Veronique's Second Life Blog

What's SLove got to do with it?

2008-11-26T08:45:00.000-08:00

Some people go to Second Life for virtual sex, or even cybersex. What is the sound of one hand fapping? :) There are tons of animations for simulated sex between avatars, or even among avatars, more positions than most people have even thought about or known about in first life.

I like virtual sex in SL. No, I love virtual sex. The suggestion of intimacy can be very stimulating and satisfying, even without touching. Sex, however, is not what really gets my attention in SL.

Love does.

Love? How can avatars love? Is it simulated love, like the simulated sex? Is it just some fantasy role play?

Not for me. I form real bonds through SL. Behind every avatar is a real person, and I bond with that real person through the medium of SL and our avatars. When I tell my sweetheart I love her, or Tatsuko, or Patrice, or Cala, or Envy, I really mean it. I'm not just tossing that word around. I truly care about those people, whether I've met them in the flesh or not.

There's something about SL that facilitates such bonding for me. I form close associations through Twitter and other social networking connections. There are people I don't see in SL whom I also care about deeply. But it's at a different level in SL. Avatars aren't just pixelated images. They have an odd kind of reality of their own.

The other night, I met my sweetheart in SL after having been IMing with her. Being with her in SL was totally different than IM. I felt much more present with her, even though we were no closer in first life than we were via IM. We can talk about touching and caressing in IM, and that works on the imagination to an extent. But maybe I'm just a visual person. The suggestion is much stronger in SL. The imagination really gets into gear.

When I am holding my sweetheart in SL or she is holding me, I feel held in first life. When I am kissing her, I feel kissed. When she hurts, I hurt with her. This is only going to get stronger as the ways that avatars can express themselves get better.

In a way, my sweetheart is her beautiful avatar, and I am mine. We give full expression to our inner selves through our avatars. That little doll is important to me. She has a kind of life of her own. That was true right from the start. Of course she doesn't have independent existence, but just like a character in a novel, she behaves in a consistent, realistic manner. She behaves in a way that fits her on-going story. I cannot, or at least would not, make her do just anything. A novelist loves her characters. I love mine, and I love many of those she interacts with, characters constantly being "written" by other "novelists."

I think this love is real.

Anyone who is not in SL, maybe even some who are, will probably think I'm crazy. Do I have an overactive imagination? Or does the imagination of others need a boost?

[Addendum: the photo is of my friends Eloria and Merik. I'm not in there. :)]

Second chance

2008-11-24T14:13:00.000-08:00

Second Life is a lot of things for me. I've given up on trying to separate immersion from augmentation. For me, SL is both immersion in fantasy and social networking with real people. I interact with real people through a virtual world in which all kinds of fantastic things are possible, not the least of which is that I can be an accomplished ballroom dancer. I dig that.

In SL, I am not solitary. I wish I could enjoy solitary time more, use it to explore or whatever, but I don't very much. I like to be with other avatars—other people. I'm not great about keeping up with all the people on my Friends list (and I've been dumped for neglect sometimes), but I keep up with quite a few. They are real friends. They're important to me.

I form deeper relationships as well. Not even two months into my second life, I formed a partnership with Patrice. Our relationship is pretty well documented in this blog, all the ups and downs, the difficult times and the more numerous wonderful times. We learned to trust each other, slowly (it's difficult in a medium where you can't really see the other person), and we shared so much of our lives with each other. In many ways, it was a second marriage for me, which worked thanks to the non-jealous patience of my wonderful first life spouse. It probably helps that my spouse doesn't much like SL and doesn't think of it as real.

Patrice and I split up a little over a year ago (I'm happy we are still friends). At first, as always after a close relationship, it was refreshingly different to be on my own. But for me, that never lasts too long. I almost formed a new partnership with someone I'll call "raven hair," whom I had long been friends with and became even closer to during the first months of my singularity. She asked. I said no. At the time, I was so busy in first life that I knew I would not have been able to give her the kind of time and attention she needed. It hurt me terribly to say no. It hurt me terribly for more than a year afterward. She met someone else, and they partnered. It was all I could do to attend the wedding. I was truly happy for her, but I was unhappy for myself. Still, I maintained a close friendship with her.

I met a darling redhead, a friend of raven hair as it turned out, and we saw each other for a short time. It didn't work. There were misunderstandings from the start. We have since become friends, but we weren't right for a romantic relationship.

Then there was the blond. OMG. I had a mad crush on her from the minute I met her. We had been friends, not close but good, since that time. She was even sort of my boss at one point, when I was doing a DJ gig. We had always enjoyed talking with each other. Last spring, she indicated that she was interested in something more. My heart lept. I moved too quickly. We had more misunderstandings, lots of them, more serious ones. We had wonderful times and terrible times. And for all that, we were never really in a relationship. That was all about trying to work things out. We are still friends, but I think it's best if that's how we leave it. I still think she is one of the most beautiful avatars in SL, and I like her very much, but we both know that there's much more to a relationship, even in SL.

I was close to writing a woe-is-me blog entry, a tale of hopeless love, but I never did. That's probably just as well. Not long ago, my poor raven hair's heart was broken. Her partnership ended in a way that was very hurtful to her. As her friend, indeed perhaps her best friend, I felt bad for her. I knew how hurt she was. She does not hold back when giving her heart. I was torn between my own selfishness and wanting only what was best for her.

I hope we have found a path that works for both of us. We have not plighted any troth, but we are seeing each other romantically. I need to give her time and space, but I wasn't about to be all noble and watch someone else zoom in and take her away. I had my own heart to think of. If I had lost her a second time, I would have been devastated. So we are together, yet going slowly. She is still healing, and I need to learn patience. I love her dearly. I have for quite a long time. And I know that she loves me. I trust her and trust her love. I need to trust more.

Many people seem to have more confidence in SL, when they express themselves through their avatars. Leave it to me to ave the opposite. I have plenty of confidence in first life. In SL, I am a silly schoolgirl. I must do better than that, both for my sake and for the sake of my raven-haired beauty.

Living free

2008-10-05T21:49:00.000-07:00

My Second Life is still pretty low key these days, so I didn't want to bore you by writing about it here. It's not entirely gone though.

I DJ at the Velvet from 2–4 p.m. on Thursdays, which is 5–7 p.m. Eastern time, 10 p.m.–midnight in the UK, and 11 p.m.–1 a.m. in Europe. Just so you know. It's been a bit lonely on most afternoons so far, although I've had some special visitors.

After not having seen Illya for weeks, I had a nice talk with her a few days ago. We just talked, and I think we actually communicated. No pressure, no expectations. It was really nice. I hope we can meet up again soon, but my first life schedule doesn't allow that much.

None of that was worth kicking this blog into action though. Here's what is: Gender Freedom Day in Digital Worlds, October 25, 2008. This is an idea started by SL resident Sophrosyne Stenvaag, who helped create the Extropia sim. Here is her explanation for why she declared Gender Freedom Day in Digital Worlds: "The last straw came yesterday, when a friend was attacked in social media and later pilloried on a blog for the expression of her sexuality." She goes on to say that the same thing happens to many other women in SL as well as to "queers of all gender persuasions," as she puts it.

In my counselling practice (rather slow at the moment), many of my clients came to me with gender issues. SL is the perfect place to explore them. Most of the cross-gender avatars I met weren't about deception. For many, SL is the only place they can express what they feel to be their true gender. For some, SL is a way to help them decide whether they need to go further. People need this freedom to explore themselves. If not in SL, or some other virtual world, then where?

I do not approve of deception or playing with people's emotions. But that should not preclude those who do not deceive from expressing themselves in a way that they feel they must, for their own mental well-being. And I definitely do not approve of self-appointed people who feel they must "out" others.

Gender Freedom Day in Digital Worlds was brought to my attention by my friend Shockwave Plasma, who wrote about it in her own blog. She included links to Sophrosyne's blog as well as to an article that ran in the Metaverse Journal. I decided one more blog entry with links couldn't hurt, even if most people have given up on this mess of virtual scribbling.

October 25, Extropia sim. Spread the word! But not to haters.

Pictures at 11

2008-07-23T08:49:00.000-07:00

Google Analytics tells me this blog still gets visitors every day, even though I am bad about posting new material. According to the stats, visitors stay an average of 49 seconds! This is probably plenty of time for them to figure out that my Second Life just isn't very exciting right now.

I see Illya when we can manage to be in world at the same time, at the very least on Thursday nights when she DJs at Club Your Destiny. I still go to the Velvet, where I was last night, dancing to music by DJ Therese Slade. I try to stay in touch with other friends on my list. I catch up with Anwen when she has a bit of free time. My closet could really use cleaning out, since there are so many clothes that I'm just not going to wear again, but that's not a task that anyone enjoys.

I did meet a new person! GoSpeed Racer, whose picture you see here, is someone I met in Plurk, where I spend an alarming amount of time (and have the karma points to prove it). Last Thursday, I popped over to see her on the beach at Extropia. She showed me the car she was going to race at a Relay For Life event on the weekend. GoSpeed is a blogger, a much more active one than me, and she's involved in all kinds of SL events, so maybe I can liven up my own SL.

Oh, my closet is still a mess, but I did catch up with one thing: my Flickr site. I posted probably a couple dozen new pictures there, if you're interested. I also submitted a couple of shots to GoSpeed's Second Life Ebony group, which seem to have passed muster. I'm not nearly as ebony as some, but GoSpeed said that she's interested in a fairly wide range of non-white skin tones. There are some beautiful pictures in that group, and I'm happy to be a part of it now.

I'll try to find interesting stuff to write about, m'kay?

Party girl?

2008-07-06T09:35:00.000-07:00

I met CodeBastard Redgrave through Twitter, but I've also gotten to know her a bit in Second Life. She is a sweet person and very generous. She is also talented. She created the Boudoir Rouge, a series of lingerie photographs of women in Second Life (including yours truly). She designed a device call the MachinimaCam for people to use to make SL films. She is very involved in SL, often as part of major events. In not much more than a year, Codie, as her friends call her, has made a solid reputation for herself in SL. She is a genuine celebrity.

Even though Codie has become larger than (Second) Life by this point, she still counts me as a friend. You know how people say, "Don't forget your friends when you get to the top?" Well, Codie doesn't forget her friends, and I appreciate that.

Yesterday, THE place to be in Second Life was the reopening of the Code Red Lounge, an all-day and all-night non-stop party. I was busy in first life for much of the day and evening, but later at night I went in world, put on a sexy red dress, red shoes, and my colourable full-body tattoo—coloured red, of course—and headed over to Code Red. I still have my VIP tag from the original lounge.

At 11 p.m. SL (Pacific) time, the place was packed. I've tried to show just how full the place was, but it was much more crowded than it looks in that photo. Considering that, the lag wasn't too bad, although as you can see from the grey people, my client and computer were not handling the situation in an optimal fashion. Still, I could dance. It was hard to talk to anyone, because there was so much going on. I could barely move from my spot without running into someone else, and I was kind of far away from people I might have chatted with. I did manage to say hi to Codie and to congratulate her. I said hi to my friend Jacek Antonelli, although I could barely see her. My dear friend Tatsuko Hayashida was there, and I could just about see her name tag. I said hi to new Twitter friend Gabby Panacek, a good friend of Codie, but I don't think she heard me. Or maybe I didn't hear her.

Want some name dropping? I saw designer Callie Cline, fashion maven Celebrity Trollop, and several well-known bloggers like Crap Mariner. If I'd paid closer attention and maybe moved around a bit more (my computer is lame so I don't have much distance resolution), I bet I could drop a few more names. When I was there, Eris Alexandre was streaming a kind of electro mix, and both the action and chat were going fast and furious.

A lot of people thrive in that kind of atmosphere. Me, not so much. I wanted to go for a while because Codie is my friend, but I'm not really so good at huge parties like that. It's easy for me to feel lost. I have a lot of friends in SL, but I'm not really "connected." And a lot of dance music just isn't my thing, at least not when I'm only virtually dancing (real dancing is another matter entirely). I'm glad the party was such a success for Codie, and it wasn't nearly over when I left (there were DJs on until 7 a.m.). I almost beamed over to my grungy indie-music home-away-from-home, the Velvet, where my favourite spider Lolotehe Menoptra was streaming, as an antidote to the bright red limelight, but it had been a long day in first life so I went off line.

Congratulations, Codie! I hope you have a blast with your new sim. I'll drop back in when things are less mad, because the sim is supposed to have some great builds on it.

Longing

2008-06-18T09:41:00.001-07:00

It's only Second Life. It shouldn't hurt so much. But it does.

It's been a while since I've seen my love. She hasn't communicated. The last time we spoke, in IM and not even face to face, she was filled with doubts about us and our relationship—doubts that I don't have, doubts that I don't really understand. I did my best to put her mind at ease, but I don't think I succeeded.

She was the one who broke the ice a couple months ago, thus opening my life to a possibility that I had wanted ever since I first met her. So it was very much a mutual thing from the start. Having wanted to be with her for so long, I was primed to lose my heart to her rather quickly. Maybe too quickly. But I love who I love and it happens when it happens. I'm not sorry for that.

There might be all kinds of legitimate reasons that she hasn't been in touch. Drama belongs on stage, not in my life (OK, yes, I am blogging about this). I'm not going to draw conclusions based on an absence of evidence. We have had very good times together, and I hope there will be many more to come. I can't help that I love her. I hope I'm not just being a fool. I hope she's OK.

"I'm sittin' on the dock of the bay / Watching the tide roll away." Thank you, Otis Redding. I'll sit and wait and hope.

Welcome to de swamp!

2008-05-22T10:45:00.000-07:00

My sweetie was in a meeting. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do. I got an IM from my friend Aki Clutterbuck asking if I wanted to come see her new store, Au Jus. Sure! I beamed over there to find her with our friend CodeBastard Redgrave, taking a tour of the shop.

(Yes, I know, I'm wearing the same clothes as I was wearing the day before at the Hell Bop Bar. What a faux pas!)

The house is really a Victorian mansion, and it's mostly empty at this point, except for one set of poses, but soon that will change. The house has some great features and nice detailing—and a tower room! As a kid, I always wanted a tower room.

Equally cool, literally, is the land surrounding the house. It's next to a small inlet that is below a cliff, so it already has the feel of a "holler." And to enhance that feel, Aki has put in plants such as mossy trees and ferns. It's so different from the typical tropical paradise or Japanese-themed parcels that are found all over Second Life, and I loved it.

There's an island out in the bay, and our friend Jacek Antonelli, inventor and lover of all things tentacled, seems to be setting up a new Cuddlefish Junction there. And there was a Bubble Ride thingie! I'd read about this and seen a machinima that Codie made of people floating in bubbles, but it's way more fun to use than to read about or even see a film of. Naturally, I took tons of pictures of my own, but I won't bore you with more than one. All I can say is, check it out and have fun!

I floated in my bubble all over Dynamism sim, which has the kind of topography that I like, very hilly with lots of water inlets. I'm afraid I was taking more pictures of me in the bubble than of the landscape.

Bubbles rides aren't all that Jacek has come up with. She recently made a sculpty octopus. I couldn't tell you what it's for, but it looks cool out there in the bay, grabbing onto what seems to be a lighthouse.

I'm not sure if the new Cuddlefish Junction is open yet, but I'm sure it will be soon. I don't know when Aki is opening Au Jus. But keep an eye out for it.

Bop till you drop

2008-05-14T07:56:00.000-07:00

Due to the eight and nine hour time difference, I hardly ever get to see my European friends. Weekends, however, can help to bridge that gap. I can't remember whether it was Saturday or Sunday afternoon when I popped into Second Life and got an IM from my friend Peter Stindberg. I thought he was going to beam me to his house, but he said he was at a club. I asked what the music was like, and he said psychobilly and rockabilly, so I figured I didn't have to change from my punky camo skirt and pink pseudo-Chucks.

The Hell Bop Bar was new to me. The decor is pretty much standard rock bar. Peter was there, dancing with a friend. My friends Caterin Semyorka and Therese Carfagno were dancing in a line with their friend Cake Kidd, whom I'd met only once before. They called it dancing anyway. They were pretty close to each other! I chatted a bit with Cake, and she offered me friendship, which I accepted happily. I love reading about their adventures in Cat and Tess's blogs. I'm guessing Cake has one of her own. I'll have to find it!

Recently, I've been dancing off my own Huddles, but this place doesn't allow scripts, so I had to click on the ball. Fortunately, the dance ball has some pretty cool animations in it. It was funny to hear someone saying she was getting drunk while I was sipping my afternoon coffee. Being in the same place at different hours of the day can be disorienting.

I don't know yet whether the Hell Bop Bar operates on only on European time or if it's open during North American prime time too. I want to go back anyway, whenever it's open. The music stream was great!

The Second Life aquatic

2008-04-28T17:31:00.000-07:00

I was busy with the usual first life stuff on Friday and Saturday night, but Illya and I managed to get together last night. She took me sailing. I'd been sailing before, but that was only around Iron Fist, and there wasn't much water to manoeuvre in. Last night, Illya took me to a marina on Nantucket sim.

She changed into a swimsuit. I was hunting through my swimwear folder, wondering if I had anything that wasn't somewhere between small and minuscule (trying for some propriety for a change), and I found a tankini that I'd bought in that flurry just before the closing of Last Call (for all I know, it's not closed yet). Perfect!

We boarded her yacht. I think it would have to be called a yacht. I'm pretty ignorant about sailing vessels. I just love to get out on the water, real or virtual. I should learn how to tell one craft from another. And when it's virtual water and virtual sun, you don't have to worry about virtual sunscreen!

I clicked on the "crew" ball, but I was more passenger than crew. Illy says she has a crew HUD, so hopefully I'll learn how to manipulate the sails. There really is wind in Second Life, although she says it sometimes acts weird.

We did get under full sail, however, and sailed around the whole area—Nantucket, Block Island, Gloucester, and a few other places with names from my native New England. I went into mouselook for most of the voyage, something I rarely do, and it was great to watch the shores slip past, and look at the cottages, lighthouses, and vegetation along the way. I don't even have a good graphics card or the Windlight viewer, and still things looked really cool and very realistic. Or maybe I have a good imagination.

We managed to make is safely through several sim crossings, but one gave us a spot of trouble. I found myself suspended in mid-air with only the sails and the steering wheel left from the boat. I managed to stay online, but Illy crashed. When she got back online, we managed to get reset and continue the journey.

We were still sailing, still taking in lovely scenery. Illya spotted a whale off the port bow (I do know my directions). I couldn't resist manipulating the camera to get a picture. Whales don't spout when they're underwater, but it was still a cute shot. SL, and the things people do it in, still surprise and delight me sometimes.

It got late for me. I had to take my leave from a perfect evening. I can't wait to go sailing again.

Expect the unexpected

2008-04-25T22:55:00.000-07:00

It was the evening (at least in my time zone) of April Fool's Day. I was doing a rare DJ gig at the Velvet, thanks to Jasper. We had a pretty good crowd there when the sim restarted after the usual five minutes notice. Some left, some stayed until, boom, everyone was blown off. But I did not lose the stream, since that's not part of the sim. I logged back in to my home, kept cueing up songs, and tried to teleport to Romero repeatedly until the sim finally let me back in. I was the first to return. Pretty soon, we had a pretty good crowd again.

She was among the second wave. I'd sent out the usual Velvet announcement, but either she hadn't received it or she'd just gone in world. At any rate, she came by to listen to the rest of my set, to dance, and to chat with me.

I've known her for quite a long time, in Second Life terms, and we've talked from time to time. I had never had a chance to know her well. She was often busy doing her job. I would flirt with her when we'd both be at the Velvet, but it never went very far. Yes, I know, I was married at the time. Bad me. She didn't go for that sort of thing.

I've been single for many months now, but I've been busy with first-life school, turning myself into a real counsellor. It's only recently I've had much time to spend in world. I've been kind of lonely in SL, but I wasn't looking for love. At the Velvet on April 1, however, something was different between us. Our chat was playful. Hers seemed to suggest more than I thought would ever happen.

After my set, we spent time together, mainly talking, and holding each other some, staying up way too late. After that, we made contact on and off, more off than on. I thought maybe something wasn't going well. In first life, I'm pretty self-confident, but in SL I'm often insecure. She's a bit of a mystery, and I don't always read her very well. Days would go by without a peep. My friends had to put up with my self-pity.

Then, two days ago, I saw her on Gtalk, and I rang her up. The response was cheery and inviting. She's also a DJ, and she was doing an early set at the Velvet. I popped over there and danced for a while with her and some friends. It got on toward supper time for me, so I had to leave. Just before I left, I heard it: I love you.

I was floored, in a good way, but floored nonetheless. I said it back, because I really meant it, but had not dared say it before. What had been very tenuous became much less so. There has been more talk, more dancing, more sharing.

I am very happy. I am intrigued. This woman is very intelligent. She is not easy to get to know. There's a lot going on with her, and she is not the open book that I am. (She thinks I'm not, but I am.) I want to know more, and I will be patient in getting there. I want to share myself with her. She says she's not special. She's wrong. I wouldn't be with anyone who isn't special.

This isn't head over heels. We're both still cautious, despite what we each blurted out that evening. We're testing the water, feeling our way forward. I think about her a lot. It's good. It's scary. It's exhilarating. I feel vulnerable, and wonderful.

I finally buy a new skin

2008-04-18T16:35:00.001-07:00

I've been slacking on blog writing again. And just when I got inspired, the blog strike started up, and I ain't no scab. But now, even though I still have no idea whether I violate you-know-who's trademarks, things are supposedly clearer and we can blog again.

Not that I've been having any great adventures that I can blog about, but I have been spending more time in world. And without any advice from friends I was hoping would give me a third-party view, I bought a skin.

Deciding on a skin can be agonizing. I haven't found a single skin yet that I love all the features of. It might be out there, but I haven't seen it. The one I chose is from Celestial Studios, by Starley Thereian, from the Charmed line, tone 70 (second darkest). I actually bought two: Drama, which is my day look, and Rubies, which is for nighttime. I thought about a four pack for less money per skin, but I didn't go for all four of any single pack. If I could do my own custom four, well, that might be a different story. What say, Ms. Thereian?

I like a lot about this skin. It has one of the best eyebrow arches I've found, and I'm fussy about eyebrows, in Second Life as in first. I quite like the face in general. It enhances the way I have my eyes set, and the mouth is a lot less pursed than my old skin.

I like the shading a lot, definitely better than my old skin. The colour is adjustable, which is quite lovely. The profile photo above is a bit darker than I've since set the colour, as you can see at left. I'm trying to match my old skin tone. I do like the quality of this dark tone. It's not too yellow.

I don't know why skin designers so often make the nipples with soft focus, but they do. I appreciate that the navel is not a black hole. In fact, it looks like there's a piercing in it already! The kitty is nice, if not outstanding. I can put up with the landing strip, but I'm going to miss the completely bald option on my old skin. I'm less fussy about the naked parts than I used to be.

I was with my wonderful friend Tatsuko on Thursday, and she gave thumbs up to the new look. I value her opinion. I'm happy with it for now. Let's see how long that lasts!

Fiery red

2008-03-06T07:49:00.000-08:00

I have been terribly, terribly remiss. I was not writing any blog entries because of a lack of time to spend in Second Life and thus a lack of adventures. But I let an offline event slip by with only one meagre passing mention. And I could have been tooting my own horn!

Twitter draws people from SL, often as their SL avatars. Not only do I keep up with SL people in Twitter, even when I'm not in world, I've also met Twitter friends in SL. Cross-pollination!

One such lovely friend is CodeBastard Redgrave. Codie is unique in SL, which is saying something. If you ever meet her, I think it's safe to say that you won't have met anyone like her before. She's pretty wacky, but she's also warm and generous and a loyal and loving friend, as well as a scripter—her main product is the MachinimaCam—and photographer. In not much more than a year, she has had a big impact on SL. Many have noticed her fine qualities and her talents, enough so that she was voted the Avastar of the Year.

A while back, Codie shot some boudoir photos of my friend Leticia and posted them on her Flickr site. They were an instant hit. From there, she created a project called Boudoir Rouge, for which she has photographed dozens of SL women in provocative outfits and provocative poses. All in the best taste, of course! These are classy boudoir photos, not smut. Not that there's anything wrong with smut!

I managed to get myself included in Codie's series, even though I am among women who have much more of an impact on SL than I do, even when I have time to go in world. I am a mere counsellor (in training) with a dearth of clients! I suppose I might qualify as a raconteuse when I'm at the Velvet, since I seem to be able to keep people amused with witty repartee. And I have been a DJ and hope to be one again when I can make time for it and, er, update my music library.

So check out my ass, and check out the other photos that Codie has posted. I bet you'll be marking many of them as favourites, as I am doing!

Forward into the past!

2008-03-05T09:13:00.000-08:00

I had some actual down time last night. Sure, I should have been working on one last paper for this term, but I still have time for that, and I really needed a break. So I went in world and went to the Velvet for the first time in ages, the first time for me since it returned to the surface of the grid.

I'm in world so infrequently, I'm always afraid when I go to the Velvet that I won't know anyone there. It has happened before. Last night, however, the night started good and just got better. Leticia was there when I arrived, as were IsaDaft and Woody, and Therese Slade was streaming the tunage. Mischief came over a while later, and then lots of people showed up—Sarah, Qualsha, Freqout, Haedon, Wade, Natalie, even Push! It was like old home night. I'm sure I'm forgetting many names too. There was even a hoverjet lying about, one of the first toys I ever had in Second Life (and still have), courtesy of my dear friend tree. Jasper came by to take the DJ reins from Therese and gave us some splendid music.

The open chat was hellafun. It's one thing I've always loved about the Velvet, especially when someone like Mischief is there. The chat can be silly, of course, but it tends to have a level of wit that is quite enjoyable and stimulating. And of course I had a few IM windows going as well. I so needed that hour and a half.

Thanks to all for such a fun night! I need more!

Skin market

2008-02-27T12:51:00.000-08:00

I've been wearing this Hybrid II Ardent skin for a long time now, ever since I discovered it and left my beloved Gala skin in inventory. I actually bought Feral first, but I decided it was a shade too dark for me. Now, I really only switch between the shaved and unshaved versions of Ardent, except for certain special occasions when I'll pull out the Nomine China White.

Hybrid II has been berry, berry good to me, but it's time for a change. I need a change for all kinds of reasons, but at least partly because my second life needs a kick start. This is a big one—just clothes shopping won't do it!

I do like several things about the Hybrid II. One is the colour. It's hard to find a non-white skin that does the colour as well as this. I hate dark with too much yellow. I also love the arch of the eyebrow and the general eye shape. I don't so much like the softness and lack of detail, nor have I ever really liked the pursed mouth.

I really like the detailing on the kitty of the Hybrid II, as well as the shaved option. Sorry, I'm just not big on pubic hair, not even a landing strip if I can avoid it. It's my smooth and slippery personal taste (or maybe lack of good taste for having published that). I would put up with a landing strip, but not anything really bushy.

The reason I bought the Hybrid II in the first place was because of a review in Linden Lifestyles. I don't find many skin reviews, but they have some, and I appreciate their advice. I went there again to see what's new, but hardly any skin reviews are recent.

Based on one review, I'm currently checking out photoreal skins from Insolence. I like several things about this skin, although it's not quite as dark as I prefer. The detail is very nice, I like the eyes, I almost like the eyebrows, and I love the mouth. I thought I'd waited for the rez before I snapped the photo, but I didn't, so this picture is less than it ought to be. In looking at these four photos near each other, I'm looking favourably on this one at the moment.

At the urging of my friend CodeBastard, photographer extraordinaire—she was kind enough to include me in her Boudoir Rouge series (be sure to check out the others too)—I'm also looking at RAC. But man, we're talking L$4,000 for a skin! Yes, the level of detail is very good, and there's a lot to like about this photoreal skin, but that's a lot of moolah for a girl with no job who just dropped three grand to see the ZeroG SkyDancers (with no regrets). As well, I'm not very fond of the southern zone. And the darker colour is one with a lot of yellow in it.

My alt has a skin from ND, and I like the makeup options for that one. The Hybrid II is not versatile, and it has pale fingernails rather than polish that matches the lip colour. Wrong! I've lived with that for a long time, but it's not my preference.

For some reason, however, I'm not sold on this skin for this avatar. I'm not sure that the face works as well for this shape as I've seen it work for other avatars. It's amazing what a skin can do when there's been no modification to the shape.

So I'm looking at any and all options, when I can make the time to shop, buy skin demos, and check them out. Suggestions appreciated.

Zero gravity

2008-02-26T22:20:00.000-08:00

One word about not having written for more than a month: sorry.

OK, more than one word. My Second Life has been practically nonexistent lately. School takes a lot of time. Other things in first life do as well. I just haven't been able to block out time to play, which is really what SL is for me. I know, all work and no play make Jill a dull girl, but I've had to set priorities. I'm not always happy that I can't have as much fun as I'd like, but I need to works in order to make some things happen. I should be working even harder.

Anyway... I actually got into SL twice today. Earlier this afternoon, I popped in to clear the numerous notices that had accumulated since the last time I'd logged in, and I saw that my friend Peter Stindberg was on (his excellent blog is on my blog list). He lives in Germany and I'm on the left coast of Canada, so we don't meet up very often. He graciously invited me over to his wife Gina's gallery, so I got to see Peter, meet Gina, and see her photographs, which are very good. I should have asked to take a few snaps myself, because Peter and Gina are both cuties and make a great couple. We chatted for a while until we all had to return to first life.

Later, I finally made time to attend a performance by the ZeroG SkyDancers, in which my friend Deborah Strangelove is one of the company's original dancers. The piece was called "Second Spring." This was my first time, and I completely enjoyed the combination of original music by ZeroOne Paz and flying movement with colours by the dancers themselves. Do you ever get those little chills in your spine at things like rituals? I do, and that's how I felt watching this performance. It was very evocative. Even the space in which they perform, Ars Simulacra, is marvelous, which is why I included a shot of the audience waiting for the show to start.

I wish my computer and graphics card were more up to snuff. I'm sure the better your hardware is, the better the experience. As it was, I still enjoyed it completely. I seemed not to be able to get in close to the dancers, though, so that's why all the photos are a bit more panoramic. In fact, I was moving the camera so much, with the draw distance set much higher than I usually do, that I crashed my client right at the end of the show.

The ticket price isn't cheap—L$3,000 recommended, L$2,000 or L$1,000 if you're broke—but I felt the experience was worth it. A ZeroG SkyDancer performance, with its combination of sight and sound, is one of those things that make people say, yeah, this is what SL is really for. Check it out for yourself. These photos are only a hint—and they're silent.

Handfast, hold fast

2008-01-12T23:02:00.000-08:00

I attended a beautiful event a week ago today. I've been meaning to write about it ever since, but in first life I started school again this week, so it has not been easy to make time.

The event was the wedding of my dear friend Anwen Ryan and her darling River. They have been together for several months now. Anwen is Wiccan (maybe River too, I'm not sure), so they were married in a handfast ceremony, just as my friend Tatsuko was. As sometimes happens in Second Life, things went wrong. The most serious thing was that Luna, who was going to officiate, became ill and couldn't make it into SL. Fortunately, our friend Cala stepped in to perform the ritual, as she did for Tats.

I love the Wiccan handfast ceremony. I don't remember all the questions and answers, but I remember questions like whether one partner will hurt the other ("yes" or "probably") and whether the partner will wish to cause harm ("no"). There are seven or eight questions, I believe. I should have been paying closer attention instead of taking photographs!

Luna had arranged the reception, and because she could not be there, the original plans fell through. But in SL, it's more about people than all the fancy stuff. An and River hosted us at their place, with music streamed in by our awesome DJ friend Merik (who was also Anwen's maid of honour). Scatter a few dance poses around, and you have a party. The ceremony started at 9:30 at night, so I couldn't stay too long, but I did get to dance quite a bit with my dear Phadre, who had been busy as River's maid of honour, as well as with River, An, and Merik.

Good friends make good times. I love that about SL. Best wishes to An and River! And sorry the wishes come so late!

I will post more photos on my Flickr site (which is badly in need of updating). Meanwhile, check out the photos Emma posted on her site. I think she has the Windlight viewer.

Frozen butterflies

2007-12-31T16:17:00.000-08:00

OK, since I was doing a lot of first life stuff far into December, and since I then left town for several days, I never did do any proper Christmas shopping in Second Life. Hopefully, a gift is a gift, whenever it's given. I'd been doing searches for shops that sell jewellery and not finding much I liked, and it occurred to me that I should revisit some places I hadn't been to in a while.

I used to shop at Coconut Ice on Butterfly Island all the time, at least when something was on sale. I've belonged to the update group since way back when. I even used to find places to change on Butterfly Island in the early days when I was homeless. So I always feel quite at home there.

I encountered something new as I walked through the door. Maybe it wasn't new, but I hadn't been to the store in quite a while, so it was new to me. It wasn't a greeter bot. It was some kind of fairy that flew around. It didn't say anything, but it was kind of cute. So I did my best to take a photo of it. Fortunately, it wasn't invisible in the picture!

I saw a notice about a winter display on the southeast corner of the island. Or maybe southwest. For some reason, I'm always drawn to winter areas of SL. I'm really not much of a winter person in first life. Many years ago, I moved away from snow and ice, not quite to the tropics but certainly to a less snowy place. Yet I love winter in SL. Maybe it's because it's not really cold, but looks very pretty.

The winter corner of Butterfly Island was quite lovely and charmingly strange. There were penguins skating on a rink that seemed also to be a dance floor. There was a snowman DJ. There were all kinds of weird things sticking up out of the ground.

As you can see, I was dressed very appropriately for the season. Ah, the wonders of SL! I should have got out my ice skates. Instead, I clicked on a couple of dance balls that seemed not to need a partner and boogied around with the penguins. I'll have to find out if there are ever any events on that corner. It's lonely exploring—and dancing—by myself!

Before I close... auld acquaintances shall not be forgot. Best wishes for a happy and prosperous 2008 to all and sundry!

The shortest day

2007-12-21T22:58:00.000-08:00

I have been a terrible blogger. If anyone even bothers to check this blog any more, I apologize. I have actually been going in world a bit more often lately, since I escaped from school temporarily, but I haven't taken any photos, and I haven't really had any adventures. I finally caught up with Tatsuko the other day. I went to Umbra Penumbra a few days ago and got my new friend CodeBastard Redgrave to pop by and dance with me. On yet another night, I was dancing with my friend Wendy at a club the name of which I can't remember—some frozen beach club (only in SL, right?). I've IMed with a few people, including Patrice, who sent me a lovely Christmas card.

Fortunately, I have Twitter, which lets me stay in touch with people even when I'm not in world very much, but I'd really love to live my second life more often. I miss my friends.

On an entirely different subject, tomorrow officially has the least amount of daytime of the year in the Northern Hemisphere, which is where I live, and the most daytime in the Southern Hemisphere. At this hour, the official solstice has already happened. In this half of the world, at least in the temperate zone, Winter Solstice has long been a day of celebration, since in the days to come we will have more and more light. I love Winter Solstice and its association with light. I wish I could be in SL to celebrate the day with my dear friend Anwen, who is Wiccan.

May you hold the light of the darkest day in your heart, and maybe the increasing light in the days to come fill you with joy.

The It Girl

2007-12-04T08:27:00.000-08:00

Apparently, I've been tagged—twice. Someone I don't know tagged me first. My friend Peter Stindberg tried but was too late.

Tagged—what is? I never know what the latest trends are. Heck, I might not even know what the not-so-latest trends are. I think this tagging thing isn't new. Or maybe it is. I'm the wrong person to ask.

According to Peter, I am now supposed to post eight random facts about myself. Considering I am a Second Life character who doesn't have enough time lately to have much of a second life, that might be difficult. Not to mention that this blog has become rather poopy with only occasional postings. I'm also supposed to find eight other people to tag, and I guess they can't have been tagged already. That is so not going to happen! Very likely, most everyone I know has been tagged by now.

Does this smell a bit like a chain letter? Some people are into chain letters. Some people find them fun and amusing. Or else they are actually superstitious, which is a bit scary. Fortunately, this tag game doesn't seem to have any element of superstition about it. I haven't seen any dire threats of doom if I break the chain. And it's kind of fun to see random facts about other people.

If I come up with eight random facts about myself, I'll let you know. I mean, if I can't even do that, there's not much point in trying to tag anyone, eh?

Oh Peter, I added a link to your blog. I didn't know you had one until recently.

Splash

2007-11-23T12:12:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to make a little more time to get in world lately. I miss my Second Life and I miss my friends. I'm grateful when they IM me or respond to my IMs during those rare times when I'm around.

The US company I work for in first life let us out three hours early on Wednesday, the day before American Thanksgiving, so I was online at a time when I usually am not. I saw that my friends Caterin and Therese were online. Cat and Tess are from Europe, and I almost never get to see them because of the eight and nine hour time difference.

I sent Cat an IM to say hi. Turns out that she's already played her hundredth piano in SL! Last I saw her blog, she was at 99. (To find out what this piano stuff means, check out her blog via the link on the right.) She said it had happened unexpectedly when she was watching a jazz performance at the Meatspace Lounge by someone she knew. I immediately teleported over to the Meatspace Lounge on Tuli to nab myself a landmark (it's notably weird that the SL client has never allowed setting a landmark from a search without having to follow it first). While I was there, I found this gong that I couldn't resist whacking. It made a great sound! I'll have to get back there when there's a gig, because I love real jazz. No "soft jazz," please!

Meanwhile, Cat said that she and Tess were being mermaids and asked if I wanted to pop on over. I'd never done the mermaid thing before, so I thought it sounded like something worth trying out, not to mention that I would get to see Tess and Cat. So I found myself at EmeraldEver's Shop by the Sea, looking at mermaid gear. Turned out that Tess had bought a "fat pack" by mistake, so she offered me one of the mermaid sets in a colour she didn't want to keep. What a doll! I gratefully accepted the green outfit and put it on. I also bought the animation override, but I wasn't allowed to rez the box on that land! Dumb. So I skipped on that and just used the pose balls in the water.

We posed in the floating shell chairs and floated calmly in the warm water (I'm imagining that it was warm). My swimmer HUD didn't work as a substitute for the mermaid HUD, but no matter. It was just great to hang around with Cat and Tess and splash in the water. They were both up way past their bedtimes, so they didn't stay long, but I think we might be back there soon.

Like riding a bicycle

2007-11-11T12:48:00.000-08:00

I should have got around before now to blogging that I got the opportunity for DJ gig last Tuesday night. Jasper Haifisch, who is now co-owner of the Velvet, had said that there should be a time when I could substitute, if I could make the time in my own schedule.

With classes and other activities, Tuesdays have become one of the only nights when my SO and I can have dinner at home together. This past Tuesday, however, SO was out for the evening, so I told Jasper that I'd be happy to do a set, if there was an opening. And there was! Therese was doing an early set, so I kicked in when she went off at 7 p.m. SL time., and streamed my usual tunage for the next two and a half hours or so.

Things were pretty slow at first. It's been a while since I spent much time at the Velvet, and I wasn't sure how things were going any more. In SL, as in first life, the popularity of clubs ebbs and flows, and crowds sometimes change loyalties. I knew hardly anyone in the room! But then later, Leticia and Rais came by, followed by Patrice, and a few more people I knew, and the ones I didn't know were having a good time. Thank you all for your contributions to Veronique's clothing drive (I haven't been shopping in far too long).

Toward the end of the set, I was even asked if I had a group! I explained that since I don't have much time to DJ these days, there was no point in my having a group so people could keep track of gigs, but it was great to hear such an inquiry.

I have to admit, though, that I've been lax about my music library since I stopped DJing on a regular basis. Sometimes I felt like I was playing the same old shit, and I wanted something new. So maybe I should do something about that in case I get another chance to do a set. Not only do I want to keep my audience happy; I want to keep myself entertained as well!

You didn't really think I remembered to shoot any pictures, did you?

It's not just the economy, stupid

2007-11-02T11:04:00.000-07:00

Here's a bit of first life and Second Life combined.

On Halloween night, SO and I had just finished watching the local news and were waiting for more trick-or-treaters to arrive. As is our wont, we changed the channel to CBC Newsworld, which often has good documentaries at 7 o'clock. And what did we find there? "You Only Live Twice," a documentary about Second Life from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

It seems to have been done last spring, shortly before voice went live on the main grid, and it was actually pretty good. The reporter was not flippant or dismissive. I think she enjoyed her time in world. She interviewed Philip Rosedale, of course. Man, is he adorable! Still looks about 20 years old. And he's wicked charming. She also interviewed other proponents of SL as well as a few prominent SL residents, notably real estate mogul Anche Chung, virtual sex merchant Stroker Serpentine, and clothing designer Simone Stern, both in world and in first life. She also interviewed some critics of SL, so the presentation was pretty balanced.

One major beef, though. Why is it that media examinations of SL pretty much always focus on money and business? This doc did touch on the social aspects of SL, and not just in the context of virtual sex (although it spent plenty of time there), but it was only a touch. I am so much more interested in SL as social experiment than I am in how much money Anche Chung made last year or how safe Simone's designs are as intellectual property.

For instance, was the reporter unaware that massive numbers of men, and not just transgendered men, play women in SL? Or did she ignore this phenomenon? From my counselling practice and from the comments on my PixelPulse article on voice in SL, I've seen a range of reasons for men doing this. Transgendered people living virtual opposite-sex lives is interesting enough, but what about the men who are completely cis-gendered, not even cross-dressers in real life, but who choose to be women in SL? And what about how they express, again and again, how this has changed their view of the world and of other people, especially women?

And what about virtual love and virtual relationships as opposed to virtual sex? What do relationships between avatars mean? Just where is that area between a cyber-relationship and playing a game? There is so much more to SL than currency exchange, really!

SL says to anyone who enters, OK, here you can be anything you want to be. What would you like to be? If someone's answer to that is "wealthy," well, it's their second life. But I prefer to let my imagination fly freely. I can make money in first life. But in SL, I can be and do so many things that simply aren't possible for me in first life. And that's what I find fascinating about SL. I wish someone would make a documentary entirely on that subject.

Cozy crystal cave

2007-10-22T06:45:00.000-07:00

I saw Patrice a few days ago at her new place. It was great to see her. We chatted for a bit, then she had to go offline. So I wandered around the island she's living on, since I know some of her neighbours, one of whom is Tatsuko.

Tats wasn't around, but I'd heard about this grotto that Patrice had built for her, and I wanted to see it. I found Tats's house and the stairway leading down into the earth. It got a bit stuck on the door post but managed to duck and make my way in.

I turned the corner to find the grotto itself. What a beautiful place! I love the fountain on the right as you walk in, pouring out of the wall into the giant urn. Then there's a lovely big hot tub in the floor, which is most inviting. And to the left, there is a shimmering wall of water. The whole place just sparkles.

As usual, Patrice has paid attention not only to the look of the place but also to sounds. The running water is so relaxing! I tried out a pose ball or two and just enjoyed being in those surroundings, listening to the beautiful sound.

Sorry you have only my poor snapshots to look at. This grotto is on private property. Maybe Patrice will get a commission to build something similar on a public sim somewhere. It's well worth sharing!

Feedback loop

2007-10-14T22:12:00.000-07:00

It took two invitations to get me to join Twitter, and even then I went kicking and screaming. Well, maybe kicking and whimpering. Twitter started out as a way to tell your friends what sort of trivial thing you were up to every moment of the day ("having coffee") and evolved into a sort of mini-blogging and social networking service. When I was invited I thought, ye gods, I don't need a new way to waste time. Can't get sucked into this.

Cala tried to get me to join a long time ago, but it was Cheri Horton who succeeded. She was already a member of Twitter (as Noche) as was Lienna (as Mercy), and the service was going to be a way for the PixelPulse staff to stay in touch. So in went Julian, Samantha, and me. It wasn't long before my tiny network of friends had grown to something like 20 or 30, and "tweeting" became a bit of an obsession. Yep, I got sucked in.

I'm usually cautious about who I follow in Twitter. I always follow those I know. I have also added, over time, certain people who know someone I know. Many of those people are in Second Life. So Twitter has ended up augmenting my SL Friends list and introduced me to cool new people.

One of these people whom I have known in Twitter for a while is HyMe Neurocam, who might or might not be a robot. HyMe is quite a character. One of the more recent additions is a fairly well-known person in SL with a particularly imaginative name, CodeBastard Redgrave. When I logged in to SL late on Saturday night, I saw a notice from Codie that there was a party at her club. Almost immediately, a teleport assist from Codie showed up on my screen. Normally, I don't hop on TPs that aren't preceded by at least an IM, but I figured I'd go with this one.

By the time I beamed in to the Code Red Lounge, there weren't many party goers left. Codie was bumping and grinding on a pole, which she says she rarely does. I'll have to take her word for it! I met HyMe in SL for the first time. He was giving us a bit of the ol' Chippendale routine, and there sure ain't nothing wrong with that.

I didn't stay too long, but I had fun while I was there. Even with only a few of us, conversation was good. Codie's got some pretty cool dances loaded into her dance machine. The music was a bit techno, but I was handling it OK. I offered my services as a rock DJ if one was ever needed. And next time I see a notice from the Code Red group, I'm going to show up earlier, is something much redder and probably skimpier, and party down!

Burnt Life

2007-10-08T09:21:00.000-07:00

This entry is really late, but I think the Burning Life sims might still be up. Consider it a retrospective.

Being completely out of it, I had never even known what Burning Man was until I looked it up this year. Seems like something I might have been into, oh, 20 or 30 years ago, back in the post-hippie days, or more likely something I would have been dragged into by friends with more enthusiasm for camping than I ever had.

Burning Life is kind of a Second Life tribute to Burning Man. People are supposed to let their creativity run wild, just as at Burning Man. There are art installations, staged events, weird little things like that Sacred Heart of Elvis with Pineapples setup (I have no idea what it means), and at some point a virtual burning of a giant statue, just like at the real thing. People even build campsites.

I visited the Burning Life sims over the course of several days, both alone and with my friend Anwen. I never caught any of the events, I'm afraid, and I didn't even find the controversial naked sculpture. I did find a controversial defence of child avatars, as you can see in the photo. That was a bit surprising, but certainly plays into the theme of freedom of expression. I also found a few interesting builds, but not nearly as cool as I expected. I actually saw stuff like upside-down cones covered in moss. Ye gods, that's like building practice 101! Why would such a thing be at Burning Life?

I did like the Shakespearean theatre (not sure if it was supposed to be a Globe replica), the frozen Arctic exhibit, and a few other installations. "Chicken Eatza," a pyramid designed to highlight the inhumane treatment of chickens, was mildly entertaining (I agree with the sentiment expressed). Still, I thought there would be cooler stuff. Maybe I missed it all somehow. There was definitely a lot of room there!

Maybe next year I should pay more attention to events and try to find out where the really good stuff is, assuming it exists.

They've shown this on both screens

2007-10-01T06:58:00.000-07:00

Pardon the first life intrusion, but this has a Second Life connection, which I'll explain.

I'd been hearing about a band called the New Pornographers for years. Since I live near Vancouver, British Columbia, it was hard not to hear about the famous home-town band. It was made up of musicians who already had solo careers or careers with other bands, people like Carl Newman and Neko Case. They'd formed in the late 1990s with the intent of recording one album together. Mass Romantic was so successful, however, that they kept going, and have now recorded their fourth.

Even though I had read about the New Pornographers, I didn't pay much attention. I wasn't paying much attention to rock bands at the time. I was still intent on making my own music. And I have always been allergic to hype. As well, I wasn't hearing music from this band on either of the rock stations I tend to listen to when I'm driving my car, and that was my only music input at the time.

Fast forward to my life in Second Life. After lots of career false starts, I started to DJ in the spring of 2007. That spurred a renewed interest in music, especially new music. I started to find music from as many free but legal sources as I could find. That's how I discovered Bloc Party, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Les Breastfeeders, Land of Talk, and the Decemberists, as well as not-so-new stuff from artists like PJ Harvey.

While I was DJing, I was also listening to other DJs to hear what they were playing. One of my favourites was Barely Schlegal. He played a wonderful array of music from a wide variety of sources, including one of my favourites, Mission of Burma. It was at one of his shows, likely at the Velvet, that I first heard the New Pornographers. I was hooked immediately. And how embarrassing! I had to be made acquainted with a band from the town where I lived by a DJ from Texas!

Once I discovered the New Pornographers, I downloaded a whole slew of their songs from eMusic, and they became a regular part of my sets. So when my SO and I found out that the band were playing at one of our favourite clubs in Vancouver, we were there. I bought the new CD, Challengers, which I loved, and got familiar with the songs.

The show was last Friday, and it was amazing. The New Pornographers don't really put on any kind of spectacle, but they are such a good band that you don't care if there's nothing in particular to watch. They played most of the new album and songs from each of the previous three, mostly ones I'd been playing on my shows. I cried for joy listening to the gorgeous "Challengers," which Neko sang beautifully, and "Adventures in Solitude." I couldn't stop dancing and bopping for the rest of the show. It earned a place on my "best of all time" concert list.

We might never have been there if it had not been for Second Life, my DJing, and our man Barely. Thanks, dude.

More Second Life to come—wanderings across the playa at Burning Life. With pictures!

Innocence lost

2007-09-24T09:07:00.000-07:00

Last night, Patrice and I ended our partnership. There were a lot of reasons for it, which I will not go into here. I will only say that it was me who had the reasons. It's me who said I couldn't go on. Patrice was not in the same place, and as a result, I hurt her terribly.

People thought we were an exemplary couple, and for a long time we probably were, although that was a lot to live up to. Our partnership was never perfect, but when difficulties arose, we talked them out. We didn't run away, and we didn't have huge drama. I know that a lot of people looked up to us. Hopefully, they can still look up to Patrice for having tried to continue as we had done. Hopefully, they will not look down on me too badly for having lost the ability to continue.

We had a period of serious difficulty. She recovered from it. I didn't.

When I first started Second Life, I had little idea of what to expect. Everything was new. As I discovered things about SL, I discovered even more about myself. SL isn't a game, or at least never has been for me. It's an exploration.

I was still pretty "young" is SL terms when I met Patrice at Cala's party on September 8, 2006. I had only just been introduced to the other side of my bisexuality by Tatsuko. I was drawn to the idea of partnership, but still unsure. Patrice and I came together quickly, weathering the trials of a new relationship, which are all the more difficult in SL, an environment in which it's difficult to build trust. We partnered on September 27th, considering that our engagement, and we were married on October 13th before family and friends.

Patrice has always been more SL-savvy than I. I learned so much through her. I met so many people. I was introduced to new experiences. She made a wonderful home for us on the beach at Iron Fist. I don't think I ever was able to reciprocate in the same way. Hopefully, I brought something else to our relationship—love, devotion, empathy, and some amount of interpersonal skills. We were good for each other. We made beautiful love together. We laughed and cried and shared. We grew together for a long time in SL terms.

Lately, we had grown apart—different priorities, different interests, different ways of looking at SL. Patrice was making the effort to overcome the difficulties. I had lost the will. I don't know why. It wasn't a lack of love for Patrice. I think it has something to do with my current difficulties with SL, and that's due to a lot of changes in my first life.

First life must always come before SL. It's weird and wonderful that the things I'm going through in first life have a lot to do with SL. But they take a lot of effort. In the process, I've lost something in SL. I would like to get it back, but I'm not sure how yet.

I'm so grateful for the past year that I've shared with Patrice. I'm sorry for the way I've hurt her, sorry for what we've lost. I hope she thrives in both SL and first life. I hope I get back to that as well.

Be well, my darling, now and always.

Not enough play time!

2007-09-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

Time passes quickly in Second Life. Some people think of years in SL like dog years, seven for every one. Some go even higher!

I've been in SL for over a year, so maybe that's more like 10 plus.

Apologies, dear readers (what few of you are left) for the state of this blog recently. I'm going to have to re-evaluate it, I think. This is supposed to be a blog about SL and me in SL, but right now I'm not there often enough for that to make sense. When I do go in world these days, it's often for specific reasons. I'm not exploring. I'm hardly even shopping! What's up with that?

I'm not sure when these doldrums started. I think some of it began with the long stretch when Patrice was completely occupied with working on EnelPark. That was a difficult time for me, although I did make contact with a lot of people. Some of it probably began when I went away for a week and a half in first life during July. That was the longest time with no SL that I'd had since I'd joined. When I got back, Patrice was still working on EnelPark, although not quite as much. But I found that after having done other things for 11 days, not even on a computer, I was feeling less compelled by SL.

I got back into it, but it was never quite the same again. Not entirely sure why. I still enjoy SL. I still enjoy having my virtual life. I definitely enjoy meeting people, going places, and seeing new things. But there's a distance between me and SL that is new.

Part of it is the loss of activities that were important to me. I'm no longer doing a regular DJ shift due to school work. That was a big part of SL for me once I'd started to do it. I'm also no longer writing for PixelPulse Magazine, which was laid to rest. Writing for PixelPulse kept me involved in many aspects of SL and meeting new people. I still have my counselling practice, but clients are few and far between.

Part of the disconnect is due to first life. I work full time during the day. I'm in class for my counselling program two nights a week, with reading and assignments between classes. I'm volunteering (in a counselling capacity) at least three nights a month. I'm working on some personal things as well. All of that takes not only time but attention. I haven't stopped playing, and I mean that in a creative sense. But the priority of creative play time has of necessity been lowered.

As I said, I still enjoy SL, and I think creative play time is important, even for us old farts, even when we're busy. Hopefully I can work this out before I'm down to no readers at all!

V Dizzle takes a break

2007-09-11T08:47:00.000-07:00

I did my last regular Monday DJ shift at the Velvet last night. Don't ask about photos! Of course there are none. But it wasn't that hectic a night, so I should have shot some.

I'm taking a break because first life needs some attention: to wit, my counselling program. I'm got a student ID, man! Two evenings a week, I'll be taking courses. I also have to keep up my volunteer work, which is counselling-related, and that's almost once a week in addition. Add in an SO who does like my attention from time to time, as well as other bits and pieces of first life, and there might not be much time for Second Life for a while.

I'll have to make some time for SL, though. I'm fine with reality, but I have friends in SL! And even though my immersion mojo isn't quite what it used to be, it's still important, and I'm working on getting it back. As well, I'm hoping to pick up a fill-in DJ shift from time to time, when time allows. Once I start school, I'll know more how much free time I have, assuming there's any.

I had a great time last night, as always. I finally added the new disc from the New Pornographers to my library, and played three or four cuts. Should have played the beautiful "Challengers" as well! Not a really large crowd last night, but a good one. Thanks to all who dropped by, especially Leticia and Sarah. Thanks to all who have come since I started, danced, had a good time, said they liked the music, and were indulgent when I couldn't fulfil requests. Thanks to Patrice for always being supportive, and thanks to Push for letting me have the most fun you can have with your clothes on.

Where's the manual?

2007-09-06T07:23:00.000-07:00

A little while ago, I find myself waiting for something, can't remember what. Had some time to kill anyway. So Merik sends me a landmark for Greenies. I've heard about Greenies, the build in which you're really small in a big house, like mouse sized, and in which the house has been invaded by little green aliens.

So I whoosh over there and start looking around. And after a while I start to wonder, what's the big deal? A lot of what I'm seeing is cute, but it seems kind of static. I see some groups of people, but I don't know them, and they don't say hi. So I just wander around a bit, shooting pictures, thinking there must be more to this place than what I'm seeing.

Apparently there is, from what I've been reading. People are enthralled by this build. Of course, if you just arrive there with no prior knowledge, I guess you might miss all the fun. It's sort of the epitome of the problem with Second Life in general. If you're motivated and work at it, you can figure things out. Or else if you're lucky enough to run into someone who knows her or his way around and shows you the ropes, then you might become engaged in the place. Otherwise, you might wonder what all the fuss is about.

I think I made a couple of mistakes when I went to Greenies. One was to go alone. I didn't have anyone to go with at the time! But I can believe that the experience is more fun if it's shared. The other mistake was to be more of an observer than a participant. I'm not entirely sure how to participate in this build, but apparently you can, so I should have clicked on a few more things and dug into a few more holes. If I had, perhaps more things would have come to life.

And I would have had more fun.

If anyone is still reading this pathetic blog that doesn't get updated nearly often enough, I imagine I'll get all kinds of advice on how to have more fun at Greenies. :)

Farewell, little sister

2007-08-30T13:27:00.000-07:00

When I first started this blog, I also started to accumulate links to other blogs. Patrice's blog had a link to Cheyenne's, and hers had a link to Sorcha's. At least I think that's how the chain went. And I'm pretty sure it was Sorcha's that had a link to Bailey Toland's blog.

I met Bailey in Second Life at my office once, and a few times after that. We would also IM from time to time. We were never close buds, but I enjoyed the time I spent with her. I thought of her a bit like a little sister (she is much younger than me), and in fact one of the reasons I got banned from a certain parcel (that I have never named in writing) was because I was being protective of her. I also met other wonderful people through her, including Caterin, her piano playing friend, and Therese (well, indirectly), who officiated at Bailey and Taimi's wedding.

I said goodbye to her yesterday, and I'm a bit weepy as I write this. I hate goodbyes. She says she will no longer be participating in SL. She went on holidays and discovered that she needed to pay more attention to her first life. You can't fault someone for that.

I always enjoyed reading about Bailey's adventures in her blog. I'm sorry she deleted it. She is not a native speaker of English, but her command of English was very good, and she wrote well. In her second language, her personality came shining through.

Take care, Bailey, and live your first life to the fullest! I hope that your second life was a good experience. I know there were both joy and tears and that many people love you.

Tropical Velvet

2007-08-28T12:20:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted a DJ-at-the-Velvet entry in a while. And I have only two more regular Monday night gigs to go, because after that I will be starting a course in first life with sessions on Monday evenings.

Meanwhile, I'm not done yet. Last night, in commemoration of the eruption of Krakatoa in 1893, it was tropical night. Now, it's not easy to think tropical in the Velvet. It's a grungy rock club, and cavernous at that. Push has done pool parties there by temporarily installing stuff above the floor, but last night we relied much more on imagination.

It was a tough night. Teleports were semi-broken. Beezle Warburton arrived via several hops between different sims. Some set themselves to log in on the sim and made their way to the club from the landing point. Given this, I was happy at the turnout. I saw some people I hadn't seen in a while, such as the aforementioned Beezle. She at least got into the tropical theme, which is no mean feat for a vampire. And she brought a friend with her who was at the Velvet for the first time, Frequency Picnic (gotta love that name), who also got tropical—and won the contest! Not many other takers, but I got to show off in a outfit (such as it is) from Simone that I don't wear very often.

Oh, I do love doing this, and I'm gratified that people want to come listen and dance to my peculiar mix of old, new, weird, and Canadian, from the music library that expands much too slowly but is (mostly) legal.

We no longer have a host, so I'm trying to make sure to greet people when they come in the door. As much extra work as that is, I love that part too. I like making feel welcome and comfortable. Especially if you've come to a place for the first time, it can be intimidating. To the credit of the Velvet regulars, though, I've never seen them not welcome newcomers. Keep that in mind, any of you who are looking for a new club to go to!

Tweets and art galleries

2007-08-26T17:31:00.000-07:00

On Friday evening, I had just enough time to spend in Second Life to be able to attend the opening of an art show by my friend Skaja ("sky-ah") Carter. And it just so happened that Patrice was also online and had some time as well! So I got changed, and we headed over to where the opening was taking place.

I actually met Skaja via Twitter before I knew her in SL. In fact, this opening was the first time I'd met her in SL, even though I've chatted with her numerous times. Same for HyMe, another Twitter buddy.

Twitter started as a web application designed to allow people to let their friends know what they were doing at any given moment of the day, whether it was important or trivial. Since then, it has become a somewhat broader social networking tool in which people exchange messages for other reasons than to say what they are doing.

I had to be dragged into Twitter. Cala invited me to join quite a long time ago, but it seemed like too much reality for me at the time. Later, however, Cheri invited me as part of trying to make it easy for the PixelPulse Magazine staff to communicate with each other. Cheri, Lienna, and Julian already had Twitter accounts, so I finally joined, as did Samantha. Well, PixelPulse is on hiatus at the moment, but I'm still tweeting away. I've added followers slowly, either people I already know in SL or people who are friends of other fellow tweeters.

In my previous life as a rock musician, I've had plenty of gigs that needed warm bodies. I know that it's not always easy to get your friends and acquaintances to show up, so I wanted to go and support Skaja. I needn't have worried. The place was quite full! And full of the kind of beautiful people you'd expect at an art showing. It felt very New York. All we lacked were smart cocktails or champagne, which as we know are just props in SL. I should have brought my own. Or mixed my own in first life.

Skaja has a wide variety of material, and she's very talented. I've run out of room to put up any more artwork, but Patrice found something she liked. She says she's going to put up another building on our land so she can display more art. As for Skaja, keep an eye out for her own gallery, where her work will be available.

Is this mic live?

2007-08-20T06:42:00.001-07:00

Somewhere in Second Life, I'm guessing that people are jabbering away, using the integrated voice facility. They must be. Everyone demanded this feature, right? Everyone wanted it more than anything else, including making SL for stable, right? They said so. It must be true.

As you can tell from the paucity of recent entries in this blog, I haven't had much time to spend in world lately. There are a lot of reasons for this. The result is few adventures, no photos, and just not a whole lot to write about. But I have noticed one thing in my infrequent forays into SL. It's still just as silent and typing-oriented as it ever was, at least for me.

Despite having been slapped recently for breaking out of immersion mode to have non-SL contact with a select group of people I've met through SL (no biggie, I'm tougher than I look), I really am basically an immersionist in SL. I fully support our world, our imagination, and the ability of people to be anyone or anything they want to be in SL. What happens in SL stays in SL. This is not a licence to behave irresponsibly but simply a way to keep SL as a world separate from, and maybe better than, all that first life out there.

If anyone can be an immersionist with voice, more power to them. Maybe I'll find that works for me as well. For now, I just haven't cared enough about talking to bother to set up the facility in my client. No one I know seems to care. We are happily typing to each other as we ever did, continuing to juggle local conversation and however many IM windows we have open.

I also have no argument with augmentationists. There are no rules for how to use SL. If that's what you want, go for it, as long as I don't get dragged into it, and as long as I still have the freedom to avoid such a thing.

But if you drag too much first life into SL and you're not a close friend, I will politely take my leave.

Augmenting the immersion

2007-08-13T14:19:00.000-07:00

When I joined Second Life, a little over a year ago, I was strictly an immersionist. For me, SL was a virtual world in which I could be anything I wanted to be. I kept in mind that other avatars with whom I interacted had real people with real feelings behind them, but I was interested only in dealing with them as fellow SL citizens. I didn't want anyone peeking behind my mask, and I wasn't interested in peeking behind anyone else's. Our world, our imagination—accent on "imagination."

SL for me was a world unto itself, a place separate from first life. Any of us could be anyone in first life—male, female, both, or neither; young, old, or in between; fat or thin, able-bodied or handicapped; having a hearing impairment or Asperger's Syndrome; a cabinet minister or a sanitation worker or a nurse or a student or a CEO; famous or unknown. Each of us had the opportunity to create our own persona (or personae, as was often the case), to build a reputation based on what we did and how we behaved in SL.

During my time in SL, more and more often I saw people for whom SL was an extension of their first life—"MySpace with an economy," as some wag put it. They wanted to create avatars that looked like themselves in first life. They quickly volunteered who they were and where they lived in first life and wanted such information in return. The addition of integrated voice to SL was only the latest thing strengthening the cause of augmentationism. People had already been having conversations with Skype anyway.

The line between first life and SL blurred. The freedom to be someone other than your first life self was eroded, and continues to be eroded. SL became a way for our first life selves to interact.

I railed against the ascendancy of augmentationalism, but a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. The social aspects of SL have always been of interest to me anyway, but I found that more and more I was interested in actual contact with some of the people I knew as avatars in SL. We still don't necessarily know each other's real names, and each of us has a choice as to how much of our first lives we reveal, but we're now in touch via e-mail and instant messaging and Twitter, and maybe even via telephone. I have not yet met anyone from SL in person, but that will happen, probably sooner rather than later.

I think part of the reason for this change is that I have made changes in my first life that make the fantasy aspect of SL less important to me. I still love the SL fantasy and the ability to live a different life, but it's not quite as vital as it once was. As well, I think there's a natural curiosity to want to know people better once you've been interacting for a while as avatars. The barrier between SL and first life starts to feel like an imposition. Finally, the sad tale is that I don't have many close friends in first life, for various and sundry reasons. My SL contacts have become important to me, as real people and not just as fantasy characters, even though most of them are far away.

There's never a gain without some loss. I kind of miss the days when SL was a complete fantasy world for me, when it was a total immersion thing. But since I've never treated it like a game, it was hard to continue to treat avatars like game players. I don't break the wall for just anyone. I continue to interact as my avatar with most other avatars, and to keep a distance from first life. But there are now exceptions to the immersionist rule. And even though something has been lost in the process, I really appreciate what I have gained.

Here's to "immersionism plus" and to my new friends.

Flashback

2007-08-12T10:23:00.000-07:00

Oh dear, blog neglect again. Less time in Second Life means less to write about. I'd hate to shut this blog down, but first life is taking precedence lately. Not ready to give up yet though.

The last few days have seen an uptick in the amount of time I've spent in SL, because I'm alone in the house with the kitty, my SO being away for a few days. I got to dance to Merik's set at the Velvet on Friday night, something I rarely do. It was pyjama party night, so I wore the new set that my friend Envy gave me for my rezday, complete with big fluffy slippers. Patrice and many other friends were there, and I had a blast.

Last night, Patrice and I went back to Flashmans, the 1920s place, only this time we dressed the part. Patrice already had a flapper dress, and she found one for me as well, bless her. Not easy to find! So it was back to the rats and the fun dances for us.

The place was still mostly empty. I don't know what is going on there, whether it's supposed to be open or not. I know that Therese wrote about it recently as a going concern, but it seems to need some publicity or something.

This place is cool, people! The music stream is from an Internet radio station that plays music of the 1920s and 1930s, most of which I've never heard before. It's great for dancing. The dance ball has things like the Charleston and Turkish Delight, and there are numerous touch dance ball pairs, like for waltzing. And then of course there's the stage, with poses that you don't want your mama to know about. Last time we were there, I hadn't seen that rocking horse pose for two. Yoiks!

There were three other people there who seemed to be a bit younger than we were. It was very amusing to watch their open conversation as they hit the hookah (that's not really how you smoke opium, but never mind) and later the bar, and finally the poses on stage. They were so cute! Then later, after they'd moved on, a girl popped in trying to recruit soccer players, while Patrice countered with hockey recruitment. She was nice, and we dance with her for a while before heading out.

I should have pinged Therese. Maybe she would have joined us!

De-Activ8ed

2007-08-06T22:15:00.000-07:00

Today, I resigned from Activ8. I hadn't been very, er, active there for a while, mainly picking up a couple of substitute DJ shifts. I used to dance, but haven't in quite a while. And since I'm going to get very busy in September, which will cut into my Second Life time in general, I figured I have to pare things back.

I've never been really connected to Activ8. I got there in the first place by answering a classified ad looking for models. Ana Boogiewoogie had placed that, and she had some tattoos to sell. I did the shoot for her, along with several other people, and I thought there would be more from the Activ8 Modeling Agency. But that was not to be the case. The company behind Activ8 was more interested in other things, namely running a couple of sims with clubs, apartments, and other entertainment. In retrospect, it's not surprising that modelling wasn't their first priority.

When I found out there was more to Activ8 than modelling (I was always a beat behind when it came to A8), I signed on mainly as a dancer. I did some dancing shifts, generally having a good time. Dancing is like being an adjunct host, and when I'm into it, I can be very active. So I think I did a good job at that. I also did one spontaneous partial shift as a greeter, although I had not been trained for it. I think I faked it well enough, and was lucky not to get any hard questions about where things are (which I still don't really know).

(I'm short of Activ8 photos, so I tossed in a gratuitous shot of the beautiful Illya at the club, with me dancing in the background. That was from a formal night.)

More recently, I was allowed to work as a DJ at the main club. I didn't want a regular shift, because of time constraints, but I did a couple of subsitute gigs. Those were fun because they let me play a different kind of music than at the Velvet. I played all the commercial stuff I have, which I admit is a bit lacking, but I had fun and hopefully others did as well.

But with all that, I never spent a lot of time on the sims. Consequently, I didn't get to know people very well, which is too bad. The people I met were very nice, and interesting, people like Ana, Noelle, Laehvul, Liriel, Evis, and Ern. And I already knew Jacii and Illya, and it was great to have some opportunity to get to know them better. I especially enjoyed having time to sit down with Illy and just chat.

Activ8 is doing very well in SL, it seems. They have become a company that helps other companies get the most out of SL, and not screw themselves up as so many have done. I know how dedicated their staff is. Best wishes to all of you, and see you around.

Space: the final frontier

2007-08-03T23:01:00.000-07:00

It's one of those times of not being on Second Life as much as I might want. My SO wants some attention, and SO deserves it. It's summer as well, with lots of stuff going on. When you live in Canada, even in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, where there's usually little snow in winter, you tend to take advantage of summer. It just doesn't last long enough.

Fortunately, I have some shots from a little adventure I had just a while ago. Good old Looky Lu. She's great for showing me new stuff. She's the one who first showed me Svarga. This time, it was a couple of outer space adventures.

First was a place called the Galaxy Dome Music Venue. That's a clue, it seems, but I have no idea where it is. In outer space, I guess. My friend Anwen said it made her nauseated, because the stars spin around, but I really liked it. The club was not operating when we were there. The photo that I put in the entry for my first rezday is from that club. I hopped into the DJ position, and the animation is pretty cool.

From there, Looky took me to the Space Port Bravo. We beamed in on the surface, but as I recall, the surface wasn't terribly interesting. Instead, we clicked on the teleporter and zoomed up to some elevated altitude. It's not a club, but just a place to hang out. There's so much animation going on that I could never fully resolve it—you can see the squares in the photo, which are supposed to be something other than squares. Looky hopped into a floating chair, which I did later as well. As with the Galaxy Dome Music Venue, the view was a big part of the appeal. Works for me.

Looky went off for her usual late supper, but Anwen had been IMing, so I asked her to pop over. We hung out and just talked for a while, floating through space on one of the pose ball sets. Just one of the many fun things I'm still discovering about Second Life.

A year in the (second) life

2007-07-30T14:09:00.000-07:00

One year ago today, I joined Second Life. One year ago today, Veronique was born. Or rezzed. Today is Veronique's first rezday.

It's been an interesting year, sometimes even an amazing year. I never really thought of SL as a game, but I did think of it as entertainment when I first started. I didn't realize then just how much more it could be.

Through SL, I have acquired new skills. Some are only useful in world, such as building and scripting, but I'm sure they exercise the brain in good ways. Scripting is a lot like what I do for a living in first life, but building was a whole new thing. I haven't done a lot of it, but I've enjoyed building my various offices, and I'll probably build more in the future.

SL has allowed me to DJ, something I haven't done since back when I had a radio show at university. Even though I'm not young in first life, I've never been one to get stuck listening only to the music of my youth. I have always been interested in new music. Yet I wasn't really finding much I could connect with until I had to go looking for music in order to DJ. That process led to me discover several bands I had not previously known about, such as Bloc Party, the New Pornographers (from my own city), and Yeah Yeah Yeahs. DJing has also got me more excited about music in general. And it helped me realize something important: much as I love playing my own music, I can now be happy showing off the music of those more talented than I and artfully sliding from song to song. I much more at peace about being a failed musician than I've ever been.

I had the nerve to set up a counselling practice in SL and actually charge money for my services, while being up-front about the fact that I had no training at the start and only a little training later on. I've had a number of satisfied clients, and I found it very fulfilling to be able to help people in this way—mainly by being a non-judgmental listener. The fulfilment was such that I am now in pursuit of a new career in first life as a counsellor. I passed a prerequisite course in April, and I start on the certificate program in September. For the last 20 years, I have worked with software. If all goes according to plan, in about a year I will be working with people.

More than anything else, living a second life has taught me a huge amount about myself. I found things in myself that I didn't know where there, or had only a hint of. I have made personal changes as a result of interacting with other human beings in SL and learning from them, no one more than my SL wife and partner, Patrice. Because of my relationship with her, I gave up something in first life that I had previously been unable to admit was hurting me and holding me back. She is still teaching me about myself and about how I relate to other people. It's the same for the many others in SL who have been and are still my friends. I have shared genuine concerns with them, and they with me. And they have responded as true friends—sometimes with compassion, sometimes with a firm talking-to, and always with love.

SL is an experiment not only in technology but also in humanity. My goal in my second life is pretty much the same as in my first life—to learn every day, to grow, to reach out to others, and to become a better human being. Well, I like to have fun in both worlds as well. And if there's something in my second life that seems to be good in general, I can then incorporate it into my first life. What a privilege that is.

So on my first rezday, thanks to all my friends, and thanks to Linden Lab. Even though it just so happens that Second Life is in terrible shape today (or at least was last night and into this morning), and my DJ shift tonight might be a complete disaster as a result, it's still the best second life I know.

The doctor improves

2007-07-26T08:56:00.000-07:00

First life news. I will be starting school in September, part time. This is a year-long (roughly) program in which I will be working to earn a certificate in counselling skills. A certificate isn't much, but it's a start, and hopefully will qualify me for some kind of social service job at which I will make poot for money but which should be good for me personally and professionally. It's also possible that I will keep going toward a master's degree.

Given two nights a week of school, extra time for one course (video recordings of practice sessions), at least three evenings a month of counselling-related volunteer work, plus the usual overhead of first life, it will be difficult to carve out time for Second Life. But I'll work it out somehow. My time in SL and my connections to people I know in SL are too important to lose. I just have to work on balance, as always.

One thing I want to keep up in SL is my counselling practice. Things have been rather quiet for a while, but I do see a notecard leave the dispenser every few days. Maybe someone will IM for an appointment. I'm doing professional development, kids! So I'll be less of an amateur and more qualified as time goes along.

It's still weird and cool how I might not have got to this point if it hadn't been for SL. And that goes for a lot more than counselling.

Renewable energy

2007-07-23T23:11:00.000-07:00

This seems to be my hundredth post. That's kind of a milestone!

EnelPark4 opened today. This is the four-sim Italian island that Patrice has been terraforming, building, and tweaking (along with flopsie and others) for months. At least it seems like months.

I messed up though. I was supposed to meet Patrice there at noon SL time. I thought we were meeting at 3. When I went, there was no more opening-day hoopla. I had been there several times during construction, but since the region was now finished and officially open, I gave myself an official tour.

EnelPark4 is a showplace for renewable energy. There are wind turbines all over the island. There are other exhibits for various kinds of energy generation. The houses have solar panels on the roofs. I think the energy generation exhibits are the main point of the island.

At the same time, it's a beautiful place for relaxation and to have fun. There's a beach. There's a beach club. There's an outdoor concert hall. There's an amphitheatre. The landing point is in the middle of a reflecting pool with fountains. There's a dockside area with little houses elevated above the water on a stone-lined pathway, with bicycle leaning against the wall and a gelato vendor in one corner. I know there's a tunnel somewhere, where I rode my Bispa scooter when it wasn't quite finished. There are also more features that I'm sure I haven't discovered yet. I'll need a real systematic tour. One feature is the amount of open water between the land and the region boundary. Patrice says there will be sailboat races at EnelPark.

I walked all over the island, taking pictures. One thing the pictures can't capture is the soundscape, which I believe Patrice was mainly responsible for. As you walk along one path, you hear various bird calls from different species of birds. Down by the docks, there is a gull that flies about, making gull sounds, very fitting for the seaside (the gull also occasionally touches down, maybe right beside you). There was music emanating from the outdoor stage, where I played a grand piano. Well, I looked good anyway. The whole place has a great feel, like there's a quiet but real life going on there. The sounds really help that.

There are also lots of signs about with explanations for the various exhibits. The signs themselves are in Italian, but you can click on them for English notecards.

I missed the boat today, so to speak. I enjoyed exploring the island myself, but I wish I'd been with Patrice earlier. She's done with the project and might want to put it behind her. I know she is already working on a new sim. But I hope she will give me the real tour. Either that or I will have to continue to explore by myself, and get a few of those notecards to see what I'm missing.

Speakeasy

2007-07-19T17:39:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling much more reintegrated into Second Life again. Patrice has been helping a lot, as have other friends. One lingering effect is a good one—SL seems fresher to me than before I left. I'm noticing things I was taking for granted, just little things like teleporting and seeing so many girls in the shops, all dressed their own particular SL-like way.

Patrice and I did some shopping last night. I had bought some new outfits from Eloria, my friend who runs Battered Boutique, and I coveted the shoes she was wearing. Naturally, they were from Shiny Things, my favourite shoe store. Cute T-straps! And a good price, although I would rather they were more expensive and colour-changing. Still, I could afford to indulge in a few colours. Great for summer.

The night before last, Patrice took me to a very interesting club called Flashmans. Its "subtitle" is "1920's opium den and bawdy house." It seemed to be abandoned when we were there, though. In fact, there were rats scurrying about. Still, no need to worry about virtual rats. The dance and stage poses were some that I'd never seen before, and the dance ball was loaded with vintage stuff like the Charleston. We amused ourselves mightily doing different dances, to the 1920s and 1930s music that was piped in, and taking the stage. Next time, I'll have to dress more appropriately! Those are some pretty sexy moves, and crop jeans aren't really the best fit. Something more glamorous and sexy, methinks.

We never did find the opium den though.

Just like starting over?

2007-07-17T22:59:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm back. It was a good vacation, even the family visit part. Well, mostly. The Quebec City part was definitely good.

We got back late last night, and I was busy with work today, so I didn't get to connect to Second Life until about five o'clock. I downloaded and installed the new client and fired it up. Immediately, I was struck by how strange everything looked. My flexi hair seemed to move in a weird way. Patrice popped home, and she looked different. Everything seemed more cartoony than before. It didn't help that something was amiss in the system, either in my network connection or somewhere else, so that motion was not as fluid as it ought to have been. Still, things were quite odd looking. I thought for sure that the graphics in the new client had changed, but that was not so.

After eleven days away, it was simply a matter of SL suddenly looking—and feeling—rather new again. I'd grown so used to it over the previous many months. A long weekend away in the spring did not have much affect on how I saw the world. But a week and a half certainly did. I felt somewhat disoriented and certainly a bit detached.

Fortunately, Patrice helped ease me back in. But it was an interesting experience nonetheless. More soon.

Ferns and toadstools

2007-07-04T14:07:00.000-07:00

Anyone who has been in Second Life for a while probably knows about Svarga. For some, it might be old hat. I still find it enchanting, though, and just a nice place to visit from time to time.

Svarga is a kind of fantasy island, all green and lush. It's got much more vegetation than most of the tropical islands in SL. Many parts look like the illustrations in a children's book of fairy stories—all ferns and giant mushrooms and exotic, brightly coloured tropical plants. There's an experiment in artificial life, an area of self-replicating flora and fauna. There are towers and catwalks between them, and rope bridges over chasms. There's also an area that makes music and rhythms out of things you type.

You take all of this in initially by hopping into a little pod and taking a tour. I did that a long time ago with my friend Looky Lu, but I recall that the tour was a bit rushed, and I didn't really take it all in. This time, by myself, I relaxed and kept mouselook on (except when I was saving photos), and had a lovely time looking at all the sights. There is narration with the pod tour. I'm guessing that at some point, there will be an option for that narration to be heard rather than read.

It's more difficult to describe how lovely Svarga is than to show pictures of it, so I shall let the photos speak for themselves. I'll probably post the rest on my Flickr site when I get a chance, and maybe even go back for more. Meanwhile, if you have never been there, check it out. If you're at all susceptable to this kind of thing, I think you'll enjoy a tour and a walkabout.

By the way, this blog will be on hiatus for a bit. It's first life summer vacation time, eh? Visit the family, who are far away, and have some fun. Alas my sad 20 pageviews a day will probably drop to zero, but it can't be helped. That is the nature of the one-person blog. Be seeing you!

In memoriam

2007-06-29T14:54:00.000-07:00

It's been the kind of week in first life that has left me little time for Second Life. When I've been in world, I've generally been occupied—DJ gig at Activ8 on Sunday, DJ gig at the Velvet on Monday. I had that one hour very late on Tuesday when I went to see SpaceJunky. On Wednesday, however, I managed to find some time to take a quick look around the Second Pride sims.

This is Pride Week, and I've barely scratched the surface there. I took a balloon ride, which turns out to be a tour of the rather extensive site (six sims). A lot of the grounds have vendor booths, but there are other things of interest, including an art exhibit. When I saw the memorial quilt garden, however, I immediately jumped off the balloon and went splat on the ground. I had to go see the quilt.

I have known people who died of AIDS. My SO actually did one care-giving volunteer thing for a man who eventually died (SO couldn't face doing another). But I have never lost anyone close to me. Many others have. Some in SL have created little memorials to their missing loved ones, which have been assembled in that garden.

I wandered through the display. Not all of the squares are inspired. Not all are skilfully rendered. Some are even a bit macabre. But many are quite moving. Often, those are among the simplest ones: "He loved cooking and teddy bears," or, "I never got to say goodbye." The best convey, in various ways, the pain of loss and the joy of love for the one lost.

I hope the Second Pride exhibit is around for a while beyond Pride Week. There's a lot more that I'd like to see. But I'd also like to return to the quilt. It's a beautiful spot.

Space invaders

2007-06-27T16:18:00.000-07:00

It's always at least 11 p.m. by the time I get home from my first life volunteer thing. Normally, I'll hit the hay around 11, since I get up at 6 a.m. (I work more or less on Eastern time), but after volunteering, I need to wind down, so I usually pour a drink and hang out in Second Life for an hour or so.

Last night, I had a destination: Unity Square on one of the Second Pride sims and a concert by a band called SpaceJunky. I met the lead singer, Shakti Cianci, way back in August of 2006, through M (you remember M, my sort-of ex-boyfriend). We were never close, but we stayed in touch. She's quite babelicious, and I had a bit of a crush on her.

I remember going house shopping with her once in the early days, which was a learning experience, as were most things in those days. Shopping as education! She also started a group called Bodhisattvas of SL, a group for compassionate people, with the member title "Bodhisattva." I really liked that, and she let me join. It's still one of the groups I activate often, and it was a harbinger of my subsequent direction into counselling.

I was also a charter member of the Alpha Crew of SpaceJunky. Shakti has a band in first life called SpaceJunky. She told me way back then that her plan was to get the band in world and play live gigs. There were all kinds of arrangements to be made—avatars to be created, instruments to be found or made, and much more. Every time I'd speak with Shakti, there would have been some delay. Then she would disappear for long periods of time, and when she'd return, I'd learn that her band was too busy in first life to get the SL thing together. Having your band busy in first life is definitely not a bad thing!

Lately, I was seeing Shakti online more frequently, and I had a feeling that something was up. Indeed, she confirmed to me that a gig was in the offing. Then just the other day, I was pleased finally to receive my first notice from the group—not one gig, but three, at Second Pride.

So when I got home, I fired up SL, quickly got changed, ignored IMs, and asked the designated SJ person for a TP. I was a bit late, and I was afraid the sim might be full. However, there weren't nearly as many avatars there as I thought there would be, but maybe the hour kept many away. My boss at PixelPulse Magazine, Cheri Horton, was there, dancing up a storm (as you can see in the photo). She's been writing about the band and posting pictures for a couple of days now.

SpaceJunky are kind of synth-pop. Normally, that's not my kind of thing. But these guys rocked harder than I'd expected from having heard some of their material on their MySpace site, and they have some really good songs. Shakti—Tania Smith in first life—is a very good singer. The only problem for me was that I expected this to be a live show. It was not. Basically, we were listening to the new CD with visuals, which was fine—the CD is obviously good—but not quite what I expected. Shakti explained to me that the band is somewhat geographically separated right now (their drummer lives in Malaysia), so they can't actually play a show at this time.

Still, I think it's worth your while to check these guys out. You have two more chances: 10 p.m. SL time on Thursday, and 5 p.m. on Friday. The Unity Square venue is really colourful and well designed. SpaceJunky are fun to watch, and fun to hear, even if pre-recorded. Don't forget to find that tip jar over to the left of the stage!

Window seat

2007-06-24T15:48:00.000-07:00

This is majorly disgraceful. I haven't written anything for days and days! I've been in Second Life, but only briefly. Too much work, too much summer (although not much summer weather yet in this parts), too much other stuff. I'm going to try to get over to the Pride site this week, so hopefully that will be at least a small adventure.

Meanwhile, my friend Eloria LeShelle, of whom I have written several times, got herself her very own island. She runs several Battered Boutique stores, and she says that when she counted up how much she was paying for rent, it only made sense to consolidate on her own sim. So Boutique Isle is now in the process of opening.

I met Eloria in one of those serendipitous SL ways. I had teleported Patrice over to the L.A.M.E. Designs complex on Heron Point so she could take a look at Ana Boogiewoogie's tattoos. I'd modelled for Booga, the first (and only) modelling gig I did for Activ8, and I have several of her tattoos. I thought Patrice might be interested in some.

One of the stores in the L.A.M.E. group was Battered Boutique. When we beamed in, we just happened to find Booga talking to Eloria. I had actually known Eloria's previous avatar, although only to say hi to in clubs, but I didn't yet know about the association. Eloria was very friendly, and after tattoo shopping we went to check out her clothes. That's when I fell for the Rope Dress and bought it immediately, at which point El started giving Patrice and me various outfits for free. Couldn't stop her! We left happy.

After that, Eloria cranked up her operation and started sending notices quite frequently, for outfits that I really liked. Sometimes, she even let me pay for them.

Somewhere around that time, Eloria started seeing my friend Merik, having had a previous association, something else I didn't know about (I never know anything!). I was already pretty close with Merik, so it's not surprising that I got close with Eloria as well. I did some modelling for her, the results of which you can see at Battered Boutique. I generally get an IM greeting from one or both of them when I come online, if they are online as well.

Which leads me to the new sim, and their new house, and the window seat. I love window seats in first life. And this one is also a pleasant place to hang out. On the evening I took this photo, we sat and talked for quite a while. I never did get a tour of the rest of the house! But it was most enjoyable to hang out there, spending time with good friends. The tour will come later.

Naugahyde and a tie-dyed T-shirt

2007-06-19T08:58:00.000-07:00

I know, it's just another DJ-at-the-Velvet entry with no pictures, but it was a particularly good night last night. Since it was 40 years ago yesterday that Jimi Hendrix set his guitar on fire on stage at the Monterey International Pop Festival, and since the summer of 1967 was the Summer of Love, the theme was all things hippie-ish. So out came the tie-dye, bellbottoms, flowers, and really big spliffs.

The previous Monday, we had a hard time getting any kind of quorum at the club. Last night, the place got relatively full (it's a big room, and it was Monday after all). I had a hostess for the first time, the lovely Ms. Prophercy DeCuir, and she made it a lot easier for me to pay attention to the music. See, when I'm hosting as well as DJing, I really want to say hi to everyone who walks in the door. I figure a personal greeting makes people feel welcome. It works that way for me. And I figure it can't hurt tips. I still try to say hi even when there's a host, but at least there's less pressure. Proph was doing a great job.

I dug out a bunch of mouldy oldies to mix in with my more usual fare. Some Jimi, of course, as well as a song by Otis Redding, also from Monterey that year. Jefferson Airplane, Beatles from Sgt. Pepper, Byrds, Kinks, Who, Deep Purple, the Bobby Fuller Four, and at least one song from the Nuggets compilation. I got inspired and ripped something from an old cassette—a very amusing bit called "Radio Moscow" by Nikita the K, a pimp on both the Cold War and on the AM radio of the time.

I'm afraid I fell down on a few requests. Hey, there is no way I'm going to let any Brewer and Shipley into my library, and "Age of Aquarius" by the Fifth Dimension is just too tacky for me even for a theme night. If I'm going to go tacky, it's got to have camp value! But I could definitely have used some Janis Joplin. And for some reason, I didn't play any Cream or Doors.

OK, since as usual I didn't take any photos, being too busy queuing up songs and answering IMs, I'll toss in this gratuitous and rather strange shot. This is Patrice, me, and flopsie on the Enel sim that Patrice and flops are working on, almost ready to open. At some point, both Patrice and flopsie crashed in a kind of weird way, while I didn't crash at all. flopsie went offline, but her avatar was still standing in front of me, and even the radar seemed to register her presence. Yet she wasn't there. When she truly reappeared, I saw that there was some kind of pose ball tucked into her prim skirt. I asked her to move, and it turned out there was a second prim skirt with the pose ball inside it, just floating in the air! I have no idea what was going on, but I'm glad I got a shot of it. It looks like flopsie is doing a magic trick. I think her outfit is really cute too. It's not often that flopsie wears a outfit like this. Another reason to take a picture!

(Almost) nothing to say

2007-06-15T00:06:00.000-07:00

Sometimes there's just a lull in Second Life activities, gentle readers. Sometimes I don't do anything blogworthy for days. I know this is a terrible thing, but it happens, especially in summer.

I had a meeting with one of my bosses at Activ8. Is that blogworthy? Probably not. But it was a good meeting, and I'm not resigning from Activ8. For the most part, I will stay on as a substitute DJ. I saw the new pub. I like the Activ8 Club just fine, but the Activ8 Pub is much more my kind of place, except it's still too big.

I had a counselling session, meaning me as counsellor with a client. Is that blogworthy? Not really, even though it was the first in a long time, but I'm certainly glad to be able to practise my skills. I do that with a volunteer gig in first life, but SL sessions are actually more similar to first life face-to-face sessions than first life hotline phone calls are.

I bought two CDs tonight, one really old (The Who Sings My Generation) and one fairly new (Show Your Bones by Yeah Yeah Yeahs). Is that blogworthy? Not in the least! But you should still come to the Velvet on Monday nights to hear me stream tunes. I play good stuff, and sometimes can even fulfill a request!

Here's something at least semi-blogworthy: on Wednesday, Patrice and I celebrated eight months of marriage. I have to admit, it wasn't really a celebration. She's still working like a dog on her terraform project. But we're still together, when we can be, and still committed to each other.

I'll try to do something interesting between now and the next blog entry. Meanwhile at least you know I haven't died or given up on posting. Ciao, babies!

Sliding toward summer

2007-06-11T21:59:00.000-07:00

A lot of things seem to be changing around me in Second Life. Just had a very slow night DJing at the Velvet. Now, a bad night at the Velvet is better than a good night most anywhere else, but it's still disappointing. It's not even the tips. I just want to get a good crowd into that room. I wonder if I need to do something with my set, get more music (of course, I do), change things up. Or maybe it's the club that needs a kick. Or maybe it's just getting too nice out and no one is sitting in front of their computers.

I'm still a month and a half shy of my first rezday, and I was in a daze for the first month or two, so I have not yet seen a full year of SL. I don't know if there are seasons and cycles. And SL changes so rapidly, maybe this time last year was nothing like now, and this time two years ago might as well have been a thousand years ago. Maybe.

Activ8 seems to be going through a few changes as well. Not long ago, I danced at an event that had so many people on the two sims that they crashed. The last time I DJed, the night never really even got going. I haven't been around there enough to know whether that's a trend or not. Even though I hit the forum at least a couple of times a day, I've never felt all that connected to Activ8. It's been a perfectly good place to work, and I've met nice people there, but I don't really fit in.

SL itself is in an even more changeable period than usual. It's this stuff about age-play and SL's sudden rush toward trying to control content, encouraging residents to narc on each other. That's such a mess. I just hope that some sense is injected soon, because right now things are looking rather grim.

PixelPulse has been a bright spot for me. We've been through changes as well, but good ones. We have some new writers and a lot of energy, always from Cheri but from the rest of the staff as well. PixelPulse has been right at the forefront of all this SL censorship brouhaha, and I'm really proud of Cheri and others for getting the scoops and posting informed opinion pieces. And maybe the story I did on the Gendar Rating Radar is actually more timely than I thought, since that kind of plays into the whole idea of poking your nose into other people's business rather than taking a more live-and-let-live attitude. Although I always see places I need to improve the writing, I'm proud of that story, and I'm glad Cheri was enthusiastic about it.

Patrice and I have been going through changes as well. Every relationship does, in SL or otherwise. She has been flat out working on her terraform projects. We've had to deal with this and with some personal things. But we have not given up. We have continued to talk. And we have continued to love. I think things are getting better, both for her and for us together. I hope so.

I have friends who are doing well. I have friends who are having a rough time. I have friends who were having a rough time but are doing better. That's SL, just like first life, only often more concentrated. I have a good friend who is hurting right now. She's staying away from SL. I hope she finds healing and comes back, because I miss her.

Impulse buying

2007-06-08T10:41:00.000-07:00

If there's anything that Second Life is about more than sex, it's shopping, especially clothes shopping. The place is just loaded with shops full of clothes that have been designed and created by SL residents. Some of what I've seen is appalling. Some is just inept, and might improve with time and practice. But I'm amazed at the amount of really high-quality, beautifully designed clothing I've found, and I'm sure I've barely scratched the surface.

This is virtual clothing, of course, to put on our virtual avatars. It's not like we can wear things out in first life, sadly. Oh, shopping is so much easier in SL! And compared to first life, even expensive outfits are really cheap. So if you spend 350 lira on an outfit that turns out to be a mistake, you're only out about one Yanqui dollar.

In spite of this, I'm usually pretty cautious about buying clothes and shoes (not to mention hair and skins, but that would be a different blog entry). I try to keep my inventory small and manageable, and I hate it when I've bought something that I really never wear, and it stares at me every time I open a particular folder. I do move those things into storage eventually, and sometimes even get rid of them. Some pieces seemed like a good idea at the time. Some looked great on the model on the wall but not so much on me. So even though most clothing in SL is really cheap in terms of first life money, I still try to consider carefully before buying.

Every once in a while, though, I see something that I just have to have, even though I might really not have much use for it, even though it's not really me. That's how I'm feeling about this outfit called Go To Girl from Ginny Talmasca of Dazzle at Last Call. Ginny makes great clothing, and lots of it, so much that I'm often overwhelmed by too much choice when I walk into her shop. I'd seen Go To Girl on the Linden Lifestyles blog, and liked the look. I'm kind of in a belted tunic mood at the moment. So even though I'm not quite a match for huge non-denim flares, even though the angular collar and cuffs à la Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction aren't really my style, even though the tunic has this strange semi-rezzed quality (no matter how long I wait), I had to have this outfit. And I even paid retail.

Speaking of Pulp Fiction, I think this is ostensibly some kind of business outfit, but when you're advertising nearly half your bosom, I think it might be only for business in a place like Hollywood. Or Second Life, of course.

I'm just wearing it around today. Will I find a real use for it? Who knows? Hey, it only cost me a buck!

By the way, I had to go searching in my hair collection for the right match. I think that's the ETD style called Ginny. Pure coincidence!

Taking stock

2007-06-05T15:30:00.001-07:00

Some people join Second Life either knowing exactly what they want out of it, or soon finding out. There are people in SL who have been designing and selling clothes and accessories, building various objects, scripting, speculating in real estate, and more, ever since they started. They have often become people of some influence, and their skills have shaped what SL has become since its inception.

That's not me. I came into SL not knowing which end was up or what I wanted to do. I was just looking for a second, different, virtual life, whatever that might be. I imagine this is fairly common. Like many, at first I basically wanted to find my way around and have fun. Later, when I looked at my credit card statements and the amount of real currency of the realm I was bringing in world, I realized I wanted a job of some kind.

I have worked as a dancer, a stripper, a hostess, and a model, all pretty much low-skill jobs, none of which earned me many lira. I thought about building, scripting, and terraforming, but I soon realized that there were truly talented people in all those areas (such as my dear wife Patrice, a highly skilled terraformer and landscaper). If I worked hard enough at any of them, especially scripting (since I am a software developer in my first life), I might be able to compete, but they just didn't get me fired up enough to put in the effort. I do like to script from time to time, but it's mainly for my own use, although I have given away a few simple scripts.

Starting my counselling practice was the first step to a more focussed second life for me. Even though I am only a beginning counselling student, I have at least some instinct for it, and I think I've actually helped some people. They paid me anyway! As I've noted previously, it was counselling in SL that led me to becoming a counselling student in first life, which before too long—a test of my patience and persistence—will result in a career change. I'm still intrigued by how Second Life opened up possibilities for my first life that I'd never thought of.

The counselling biz has been rather slow for quite some time now. It might be because there are people in SL who do it for free, as well as trained clinical counsellors who have practices in SL. I get some activity at my notecard dispenser, but very few appointments.

I continued to look for a niche. I started modelling for Activ8, but it turned out that Activ8 wasn't really so much in the modelling business, and now is out entirely. I have ended up sometimes dancing and sometimes DJing at the Activ8 Club, and the pay is fair, but it has not proved to be a very good place for tips, at least not so far.

My modelling these days consists of doing occasional shoots for my friend Eloria LeShelle, who makes and sells cool clothing at her Battered Boutique shops. Those sessions are fun, and it's fun as well to see the results. I don't think I care enough about modelling to chase down the big agencies, although I might change my mind.

I started writing for PixelPulse Magazine. This was basically an outgrowth of my inveterate blogging. I checked out different SL-related publications, and PixelPulse was the one that really intrigued me. I didn't want to write for a joke publication. As well, Cheri Horton, the publisher, is a friend of my friend Cala, so I figured she was good people even before I met her. Writing for PixelPulse takes time and effort, but I'm proud of the results and proud of all the good writing that's around me in that magazine. And Twittering with Cheri and fellow staffers Lienna and Julian is extra fun.

I mentioned DJing at Activ8. I'm genuinely enthusiastic about DJing, and have been for some time. I talked to some people, got the right software, got more of the right software, ripped tons of stuff from our CD collection onto my rapidly shrinking disk, bought more tunes through legitimate channels (honest!), and went in search of gigs. I did some fill-ins at the Velvet, and then Push let me have Mondays. I love that gig! I have so much fun. A month of Mondays usually covers the rent and some shopping, which is really all I need. I did a substitute gig at Activ8, and I'd like to look for more of those. Because of time constraints, I don't want another regular weekly gig, but occasional club dates or parties would be fun.

Just as with counselling, DJing has had an influence on my first life, not quite as profound but interesting nonetheless. I'm now constantly searching for more material, both old and new. It's been especially exciting to discover new (or new-ish) material of which I had been unaware. I'm so happy to have found Bloc Party and the New Pornographers! Boy, I've been asleep for a while. Glad to have awakened.

True confessions

2007-06-03T22:15:00.000-07:00

Tatsuko Hayashida is one of my closest friends in Second Life. I've written about her in this blog. Now she wants me to write again, for a specific reason.

She wants to tell everyone that she's a biological male in first life. I thought I was going to give gender a rest for a bit, and go back to writing about discoveries in SL or fashion or something less weighty, but Tats has a need, and I want to help her.

I've known for a long time that Tats is male in first life. Way back when, she came out to a small number of friends. She says she's coming out to everyone now because she wants to reveal the real her. "I am two-spirited, TG [transgender], and bisexual, and that's not only what I am but also the foundation of who I am," she wrote in her SL profile. "If I'm not accepted or treated fairly because of this, so be it."

People who cross the gender line in SL have to figure out how to navigate the waters while remaining true to themselves. If SL is about imagination and possibilities that cannot be reached in first life, then there should be no problem in a biological female being a male in SL or a biological male being female in SL. SL is not a game. It's an alternate reality, a "metaverse." It is a world of imagination, at least for now (Linden Lab seems to be trying to back off from that, sadly), but it is also a world of real people with real feelings. And there is no general agreement as to what the "right thing" is in cases like this.

T-girls and T-guys feel that they are expressing their real selves in SL. For some at least, confessing to their biological sex would be providing misleading or incomplete information, information that would likely be misinterpreted, because biological sex and gender identity are two different things. Gender identity isn't something chosen. It's something that happens in the brain and the body. It's innate, like sexual orientation, and it's not either/or. Those whose gender identity differs from their biological sex deal with that fact in various ways. One way is by living their ideal life in SL, freed from the constraints of their biological first life reality. In SL, they can be who they feel they really are despite appearances to the contrary.

But no one can or should impose his or her views on others. If someone says that the biological sex of an SL lover matters, it does. For some, it matters a great deal, and there's nothing wrong with that. For others, only SL counts. What you see is what you get. And there's nothing wrong with that.

That's how it works for me. I still see Tatsuko as a beautiful girl. I did before I knew, and I did after. We have made love in the time after I knew her first life biological reality, and it didn't matter to me. Her in-world presence is what counts for me. I find this is true for other cross-gender people I know in SL. I can force myself to think of them as their first life sex, but it's not easy. It seems to come naturally to treat them as they appear in SL.

I love Tatsuko regardless of what is between her first life legs. But then, even though our relationship is between two real persons, it's also expressed entirely through our SL of imagination.

I'm not unique, but I don't know how common my view is. I know many disagree. And Tats herself is feeling that she has been deceptive. I think she might be flogging herself excessively, but she feels the way she does. So she has now chosen the path of being female in SL but publicizing her first life biological sex in her SL profile, right on the first tab. People who know her and people who meet her will have to decide for themselves which is reality for them. Maybe it's both.

The fascist regime

2007-06-01T17:03:00.001-07:00

Everybody is weighing in on Daniel Linden's restatement of Second Life community standards, so I might as well put in a cent or two (Cdn, almost at par with the US$).

"The diversity of things to see and do within Second Life is almost unimaginable, but our community has made it clear to us that certain types of content and activity are simply not acceptable in any form."

Right from the get-go, we know we're in for a steaming heap of fewmets. "Our community"? Who is that? How did they gauge what "our community" has made clear? Any critical thinker would rip this sentence to shreds in the absence of even a hint of evidence to back it up.

Now, I'm not an age player. I'm not drawn to that sort of thing. Neither am I into rape fantasies. I'm not even a violence junkie, having grown up when "video games" meant either Pong or Pac-Man in a bar. But "your world, your imagination" is either truly meaningful, or it's a sham. If you're allowed to imagine anything except what you're not allowed to imagine, then everything not allowed is forbidden. And Big Brother is watching you.

"...and other broadly offensive content are never allowed or tolerated within Second Life." This is just chilling. What constitutes "broadly offensive content"? Offensive to whom? How broad is broadly?

It's not a matter of free speech, much as we might want that. Linden Lab is a private company, and Second Life is its service. LL doesn't have to allow anything it doesn't want to. CompuServe has a bunch of forums, and there are all kinds of rules about what you can and cannot post (mostly having to do with ad hominem attacks—unmonitored forums could use some of that). It's only that SL was supposed to be a bit different. It's for adults only (unlike most CompuServe forums), and if you don't like something that's happening at some club or on some sim, you go elsewhere. Live and let live, chacun à son goût.

You protect expression you don't like so that all expression is protected. But if forbidding things is arbitrary, then where will it stop? When SL is Disneyland? What if I find people dressed up as Mickey and Minnie Mouse to be "broadly offensive"?

The Carnival of Venice

2007-05-30T13:47:00.000-07:00

Patrice has been one busy girl lately. I hardly get to see her these days! She has been hard at work building new sims for the Italian government, or tourist board, or something like that.

First there was Toscana, which is the province that English-speakers call Tuscany. Toscana is a lovely, rural sim, with lots of grass and trees and grazing animals, as well as a small village. It's a great place to cycle or ride your scooter or just walk. There is even an area with huge picnic tables for one of those outdoor Italian feasts, although you'll have to imagine the food and wine.

The most recent Italiam sim to open is Venezia, also known as Venice, which Patrice did not work on (she's been working on another that will open soon -- this is a correction per Patrice's comment). Just as Toscana is a miniature reproduction of Tuscany, Venezia is a miniature reproduction of Venice, city of gondolas and canals. Indeed, one of the best ways to get a look at the place is by hopping into gondola and typing GONDOLA GO. You'll get a brief view of what there is to see from canal level. In fact, that's what Patrice and I did when we were there. It was wonderfully romantic! Maybe they should include kissing animations in the gondolas.

I'm afraid I don't know my Venetian geography. I'm sure there are famous churches and museums and palaces and other buildings like that of which I am woefully ignorant. So I don't really know specifically what we were looking at from the gondola. But you can find out for yourself. The sim is now open.

Freedom tastes of reality

2007-05-27T21:53:00.000-07:00

Yoiks! I got distracted in that other posting. I asked the question—why are there seemingly so many guys whose primary avatar is female?—but didn't really even attempt to answer! I appreciate the comments that entry has already received. Comments always provide additional insights. Maybe there will be more insights from this one.

I already touched on one reason that some men play women. It's more social than sexual. For all the talk of male bonding, it's women who bond more easily. Women tend to see each other as allies. They can form exclusive cliques, of course, but in general they are more welcoming. Women can form friendships at any point in their lives. For men, not so much. Heterosexual men might have other men they hang out with—go to bars, watch sports, shoot hoops, things like that—but they are rarely close to other men unless they happen to have known someone for a long time, like an old buddy from high school or university. Women can more easily get close to other women, and can share much more intimate things than men can with each other. When it comes to friendships, woman are freer than men.

Another reason is that women, much more than men in this society, can be overtly sexy. They are allowed, even encouraged, to put their wares on display. It's like the opposite of the situation among birds, where males tend to have the brighter plumage and are the ones that "strut their stuff" (and females do the choosing). Among humans, with some exceptions, that's the domain of women. Women can strive to look beautiful. Men get to be strong silent types. They can be rugged and handsome, if they're lucky, but they're supposed to do that without making much effort. If they make too much effort, that's not manly. So here again, women are allowed more freedom than men.

(Incidentally, this freedom to be sexual is very powerful. I think it's one of the reasons for the oppressive patriarchy, and why in some societies women are forbidden to make any kind of display. A woman can bring the strongest man to his knees just by being herself. Desire can sap the will out of the toughest guy. This leads to men both wanting and fearing women, which of course leads to a desire to control. You know the rest.)

Second Life, of course, helps with this freedom to preen and strut. SL is loaded with "slutwear." But it's not just that. Designers also create very beautiful clothes, not just overtly sexy ones. Female avatars can as easily look beautiful and sophisticated as hot and sexy. The range of female clothing is astounding, and new designs and designers keep on showing up. For men, the choice is limited, although not as limited as many think. Still, just as in first life, guys don't have the clothing options that women do. Women have the freedom to look beautiful, sexy, sweet, pretty, or any and all of the above. The range for women even includes most of the range for men.

It's clear from comments I have read that being female in SL is liberating in these ways and more. For some, being female allows them the freedom to open themselves up, to be vulnerable, to learn about their own emotional range. They don't get this in their first lives. The fantasy of SL, the allowance for imagination, lets them escape the chains of first life male existence. They seem to be better men for it. And some question whether they have been repressing something in themselves.

What we're seeing in SL is that many more men than might have been imagined, when given the opportunity for a fantasy existence, choose to be female. This is extraordinary. It's telling us things about what men want when given the chance. It's telling us about what is lacking in men's lives in the our current cultures. It's like a grand social experiment, although without controls. Still, someone in academia should probably study what's going on here. No doubt there is much more to learn.

Men who are women who are men

2007-05-26T23:28:00.000-07:00

It's another one of those periods when nothing really blog-worthy has happened. You don't want to hear about yet another fun night at the Velvet, I'm sure! But I'm working on some stories for PixelPulse, and that always gets me thinking about social issues in Second Life.

This time, it's one of the big SL questions: why are there seemingly so many guys whose primary avatar is female? No one knows for sure how many, but it seems there are more than a few. I'm getting some interesting insights from some of the comments on my article on gender and integrated voice on the various reasons this might be so.

I don't doubt that a certain percentage of men playing women are doing it for kicks. I've met some. Men tend to view SL as a game, and being a female avatar would just be one aspect of game playing. Apparently, men have done it in online war games for years because of certain strategic advantages. In SL, men being female for kicks seem mainly to want sex, sometimes as escorts but often girl on girl. It's certainly obvious from first life that women, for the most part, control if and when they have sex and, if they want, can have as much sex as they want. Being female in SL brings the same advantage. Men might be the initiators, but it's women who say yes or no.

Of course, at least sometimes, the guy looking for hot girl-on-girl sex is having sex with another guy looking for hot girl-on-girl sex. Maybe the guys looking for hot action might keep this in mind. Or maybe they'd rather pretend it's not so.

Men playing women for kicks are sometimes called "transgendered." This is a misappropriation of the term. These men have no desire actually to be women in first life. They are simple doing a bit of role playing. Even though there might be some undertones for some of these guys that they're not admitting to themselves, for the most part we're not talking about transgendered men. There needs to be another term for these men, because it muddies the water.

Actual first life transgender male-to-female (MTF) people are another group who often play women in SL. I have spoken with many in the course of working on articles for PixelPulse. For them, being a female in SL is no game. Some are transsexual women in transition, at various stages, so it only makes sense for them to be female in SL. But many are MTF non-op transgenders. These would be biological males who feel themselves to be wholly or partially female but, for various reasons, are not transitioning. For them, SL is like a dream come true. They can live a life that is not possible in FL, but only if they live in stealth.

I've found an interesting in-between category. This would be a guy who is not transgendered but who finds playing a female avatar to be compelling. He doesn't want to be a woman in first life, but very much does in SL, not to have hot sex but simply because women in SL have more interesting lives—better social lives, more and better clothing choices, more opportunities. SL, unlike FL, is a woman's world. It's hard for a male avatar to demonstrate that he's a genuine person and not just someone looking to pick up a girl for sex. As in FL, the cool guys suffer for the sins of the numerous male asshats.

The influx into SL of "augmentationists"—those who consider SL to be an extension of FL—threatens to upset the equilibrium. Augmentationists always want to know the FL biological sex of other people, especially women. They abhor cross-gender role play, regardless of the reason for it. They do not distinguish among the different reasons for being cross-gender. To them, it's all deception.

Not many will cry over the hot-sex role players being "outed." They will just have to go back to being guys and taking their chances in the meat market, just like in FL. But the outing of transgenders, and even of the sincere non-transgenders, will be tragic. An opportunity that in unavailable in FL, that was unavailable until SL, will be lost. Not to get melodramatic, but at least one suicide will be the result. And many others will be crushed, lost, and depressed. Some might create new avatars and try again. Some will leave SL.

I sympathize with those who have been deceived, who have been having sex with someone who suddenly "outs" himself. That would be pretty traumatic, and something to be avoided if possible. But you can't have certainty in SL any more than in FL. You can try, and in so doing curb the freedom of decent people. But it's a bad idea. The level of control that attempts to achieve certainty is fascism.

It remains to be seen how prevalent augmentationism will become. Mitch Kapor might want to erase the distinction between SL and FL, but many long-time residents do not. "Your world. Your imagination." Many take that as an opportunity to create a parallel universe, a better world, a world of positive imagination. We have to see if the augmentationists have the staying power that the immersionists have already demonstrated. Whatever Mr. Kapor wants, he doesn't control what goes on in SL. The residents do. Unless the plug is pulled.

My twin sister

2007-05-23T11:07:00.000-07:00

Yes, it's that time again. Second Life is down for an upgrade—or maybe up for a downgrade. We've yet to see. This was supposed to be the release of integrated voice, I think, but apparently it's been postponed until next month. This time, we get sculpted prims. Since I can just about build a habitable domicile with the old prims, I'm looking forward to seeing what those with far more graphical design talent than I have will do with these new prims.

I shall take the opportunity to do another person entry. tree Sprawl (she always spells her first name that way—some people don't like to hit the shift key!) was rezzed the same day as I was, on the 30th of July 2006. We met on Orientation and/or Help Island, and she might well have been the first name on my Friends list. She skipped all the build tutorials and headed off for the mainland after only about a day, while I waited behind for a new graphics board to arrive, but we stayed in touch via IM. While I was rezzing cubes and playing with textures, she would tell me about the adventures she was already having.

When I finally jumped to the mainland, I was afraid she'd be way ahead of me and not want to be friends any more. My worries were for nothing. As soon as I jumped, tree was ready to give me a hand, and more than a few lira (I told her I had money, but she seemed to think I didn't). She took me shopping. She introduced me to her friend Athena, who is actually our triplet. She kept me company in those difficult days when Second Life seems very intimidating because you haven't really learned anything yet. I remember when she took me dancing at a place that was having an animal avatar contest, and she turned into a sort of triceratops. Then she couldn't get the darned thing off and temporarily lost her skin! Oh, everything was new then.

As we continued with our second lives, we didn't see each other as often, but whenever we did, it was like we'd never been apart. We could always start talking about whatever was going on, even if it had been a while since we'd met. I had my fling thing with M. She had a couple things of her own. She grabbed some first land long before I managed to, and even bought some more. She did eventually learn to build, and she made me a skybox on her land, my first home. (We had started with a pre-fab A-frame cabin, which was rather nice, but she went for the skybox because she wanted to use the land below.)

Eventually, she bought four adjacent 512m² parcels and created a beautiful walled garden, some photos of which I put on my Flickr site. We would sit there and talk sometimes. When I first met Sorcha McConachie, I brought her to the garden so we could chat. tree said that she got more traffic on her parcel than a nearby club did, and that doesn't surprise me.

She had a rocky relationship for a while, and I was her shoulder to cry on when things were going badly. (The relationship also had much about it that was good, so it wasn't all tears.) In fact, I think she might have been one of the first, if not the first, to come to me that way, which led directly to my setting up a counselling practice in SL, which led to me working on a career change in first life in order to becoming a counsellor.

I did my share of crying on her shoulder as well. She was always a sympathetic listener. At the same time, she's one of those people who can cut right through bullshit, and that always helped me keep my head on straight.

Sadly, the garden is now gone. So is the rest of tree's land. In fact, tree will be gone from SL soon as well. Maybe not forever, but at least for now. Like many of us, she gave up some things in first life in order to make time for SL, and she'd like to make time for those things again. Fortunately, we have other ways of getting in touch, because tree is not just a friend to me in SL. She is a friend, period.

I love you, tree. I know we'll be in touch, but I'll miss you so much in SL. I have tears in my eyes as I write this. I am so grateful for your friendship, so glad that I met you. May you always thrive in all of your lives.

Miss May

2007-05-21T22:21:00.000-07:00

A while back, I wrote about Eloria LeShelle of Battered Boutique and her awesome jeans. Well, she needed a new "pin-up" for the wall of the store, and she picked me for this month. I am humbled and honoured!

Even more, I got an outfit named after me—the 'Nique. Of course, it's not from any kind of talent. Eloria is the talented one. Being a model in First Life is hard work, so I understand, but being one in Second Life is totally easy. You don't even have to pose, because animations do it for you. Photo shoots are simple—just watch the photographer work. And change clothes and make adjustments when you're asked. And don't talk too much so your hands don't move!

This is a bit of a skimpy entry, because I just finished a three-hour DJ shift at the Velvet, and I'm knackered. It was Victoria Day in Canada, a holiday, so tonight was all things Canada—the good, the bad, and the silly. Of course I didn't take any photos, dammit, and alyssa looked great dressed as the Stanley Cup. And Lana was wearing a canoe. And the place was really full! I'm grateful that everyone wanted to come out and have fun.

Music revival

2007-05-19T22:58:00.000-07:00

I'm not exaggerating when I say that Second Life has profoundly influenced my first life. In some ways, you'll just have to take my word for it, because I'm not going to go into all those details. But there's one thing that has struck me recently that I can talk about.

Recently, I started DJing. I now have a regular Monday night gig at the Velvet. I turned down another regular weekly gig because of time constraints and conflicts, but I hope I can land more jobs anyway, even if they are irregular ones. I have such a good time putting song after song in a particular order into a stream for people to listen to and dance to.

I am a semi-retired musician in First Life. I have been interested in music for almost as long as I can remember. Recently, however, I had kind of fallen away from music. I got into that mode where you say that there's no good new music, and I listened only to old favourites.

Even before I started DJing, however, I was listening to various other DJs on SL and being exposed to new music. As a result, I started paying more attention to what I was hearing on the station I listen to most often, a "modern rock" station in Victoria, B.C. When I wanted to DJ, I looked for more sources for music than the large but still limited CD collection I share with my SO. It's a lot harder to find legal digital music than I thought, at least in MP3 format rather than iPod or WMA. Still, I started to find sources and to hear things I'd previously been ignorant of.

In the process, I have become aware of quite a bit of new music. I knew there was good stuff out there, but I wasn't always finding it. DJing has been instrumental in reviving my love of modern music and in leading me to new music with which I was previously unacquainted.

Which leads me to Bloc Party. I can't remember how I first heard about them. I think it was in the process of finding new free music, and I was probably interested in the description of the band. I downloaded "Banquet" and was totally taken by the song and the sound. I decided I had to have more. I bought the A Weekend in the City CD at a store downtown and ordered the previous Silent Alarm CD from Amazon (the record store had only a remix).

I like Silent Alarm. "Banquet" is certainly a stand-out track from the album, but there are several more good tracks. Overall, the band were still finding their way.

But with the release of A Weekend in the City, I think Bloc Party have created an astounding achievement. I can't remember the last time a disc—the whole disc, not just a song here and there—has so captivated me. Some bands have a great sound. Some have great songs. Bloc Party puts them both together, and that is the hallmark of a great band. Song after song on A Weekend in the City just draw me into a different world, a world I find fascinating. I can't think of a weak moment on the entire disc, but when we get to "Kreutzberg," then things really get moving. "I Still Remember," the second single from the album, is just astounding. It's a happy, poppy, driving melody, but the lyrics are all about a love that never happened but should have. The juxtaposition is devastating. And by the time we get to "SRXT," well, it's best if you're not driving while you listen. This is a song about suicide, and it's masterful.

Some CDs grab me right off the bat, but the appeal wears off. Some grow on me. A Weekend in the City has done both, and I find that remarkable. I haven't run into an album so evocative in a long time. And without SL, I might never have known about it.

Sleep talking

2007-05-16T22:41:00.000-07:00

Last night, I was offline doing a First Life volunteer thing. Tonight, I had an interview and audition for another DJ gig. I have to decide whether to take two regular shifts a week—one more in addition to the Velvet gig. I might not have much Second Life time left, but it's a good, high-profile gig. Ye gods, I might even need to talk on mic. Pretty soon, lots of people will be doing that, whether I like it or not. Oh, it's hard to be a dinosaur. And I'm not even a year old! When I joined SL last July, not even a million people had yet signed up. Look at it now.

It will be interesting to see what happens when integrated voice goes live on the main grid. We'll have to see how many places it's enabled. We'll have to see how non-speakers will be treated by speakers—and vice versa. In FL, hearing and deaf people engage in conversations (think of Marlee Matlin's character on the late great West Wing). In SL, will speakers and typists still communicate? My brief experience on the voice beta grid was not promising.

I really don't want to be babbling at my computer all evening. I prefer to type. It makes a little sound, but mainly I'm listening to music. If voice conversation enters the picture, I'm not sure how it will be. But again, we shall see. No way to know in advance.

I'm much less concerned about age verification, at least for now. Normally, I don't go to any places that I would consider pornographic or very violent. The problem might come if places I do want to go get flagged "adult" in a cover-your-ass kind of move. And I might need to get verified in order to keep writing for PixelPulse Magazine. We basically only deal with "adult" topics. The bottom line is there's some information I don't want to hand over to a third-party verifying company. Hey, I'm older than dirt, OK? It's annoying to have to prove it.

Nothing stays the same for long, least of all SL. I'll just have to keep evaluating whether the experience is worth the price. And now I really am fading....ZZZZZZZZ.

V Dizzle fo shizzle

2007-05-14T22:47:00.000-07:00

Tonight was the official debut of Veronique's Vault at the Velvet. Vividly vivacious! Can we squeeze any more Vs into a sentence?

I am still lame about contests. I should let Push choose something. I thought this one would work: first outfit you bought in Second Life, or the oldest one you still have. It's not often that I wear the first outfit I ever bought, but I do still use the hair on occasion, and the first shoes are still some of my best and most useful (and change colour too). But I guess a lot of people have dumped their early stuff. At any rate, the contest was not the most stimulating part of the evening. Some contestants, but votes were scarce, despite my repeated encouragement. Mischief won again. Patrice came in second again. Since I was handing out the money, I did not vote, so it wasn't me who lifted Patrice into second place.

Not a bad crowd for a Monday with a new DJ. I learned something about announcements via IM. Now, I hate, hate, HATE IM spam. I have left groups because of it. But even though I had sent out the official announcement a little after 6, at 7:30 there were still only a few people in the club. So I did a bad thing and broadcast to the Velvet list. I know it's wrong, but I'm weak. Thing is, it worked. Shortly after the spam, there were a lot more people at the club. Oh dear. I will have to be more forgiving of IM spam from now on. At least some of it.

The club wasn't super-full, but there were more people there than my photo shows (or than show in Patrice's photo, which she kindly shot and sent to me). And notice the person dancing in the cage, which is always fun. I got good feedback from several people. Thank you! I strike out on a lot of requests, because my music library is still pretty small, so I appreciate people's indulgence. And I do have some rather unusual stuff to play (along with plenty of more-usual stuff), so I'm glad that people go for it. ComradeX and September came by! I hadn't seen them in a long time. I think they've been busy in First Life. It happens.

Next Monday is Victoria Day in Canada. The set will feature every Canadian artist I have, which at this point is more than two dozen, plus some other music that fits in. The contest will be about Canadian stereotypes, and anti-Canadian abuse will be the order of the evening (and don't forget those pea-soup-and-poutine-eating French speakers). Think you can handle that, my non-Canadian friends?

The Art of Living

2007-05-13T22:46:00.000-07:00

All is not really black emptiness, despite that last entry. I was kind of lonely and in a mood that night, and I channelled it purposely into some writing. I like how it turned out. Downtown is kind of an inspiring place.

It's been three days with no blog entry, and I can't let that go on, but it has not been a terribly eventful three days. Friday and Saturday nights are usually for First Life, and this past weekend was no exception. I could write about great Indonesian food and the film The Queen on DVD, but that wouldn't be quite right. I was at the Velvet very late on Saturday night, past Patrice's bedtime (recall that she is three hours later than I am), and danced for a while. Still not very blog-worthy. And I ended up kind of lonely again, so I got into jammies (with dropped drawers), lay on the bed, and thought about my sweetheart.

But earlier on Saturday, Cell (Cellside Unknown) sent out a broadcast message that he (he's mainly being a he these days) was DJing for a gallery opening. I figured I'd pop in to listen to music and see what was happening. Well, it turned out to be an opening for artist Sysperia Poppy. I remembered that I'd read about her work in Emma Nowhere's blog. I looked around the gallery and was struck by several of the photographs, but especially by one called "Warrioress." So I splurged and got it (really not a bad price for such a nice piece), and Syssy also let me have another non-limited edition shot. They were huge as displayed at the gallery, but Sys assured me that they could be resized.

So I took them to my office-studio and was about to try to cram at least one onto the bedroom wall when I realized that only the studio downstairs would give me the space to do them justice. So that's where I set them up. It's not much of a gallery, but it's much livelier than it was. And Mischief's cartoon doesn't look so lonely.

Today was seven months since Patrice and I got married. She gave me a great present, a tandem bicycle that we hope to ride together on some of the new sims she's working on. I must admit that I was thinking of Mother's Day and forgot about our seven months, but I had thought even on Saturday that Patrice might like "Warrioress." So today I beamed her over to the studio to see the photos. She liked them, but didn't quite click. I told her I'd buy her something from the gallery, so we teleported over there, where we happened to meet Sys and her partner Zoe. What Patrice ended up with was a beautiful, sad photo of our friend Cala (Super Calamari), part of the same series from which Emma has a photo.

I'm going to keep my eye out for more work by Sysperia.

City of dreams

2007-05-10T22:47:00.000-07:00

Downtown. It's nowhere to be if you're lonely, and alone. It's always dark in Downtown. Oh sure, there are shops, and neon, and things to do—sometimes. But if it's late, and you're looking for a lift, look elsewhere. Downtown doesn't care about your despair.

You land at one of the corners with a traffic light. No cars, so you know it's late. The signal changes anyway, green to amber to red and back to green again. The walk signs tell you when it's safe to go, as if there were actually traffic. You head down Falcon Street and into Chinatown, because you know the place, but it's empty. The neon lights make a mockery of your longing for life.

You see that there are people somewhere nearby. No matter which way you go, they never seem to get closer. You find someone, a stranger. She passes you without a word, intent on her own business, whatever that might be. Don't ask.

You keep searching, but you don't quite know what you're looking for. You see the cinema, with promises of life and entertainment, but it's closed. You head out to into the open at the edge of town, which if anything is lonelier and scarier than the claustrophobic streets under the el. You check out the diner, empty as the day before payday. The lights are up, but not a soul is to be found. You head out and find a garage where cars are being fixed, cars that never drive down forbidden streets, seeking the promise of open air and sunshine.

You fly up thinking that soaring above the urban squalor might clear your head. The atmospheric pressure still crushes you. Past the obelisk, you can see the promise of a new dawn, a dawn that never arrives. You could wait forever, waiting for Godot. A fool's errand.

You circle around and around, past the pawn shop, past the bookstore, knowing that there are people somewhere, but you never find them. You give up. You head back to Chinatown, back to where you know there's a place to crash, to sink into oblivion. It's dirty and messy, but it's as safe as anywhere in this burg.

Those potstickers from the Chinese take-out down below didn't sit too well, so you're glad that at least there's a toilet in this dump. The gods know what's in those buggers. The rot-gut whisky you washed them down with probably didn't help. You want to sleep, but the room is spinning, and sleep won't come. You're alone with your thoughts and a bag of crack and photos on the wall that some self-righteous bastard is probably soon going to proclaim are pornographic. What they hell do they know.

The Vault previews

2007-05-09T12:38:00.000-07:00

I did my first real DJ/hosting gig at the Velvet last night. Veronique's Vault doesn't start its regular run until next Monday, but Push needed a DJ, and I was eager to fill the slot.

Not only was I in charge of the music. I also cooked up the contest, sent out the notice to the Velvet group, and had access to the contest board and the "now playing" board. Thanks again to Jasper for clearing up a few things there, but for the most part I just clicked and followed directions. I also served as host for the evening. I like greeting people (and other critters) who come in the door anyway, and it wasn't so busy that I couldn't keep up.

I broke one of my own rules about contests: don't make anyone buy anything they don't already have, unless they really want to. The contest was "Velvet goes Hollywood," because it was the anniversary of the formation of Paramount Pictures. I should have said, however, that any kind of creative glam would do. I just happen already to own the pair of Leeloo Dallas costumes from the movie The Fifth Element. I promise to do better in future!

I streamed my usual mélange of rock, indie, punk, grunge, and Canadiana of all genres, somewhat expanded since the last time I DJed, with interjections of sound clips from movies (as is my wont), also somewhat expanded. The one from Office Space about the worker named Michael Bolton really got some people started. The quotes were flying fast and furious!

Mischief, who as you may know is a Neko, came with her attachment that frames her face with the MGM logo, which is always a big hit. Patrice was doing Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany's, resplendent (and I'm not just saying that) in a long slinky black gown and long black gloves, her darkest auburn hair, and a cigarette in a holder. Not surprisingly, Mischief got the most votes, followed by Patrice. We did have a very cute Marilyn Monroe type early in the evening, but she didn't stick around.

With all the balls I had to keep in the air (I rarely cue up more than one song in advance, because I want to "feel" what the next song should be), I did not add the ball of picture taking. Sad, I know. You should have come down, if only to see Mischief in her get-up. Starting next week, I will be rockin' the house every Monday. Be there or be cubical!

Descriptive video

2007-05-07T22:39:00.000-07:00

Argh! I completely forgot to take pictures at Mischief's rezday party! OK, here are my excuses.

See, I got there about twenty after six, and there was no music. Someone was dancing, but let's not ask to what. The music stream was not going, and Jasper was offline. So I told Mischief that I would try to get some tunes going. I connected successfully to the Velvet server, but still nada. Repeated tries in various configurations yielded no results.

Thankfully, Push soon came online and flipped the switch. See, some DJs use their own servers to stream into clubs. I think that's what happened here—someone else's server was connected to the club. As soon as Push whacked it, I was on the air. So I played songs for a while until Jasper finally showed up. During this time, I had a friend in distress, Patrice arrived, and at least a couple more IMs came in as well. So I was dancing, and not just my avatar.

Then when Jasper arrived and took over, I was much relieved. I still had a friend in distress, but at least I had a bit more breathing room. But by the time everything had calmed down, I was totally not thinking of taking pictures. Wah!

Mischief had on a lovely new long dress too, with a really low back. And Patrice was all sexeh in black, as was I. And many people showed up to dance to Mischief's rather unusual series of requests. Patrice even got Jasper to play Gilbert and Sullivan's "Modern Major General." That's not something you'll hear at the Velvet every day!

Oh, if only I had got a shot of Mischief on the stripper pole, with big black "censored" signs over her nether regions.

At any rate, a splendid time was had by all. Patrice and I had to leave kind of early, because these days Patrice is getting up before dawn to rendezvous with her Italian land-owning clients (she is doing a very large terraforming project). And I should have gone to bed already, since I was up at 5:30 and will be up at 5:30 again tomorrow.

Mischief Fairymeadow, one year in world today. Happy happy, and many more to come!

The Jean Genie

2007-05-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

Remember No Mom Pants? Grazia Horowitz in Second Style had written that high-waisted jeans would be coming in. Horrified at the thought, I begged and pleaded for some Second Life designer to create low-rise jeans that still covered the butt, or most of it.

Well, Eloria LeShelle of Battered Boutique has done just that. Yep, Eloria is a friend of mine, and I've done model shoots for her (if you go to any of the Battered Boutique locations, you can see). But even so, this isn't about the fact that I like Eloria. It's about her awesome jeans.

She has made them in an array of colours (the one in the pictures is "faded black"). Each colour includes jeans in the pants layer that are modifiable, so you can adjust the flare of the leg, as well as jeans in the underpants layer that are pegged so you can wear them with boots. She thought of it all! Most of all, she is seriously undercharging for these babies.

And check out the booty! Yes, that's a hint of butt crack, but really, hardly at all. I slipped on a couple of pairs of thong undies, and they didn't show. You're looking at the proof. So almost no crack, and no whale tail either.

While you're at Battered Boutique, check out her outfits and tops as well. Eloria makes cool stuff. I'd say so even if I didn't know her. I am totally in love with the Rope Dress, and the stained "no cowards" T-shirt is très cool.

[Addendum: just after I wrote this entry, Eloria came out with a line of ripped jeans as well. Woot! Walk don't run!]

Where's my double-double?

2007-05-04T10:54:00.000-07:00

Canadians consume five times more doughnuts than Americans, according to the last statistics I saw, and in Canada, Tim Hortons doughnut shops are ubiquitous. Started by a Toronto Maple Leafs hockey player, Tim's is now owned by the same company that owns Wendy's. Still, it's a Canadian institution.

I'd heard from Mischief that there was a Tim Hortons in Second Life, so on Wednesday night, Patrice and I popped over there. It sure looks like a Tim Hortons. Sadly, however, it's not really open yet. There are no doughnuts on the shelves! No coffee either. (The item in the title of this entry means "two cream, two sugar"—Tim's coffee is fine, but it ain't gourmet blend.) I hope they open it for real soon. We could sit around imitating that old bit from the Royal Canadian Air Farce.

We were rescued from our disappointment by an invitation to Merik and Anwen's castle to join them and several others in their hot tub. At one point we managed to get seven of us in there. It looked a lot bigger in the photo Merik had sent. However, there really was plenty of room for all of us, and I was perfectly happy to drape my legs over Patrice's. It's not quite as nice to soak in a virtual tub as in a real one, but somehow it's still relaxing.

Of course, relaxation wasn't exactly what we were up to. It was a nice gathering of friends with lots of conversation, jokes, and just having fun hanging out together. Meri and An are super hosts and really great about having spontaneous gatherings. Love ya girls!

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a deadline to meet.

Apartment life DJ makes Mischief

2007-05-02T07:22:00.000-07:00

Not a whole lot going on, gentle readers. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes First Life needs attending to. Sometimes Second Life is more about hanging out with Patrice and with friends than about anything really blog-worthy.

Like last night, I went with Patrice to see what she's done to our crack pad in Chinatown. I hadn't actually been through the front door, having previously been beamed directly upstairs. The crime scene tape off to the side was a certainly a nice touch. And the elevator works, sort of. We're on the third storey, and there seem not to be any stairs.

But you really don't want to see the gross mattresses Patrice put in the room. Nor the boxes of half-eaten take-out Chinese food. And you especially don't want to see the used syringe that flopsie left in the middle of the floor. Yuck! Good thing I was wearing some really chunky boots to protect my little feet!

We did a bit more wandering around in the dark. Patrice wanted to get her palm read, but unfortunately there is no palm reader yet. Cool looking salon though. She was thinking that our friend Mischief might make a good palm reader.

Speaking of Mischief, here are the only bits of news I have at the moment. I have my first regular DJ gig coming up! Starting on May 14th, I will be the Monday night DJ at the Velvet. My equipment is ready, although I'm going back and forth on settings for the compressor/limiter between one set that's milder and one that's more aggressive. And I've put more songs into my library, although you can never have enough, and I'm working on getting more.

And the reason I'm not starting next Monday is that Mischief will be having her first rezday party at the Velvet, and she has gone and lined up another DJ! Jasper will be doing the streaming thing. I might have to give her a bit of grief about that, although it's very likely that Jasper has more songs that Mischief wants to request. At any rate, I will be able to party without distraction and celebrate one year in SL of one of the coolest kittehs around.

Pied-à-terre

2007-04-29T16:30:00.000-07:00

Sure enough, they'll be sellin' stuff
When the moon begins to rise
Pretty bad when you're dealin' with the man,
And the light shines in your eyes

"Come On, Baby, Let's Go Downtown" by Danny Whitten

Patrice and I now have a run-down one-room apartment in the Chinatown part of the soon-to-be-opened Downtown sim. No, we're not moving away from Beaver Beach. But Patrice has this fantasy.

She imagines us as supermodels who are holed up in a crummy flat trying to lose weight before a big fashion show by eating very little and doing drugs. So naturally, our flat is not in the best part of town. When I first beamed in, before I'd looked off the balcony, indeed before much had rezzed, I asked her if this was one of the brownstones. She said she'd got a place in Chinatown because it would be easier to get drugs. Just kidding, children! Drugs are bad, m'kay?

As well, the view is pretty cool. I love neon, and flopsie just showed me how to change a setting that's supposed to allow light sources to glow like when that hit of acid has kicked in (not set yet when I took this picture). Oh no, there we go with the drug references again! And I'm not sure if Downtown would be a good place to do psychedelics. I think you need your wits about you on the mean streets.

I told Patrice that this scheme might not work. See, we'll go down on the street to score, but we'll come back with a bunch of fried dumplings as well. So we'll be strung out and gain weight. We'll have to see!

Come On, Baby, Let's Go Downtown

2007-04-27T11:23:00.000-07:00

New York New York, big city of dreams
And everything in New York ain't always what it seems
You might get fooled if you come from out of town
But I'm down by law and I know my way around

"New York New York" by E. Fletcher / Melvin Glover / Reggie Griffin / Sylvia Robinson

Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five—now that's kicking it old school! And when it comes to New york, forget Disney-fied Times Square and scrubbed subway cars. No Rudy Giuliani or Michael Bloomberg here. Let's get down and dirty and gritty, but with class and charm as well.

On Tuesday, I had the privilege of seeing a preview of a new sim that will be opening early in May called Downtown. Our landlady flopsie McArdle was one of the builders, along with sim co-owner Natalie Defiant (gage Rousselot is the other owner), our friend Pushbutton Skolnik, Abbey Underall, and Trevor Turner. As flopsie describes it, Downtown is somewhere between the East Village and Brooklyn, and I can already tell that it's going to be a really exciting destination for lovers of the urban experience.

Patrice and I met flopsie at one of the five subway stations—actually, on one of the elevated sections. We were joined a while later by our friend, neighbour, and fellow Canuck Mischief Fairymeadow. The subway does not work yet, but it will. The attention to detail is amazing, something that I noticed throughout the tour. This is a subway that still has graffiti and flickering lights, although thankfully no DNA left behind by people with dicey hygiene habits. There are poses that let you sleep in the corner, sit and read, and hang onto the rail.

Since this was a station on the el, maybe we were in the Brooklyn part. The streets are dark and dingy, and again beautiful detailed. There will be all kinds of shops opening soon. Around the corner, we found ourselves in Chinatown, complete with hanging lanterns over the street and with yet more shops, including flopsie's store, for which the displays are vintage Communist-era posters. Nothing like a touch of neo-realism!

I was relying on my tour guide, because it would be easy to get lost in or below these streets. I know I was in a tunnel at one point, not sure of the way out, although somehow I did end up safely in a subway station. I also had to rely on Patrice sending me teleports, because I'd stop to take pictures, or go back to take pictures I'd forgotten to take, and lose the others.

Not all is grit and grime in Downtown. One street is lined with brownstones, again with terrific detail. I believe these are apartments that can be rented. Didn't see inside, but I imagine the detail doesn't stop at the outside. And right near the brownstone street is a park with an obelisk, half Nelson's Column and half Cleopatra's Needle, as well as a couple of low breast-like hills that Patrice made (my wife is obsessed!). This is a more open part of the sim, the part through which a river runs (flopsie says it's polluted).

We hit yet more cool stores. The record store is full of vinyl, with an animation that lets you browse. I love the detail of the baseball bat behind the counter. No trouble in this store! Oh, and a vintage cash register. Leave your debit card at home. Next door is a book shop, from the days before every bookstore had an espresso bar in it (although I did suggest adding one). There's even more cool stuff that I forgot to take pictures of, including a movie theatre and a club. And I just love the "PARK" sign for a parkade (that's "parking garage" for non-Canadian readers) with the "R" burned out. That's the kind of detail we're talking about here.

We ended up back where we'd started, or maybe at different el station. Just before Patrice and I left, we were joined by the fourth and final resident of Beaver Beach (our newly renamed parcel—double entendre intentional), Sarah Fouquet. The conversation got all nostalgic at that point. I am the baby of the bunch, but I've known all those girls for most of my Second Life. They've known each other even longer. Mischief's first rez day is coming up very soon! I'd better remember to get pictures of that party.

I was totally blown away by Downtown. When it opens, you have to check it out. It's about as far from the pastoral tranquility of Toscana as you can imagine. It's going to be a lively and interesting place to hang out.

The Espadrille Caper

2007-04-25T14:18:00.000-07:00

The quest for Second Life shoes that approximate the espadrilles that Penelope Cruz wore in the film Volver continues, although I did find something at least in the ballpark.

Patrice in her comment on my last entry pointed me to the same shop I'd found through Style Disorder, so as soon as I had a chance yesterday, I went to Digital Dragon Designs. Once I got there, it took a lot of waiting for pictures to rez, a lot of flying around to find what I was looking for, and one false start (never be hasty on a purchase, it might cost you 300 lira), but I finally found the shoes that had been featured in the blog—not the stripy version, but the same shape.

On the plus side, they have the ridiculously high heel and not a bad side colour. The ones with black ties had black sides, and that was just wrong. And in general, they look pretty cute. On the minus side, those are ropes, not ribbons, and they're white. I can't wear them with enough outfits. As well, the side texture isn't quite what it ought to be—looks like a fabric texture, not rope (in fact, suspiciously like "linen" from the SL Library). Worse, at 400 lira, they are no bargain. For 400 lira, I would expect the ability to change shoe colour. I've paid a lot for shoes at, say, Coconut Ice, but there I get 140 colour options. So this purchase was OK but not entirely satisfactory.

If I could magically move shoes into SL from eBay, I found some pretty good candidates. This one on the left is the closest I've found to what I'm looking for—high-heeled, rope sole, open-toed, with ribbon ties. You can't really see how it would look tied up because the ribbons are lying by the sides, but I think it's a reasonable approximation that brings all the right components together.

This one on the right is also a pretty good match, with an even higher heel, although it ties with strings and not ribbons. Still, the overall look is pretty good.

I'm still looking for my ideal Penelope espadrilles on SL. I'll keep hoping that some designer also saw Volver, also fell in love with those shoes, and also noticed the demand in First Life, which I'm sure would translate into even more demand in SL.

Yes, I will leave fashion aside again for a while. I have something cooler coming up. I got a preview of an awesome urban sim that sets a new standard for detail and quality, not to mention serious grittiness. Next time, it's anti-fashion!

Cruz shoes

2007-04-24T09:12:00.000-07:00

OK, back to fashion for a bit. SO and I saw Volver on DVD this weekend, and now I am on a mission. I must find an approximation of the espadrilles that Penelope Cruz was wearing. In general, her character in the film is a fashion disaster, but those shoes are to die for. Apparently, they come from a maker of espadrilles in Barcelona called La Manual Alpargatera and are a particular Catalan variety called espadenya, with the ribbon that laces up the ankle.

A bit of Googling showed me that apparently I'm not the only one looking for these shoes. Of course, those people are looking for the shoes in First Life, which would be lovely, but I need them in Second Life.

SL is crawling with talented designers, including people who make shoes. Yet I find no espadrilles like these at Shiny Things, my favourite all-around shoe store. I have some awesome ankle-ribbon shoes from Coconut Ice, but they are stilettos. The search engine in SL Boutique is hopeless. I did a search for "espadrilles" at Linden Lifestyles and came up with only one hit for shoes that in fact are not espadrilles at all (they're not wedges, for one thing), let alone the coveted espadenya style. No hits at all at the Second Style Fashionista Blog. What's a girl to do?

Impossibly high wedges. Rope texture. Ribbons that lace up the ankle. I mean, come on, these are just so SL. Someone must make them. Or someone ought to. Au secour!

But wait. Is Style Disorder going to come to the rescue? I don't check that one regularly. Perhaps I should. A search produced one actual hit. Not quite what I'm looking for, but maybe close enough for rock and roll. We shall see!

Tranquility base

2007-04-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

First Life has cut into my Second Life time lately, not to mention my blogging time, and will continue to do so at least for the week coming up. Work, gardening, volunteering, chores—it all adds up. Oh, and in SL, I have a story due at the end of the week for which I am still doing interviews. So forgive me, gentle readers, for going with a bit of an evergreen. But it's something I wanted to write about anyway.

I met Cahide Meadowbrook at Patrice's and my wedding. Patrice had met her earlier at the Blue Note jazz club, where Cahide was at the piano. Cahide was managing a club that was about to open called the PowerPlant, and she offered Patrice a job as a host. Just minutes after I'd met her, she offered me a host job as well, which I accepted with gratitude.

Later, I met her butler Charles Nighbor, who was working as personnel manager at the PowerPlant. Like Cahide, he is English, and a proper English gentleman he is. Charles is one of the few people I know in SL who is not young in appearance. Since he is somewhat older in FL, his avatar reflects that—balding, with white hair and a trimmed white beard.

Cahide and Charles are two of the best people I know in SL. Even though the PowerPlant didn't work out (it's closed now), we have remained friends. While I was working for them and ever since, they have always been kind and generous to me, exemplary bosses and exemplary friends.

A short while ago, I gave Charles a ping. I hadn't seen him in some time, and I wanted to remedy that. He beamed me to the parcel where he and Cahide live on a sim called Kawaii, which seems to be kind of a cross between Hawaii and the Japanese countryside.

Charles gave me the full tour. They live in a mostly Japanese style house, except for one of two living rooms, which has western lounge chairs. The place is on the ocean and surrounded by gardens with butterflies and bird sounds. It is quite a restful place.

Just before I had to go, we were sitting in the "western" living room, and Charles demonstrated the weather system they had installed, which is what you see in the photo, which I finally remembered to take! First, it was raining. Then, there was something much more northern Japan than Hawaii—snow! We continued to chat as we sat and watch the peaceful scene.

Charles has been busy since then. His current project is building a cave for his new neighbour, who is a hermit. He has already built some sort of small prayer spot on top of a very steep hill. Next time I visit, I will have to take more pictures.

I am thankful that I have friends like Cahide and Charles in SL.

Sonic Reducer

2007-04-18T09:26:00.000-07:00

Last night, I had the most fun anyone can have with their clothes on. I was the DJ for about two and a half hours at my favourite club in Second Life, the Velvet. The regular Tuesday DJ, the beautiful Qualsha Nordberg, is taking a break for a bit, so club owner Pushbutton Skolnik (Push) is having "rotating DJs" on Tuesday nights. Having ripped just about enough music, and having equipped myself with the right software, I got in touch with Push on Sunday to ask if she had any slots available. When she said, how about Tuesday, I just about plotzed.

I frantically ripped even more music. I found a cross-fade plug-in for the Winamp player. I made sure I'd be able to connect properly to the Velvet SHOUTcast server. See, streaming music into Second Life is easy, except when it's not. As with any electronic process, there are numerous things that can go wrong—not quite the right software, a firewall in the way, a mistake in the port number. But once I had overcome a few glitches, I was as ready as I was going to be.

People have their own peculiar collections of music, and I'm no exception. I would love to own everything that people want to hear—at least of songs that I like—but you don't want all DJs to be alike, playing the same music, right? So even though I want more stuff, my collection is what it is, and I'm not sorry about that. Before going onto the web to get more, what I have available includes some classic rock (more '60s than '70s), a bunch of old school punk, various bits of '80s new wave, a generous helping of '90s grunge, bands from Boston you might never have heard of, and enough Canadian content—"CanCon," as we say up here—to keep the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission happy.

(And this is not counting the reggae and Cajun that I might rip when I get a chance, or the folk, jazz, and classical that will probably remain on the shelf—not much demand to dance to Carmina Burana, eh?)

Push set a punk theme for the contest, so even though I wasn't constrained to play only punk rock, I did want to skew in that direction. That reduced the available tracks a bit! As well, some of what I have just doesn't fit the Velvet, at least not when Push is listening. So I didn't segue into INXS's "Bitter Tears" or "Beds Are Burning" by Midnight Oil. Some other time, some other venue! I got a bit of grief for playing Soundgarden—the consensus was that guitarist Kim Thayil is punk, but vocalist Chris Cornell is not—but in general people were kind and generous and supportive, and showed the love to my tip jar.

If anyone thinks DJing is easy, let me disabuse you of that notion. It's possible to put an entire set together in advance, but I find it better to be at least somewhat spontaneous. I want to see how people are responding to what I'm playing, and make adjustments if necessary. Staying only a song or two ahead also lets me accommodate whichever requests I can fulfill. So being a DJ is not a relaxing thing! I've seen Barely Schlegal pull down more than two grand in tips, and let me tell you, he's earning every Linden penny.

By the end of the night, I was exhausted, but I can't wait to do it again! I've already made three improvements—a better cross-fade plug-in, a plug-in that sends song information to the server (didn't know I needed that, and I hope it works), and a compressor/limiter plug-in, which I certainly hope works with SHOUTcast, because it's way better than having to adjust the volume for different source material.

Big thanks to ComradeX Munson, who told me about the basics of getting set up. More thanks to Merik Drebin, who patiently let me test my connection repeatedly with her SHOUTcast server (you can hear Merik streaming, and maybe me too at some point, at the Anarchy Club). Thanks to Push for letting me lose my SL DJ virginity at her club and for being generally supportive. Thanks to Jasper Haifisch, one of the regular Velvet DJs, for his kind words and support all night. And as always, thanks to Patrice, who believes in me.

Unstuck in time

2007-04-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

In the courtyard in front of the Velvet on Iron Fist, there is a memorial to Kurt Vonnegut Jr. I think club-owner Push started it, or maybe someone else associated with the club. (I didn't ask—too busy trying to connect to the Velvet stream so I can DJ. But that's another story.) There is a photograph of Vonnegut on one side and a quote from him on the other. What's really touching, however, are all the little tributes people have left in front of the memorial, flowers and the like. I saw one that seemed particularly appropriate—an ashtray with a burning cigarette in it.

I have read Slaughterhouse Five more times than I can remember, and have seen the film more than once. I read God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. I saw the film Mother Night, and I can remember enjoying From Time to Timbuktu on television when I was a kid. So I am not a major Vonnegut fan, and certainly not an aficionado of his work. Still, I greatly appreciate what I know of his work, and I'm sure I would enjoy more if I took the time to do more reading. His death is a great loss.

Kurt Vonnegut spent time in Second Life. If he could see the memorial and the spontaneous tributes, I'd like to think he would be pleased. I don't know how long Push is going to leave it up, but if you're into it, you might want to beam over there and leave your own tribute.

Po-tee-weet.

Lucky number 13

2007-04-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

I let yesterday slip by without mentioning that April 13 was six months to the day since Patrice and I said our vows to each other. For those of you who are keeping track, that is. Married on Friday the 13th, and six month later, another Friday the 13th! No bad luck here. We still love each other, still like each other, still love having sex with each other, and generally feel pretty fortunate.

We keep learning about what a Second Life-only relationship means. A lot of people seem to have trouble making such relationships last. In many cases, it might be because they're not that interested in such a thing, and there's no shame in that. After all, there are so many things to do in SL, and most don't require a partner.

I have to admit, having an in-world-only relationship is kind of a weird concept. It's not something you could easily explain to friends and family, and you can explain it to your spouse only if said spouse is unusually enlightened. But our relationship is precious to us, brings us a great deal of joy, and is something from which we continue to gain knowledge of ourselves and each other. It still makes sense to us.

Happy belated six months, Patrice! And hats off to any other SL-only couples who have made it this far or farther.

Oh, and don't forget to check out PixelPulse Magazine! One big article and one small one so far. I'm really enjoying the gig and enjoying working with Cheri and Lienna.

Burning down the house(s)

2007-04-12T06:39:00.000-07:00

Tuesday night was the opening of my dear friend Tatsuko's club Anarchy, which is in the midst of her Underground (as in the comic and movies) role-playing SIM. Shrink-wrapped black leather is a popular choice for attire! The space is funky and unpretentious, kind of like an urban roadhouse, if you can imagine such a thing. The anarchy flag flies over the dance floor along with the flags of Japan and the former Soviet Union, just for fun.

It didn't take long for the club to fill up, based mainly on word of mouth. DJ Merik was streaming hot indie rock and lots of requests for the mostly female dancing crowd. Lots of friends there! In fact, I saw girls I hadn't seen since my early days at the Wet Kitty. Many (including me) even went topless at 8 p.m. in a kind of tribute to the old days. The place was shakin' and the pheromones were wafting, lemme tell ya!

Last night, I took a dancing shift at the Activ8 club with Ana "Booga" hosting and Blake streaming the tunes. It was pirate night, and since I don't have a pirate costume, I dressed in my "serving wench" dress from PixelDolls. Oh yes, and I added an eye patch. As usual, not everyone dresses for the theme, but there were some great pirate costumes among both the males and females. Cute guys in pirate gear tend to get my attention! In fact, three of the boys tied for first place in the contest. I never did find out which of the girls won, although I hope it was Blake's sweetie Emra, who wasn't quite dressed as a pirate but looked adorable anyway and did have a pirate hat on.

I was working furiously all night, doing my best to follow the chat, say hi to those just arriving, and throw in plenty of witty chatter to complement Ana's hosting. Things started slow and tended to ebb and flow, but by 10 o'clock the joint was jumpin'. The word was that the sim had 77 avatars on it! It wasn't long after that announcement that I noticed I couldn't move, so I knew the sim had gone belly up. I shut down my client and tried to log back in, but it was a hard crash, and it took several minutes for the sim to return. Now that's a party! We actually got a fair number of people back after the crash, which was pretty cool, and I kept working all the way to 11 (this one goes to 11). Even my Canadian flag tip jar was reasonably happy!

And I was too busy to think about taking pictures, which is too bad, because the place was really jammed.

We'll always have Paris (1900)

2007-04-10T07:30:00.000-07:00

When Patrice came online tonight, she suggested we take a break from dancing and do some exploring. That was fine with me! You must get sick of reading about yet another fun night at the Velvet. I mean, it's fun for us, but probably not all that interesting to read about, although I do try to make every entry as entertaining as possible, and the usual suspects at the Velvet are often helpful in that regard.

On Monday, however, we went on a real adventure—to the place called Paris 1900. We materialized in the Metro, which was an interesting way to arrive. You have to read the rules, in either English or French, and agree to them, but they are not nearly as heinous as those at many places. They're mainly about no sex and don't dress too inappropriately.

We emerged from the Metro station to face the Moulin Rouge. Unfortunately, since it was 4 a.m. Paris time, there was nothing happening there. Great build though. We amused ourselves by clicking on a set of dance balls called "Hokey Pokey," which I'd never seen in SL before. I wasn't quite the Hokey Pokey, but it was pretty weird, as you can see. Looks a bit like a pairs figure skating move. On the way out, Patrice pointed out a giant elephant, which was so huge I hadn't even seen it on the way in. You can see in the lower right corner of the picture how tiny the two of us look in comparison.

We figured we had to hit at least some of the shops, so we went into a build in which several were housed. There were fairly nice clothes, from designers and I knew but mostly from ones I didn't, so we did a bit of careful buying. There an annex of Adored Clothing in there. Adored was the first place I ever bought a dress, and my first pair of shoes as well (and I still have them both), but I haven't been there in a long time. I couldn't resist a lovely white dress with a long draped scarf behind, something quite different from what used to be at that store.

We left the shop and headed for La Tour Eiffel. This is a really impressive reproduction of the famous tower. It feels huge. We took the lift to the première étage (first level above ground), then on to the deuxième. Unfortunately, there isn't much to see from up there. I did get hit with a bit of lag, though, and found myself having fallen to a sort of intermediate level, somewhere that avies probably aren't supposed to be. Fortunately, Patrice rescued me with a teleport, because there's no flying in Paris 1900.

Once back at the top, we took advantage of a catwalk from which you can sky-dive. We both have the equipment already so we took the plunge, Patrice in her suit and I in my lavender gown. I didn't achieve quite enough horizontal distance, so I landed about 40-odd metres up on a platform from which I had to jump to the ground. Patrice, being more skilled, had a much better jump. We finished by poking our heads into the Callie Cline shop, but nothing really struck our fancy, except for one sun-dress that I thought was nice, but I got cheap and didn't spend the 500 lira. I might need to remedy that.

Oh, on yet another fashion note (what's going on here?), Patrice sent me a link to a modelling contest that Lacoste is running. So we both entered. As the lottery people say, hey, you never know. I think the shots I sent were pretty good, although I could have used that Callie Cline sun-dress. I had to submit it twice since it seems not to have "taken" the first time. Hope this one works!

Please, no mom pants!

2007-04-08T13:06:00.000-07:00

Patrice said that the "Shopping spree" entry made us sound like fashionistas. I said, well, we get that way, but only once in a while. Mainly, we buy what we like and don't pay much attention to trends. I do appreciate when Linden Lifestyles or Second Style (and others, such as Iris Ophelia's recurring feature in New World Notes) bring cool clothes, hair, etc., to my attention, because otherwise my shopping would be woefully uninformed.

I hadn't looked at the Second Style blog in a while, and seeing Celebrity at the Velvet last night reminded me that I have been missing out on some good tips. So I went to the site to do some catching up.

When I saw Grazia Horowitz's entry for April 2, however, I groaned. Not about Blaze Columbia going casual, and nothing against Grazia. About high-waisted jeans, "which is going to be the new trend in jeans," she wrote. Ye gods, deliver us!

OK, I realize that low-rise jeans in Second Life get a bit ridiculous. I really am not into butt crack. So, here's a challenge. Can anyone in SL design jeans that are low-rise in the front but higher in back, something like Lucky Brand Jeans Lil' Maggie or Sweet Dream styles? Jeans that fit comfortably on the hip, look hot, but let you sit down without southern exposure—or the equivalent in SL terms? Obviously it's possible in First Life. I can't imagine it's not possible in SL. Yet I have a virtual closet full of virtual low-rise jeans that seem, if anything, even lower in the back than in the front.

I do not want high-rise jeans! But I sympathize with saying no to crack and whale tail. So, some talented designer, please help me out here! I don't think I'm the only one who would be grateful. Oh, and more skinny straight-leg varieties too.

Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis

2007-04-06T17:16:00.000-07:00

Still the longest word in the English language!

Hopefully, Patrice and I did not breathe in too much fine silica dust as we did some volcano exploration. We didn't have much time last night, so Patrice took me to a tropical Gorean island that belongs to her friend Kim. After we explored the most excellent shipwreck, we made our way up to the top of the very steep volcano. Now that is some volcano! You can't bathe in the lava, but it really belches black smoke, which shifts as the wind does. And if you back down the hill (no flying in Gor) and watch in from the base, periodically it shoots out fireballs. Quite a sight, which of course I failed to record with my trusty camera.

I had to take a quick break to do a photo shoot for my upcoming article for PixelPulse Magazine, so we met up with my subject at somebody Linden's place. Can't even remember! But it was a pleasant spot with a gazebo where I took some pictures of my subject. So there I did get the camera out, but those pictures are for the article.

With our remaining time, Patrice and I went to Pele, the volcano of fellow blogger Cheyenne Palisades. Finally, I visit Pele! Chey was not there, unfortunately, or I'm sure she would have given us a tour. I could see on my radar that Mordecai, another fellow blogger (see Links for both), was nearby, so I IMed him. He quickly made a request that we not visit the Xubi house and mumbled something about nakedness. Well, yes, I could see on the radar that someone named Maia was in very close proximity to Mordecai. I laughed and told him to lock the door! But we were certainly not about to disturb his pleasure.

So we splashed around in Pele's lava for a bit and checked out the nearby pavilion before teleporting home and then, sadly off. We did meet up briefly later on at the Velvet. Patrice had gone kitty again as she danced with our friend and genuine Neko, Mischief, so I quickly changed species and began to purr. I am only a dilettante Neko, but I'm kind of enjoying it. Meow! Watch those claws!

Shopping spree

2007-04-05T14:08:00.000-07:00

Is there any other kind of spree?

I've been sooo good with my money lately, and I was getting sick of everything in my closet. Well, not everything, but you know how it is when you look for something to wear, and nothing is really catching your fancy, and you're just dying to see a new choice in there. So last night, Patrice and I finally went on our long-planned shopping trip.

I actually got a bit of a head start before Patrice came online. It was Neko night at the Velvet. Now, I have never had any kind of kitty attachments, and I was feeling a bit left out. I never did go to the Velvet, but I found myself a cute animated tail and ears at a store called 42nd Life. I skipped on the skin and whiskers because I'm just not that into the look. But I do love the tail especially. Tails are sexeh. Weird, eh? We wouldn't think so in First Life! Then I did a search for "catsuit" and beamed over to Nicky Ree's. My catsuit is red and shiny, and I wanted a black one, which I found. I love the dragon pattern! I coloured the kitty ears and tail black to go along with it.

At that point, Patrice arrived. Turns out she got an even earlier head start, landing herself yet another tattoo and a top. I took her to the Neko store, where she decided she didn't want anything. Or so I thought. We went to check out some tops from Second Wave Apparel that had recently been featured in Linden Lifestyles. Nice deal! I went for the Asian brocade box. Patrice went totally Vegas with the animal prints.

(Sabrina and Salome at Linden Lifestyles are to blame for a fair amount of my spending on clothes and accessories. I don't always share their taste, but when they feature something I like, I know it's going to be good. Before this shopping trip, I had already improved my hoody collection with two of the ones from Radical that I saw on their site. They were right about what they do for your, er, upper body. And that the hood prims are more realistic than other hoodies that I have.)

Next, Shiny Things. Patrice recently got herself a sari, and I know where the best sandals are. But of course, once you're at Shiny Things, it's hard to stop at one item, especially when there's that wall of totally cool boots on display. I held back on the white version of my favourite black wrapped boots, but Patrice went for a very cute pair of high-heeled lace-up boots. At that point, in her leopard top, low-rise jeans, and boots, she was totally ready for the strip!

Finally, I took her to L.A.M.E. Designs, with tattoos by my Activ8 colleague Ana Boogiewoogie and clothes by Eloria LeShelle, among other items. I think this is L.A.M.E.'s third or fourth relocation this year (and Ana seems to have changed the name as well, to Sh*t Happens), but the new store is nice and big, and hopefully I won't have to toss out yet another landmark. At this point I noticed that Patrice was now sporting ears and a tail as well. She gave me the slip! As we were looking at the merchandise, our friend Merik showed up with a newbie friend. Merik was kindly showing the new girl some basics of Second Life, including, of course, shopping. Merik had been at the Velvet and so was looking like a sexy kitty (it's hard for Merik not to look sexy). I saw the familiar Multitool blue box pop up without looking too closely at it. When I clicked to allow it to animate me, I expected the usual hug. Instead, I got pounced on! I'm definitely not complaining, but it was a surprise. Now we all want one.

Merik's friend left, and we wandered over to the clothing part of the store, where designer Eloria joined us. She makes really cute stuff, like this Rope Dress that I fell in love with right away. Patrice and I kept buying things, at a good price mind you, and Eloria kept giving refunds. Hey, girl, I'm trying to make you some money! But it was really sweet of her. Next time there's a pyjama party at the Velvet, I have a feeling we won't be the only ones sporting red droopy drawer longjohns. OMG, at this point, my "shopping bag" was bulging. Time to stop spending.

Before we beamed away, we got some news. Merik and Anwen are engaged! They are two of our favourite people in SL and are really good together. So that makes two weddings coming up soon. Our friend ComradeX Munson is also getting married soon to his girlfriend September—in May, not in September (that would be too weird). An actual male-female wedding—who would have thought?

O Bondage! Up Yours!

2007-04-03T07:16:00.000-07:00

OMG, I won another contest at the Velvet last night. The theme was bondage, or fetish—not entirely sure which. I'm not used to winning popularity contests. Of course, the place was packed, and there were at least three pages of contestants on the board by the time voting closed, so it might have been one of those situations like when Arnold Schwarzenegger first became the Governator with something like 12 percent of the vote. Still, he won, and I won, and I'm grateful to whoever voted for me. DJ Barely Schlegal and the club got the benefit of extra tips.

I sweahtagawd, for most of the night I was wearing the mesh part of this costume (like the gloves and tights), and not all the skin that you see here. :)

It was a fun night no matter what. Patrice was a bit late coming on, as has been the case lately of necessity, but IMs were flying, and the chat was fast, furious, and of course witty, even without Mischief being there. Warning: you might find the next sentence offensive! Club owner Pushbutton Skolnik was up on a cross, overseeing a dance floor full of whips and chains. Sorcha IMed with news that her connection had improved! I hadn't heard from her in quite a while, so I invited her into the fray, and she joined us. It was so cool to see her! I'd forgotten how tall she is—I had remind her to be careful not to step on Barely, lest the music stop. I seem to have accidentally skewered McCabe with my cane at some point, which was flailing around as I dance, at which point he turned into a zombie. Fortunately, all our sins were forgiven.

Once again, the two gigabytes of memory were doing the job for me. That club was full, as you can see from the picture with all the name balloons in it. But I was still able to move my camera around, not lag too badly, and stay online with no weird crashes.

By the way, you might also be able to see a bit of chat in the lower left corner of the picture (click on the picture to see it at full size). That's Sorcha saying, "What do you know? I had a whip in my inventory!"

Deep space office

2007-03-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

I wrote a few days ago that I had completed a new combined office and studio and set it around 500 metres above my first land. I can't believe how quickly it went compared to when I was just feeling my way through building. At one point, I realized, OMG, I'm done! It felt as though there should have been more to do.

As you can see, I did modify the original design of two linked cylinders. That just wasn't going work or look good. I ended up creating two half cylinders linked by straight walls, with roof overhangs. I think it still looks a bit space-station-ish, certainly more so than the old design, but it does give me some flat walls to work with—not to mention a few more square metres of space!

The entrance faces south now instead of north, and directly above that entrance is a tiny apartment. That's not what you see when you go in, though. The downstairs entrance leads into my photo studio, which is totally nothing to look at, but that's how photo studios are. I change the backdrop to various things, but the rest of the room is quite nondescript.

A rubber-covered ramp (possibly a bit steep for a wheelchair) leads from the studio to the office in back, which faces north. I finally sprang for some matching furniture. It's quite low-prim but looks decent, and it has pose balls so I and my clients can sit with more ease than before. I do need to make those lamps look better, though, or else buy some. The office-studio itself is made of only 18 prims, which is actually one less than my old office alone. I still have something like 38 prims remaining after doors and furniture and artwork and such.

I modified a sliding door script to fit my needs for both the front door and the door to the apartment. I figured that a space station needs sliding doors, like in Star Trek. I'm currently trying to upload the Star Trek door-opening sound (or maybe the Deep Space 9 sound), but Second Life is very fussy about the sampling rate. Every door sound I've found so far was done at too high a rate! I'll keep working on that, though, because it would be cool to have Trek doors. Doors that don't make any sound when opened and closed aren't nearly as much fun.

As you can see above, at 500 metres above sea level, there isn't really anything to view from the apartment. Great for seeing the sun and moon rise and set and for seeing the stars, though. I have finally managed to get some "elbow room," as Daniel Boone said. He liked it best when neighbours were several miles away.

[Addendum: Woot! I got the door sound working, thanks to software from a company called PolderbitS, which I use to convert analogue material (such as music on old cassette tapes) to MP3 files. Turns out it saves .wav files as 44.1Kbit/sec files, which is exactly what SL was looking for. So now my doors sound like the ones in the original Star Trek. I love it!]

Banned in Boston, or Buggery and skulduggery

2007-03-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

I have been banned from a commercial parcel in Second Life. How, you may ask, would a sweet girl like me get banned from anywhere? Well you may ask such a question! It's a long story, and you're not going to hear all of it. Names will be withheld to protect the guilty.

See, I was talking to a friend at my friend's house and happened to mention a certain parcel owner. I can't remember what I said. It was late on a Saturday, and I was, well, let's say deep in my cups. I know I didn't say anything scathing. I don't know this person well, but the person has always been kind to me, which I appreciate. I know for sure that one thing I said was quite innocent (and later misinterpreted), but I might have said something else that was less than complimentary about a specific situation, something I shouldn't have said. Hey, I might be virtual, but I'm humanly virtual, or maybe virtually human. In other words, I ain't perfect and never claim to be.

None of this would have mattered except for one thing: my friend's house was bugged. Bugged! Yes, such BS actually does go on in SL. A certain someone who also will remain nameless bugged my friend's place to spy on my friend. The bugger, seemingly intent on causing trouble (I don't really know the bugger's motivation), then passed this private conversation on to at least one person, the parcel owner in question. No idea where else it went, which is a bit disturbing. Anyway, the parcel owner took issue with what I said, which was only quoted back to me out of context. I politely refrained from reminding the parcel owner that the information came from a private conversation that had been bugged and then distributed, calmly absorbed the IM abuse coming my way, and apologized for any offence I had given, offering explanations where possible.

It was not enough for the parcel owner. I was banned, not only from this person's club but also from several stores that are also on the parcel. So not only can I no longer leave generous tips to the dancers at the club, as is my wont; I can't buy anything at those stores either. Now that is truly brilliant. It reminds me of a saying about cutting off one's nose to spite one's face.

I find that I am in good company on the banned list, however. Oh sure, a bunch of the banned folks are griefers. I can tell by the names. But several of my friends are on the list as well, and they are certainly not griefers. Fine, upstanding citizens of SL they are! And now I am among them. If at some point I get unbanned, well, I'll just have to live with the shame of that, unless I can manage to get myself re-banned. Meanwhile, I shall continue to tip generously and make purchases at places where I am welcome.

Ariadne's thread

2007-03-27T07:49:00.000-07:00

Patrice managed to get into Second Life last night. She should not have done so, but I'm glad she did. My darling is under stress. She is full of anxiety. I wished so much that we actually could have touched, that I could have held her in First Life. She needs to be held. But we made do with our only contact, through our avatars, that fine thread snaking through the labyrinth of the Internet and Second Life.

She showed up wearing a black kimono and some Japanese-style—but flaming red, as is her wont—hair, which is very complimentary. I could see a bit of purple tattoo on her upper chest. She never wears tattoos, but I love them. She had worn it for me. When I saw her, I just melted.

She wanted to go shopping. We haven't been out shopping in quite a while. She looked so beautiful, however, that I convinced her to head to my studio first. I haven't done any studio photography recently, and had not yet tried out the new studio with its curved wall. The session was a bit frustrating. I can animate a model with my Huddles EZ-Animator Plus, but it wasn't working right for me. I could see the animations only some of the time, even though Patrice could always see them. Actually, the animator was working fine, but my client was borked for some mysterious reason. Who can 'splain? I should have logged out and then in again, but I didn't think of it at the time. I still managed to get some nice shots, which I will post on my Flickr site.

The photo session chewed up the time we could have used to go shopping. I'll have to make sure that happens at the next opportunity. We went upstairs from the photo studio to my office and from there into the apartment behind it. Using my underpowered Sexgen rug on my home-made bed in my little wee apartment 500 metres over my grotty first land, we made the sweetest love. It felt like when we were new, when life was simpler, when we had little but each other. It was wonderful.

We could not just fade out on the bed, unfortunately. I had a late meeting with Cheri Norton, publisher of PixelPulse Magazine. More on that as things develop. So Patrice and I had to break our embrace until the next time, whenever that will be, maybe tonight, maybe later. Sometimes when there are things going wrong, when the thread seems to be stretched very thin, love becomes even more intense. We will make it through.

[Addendum: Yoiks! The date did not ring a bell. Must have been that brief vacation and anxiety over my counselling course (which I passed) getting me all disoriented. On this day, six months ago, Patrice and I became official Second Life partners—plighted our troth, as it were. How appropriate that we had such a simple, lovely evening. O happy six months!]

Steady as she goes

2007-03-25T21:49:00.000-07:00

This is just a brief entry upon my return from a few days' holiday in First Life. It was nice to get away for a bit, but nice to be home as well. One of the first things I noticed upon getting back to this computer is that after four days of driving, walking, touring, clothes buying, book buying, gourmet eating, and hanging out in brewpubs, typing is not so easy! Somehow the fingers aren't working quite right.

Happily, I saw Patrice briefly this evening. I alluded in the last entry to some changes. I will probably not be seeing much of her for a while. It has to do with her FL. She is in good health, so it's not that, but it is not my place to say more. She will still be getting online earlier in the day to take care of her terraforming work, and she will probably be posting about it. You might think this is weird, but rest assured that our relationship is in very good shape, after nearly six months, and you can confirm that with her if you know her. I love Patrice dearly, and I have no doubt that this reciprocated.

Still, things might be a bit strange and disorienting for me for a while. I might sign up for more shifts at Activ8. I do need to pry myself away from Second Life to do some work in my FL perennial garden. It's that time of year. I also have friends in SL who care about me and for whom I am ever grateful. I would like to spend time with them. And hopefully I will be writing for more than this blog soon. I'll post more on that if it happens.

And next time I post here, I will try to make sure it is more interesting than this entry!

First things first

2007-03-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, First Life asserts itself and pushes Second Life aside. That's as it should be. Much as I love my alternate existence, FL has to come first. After all, without FL, there is no SL.

So I'm a bit behind on this blog, which I try to update every couple of days. I haven't written that Patrice and I had a lovely time on Monday night dancing at Jade's Jazz Lounge, where of course I forgot to take pictures of us looking très elegantes in our beautiful gowns, tripping the light fantastic. I haven't written that I finished the combined office and studio and even put it up near 500 metres, above my flying neighbours on Bluenose.

And I haven't written about another First Life thing that might change my SL world, might turn it upside down. I'm not ready for that yet. I'm waiting to see how it actually plays out.

Meanwhile, this blog is going to lag a little again. I probably won't be able to post another entry until at least Sunday. And right now, I need to finish the final assignment for my counselling course and go to the penultimate class this evening to hand it in. I also have an interview coming up for a volunteer gig that I need in order to be admitted to the counselling certificate program in September.

So much FL! But I'm not done with SL. Not by a long shot. Ciao for now.

Squeeze play

2007-03-18T10:34:00.000-07:00

One hundred seventeen prims. That's how many prims—basic building units (primitives)—you get on 512m² of land. My original first land is all I own (Patrice and I have technical ownership of our beach land, but we really rent it from flopsie). I have considered buying more, something between 2,048m² and 4,096m². However, land is still pretty expensive, and I would have to pay monthly tier fees on any land that I owned after the first 512m².

I don't really need more land. I'm happy with Patrice at our beach house. I have my counselling office and my photo studio squeezed onto my first land, floating at two different heights in the sky. Anything more would be an indulgence. Now, there's nothing wrong with indulgence, but I think I'll stay cheap for now. It lets me waste money on clothes and give good tips.

So that means continuing to squeeze the most out of my ugly parcel. My office has only about 19 prims. My photo studio has even fewer. Yet when you start to put furniture out, even low prim furniture, it's not long before you're pushing your 117-prim limit.* On a parcel that size, there is barely room to turn around, in more ways than one. I can't even work on my Huddles EZ-Animator Plus at the office. So I decided to try to make an even lower-prim combined office and photo studio. When one person's ceiling is another person's floor, that's a couple of prims saved!

I hadn't been down to my "workshop" on the surface in quite a while. How things have changed! A lot of Bluenose, at least at my end, seems to have been cleared out, as you can (sort of) see in the photo above. I know there are quite a few buildings in the air, but it's odd to see how empty things look below. Next door, Seraph has removed his teahouse and has put the land up for sale. No, I don't want to buy it, because that spot on the high edge of the sim is not very nice. I wish I'd grabbed a parcel at least one row away from the sim edge, but at the time I had to move very quickly. If I'm going to buy land, it's going to be better land. Worst of all, the antique dealer in next-door Kootenay has built right up to the edge of that sim, right up against my "lot line" (second photo). The surface at the northern edge of Bluenose is no place to be.

For the new office-studio, I decided to try a cylindrical design, both to save prims and to make the building look a bit more futuristic. It's kind of odd having a little old-fashioned house flying in the air, but something that looks a bit like a space station seems to fit better. Round with all glass will cause difficulties for putting up artwork, but I'll deal with that somehow. Ultimately, I might find that I am more comfortable with corners, but I'm going to experiment with this and have fun while I do it. So if I'm in world and you can't find me, I might well be in the workshop, trying to make the pieces fit.

*A prim is a basic three-dimensional object: tetrahedron, cube, pyramid, sphere, cylinder, torus, and a few more, all of which can be manipulated in various ways (such as twisted). Even the simplest furniture takes a good three to five prims, and the more detailed something is, the more likely it is to be made of many prims. Textures—drawn or photographic images—help with the illusion of detail, but it's still hard to make anything nice with only a few prims. Even a crappy floor lamp I made has four: base (flattened cylinder), pole (skinny cylinder), bulb (light-emitting sphere), and shade (cone with its head trimmed off).

The Ides have it

2007-03-16T14:04:00.000-07:00

The Ides of March were a bummer for Julius Caesar, but they were berry berry good to me.

For starters, I had a client in the afternoon. The counselling thing has been slow lately. I even lowered my rate. So it was good to have a session.

Then later, I got the Velvet announcement in my email. As I read it, all about the Ides and Caesar, I thought it was going to be a toga party. I thought, cool, I don't have a toga, but I could use an excuse to buy one. Especially those sandals that lace up the leg. I have always wanted a pair of those.

But it turned out to be a "best in red" night, red being the colour of Caesar's and everyone else's blood (except Mr. Spock's). Actually, it was a sort of red/pink/toga night, with pink in there because DJ Vivianne is into pink, not red. So maybe red or faded red. At any rate, I might not have a toga, but I have tons of red. Since sex sells, I pulled out the Dolly Rock red dress unzipped down to there (a First Life impossibility, at least without some kind of tape) and with a skirt up to here, plus a full body tattoo coloured red (from L.A.M.E. Designs), my Coconut Ice party shoes with red laces, and the shamrock gold jewellery set that Patrice just gave me (goes as well with red as with green).

In the photo with me are two of my favourite people in Second Life, Emma Nowhere and Mischief Fairymeadow. We had a kind of symmetry going, since Emma was on the same dance ball as I was while Mischief, in the middle, was on a different one. Not sure who the guy in the background is.

I thought the contest winner would be the person whose avatar for the evening was a giant pitcher of red Kool-Aid. I mean, that was a really good gimmick. But maybe she got a bit too annoying with the five-metre-long red penis that she periodically attached to the avatar. It didn't really whack anyone while we danced, but it kind of felt like that. When the votes were counted, I was surprised and pleased and gratified to learn that the winner was yours truly.

And finally, if that wasn't enough, Patrice came online! She was pretty tired from her return trip, but not too tired, nudge nudge. It was so good to see her after eight days without her.

Oh, and the two gigs of memory seem to be doing a great job. The Velvet got pretty crowded last night, and my client software was behaving quite well. Sometimes, (second) life is good!

The name's Lalonde... Veronique Lalonde

2007-03-15T09:14:00.000-07:00

Hey, it rhymes with Bond!

On Tuesday, with Patrice still away, I took a shift as a dancer at Activ8. Yes, I signed up with Activ8 to work as a model. No, there hasn't been anything in the modelling area since that tattoo shoot. Yes, this is a bit disappointing. At this point, the Activ8 organization seems to have its focus on the club scene, first with the Activ8 Club (kind of a disco), and now with the addition of the Activ8 Pub. So, I try to sign up for some dancer or greeter shifts, to help where help is needed, to make money, and to try to keep myself well positioned for modelling gigs whenever they happen.

The theme on Tuesday was spies, so I came dressed in my 1960s black minidress (Carnaby Street) with '60s blond hair (ETD), shades (DTK), and a pair of long black gloves that Patrice gave me. OMG, I don't even look like myself! Must be a good disguise. New DJ Ern alternated between music I loved and music I hated, but that's bound to happen given my particular tastes in music. The club got pretty full, and I crashed at one point while trying to manoeuvre my camera to get a better look at the contest board. It wasn't a Second Life crash. It was my SL client getting completely hosed from too much swapping to disk. That's when happens when there is a ton of visual information and your computer has only (only!) 512 MB of memory (the SL web site still says 256 MB works as a minimum, which is a bit of a joke).

I had fun though. 3corner dropped by for a while at the beginning of my shift. Later, first Tatsuko and then Govindira came to keep me company. Host Ana was in an almost perfect disguise—surrounded by an invisible prim! Her name was still floating above her head, though. There were a few men in tuxes, but I think there should have been more, and definitely more femmes fatales. Let's get with the program, people!

By the way, the photo illustrates when happens when you forget that you've left "include interface" on. I don't usually take pictures with all that stuff in the frame, except for a special reason. Oh, and about that memory. This machine is now turbo-charged with 2 GB of RAM, the maximum that the motherboard will hold. Same old recommended but not stellar ATI graphics card, same DSL, but at least I should be able to handle full clubs and visual overload better. We shall see next time I'm at the club.

Come on by the Activ8 Club, and if I'm working, look for the Canadian flag tip jar up by the DJ booth. Consider it the Veronique Lalonde shopping fund, through which I plow money back into the SL economy. It's all good!

[Your ad here]

2007-03-13T08:35:00.000-07:00

Is this not a totally cool thing? Just like in First Life, the Second Life hockey arena has ads along the boards. So Patrice made up a nice professional ad and bought space.

The SL Hockey League blog doesn't get updated very often, but I checked the standings at the rink. Looks like the Whales are still tied for first place with the Moose, both clubs at 7 wins and 3 losses. I'm sure Patrice is dying to get back on the ice!

And hey, I learned how to capture a SLurl, so here's one for a landing point just outside the rink. So check out a game some time, but don't forget to remove all your prims, animations, and scripted devices first!

Tee time

2007-03-11T14:09:00.000-07:00

So I did go play some golf with Looky yesterday, and she was right—it is beaucoup fun! I got online later in the afternoon than I expected, with less time to spend. By the time I'd read all the preliminary material and done a bit of practice on the driving range, we had time for only a couple of holes. But with Looky's help (I'm sure I would have learned much more slowly without it), it was enough to show me the basics of how SL golf (or floG, as the HUD says) is done and to know that I want to block out time for more.

The simulation is very good. Indeed, it's a lot like golf in First Life. Smacking a long drive straight down the fairway takes some practice, but it's not too hard, even with the breeze influencing the direction of flight. But the closer you get to the pin, the more finesse is required. I had the benefit of Looky advising me on club choice, but when you're down to a pitching wedge or a putter, it's hard to figure out what percentage of force you should use. And that's exactly right, as anyone who has been on a putting green knows. On the first hole, I actually made the green in two, but then I three-putted. I think it took me three strokes to hit the second green, but again, two putts. Still, I can't feel too bad about two bogies on my first two holes ever. At least they weren't double bogies.

Second Life golf is like FL golf in other ways as well. It's not cheap, although I got a lot of enjoyment out of what I paid. I think you save money by joining the club. As well, it's not fast. It's quite leisurely, which is how golf should be. Unfortunately, that means you should plan on a fair amount of online time, not always easy for me to do. I also find it interesting that the scorecard does not work automatically. So there's one more way in which this is like FL golf—you can cheat.

I'm looking forward to when we can get a foursome together. Patrice really should take this up. It's practically traditional for hockey players to play golf in the off season!

So why, you may ask, did I not take any pictures? Well, think lag. They are really serious about lag. That means I divested myself of every prim that was attached to me—not just skirt, shoes, jewellery, and various devices. We're talking prim hair as well! So I was not about to illustrate this blog with a shot of Looky with her texture hair and me, since I loathe texture hair, completely bald. You'll just have to imagine.

[Addendum: OK, Looky insisted that she be allowed to illustrate this entry. She was an excellent golf instructor, so who am I to deny her? Notice that there is no bald Veronique in the shot, thankfully! I think this picture is Looky watching the trajectory of one of my awesome beginner's luck drives.]

Filling the void

2007-03-09T20:48:00.000-08:00

I tend not to spend much time at home when Patrice is away. It's not that it's such a big house. It's quite cozy. And there's the veranda, the beach, the diving board, and the lovely teahouse. But I feel her absence.

So I spend more time at my office. It's about the same size, but I guess because I'm used to being there alone, or with a client, it feels more normal and less lonely to me. When I'm there, I still miss Patrice, but a skyhouse, especially with a loft, is a good place for gazing out at nothing (except some too-close neighbours) and thinking.

It is nice to have time to catch up with friends. When I left work last night, I met up with Emma at the Velvet. Emma is a fairly new friend who was an acquaintance for a long time (from all the way back in the Wet Kitty days). Now we are getting to know each other better. I was also in IM with my friend Envy, whom I don't see often enough but who loves to tease me by sending sexy pictures of herself. Today, I IMed an old friend named 3corner and got him to drop by my studio so he could finally have a picture to put in his profile. He returned the favour by taking me to see his friend Angela's "fire jewellery," simple pieces that glow rather than bling (in the photo, I'm wearing a choker I bought there).

My beloved Second Life sister tree has been busy with Raul and their new home, but she is always willing to give me time. I'm hoping to go golfing with Looky on Saturday, since her sweetie will be busy in First Life. Looky tells me SL golf is way more fun than golfing in FL—we shall see! I haven't seen Tatsuko in a while, but she's been busy with a new love, and it always makes me happy when she is happy. Tethys (another beautiful name for a beautiful girl) has also been rather preoccupied, but again, that's a good thing.

I have great neighbours as well. Mischief leases the second house on our land. A while ago, she gave me a terrific present—a drawing she made of me as Lucy Van Pelt (from the Peanuts cartoon) in her psychiatrist booth being jawed at endlessly by a client. In the other direction live Bjerkel and Karin, whose wedding I wrote about several weeks back. Illya, who's kind of my boss right now at Activ8 but still a friend, has a skybox high above the land nearby, and of course flopsie surveys all from her castle on top of the mountain. And I meet and chat with so many other people at the Velvet across the island—Push, Lolo, Barely, too many to list.

Speaking of a psychiatrist booth, Cala gave me a 3-D booth she made a while back. I'm serious about my counselling work so I haven't set it up, but it's very funny. You can even click on the little sign to make is say that the doctor is in or out.

I can't forget Kiera, who first caught my attention with a wicked flirt at the Wet Kitty. Or Davika, one of my oldest friends (a male, despite the name—OMG, he took my SL maidenhead!), who has recently moved into a former dungeon. I need to see what's up with that! Or Athena, whose birthday party I attended recently. Or Anwen and Merik, two wonderful and generous women with whom Patrice and I sometimes go dancing. Or ComradeX, who told me how DJing is done. Or Bailey and Sorcha, my fellow bloggers. Or Charles and Cahide, my former bosses who are wonderful and charming people. Or Cell, another DJ and musician, who turned me on to Kin hair, and with whom I must catch up soon. Or our old neighbour Bella. Or Leticia, with whom I have deep conversations. Or Wendy, who invites me to cool parties. And I'm sure I've missed someone. I beg your forgiveness in advance!

Even though I am missing my darling, I am still a fortunate little avatar in Second Life.

Double celebration

2007-03-08T07:44:00.000-08:00

Today is International Women's Day. It is also six months to the day since I met Patrice. How's that for a double celebration? Today, I will honour all women and my special Second Life woman. I think I will wear my sari today, because while International Women's Day is important all over the world, it's especially important in places where women have not yet achieved full human rights (not to single out India in particular, but the sari is what I happen to have at this point).

(Indeed, I am wearing my sari in this picture, from anti-Oscar night at the Velvet, in honour of Deepa Mehta, director of the superb Oscar-nominated film Water. Patrice, looking fabulously chic in her bobbed hair and slinky gown, won the contest that night.)

Unlike First Life, women seem to dominate Second Life. While many SL men are playing a game, many SL women are running things: real estate concerns, fashion houses, clubs, stores, a great many of the things that make money in SL. Patrice has become fairly prominent in terraforming (land shaping), and the other terraformers she knows are women. I know I tend to run in somewhat testosterone-challenged circles, but I do see this trend everywhere I go in world. A little has been written about this distinctly SL phenomenon, but maybe it deserves to be looked into further.

How many of the SL women running things are biologically female is left to the imagination of the reader, but you know they aren't all men. And on the day to celebrate the achievements of women and to remember the continuing struggle for equality, it's important to keep in mind that not all women are feminists, and not all feminists are women.

Tool making

2007-03-06T07:03:00.000-08:00

Earlier in my Second Life, I started to become familiar with the Linden Scripting Language (LSL). In First Life, I am a software developer, so learning a new programming language is not a big deal. I didn't get very far at the time, though. The list of functions is right there on the LSL Wiki, and the language syntax is pretty much like C++ or Java, but the best way to learn how to apply such knowledge is by having specific tasks to accomplish. Since I didn't have that, I didn't get much past experimenting with individual functions.

As well, I must admit, since it's so much like my FL work, I kind of lost enthusiasm for yet more programming.

A short while ago, however, I noticed Patrice's notecard dispenser, which she has outside her terraforming office. Anyone who uses the posted landmark and drops by the office can click on the notecard dispenser and get information on the services Patrice offers. I have noticed that people also teleport to my office when I'm not there. I figured it was long past due to give them something more than a stained glass window to look at. I was missing potential business opportunities.

You can buy notecard dispensers, but I figured it couldn't be a very complicated thing to program. Turns out it's dead simple. I even added a feature. When someone touches the ball, not only does the person receive a notecard, but I receive a notice of who took the notecard. Cool and useful. Don't worry, I won't be tracking anyone down to badger them about setting up an appointment! For informational purposes only. I made my alt useful as well, as a tester. Sometimes a script will work for the owner but not for others, so alt-boy verified that he could receive notecards as well.

The other night, I was working at the Activ8 club as a dancer for the evening (yeah, I signed on to model, but there hasn't been any modelling work since the tattoo shoot). Not everything is yet set up at the club, and there are no tip jars for hosts and dancers. Yaeh pulled out her own tip jar. I didn't have one. Whine whine. Illya, sweetheart that she is, gave me one. This shamed me into realizing that I could probably build my own quite easily.

A tip jar isn't quite as simple as a notecard dispenser, but it's not much more difficult. It requires a couple more functions, and again I added some features. If you left click on (touch) the jar, it provides instructions on how to make a payment. Help for newbies, should any of them actually have any money to tip. And if anyone sits on the jar, it boots them off. Can't have someone obscuring my tip jar! I also put in a more effusive thank-you message for particularly large tips. Again, alt-boy did the testing.

My latest project was spurred by reading about Chey's trouble with intruders. It's a script that finds all agents within 96 metres (maximum distance) and asks whether the agent should be ejected from the land. It's designed to give the land owner more time to ban the griefer. I don't know if it's faster than going straight to banning, but I think it probably is. This project is still in development.

These are all tiny projects. It's more difficult to design and implement larger projects, and I haven't figured out one to work on yet. However, this is a start, and I've finally done something more useful than determine the height of an avatar.

I might get distracted from further scripting by something I want to use the tip jar for—DJing. My friend ComradeX showed me the ropes, so now I need to rip a bunch of music onto my computer, where it does not currently live. Then maybe someone will let Véronique's Vault come to life. If that happens, don't expect any between-song patter. :)

Rebel, Rebel

2007-03-04T09:18:00.000-08:00

You've got your mother in a whirl
She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl

I recently received my copy of Second Life: The Official Guide. I'm sure I'm going to find much that is of interest in there. I've been in world only since the end of July 2006, and there is still a great deal I do not know. I must say, however, that I am disappointed with the simplistic treatment given to the issue of gender.

As you might expect, in my role as a counsellor, I run into people who have gender issues. It's one reason people come to talk to me. And one thing I know from having spoken to people and from having done my homework in this area is that it's not as simple as either female or male. So to say flat out that those whose avatars are of the opposite sex as their First Life selves have to come out to their friends, and that's that, seems to me to betray a lack of understanding of the issue.

The term transgender is very broad and encompasses several different gender-identity phenomena, so without further specification, it's not terribly useful. But it does get us started with the notion that not all people see themselves as having the gender that is assumed to go along with their biological sex. A biological male might see himself as female, or both male and female, or neither, or some combination of the two, and you might never know it by looking at him. Same for a biological female. Transsexual is a subset of transgender; not everyone whose gender identification is outside the norm undergoes sex-reassignment surgery (SRS).

After films like Boys Don't Cry, you'd think that Second Life would be part of the solution, not part of the problem.

Now, no one likes to be deceived, and most people do not like being deceptive. I'm sure that among those who participate in SL using an avatar that does not correspond to their biological sex, there are some who do it to deceive and some who do it as a lark. But among those who choose an avatar of the opposite sex, there are some, perhaps even many, who do so very purposefully for one reason: because they feel themselves to be that sex, wholly or partially, yet for various reasons cannot live their First Lives as a person of that sex.

What if a man in FL goes through the full change, complete with SRS, and the result is good enough that she has no trouble passing? Is she forever obligated to tell sex partners and other intimates that she was once a biological male? Does it mean that she is not a "real" woman because she grew up biologically male? In SL, if someone has the right personality and commitment, "passing" physically is no problem (the beauty of the pixelated sex change). Is a person who is committed to living as that avatar and successfully "passes" still not a real woman or man?

There are openly transgendered people in SL. If they want to be treated as transgendered, that's not a problem. But if they want to be treated as the gender they visualize for themselves, forget it. A female avatar who comes out is no longer female but transgendered. A male avatar who comes out is no longer male but transgendered. Complete acceptance as a genuine male or female by one's friends? Well, maybe, and maybe not. To the SL world at large, not a chance.

So there's the choice. They can be honest and despised or treated like freaks, just as in First Life. They can come out to their friends and, in all likelihood, no longer be treated fully as the gender they see themselves as, except perhaps by an enlightened few. That is the price of honesty. They might as well give up the fantasy and stay in FL. Sadly, in order to live the cross-gender life they can't live in FL, they have to keep a lot to themselves and perhaps even deceive their friends (if that's how they see it). That is the price of living fully as a person of the opposite sex. They have to pass.

It's not a happy choice. It's not an easy choice. And it's a lot more complicated than the SL book makes it out to be.

Game on!

2007-03-01T07:35:00.000-08:00

You've heard of golf widows, right? Well, I am a hockey widow!

As I mentioned a couple of posts ago, Patrice is playing for the Whales in the Second Life Hockey League. There are four teams competing for the SL equivalent of the Stanley Cup. I was kidding about the hockey widow part. All of her practices and many of her games are at times when I'm not online. When my online time and a scheduled game coincide, I love to go watch.

She practises hard to get better. It's not an easy game to play, especially if you're on defence. The animation does not allow skating backwards—yet. It's often difficult to see the puck, even when you're on the ice. It's difficult to check someone off the puck, and it seems to be all too easy for a puck carrier to waltz in and shoot before the defence has even had a chance to react. I'm beginning to realize that an accurate shot is one of the most important offensive skills to have.

If it's hard sometimes for players to see the puck, it's even more difficult for spectators. Sometime what I'll do is use the camera controls to zoom in on one of the players and let him or her drag my view around the ice. If you zoom in on a hot forward, you are likely to find that elusive puck on her or his stick!

For the players especially, there is often lag to contend with. Anyone who comes to a game, please remove anything scripted! That includes jewellery (often), animation overrides, and many other toys. They probably need a script bouncer like many live concerts have. I tend to fly in to the rink itself from the landing point. I detest the default female walk.

The rink is located at Jericho Hill. It's easy to find a landmark if you look up SL Hockey League. Sorry, I still haven't learned how to post a SLurl!

Talkies

2007-02-28T07:39:00.000-08:00

It was inevitable. The silent film era was never destined to last forever. It was only a matter of time before someone invented synchronized sound recording and made it practical. For many silent film stars, it was a career ender. For others, and for many who had never worked in silents, it was a new opportunity. Movies would never be silent again.

The implications were parodied to great effect in the movie Singin' in the Rain. Gene Kelly's sexy silent-screen co-star turns out to have a horrible, squeaky voice. That cute little Debbie Reynolds has to stand behind a curtain to dub in a voice that people can stand to listen to.

So now Linden Lab is testing the integration of voice with Second Life. It was already happening in various ways, such as through the use of Skype. But now we're faced with the prospect of typed chat being replaced, or maybe complemented, by built-in voice communication.

I was fourth in with a comment on this announcement in the official Linden blog (I've since posted several more). The divisions that already exist in SL are apparent in the comments that follow. Those divisions can get pretty nasty, and misunderstanding is rampant.

For some, SL is an extension of First Life. Some of these people are in business. Some are in education. Some are just people who either have no imagination or can't be bothered to use it. Some comments even express hatred or disdain for those who do use their imaginations, who dare to be not "real," who dare to create their own world.

[Addendum: as Mordecai angrily but correctly points out, not all FL extenders fit into these categories. I know this is so. I was not intending this list to be comprehensive, and I was mainly reacting to the disdain and ridicule I was reading in the official blog.]

For others, SL is a way to live a life that they can't live in FL. It's a way to learn about themselves and others, a way to see just how far imagination can take them. It's a way to be free of a FL that might be fine but limiting or might even be intolerable.

I have a First Life already. It's a good life, for the most part, but it is what it is. Why would I want more of the same?

I'm thinking that the "utopia" of Second Life was never unified anyway. If there is any utopia, it's because there is room enough for an extreme diversity to exist without too much confrontation. Voice vs. typing will simply be another thing that divides people, which is kind of too bad but what can you do. Hopefully there will continue to be enough typers so that we will not become marginalized. Hopefully, not too many friendships will be broken.

See you in chat. Imagine that! You can if you try.

Paradise not-yet-lost

2007-02-25T12:48:00.000-08:00

OK, to start with, Blogging Rule #1: Post frequently. But see Rule #2.

Blogging Rule #2: Have something to say. But don't forget Rule #1. Heh heh.

I haven't managed to get my dear sister tree into my photo studio (for photos only, I sweahtagawd!). She's too busy working on her new beach house with her boyfriend Raul. So instead, I shall feature her garden, which might not be long for this world.

tree got her first land before I did, in a sim called Nabi. In time, she also bought 2,048m² more land in the sim. There, surrounded by for sale signs and tons of other typically ugly first land stuff, she built a garden, a sort of urban oasis in the midst of capitalism run amok.

I think she did most of the building, including the waterfall. She learned a lot about building when she first jumped to the mainland (and I have learned from her). She made high walls, like an English garden, so you wouldn't have to look at what's outside. And she put in all the relaxing pose balls and things like the hammock. There's an apple tree that drops blossoms everywhere. And there are butterflies fluttering by as well.

On two walls, you can also see paintings by tree and by some friends. I bought one to hang in my counselling office. They are for sale to anyone who comes by.

And anyone can come by. The park is simply there for weary wanderers. That's the kind of generous person tree is. She used to joke that she got more traffic than a nearby club. I can believe it! The garden is a very relaxing place just to see and think or to sit and talk. The first time Sorcha and I had a real chance to talk, that's where I took her.

Sadly, the land is for sale. tree and Raul have their own land to deal with. So you might want to drop by while you can, and you'll have to ignore one thing—an ugly for sale sign! (It's just to the right of the frame in the photo above.) If I can figure out how to do it, I'll post a SLurl here.