season

2009-02-11T03:17:00.000-08:00

At the height of the entertainment industry's awards season, I was pretty surprised to get this...

Which was very kind of everyone to give me! A full explanation as to why is here.

I also took the advice of Stillpink Sandgrain and submitted the Parry Gripp video to iReport, an extension of CNN.com, that allows folk from all over the globe to submit their own video reports, some of which are then picked up by CNN (or so it seems, forgive me for only a passing understanding). Nicole Ireport (SL name) sent me a lovely e-mail asking me about my vid, and said that because the music used wasn't mine, it would be hard to use in it's entirity, but some footage could be used! That would be nice! But it has lead me to want to find music in the public domain, like classical, or older tunes, to use for my next video work, so it gives it more of a chance to be used in something like this.

Parry Meets Raglan

2009-02-06T09:29:00.000-08:00

Quite possibly the most intense piece I've done yet! I built sets and props for shots that lasted less than two seconds in some cases, recruited dozens of tinies to help, and also dabbled with a bit of audio editing to accompany the thing (I say dabbled, I edit audio every day of the working week, so it wasn't too much of a stretch).

My favourite sequence is the Hamster On A Piano bit, especially the scenes with Shady Fox 'narrating' and Summer Seale and her pals Autumn and Winter (no, really!) dancing behind. The Hungry Hippo bit was fun to do too. Took me six days to do.

EDIT: I sent Parry Gripp a message via YouTube to take a look; although he didn't reply, he DID add the video to his Favourites, so that was nice! Thanks Mr Gripp!

Busy Bunny

2009-02-04T07:39:00.000-08:00

Well, I didn't think I'd done much recently, hence the lack of update; but when I came to write about it, I realised that this week alone I've been putting the finishing touches to the new Shire Times issue, have been filming and editing a new Machinima piece for Raglan, have been trying to get the Shire's 7Seas fishing opportunities back up to speed and have made a Valentine's Walk freebie. So maybe I have been busy after all.

My Valetine's gift was designed to be the most tackiest, cheesiest thing you've ever seen for a tiny in Second Life. I hope I succeed!

My new Machinima has some brilliant moments in it; Kitti says it's inspired, I think it's inspired luck.

The Shire Times has again been great to do and soul-destroying to do. I wish sometimes I had better ways of making up a page.

Made some nice custom fish for the fishing though! Really pleased with how they turned out. Now I just need some other folk to come up trumps with another half dozen or so, and we're on the way!

Linden Lies

2009-01-23T00:27:00.000-08:00

I'm posting this image up here, because I don't trust that at some point over the next 12 months, Linden Lab won't 'accidentally' delete it, or deny all knowledge of it. This is my binding contract to throw back at them, attached to a megaprim in January 2010.

I'm not sure simply "announcing" purchases of OnRez (to kill it) and XStreetSL (to tax merchants) is really improving communication, but still, it's done now, and I will just have to seethe about it in my own way. I absolutely begrudge paying back Linden Lab for my work, which I will now do. I didn't mind paying when it was an independent venture - I'm all for rewarding entrepreneurialship - but now am wondering why Linden Lab deserve a cut of my sales? They will say that it will be used to improve the customer experience; I'll believe that when I see it - which won't happen (I found out recently that I make less than 50% of the sales that a fellow tiny makes on Xstreet in a month, than I do IN TOTAL - from all 5 shops I have, and XStreet, and this tiny is making more than double that on XStreet alone).

Three weeks into 2009 and again LL have managed to incense a massive percentage of residents, or more importantly, merchants. They are claiming it is for the residents, but I wonder exactly how many residents actually asked for this to happen? My guess is somewhere around the Zero mark. LL are doing this for the additional $1.2 million USD, of which approximately $0.00 USD will be filtered back through to the residents. After the OS debacle at the end of 2008, and now this, it seems to me as though Linden Lab may become a public company within the next couple of years, after Kingdon displays that income streams have massively increased and can make a potential share price look uber-attractive. Hopefully, he'll take the payoff that will come with such a move and get lost.

In other news: made a custom 7Seas fish this past week though, although all the hard bits were mostly done by Panacea Pangaea, with Bloodsong Termagant providing invauable support too. Thank you! I will endeavour to get it thrown into the sea and fishable very soon!