Face to face…

So……it’s been a while

Yes, it has

Where have you been? No randomness?

Well, I’ve not always been on as much as I used to be, been tired, that other life we have has been making its demands – you know how it goes….

But the photos…?

Hmmmm… well, I’ve been treading the same paths, cruising the same haunts. Second life has some fabulous places, some great builds – I just haven’t been visiting any. I need to get off my fat pixels and explore a bit again.

And the writing…?

Yeah well, THAT is very much as the mood takes me. This was originally a photoblog in any case, finding I actually wanted to WRITE anything surprised the hell out of me (and when I did, I submitted to Moonletters)

So what are you going to do about it?

I think I need to pick up the reins again, get out and about a bit more, start reporting back….

Good! Better get on with it then!

Lumiya…

Like many on here I get the addict’s twitch now and again and want to be inworld even when away from my laptop. This effectively means a chat client. I had given mobile grid client a try on my android a good while back but ditched it after the free trial – a monthly fee was charged – inworld, payable in Lindens with some further complexities after that (can you tell that I’d glazed over?). It offered IM chat and that was it – I didn’t like the charging policy and resigned myself to the natural discipline of being a laptop-only user.

I don’t know what prompted me to look again but Lumiya had come along. A one-off fee of £1.90 got me rolling on both my phone and tablet. It was a nice little chat client, easy to use, nice screens.

A few days ago I noticed that a 3D button had appeared at the top of the screen so, being a born button-pusher, I pushed it and, lo and behold, I was there, inworld, in my last location. OK, my avatar is a grey silhouette but…….I can move, I can tp, I can interact with objects (sit; deal with menu-driven scripted objects although I haven’t found a way to click on a dance poseball).

I can look at profiles, pay money, and use the mini-map. What really surprised me was that the surroundings rezzed – yes slowly (this is not for sim-hoppers or action types) but given time, very nicely. Given how slowly things rezzed on my old laptop I think this compares well and I’m sure there are some old-hand residents who could tell tales of back-in-the-day rendering that was not a whole lot better.

It seems pretty stable, certainly as stable as the device it’s being used on – sure it froze my tablet – but so does facebook. It was fine on my phone.

I’m still finding things that Lumiya lets me do – it’s really impressing me. It’s NOT a viable alternative to a laptop or pc but gets you there when otherwise you couldn’t be.

This is a picture of how a room renders. It’s on my tablet – well, I was using my phone to take it!

Wow

I build a bit, I’ve posted my proud offerings on here. They are….simple..I don’t claim to be good and do it for fun.

Every so often I see something that I just keep looking at in admiration. Here is something I saw tonight at The Ace Cafe.

R/L S/L crossover…..

I read once about a celebrity, I can’t remember who, who said that she didn’t like green olives but, although she was getting on in years, every time she was offered one at a party would try one in case her tastes had changed.

That tale resonated with me and with the me I want to be. There are a few things that I will state a clear position on but I believe in general that to close your mind is to stagnate and die.

In my R/L (or perhaps I should just say, my other life) I have discovered football (if you are reading this in the US, I mean soccer – the one with the round ball). I’m no chicken as we say here and one of the things on my to-do list was to go to a match.

To be honest, the game on TV held little interest unless it had the cachet of a final or the drama of an international but I love live music and am well aware of the indescribable difference between an exhilarating gig and the skilful studio album that’s being promoted so, was open to the experience.

Well, it was great and you know what they say, nothing worse than a convert!

So what has this got to do with S/L?

Well, I’ve got one of those free tv’s in my inventory that you can use for rolling slideshows or can link to a website. I now can sit on my S/L sofa and watch the match by the magic of live streaming from the internet.

A Trip to London…

I logged on and no-one was online.

The current version of Firestorm (the hokey-cokey 5000 I think) has a pop-out icon on the left of the screen for interesting landmark suggestions and I have looked at a few in the last week or so and some are…interesting.

I was enticed by the lure of the Millennium Wheel, never having been bothered to face queuing for the real thing so I teleported to London.

Sometimes in Second Life it can be best to avoid places you know well because the inaccuracies can be much more apparent than the bits that are right, but this is pretty good (although, arranging a City’s worth of landmarks on a sim inevitably means some strange neighbours).

City hall is an iconic building designed by Norman Foster and opened 10 years ago, it currently houses Boris and his team and I stepped in wondering if he was at home. However, inside is a dance floor.

As a London voter with a polling card somewhere for the upcoming elections, I allowed a fleeting moment about the political message that this might convey, Nero’s fiddle maybe? I decided to move on.

Further on I saw a good replica of the Royal Albert Hall, albeit with BBC Broadcasting House immediately behind it! Both looked good, further on was a part of the Tower of London. The shells are very good, the outside views are very well textured and proportioned but although you can enter the buildings, the outside is really all there is to it, similarly the wheel that had lured me there is static with no seating in the capsules.

It’s worth a visit, care has been taken with detail at street level with the right kind of signage for example, the feel is right, just don’t go into the Tower expecting to see the Crown Jewels!

 

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PS If any of this looks a little different, I apologise.

Following a virus I have done a complete strip-down and re-install – I haven’t got everything installed yet

TUUUUNE!!!!…

My media edges have been blurring lately and it has made me wonder what senility will look like for the S/L generation.

I met my point of “how many prims is that I wonder?” and “I already have that dress (no, Lace does)” quite a while back. The lack of a teleport has been lamented many times both when sitting in heavy traffic and also more locally back when I injured my knee.

It’s not helped by my fondness for sci-fi, at the moment I especially like Charles Stross who further muddies the water by writing not in the far fantastic future but in the grimy near future where the current levels of technology are still evident in his places just as those of us with a digital tv are made aware that those who still use earlier technology will suffer great torment after April.

One of the developments he incorporates is like a floating profile précis. How nice to be able to click a few reminders about people to avoid those foot-in-mouth moments of forgetting who has undergone a painful break-up, bought a new house (insert social gaffe of choice here).

My most recent mix-up is to touch-screen or not – you can look pretty daft jabbing away  a non-responsive non-touch screen I can assure you.

So, in our dotage, I suspect standing in the garden in our underwear and collecting string may be the least of out worries. We may be found in the Town square squatting on a manhole cover trying to teleport, demanding that the annoying neighbour be muted and instead of singing the songs of our youth, shouting out our favourite gesture when the muzak in Tesco triggers a memory.

On Being Quiet…

If you ever look in here at all you’ll have noticed the tumbleweed blowing down the main street a lot lately. I’ve been wondering why that is myself.
I have not suddenly turned into a quiet demure soul devoid of opinions (although I daresay some who know me might have that on their wishlist) but somehow such things are not reaching here. One overwhelming reason for this is how tired I’ve been . Yes, we all are I know and I do not seek to diminish the tiredness of another, just to explain
1 I do all my S/L related activity in the evenings, sometimes very late and
2 There have been “events” at work, specifically a very big move that is still draining me.
But I’ve found another thing – the times at which I feel blogging ideas forming in my head are the most inconvenient (while driving being a recurrent one) and not being a skilled writer I don’t know any tricks to “fix” them or make them return.
Also, I suspect some changes within me. Although I’d share more 1:1 I will say that this has been a turbulent year and is not over yet. I’ve felt events leaving a mark on me and have noticed myself thinking of moving in new directions are a result – nothing earth-moving, just a few new things to me. Whether this will result in more or less to say here, who knows!

Linden Homes…

Linden are doing a customer satisfaction survey. I included this in my free text reply.

An Evening at an Exhibition….

Last night convinced of my (hitherto) unspoken New Year’s resolution on here which is to get out more and see more new things.

I had seen pictures from the Petrovsky installation on a friend’s blog and it was on my list of good intentions. Well, I got there and it’s fascinating!

I stood and stared as things whizzed and grew and rebuilt and deconstructed themselves around me.

I became curious abut “how” so thought I’d look at transparency, no more clues – but another facinating perspective!

I cammed around and, while I was in one particular spot one started growing right in front of me.

Oh, I should mention, there is a “hat” that visitors are invited to pick up – I realised while I was focusing on the artwork that my hat had an eye in the centre, I noticed it when it blinked at me!

Petrovsky flux at the Spencer Art Museum

 

Theatre in the Round……

I haven’t been to Piedmont for a long while, the timezone differences had really begun to bite sadly but I had intended to get there for the Chinese New Year OOC dance last night but sadly at 10pm I i was just closing down the job I’d been engrossed in for work.

I saw Perryn was still online and thought it just might be extending with a few stragglers so while I rummaged for an outfit I IM’d him “No it’s finished, but are you coming to the play?”

I knew he was involved with a theatre group in S/L – The Jewel Theatre – but had never been to a performance.

The next bit was complicated. I was already late, S/L was only running on one hamster treadmill I think making everything laggy and slow and I had silly issues on the way meaning that I was tp’d in during the interval.

Now, what’s your image of a play in S/L? Rows of people? Static stage?

The whole set-up was a big wow factor! We were inside a dome, the sky above us was controlled and the panorama around us too, placing us inside the production.

 

We were on a raised semi-circular platform that was elevated above the stage. As it was a Gorean set-up (although I’ll stick my neck out here and say that I’m sure non-R/Pers would be more than welcome) there were seats for the Free with cushions at their feet for slaves.

The play, The Miser, is a Gorean re-telling of a Christmas Carol with The Ubar in the role of Scrooge and a She-Urt leading him to his enlightenment.

When the final act began the sky lit up, the panorama behind us changed and the set was reached by the ground scrolling beneath us. The whole play took place in local IM so no one was excluded.

The script was tight, the delivery crisp and the re-imagining of the story was very creative. Whoever was on props and scenery did a fantastic job with things rezzing promptly and all the S/L gremlins safely caged for the night. The company hit that “well-oiled machine” spot making it look effortless and professional.

I’m always late to catch onto things and this was performance 4 of a 5 session run.

Do try and catch the final performance tonight if you can.

Sunday, January 22th 2012 at 12pm SLT Samandiriel

The Jewel Theatre Samandiriel (225, 129, 27)