Creating Callisto

After RL interrupted my two days planned toward building my SL6B project, I'm doggedly working on and offline toward its completion.

When we were given "The future of virtual worlds" for a premise, I had understood it to mean a RL relating to SL kinda thing. I had made a detailed proposal as expected of me, and hoped I'd get the land and prims needed to do all I had promised. When the lands were rewarded, the premise slightly changed. It was the 25th century and we were on an asteroid hurtling through space with the remnants of our civilization. Our hopes would be to find a new home on a distant planet.

As mentioned, the barren rock and perpetual darkness sent most applicants into a tailspin. Heavy use of glow & particles ensued; whatever they proposed must have flown out the window.

I remain the calm within my region's storm: no post-apocalyptic drek, no undulating blobs of light or showering sparks. My proposal applies now just as it had then. The difference being a question of whether to fullbright interiors and "paint shadow" with material and textures, or just use alpha lightsources.

Tonight the layout and basic builds should be completed (still need to make some livingroom furniture and maybe some framed art for the "bedroom" wall). Then I'll need to map out the layout from above and prepare terrain details on graph paper. I've got a diner parking lot, a pebble path, a residential lawn, and other somesuch things. I'd like to have a pool but I don't want to impose on the exhibitor assistants more than I have (there's something amusingly ironic on the livingroom TV). They've lowered the land so my fake terrain can be flush with the region, added media including an awesome Space Age Lounge station, and will be assisting me media changes for a party planned with DJ GoSpeed Racer.

Stay tuned; maybe next entry about SL6B will include screenshots!

Response to Torley's video re Guilty Pleasure

Torley:

I didnt have room on YouTube, but I wanted to comment properly about your latest videoblog. I tried to delete and repost since I typo rabidly, but it wouldn't take subsequent attempts to repost, so I undeleted the one I had. Anyway, here's the full response:

As you most likely know, in Japanese a Kanji ideogram alone may mean something totally different than grouped with others. I think the term "Guilty Pleasure" works similarly, as do many other terms we have in English.

I know why I use the phrase and it's to say I have a fondness for something which reminds me of a time or place I'm no longer associated with. For that I think it's perfect & serves a purpose.

Consider this for a comparison: In cinema there's high comedy & low comedy. In the first half of last century, slapstick and physical humor was seen as the commoner's form of entertainment, & someone telling bad jokes with pretty girls dancing around them was seen as high class. By the last half of the century, low comedy by the likes of Lloyd Keaton and Chaplin (among several others) was recognized as genius. Even those still seen as less sophisticated and more formulaic such as The 3 Stooges or Laurel & Hardy were admired for having entertained the masses and taking us through the harder times of our history in America.

I dont mind "guilty pleasure." In context of music it usually means that I enjoy something or someone from a genre I normally don't favor, or more commonly a song targeted for teens at a time when the music was considered frivolous and the artists exploited to the point of embarrassment. For example my last.fm library includes The Partridge Family, Tommy Roe, Bobby Sherman, and other such acts. They were in Tigerbeat & 16 and not Stereo Review, their records made gold & platinum by armies teens who often screamed too loud to listen to their music. I never screamed LOL. And maybe I didn't see them at the time as special or their music as catchy and uplifting as I do. Maybe it was the time away from them. I consider listening to them today as a guilty pleasure. I'm not ashamed to listen to them - in some cases no longer ashamed :P - but they're certainly out of character for someone like me OR someone my age.

Just wanted to feed you a perspective from the other side.

Life in the 25th Century?

We got our parcel assignments yesterday for SLB6. Along with the landmark came our collective premise in greater detail. We are hurtling through space on a meteor (The Rock) in search of a new home. Apparently we were placed with others based on the similarities of our proposals. If that's true, I'll be in an interesting neighborhood for the next few weeks.

And Then I Want a Chalet

It started when my grandmother took me and a cousin to France for my graduation.

The survivors on Mom's side hid out during the war and remained in Alsace. I remember seeing Grandma's birth certificate when we went through her things 11 years ago; her birthplace belonged to Germany that year.

I ogled the architecture. Anything we had in America was a paled copy. No no not those! THOSE! Yeah! The framed houses reminiscent of every fairy tale I was ever read as a kid: thatched roof, window panels with little shapes cut into them, flowerboxes...


When the cousins took us to Obernai that was it. Anything before or after would be framed chopped liver. Even the river ride through Strasbourg lost view points after Obernai. Back then I thought to myself: "If I win the lottery or the French invite me like they did R Crumb, I will live in Obernai."


Nowadays the thought is more along the lines of "If only the French as a whole weren't anti-Semitic..."

Then again in Second life I don't have to deal with that, would I?

Wow only one other person bid on the thing. I assume all land gets automatically bid by some reseller. Well, something else to dabble with :) 1024 for less than 3500 and bordering with a Pathfinder project. I ain't complaining.

It's starting to look like something

I'm really psyched. Cartoon World is starting to look like something. I found a nice deco wood tile pattern from Harbinger for the floor and it seems to have transformed the shop.

At the same time, the moles and Michael Linden are working on various elements to construct an airport in Hau Koda for another infohub. They work out of the way in a remote location of the region. Being a theme with planes there's no surprise that Michael L is contributing. There are some awesome deco aviation wings of various sizes and building applications all around the work area, and photo references on a makeshift wall (some provided by Marianne McCann with the poll results from the Bay City Alliance. It was nice Linden Lab took input for a theme; but it makes sense since it was their idea to create Bay City). It's neat to see the process. Besides we probably won't have access once the region officially gets its "i" designation if Moosehead Beach to the east is any indication.


Speaking of which, I miraculously got into Moosehead Beach the other day. I flew by the border and miscalculated but didn't hit an invisible wall. Marianne joined me for the rare occurrence while we watched avatars yell "penis!" and "hey baby" a lot. I swear it reminded me of Cybertown's main plaza on a bad night.

If only SL had a competent age verification process at the front door. They would restrict new residents if they did not enter payment information or were new and their IP address detected another unverified ID created within 24 hours. Anyone who entered verifiable proof and payment info from the start - or a resident sponsor and payment info - would be allowed anywhere immediately while the others would have to wait for verification. Or maybe restrict to infohub-only regions like Hellfell and Hau Koda?

What would verification be? Hm good question. When I first joined eBay I didn't have a credit card, and verification meant their sending me an envelope by mail and my returning a postcard. If SL was that serious it might pose an inconvenience to some but a blessing to others.

You may ask why not include any PG land in the restrictions? Well, because inworld residents have a right to be protected just as much as minors have a right to be protected. PG has never meant anything more than "this is the content threshold I have set for myself in SL," regardless of children watching with their parents (my friend showed her kids the 7Days Bakery, so yes it does happen). All of SL must respect the cultures of the world or their claim for diversity is a sham.

Cartoon World Opening This Saturday

After a defunct computer and pneumonia, I think the setbacks are over and done with.

Even the planned entertainment had its share: first a folk performer whom I knew (and who wanted to get involved in Second Life) couldn't make Saturdays, then my backup fractured his wrist. Now I have an awesome DJ (awesome = nice + has a great music collection) scheduled.

The building's been in place in Bay City for about two weeks now, and with a staggering pace is almost ready to open. The comic art is already installed. The illustrations I displayed previously will get lower prices; some of them will be featured on shirts, which will be available on the ground level. I need to set up a subscribe-o-matic as well; I'm glad I found out about that.

Healthwise it fluctuates with the pollen count; I don't anticipate this preventing me from seeing it finally through.

Death by Kindness

There is an explanation for why gears shifted so radically last month. I had a venting entry which I removed. Friends inworld were aware of the situation. There should not have been a situation IMHO, but one cannot always tell online what people are really like much less their true state of mind. I still want to explain things but keep it vague.

Suffice it to say despite my own overload issues as clearly blogged here, there were some radical behavioral changes in neighbors which proved unhealthy for me when the land beside my shop turned purple, and it got worse when I won the auction. Their attention directed to someone who works alone was stifling. I tried the communication route and that didn't work. Stepping up the hints to blatant objection didn't work (and of course I was seen as a bad person). In the end, fate stepped in & my dream plot in Bay City came to be. One can reason that this all pushed me to where I truly belong.

Either way, removing my properties from their proximity and eliminating land as a factor should have brought them back to their senses. After all I knew them from a time when property was not an issue and you hosted your own world on the web. One backed off thankfully, and that was nice. However upon learning I had sold the land in their proximity, another one removed me from all contacts in and out of SL. I think if anything proved they had an agenda with my land, that was it. Their attitude was they did something for me and I should have been grateful for the badgering.

But why? That still makes no sense. My land dwarfed next to theirs, even with the added auction land. I was the first resident in that region last August. If anything, my part in their SL existence was to start them there, where they became a flourishing paradise and a successful social hub for VRML immigrants. Out of respect I avoid both of them so she's not a victim of that silly ole "guilt by association" thing.

My selling the land was very good for the neighbors. A couple to the west got to expand, and the fellow to the north, concerned about being stuck with his land, got it sold hot on the heels when mine was resold by the agent.

Yes, it would have been NICE to have a pier for fishing and a place to rez boats and fish from them (that was the plan over there), but not at that cost. The people I've met in SL have been wonderful, and when unnecessary drama like this rears its head from post-Blaxxun members, it's enough to review why I ran to Toontown and Second Life - and confirm never to go back to the ways of VRML communities.