Ephemeral Beauty and an Enemy of Decorum

Even when bushwhacking goes well, it's sad. I know you've heard this before, and this time I'm going to invite all of you to visit LINC ISLAND before its owners can't pay the rent. OK, I'm never one to avoid some good snark, but seriously the build is gorgeous. This picture of a kinetic coral sculpture does not do it justice. You have to be there to see the golden, borwn strings of cells crawl slowly and jiggle less than slowly.

And here is a nautilus sun dial. I like the color combination which is not too garish. I've seen too many nautilus shells badly done. This is NOT one of them. It also revolves slowly, like a....

Of course the best part of LINC Island is the underwater gallery. My avie has a swimmer, so Iyoba and I see it a bit differently, but this orange sea anemone was one cut above what is usually sold in bulk by sea life merchants. Maybe it was where Carima Hoysan, the owner, put it, but it is very beautiful.

And yes, there is art below the sea as well as a spiral tower and a very Steam Punk submarine. This poster was right next to a dance floor that reminded both Iyoba and me that not every avie has a swimmer hud.

Eventually though, every avie has to climb out of the water, and in this fanciful tower above the sea was a fireplace. My avie was of course cold and wanted to warm herself in front of a roaring blaze. Oh well...she didn't get the chance. Somebody let the fire go out!

I guess this is an apt metaphor. LINC Island costs its owner(s) $300 a month and did not seem to have any rentals or even the usual mall or club with a tip jar. Maybe grant money finances it. Maybe it's dedication and disposible income. This means that a donor fallen on hard times or medical bills or a broken oil burner can easily make this sim history. If you can't pay your rent in Second Life, you're gone! Please see LINC Island while you can.

Of course after seeing all this art Iyoba and I both had the sandbox itch. Also I had promised Iyoba some new blond hair, and we had found that the short version of a dress I made for her last winter was missing. We headed to our favorite sandbox, the one with the big sign out front. Only, Iyoba forgot to change her bathing suit. She wanted to keep it on to better fit the short skirt we were going to make. No, it wasn't too short, but there she was, scantily clad! Please click the thumbnail to get a better look at the sign.

We got the skirt shortened in record time. Here is Iyoba still somewhat scantily clad as I shortened her skirt. The irony is that the top part of this dress is long sleeved, but somehow it was just too wintery, and Iyoba wanted to be a blonde.

And Iyoba got her wish. This is her new set of blonde locks. I wanted to make a kind of touseled and tribal looking design. Iyoba and I signed up to be part of a tribe of blood thirsty canibals, Maya and Taino repelling the European invasion. This was the first role play that ever spoke to me, and it screamed. I know Maya were not blonde, but a few Cuna were. In fact, some were albino. Besides, don't you think they had hair dye along with the war paint? Seriously, I need to do some clothing research, if I ever find the time. And yes, the decorum police must be in the doughnut shop. I loathe doughnuts in real life, but Iyoba eats anything. After we get done with those pesky white explorers/conquerors, the decorum police are next...if we can find them.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 31, 2013

Jumping in with Both Feet

Why is Iyoba, my favorite avie, jumping for joy? It's not because we found our newest baby zwicky in our house, and she had a ruff that resembled her mother's for a change.

And it's not because I was fast enough with my camera that I was able to catch two zwickies, Nimrod (lavender ruff and golden orange face) and Bishara (all blue), not only giving Iyoba a well-deserved kiss while also forming a star.

It is because Iyoba and I as we circle around Central Texas College in search of new academic exhibits for the Explore SL Spreadsheet jumped in with two feet at TeesLife. What is so special about TeesLife? Well, it is the exact opposite of WSWHE BOCES or perhaps what WSWHE BOCES should have been. Both sims are purportedly set up to teach adults, and have a real world focus. Both sims include some large buildings, but there the similarities end.

Click this thumbnail image to see a large view of a typical classroom. While there is an outdoor lecture hall on the beach, most classrooms on TeesLife are comfortable office spaces or environments for role play or reenactment. Also, and most important of all, this sim is open to the public. This is true, even though it is home to a lot of unfinished projects.

The court room though was finished. Iyoba had to pass through a metal detector to get inside. Court was upstairs, and the judge's bench was huge! Fortunately, the chair was up on a platform. Iyoba had to sneak around the judge's bench to find it. She wondered how she would maintain order in this cavernous court room, especially since she does not have a gavel in her inventory. She does not think she has enough presence to cry out "Order in the court!" when the room is full of rowdy and bored spectators.

The midwifery clinic is unfortunately, not finished, but that hasn't stopped builders from including several wonderful safe sex posters on the office walls. In Great Britain, they have a much less delicate sense of humor around sex. You'd never see a poster like this in a medical office in the United States. I felt sad that I could not include the midwifery clinic on the spread sheet, but it was simply no where near ready.

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The other reason Iyoba is jumping for joy is that we are actually getting somewhere on our Never Ending Project. We have a model of our Ovi-Ring Platform tucked away in a corner of the LEA5 sim, and it gets to stay there until Friday. I hope I remember to collect it. Here is Iyoba posing inside our prototype where it is on exhibit to the whole Second Life world. Click the thumbnail for a full size image.

And here is another thumbnail (click it!) image of Ovi-Ring prototypes wearing various textures. So far I have learned that mosaics wtih small tiles are the way to go. I'm not sure which ones I like. I like the green and red better than the teal and brown. Colors can be fairly bright, the variations and small tiles somehow mute them. This gives me a lot of choice as a designer. I think I want a deep red ring or a mosaic with some red notes in it. I also want th e Ovi-Ring to include a note card giver with cards that feature some of the great places Iyoba and I have discovered on our blog. In addition, we are working on finding a slide presenter we like. I want a free one that users can operate. There may even be a place for an Arbor Vista Sixteen Vendor on the prototype. Yes, this is one big project, and there is a reason it is never finished!

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni who makes it all happen -- January 29, 2013

The Start of the Never Ending Project

It's no secret. I have a lot of never ending projects, but sometimes a never ending project is a good thing. Iyoba has a closet that would make Imelda Marcos turn in her grave with envy. That's not saying much, but inventories are unlimited in Second Life and space is not. Meanwhile, we have been bushwhacking and we've watched large portions of the the Explore SL Spread Sheet turn grey, and we know there is more to come. Still we visit academic builds and after a while the message hit us over the head with a clue-by-four: Most academic builds are prim-hogs and just too big! Back before 2011, this was not a problem, but with the demise of the academic discount came the demise of cheap academic land. Suddenly institutions of higher learning and nonprofits are as land poor as your typical avie who rents estate land and tries to develop mainland.

Still those designing academic sims or paying others to do it (Bad idea!) have not yet caught up with economic reality. This is a freshly built, and not quite finished structure on Edu-Mississippi. This is not the sim's real name. Because the sim is currently an accidental sandbox, I do not want to put a link to it or use its real name. I hope you understand. Wilson Hall, the building in the image, has two floors, big stair wells, and a basement with rooms in it. It's a ground level basement because stairs go up to the main entrance on the outside. If this building were full to capacity, it would lag the sim or strain its capacity, but Second Life is not real life.

This is an unnamed hall on Jacks SDState. This is actually a fairly productive academic sim with two exhibits that made the Explore SL Spreadsheet. It is huge. It is modern. I had trouble finding the doors though the stripe down the middle is actually a fairly, clever motif. Maybe a "welcome" or "Enter Here" on the stripe would straighten things out, or God forbid, a handle.

This is the same building from the top. The stair wells are monumental in proportion. The floors are pretty pale grained wood. The bricks have nearly black mortar indicating they are probably an original texture. Only about half the rooms are furnished. When they are furnished, the chairs have stripes on them, a single stripe down the middle like the door. In real life all of this would be quite elegant. In Second Life this is sad, empty, and expensive. It is also unsustatinable.

So here you have the problem. I see it day in and day out. I see it on productive educational sims. I see it on sims that are forgoteen and busy wasiting tax payer money. I see it every where, but a problem without a solution gets boring. It makes readers cry unfair. Fortunately, I've seen enogh good and useful educational builds, and done enough building on my own land to see a way out of the monumental building morass.

With the advent of megaprims (and I don'tmean the huge 256m ones!) and a little thinking out of the box, it is more than possible for even fairly inexperienced builders to put up a structure that would be useful for academic sims, commercial sims, or even as a kind of residence after you realized how little use your avie has for a house. I know there are people who love houses. I'm just not one of them, and academic buildings are houses. This structure is called the Oviring (because it is an oval ring). It is two stories. It has no dead space. It has stairs to the second story, and a safety barrier where the stairs don't lead back to ground level. It takes up eleven to twelve prims and measures 20 by 30 meters. That means it will fit on a 1024 or larger piece of property. It could work as a sky box. Certainly, one could deploy a couple of these on a 4096 and not have to rent a whole island. Best yet, these are multipurpose structures. What you get depends on what you choose to place inside them.

Of course even with economical size or primmage the Ovi-Ring is sterile. There is no place to sit. There is nothing to do. Fortunately, I have a few object giving itmes I could press into service. The link basket on the far right is an experiment and not properly textured. I can fix that when I make the right textures. The Mourning Dove Soda machine and the Upset the Apple Cart are all examples of a creative touch that could prodly grace any student union without having to give product placement to a big corporation.

And of course if you are to have classes or presentations, avatarim need a place to sit in the Ovi-ring. In this image Iyoba stands proudly beside her one prim pillow seats (Thank you Es0 Torok!) as she multiples and displays them in the TTU Libraries 3 Sandbox. Put out half a dozen of these seats in a circle, and you have a break out space. Put out twenty of them or maybe closer to a dozen in rows and you have a lecture hall. I'd make the pillows free to move within a group and let the instructors rearrange the space.

Of course the Ovi-Ring has a long way to go. First, I don't like the colors. They were a wood grain I had on hand. I do love Ebony and I call the textures made from this wood, iloveebony1, 2, and 3, but the wood is too dark. I want something better, maybe a cork, or a mosaic. I want it brighter and more cheerful, colorful without being loud. Oh that is a judgement call! I also want to get out my free tools for educators and see if I can set up some slide presentations to show the Ovi-Ring's potential as an exhibition space besides being a union or an instructional space. Then I want to start displaying the Ovi-Ring in various states of completion at LEA Arts Self Curated Space. I'm not sure my kind of practice art work is wanted there, but I can make a trip there to find out. Meanwhile, I need some fresh textures, slides, getting used to slide projectors etc... In short, there is a good reason that a never ending project never ends, and in a way that is a good thing. There is of course, more to come.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 27, 2013

Squandered Opportunity in the North Country

I really do try to keep this blog from becoming too negative. I also really fail. I was out at Talent for Growth, and just across the water is WSWHE BOCES. This landmark will only take you to Talent for Growth, which has a story of its own. You can't get into WSWHE BOCES. No one can, and that is important.

But first let me introduce the cast of characters. We have WSWHE BOCES is the Washington, Saratoga, Warren, Hudson, and Essex County Board of Cooperative Educational Services. In the New York Metro area, where I grew up, each county has its own BOCES and it handles things like vocational education, bus drivers, technology, special education etc... BOCE (pronounced Beau-see) became a kind of epithet like a certain r-word, which polite people call "developmentally disabled." Except for the epithet this is classic educational alphabet soup. If you are not from New York, you aren't going to be able to decipher the last four letters of the sim name. The other letters eluded me, but in the North Country (the part of New York State north of Albany. There really is no such thing as Upstate New York to those who live there. There just isn't.) several counties share a BOCES.

WSWHE BOCES was built to provide vocational education to adults. There was still a teen grid when the sim launched the summer of 2010, so the island had to be mainly for adults.

When I first went to visit, I crossed the bridge and hit ban lines. I checked my World Map, found an avie near by and let her have a piece of my mind. She was a builder hired by WSWHE BOCES. She did not live in the North Country of New York State. She did not live in New York State at all. She lived in England! If you don't know Central and Northern New York, you won't know why I found this such an affront. The North Country, the area north of Albany and in the Adirondack Mountains is depressed. A lot of Central, Northern, and the Southern Tier of New York is an economic sacrifice zone, and has been for at least one generation. Yes, it's that bad. Yes, people in the North Country often live in shacks or trailers. Yes, they often don't have year around employment. Yes, a lot of development is off limits due to a state park that wants to expand to even more of the Adirondacks. Someone probably needed the work of builder and sim developer, someone who was local and who could have put his/her wages back into the local economy.

Actually, as often happens when the sim's owners don't do their own building, the good folks at WSWHE BOCES got reasonably ripped off because they did not know what Second Life could do and did not know what they needed in a build. This building is typical of several on the sim. While Second Life is supposed to be an innovative place, look through the windows and see... lecture halls. Now there are lots of amphitheaters and lecture halls in Second Life, but having them stacked one on top of each other is a great innovation. OK, I'll cut the snark. If this building ever filled to capacity, it would probably cause a major amount of lag.

Actually, I don't think the English builder works for WSWHE BOCES any more. Some of her buildings are gone. Also, she did do an excellent job landscaping the sim. There used to be cat tails and pine trees and wild flowers that looked like they belonged in high summer in the North Country. When I got to see the original landscaping, the sim was open to the general public. It's not open any more, and the landscaping is gone, replaced with this hideous treee and a few scruffy things with very, dark foliage.

In addition, the sim now has an Advanced Manufacturing Facility on it. This is the sign. Upstairs there are classrooms in a big loft with both break out space and clear benches in rows. Yes, another lecture hall! Downstairs, is the factory istelf where apparently, they manufacture closed and taped up cardboard boxes.

Now ask why all of this interests me? Why should I care? This is not my money. I've never lived in the North Country of New York State. I've visited there, but that doesn't count, because I visited in Herkimer County which is not one of those in WSWHE BOCES. Well, Second Life is a small world. In the spring of 2011, I was exploring Talent for Growth when I saw something at the edge of the neighoring sim. It looked like a school desk until I looked closer. It was a sex bench. WSWHE BOCES was set so any one could build and with an autoreturn of zero. Whoever ran the sim was asking for trouble. Worse yet, there were floods in the North Country that spring, and whoever ran the sim, Don Lexico as I found out in an About Land, was probably not watching closely. I felt bad for Don and his crew. The sim was still open to the public. I felt bad because a badly run sim could give all educational spending in Second Life a bad name if someone got wind of what went on with tax payer dollars etc... I filed an abuse report and sent Don a letter asking him to fix the building privileges on his sim and run a tighter ship. Oh well...these days, WSWHE BOCES is closed to every one. A tax payer from the North Country can not let his avie walk there. That avie can not try out the dance floor in the Orientation area. That avie can't sort inventory.

Did you notice that I said nothing about classes? That is because there probably aren't any. I went over th e WHWSE BOCES web site with a fine toothed comb and no where did it mention any projects in Second Life. I'm not sure if there have ever been any classes on the two sims. Meanwhile both WHWSE BOCES and another sim called WSWHEBOCES Nano Center cost $300 per month per sim, though for the first few months they paid half price due to the educator discount which no longer exists. In the two and a half years of their sims' existence, WHWSE BOCES has either spent around $16,000 out of pocket and/or $16,000 of grant money. Actually, WHWSE BOCES spent $16,000 of someone else' money no matter what, because either the grant agency or the taxpayers funded this project, and they probably received nothing in return.

And why should I care? When any agency throws money away, it can not spend it on something useful. What could that $16,00 plus $600 a month until the sims vanish fund? Several boxes (of ten reams each) worth of photocopies, part of a teacher's salary, 4000 gallons of gasoline. $16,000 is nearly half of some people's yearly income. $600 a month is nearly what I pay in rent, and more than some people pay.

And the saddest part of all is that Don Lexico or any one with a small amount of building skill could fix WSWHE BOCES so there would at least be something for the taxpayers who wanted to visit the sim. Opening the sim to the public would be a big step in the right direction. Adding a few scripted objects such as note card givers, landmark givers, or SLURL givers would help make the sim somewhat eduational. It would not be much. You could argue about whether it was worth the money, but at least you might win the argument. With roads that get icey in the winter and people separated by what are long distances by New York State standards, Second Life would make a great venue to meet and hold classes. Oh well, WSWHE BOCES squandered their opportunity to build a sim.

PS for those who don't know Second Life. I was able to take the photos ued in this blog on Tuesday night by using my camera controls and staying on Talent for Growth.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 23, 2013

Shucking Beans by the Bucket Load

There are lots of pink boxes on the Explore SL Spread Sheet. They are a fine rosey shade, and all that is by design. There are lots of grey spaces as well. Those builds or their sims are gone. The pink ones are those Iyoba and I have explored for the first time. It is not secret that we surf the map. We find a location and then look around it. There are a lot of educational islands located at the western end of a huge band of academic sims. These islands hide in plain sight, and most of them are still not on the Exlpre SL Spread Sheet. Iyoba and I set out to fix that. We started with Central Texas College.

I think I chose it because it had a name that indicated it was open to visitors. It did not try to hide. The sim offered a sociology timeline, an exhibit of links to wholesome places for SL exploration, and of course a library.

But the best part of a visit to Central Texas College was that the sim was just, plain fun. There was a hay ride, and avatarim could brush horses in the pasture on the west side of the island.

And in the bottom of the amphitheater was a mechanical, Holstein bull. Iyoba climbed right aboards. She has ridden these things many times, and is unfraid to get thrown, but her experience, perseverence and grit paid off. For a hundred and two seconds she rode Mr. Holstein, and she is now the champion bull rider of Central Texas College in Second Life. Way to go Iyoba!

This is not to say that Central Texas College is not a serious place. This outdoor trash can reflects the institution's committment to sustainability in real life. In Second Life everything, even what is deleted, goes back into inventory or stays rezzed, but what I liked about this garbage can was the files. They are just black particles, but they reminded me of the mason bee hive I built, though the particles there are actually small bees that fly out in a variety of trajectories rather than just buzz around. I believe Second Life needs more insects, and I'm glad Central Texas College's builders feel the same way.

Central Texas College led to Anne Arundel Community College's AACC Virtual Campus. This is a much older sim than Central Texas Community College, and far more formal in style. The sandbox while available to everyone does NOT allow scripted items. That means no building dresses with Looprez, no landmark givers, or pose balls. I did NOT landmark the sandbox. A sandbox where scripts do not work, is only half a sandbox if you ask me.

AACC Virtual Campus did offer an art gallery that made it to the Explore SL Spread Sheet and a barn. In the barn were horses, cows, and several lovely, pink pigs in an equally lovely sty. Iyoba couldn't resist posing with them.

Of course there are a few signs all is not well with the orderly and well built AACC Virtual Campus. One of these is this notice board. It's a thumbnail. Please click on it. You can see for yourself that no one has updated it in four years. The college still pays the rent. Without scripting in the sandbox, nobody can make trouble. Hopefully the sim and its build will still be here when Iyoba and I come back again six to twelve months from now.

One set of islands that is not going anywhere as far as I know is the Cape Serenity Archipelago, run by the same people who run Virtual Ability. I am not sure what to make of these sims. Part of me really enjoyed them. I was happy to put the Cape Abel's Deaf Chat Coffee Shop on the spread sheet. I learned a lot about ASL from a PowerPoint presentation, that really made me think. The art galleries are mainly reproductions, but the works are beautiful.

All three islands are heavily built, and Cape Serenity and VAI Sanctuary are both laggy. I would have enjoyed the mountain trails and some of the rides and games on VAI Sanctuary a lot more than Iyoba and I did because Iyoba could barely move. Exploring Cape Serenity was like moving through cheese.

Some of the lag problem with all three islands is that Cape Abel and Serenity include heavy, residential builds. Iyoba wandered into a house where another avie was at home, apologized, and exited quick. A few minutes later, my favorite avie ran away from a security orb. In a way, this is part of the adventure of exploration in Second Life. Homes, offices, and public buildings can be difficult to tell apart. The lag, however, drained the fuin out of the adventure. I know residential rentals pay the bills, and that many people prize being near neighbors like themselves, in beautiful, zoned area. This is not me, but I know there are enough people who like it that it keeps a sim in business. Cape Abel and Serenity (VAI Sanctuary is fun if you can somehow escape the lag.) both give back enough to the public that they should have been nonprofit/academic sims. Of course these days they have to pay the same rent as everyone else. Let's hope those residential rentals keep all three sims in business.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 21, 2013

"I Didn't Have to Worry."

I didn't have to worry about where to go on Thursday. I saw the map for the Info Island Archipelago and knew something was WRONG with Bradley University. The build was missing. The land was blank. I told my favorite avie, Iyoba: "We have to go there." We got there and the land was blank.

That in itself does not really say much. The good folks who run the sim could have put their build in the sky. They could have decided to revise and repurpose the entire sim. They may still have decided that, but somehow I don't think so. Here is the About Land for Bradley University.

You can see there is no mention of a new build or construction. Also a new build leaves behind bits and pieces of itself unless the builders are exceedingly neat. Third, we are in the middle of a semester and possibly the start of a quarter. That means the expensive island is sidelined during prime time. And here is the object count for Bradley University.

Maybe there is academic politics I am not seeing which somehow killed the build. Maybe it just takes time for Linden Labs to reclaim the island. Still this is another academic sim I'd never guess would go down in flames. It is odd that it's owners are letting it circle the drain so publicly. It is one more loss on the Info Island archipelago.

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The Last of Their Kind

I decided to cheer up both Iyoba and myself. We'd go look to see what Tempy was doing with his breedables. He seemed to be abandoning frogs the last time we looked at his ranch on Carpathian Island. Maybe the frogs were back.

The frogs were gone, and so were the chickens, horses, trees, lovely stone build etc... Put succinctly, Tempy had sold the entire island. Where the ranch once stood, we had landed on a photo studio. The computer powers the camera or saves the images to disk. It really does none of these. Second Life is full of fake books and fake computers. The juke boxes, gum ball machines, and radios, and even tape decks tend to be real. The turntables DJ's use add atmosphere, and the DJs of course play real music, but the computers and books are fakes. Fake CPU's as opposed to monitors are a bit rarer than most technological marvels. This one was made with great detail, and it is not even mesh.

Needless to say our visit to our landmark for what was once Carpathian Island came as quite a shock to both of us. Yes, Carpathian Island was a beautiful build. Yes, if you don't pay your rent, you're gone, but the build while pretty was never my reason for going to Tempy's former sim. I went there for the Animal ranch. I went there to look at the frogs in the yard, see if there were eggs for sale, and see what other knids of breedables Tempy kept.

There is now one fewer Lily Frog enthusiast out there. I don't know how many of us are left, or how few of us there have to be to cause problems even with a "supported breedable" Petable Turtles by contrast are "unsupported" but most of us enthusiasts have been in the game a very long time, and have a lot of unhatched eggs and turtles picked up from free from those who "left turtles" in August of 2011. We can keep breeding programs or find new stock either from our own inventories and from eachother. This is true even though turtles suffer inbreeding depression. Lily Frogs are almost always inbred with no harm done, but without new blood, the colors muddy, an dthe phenotypes repeat. Lily Frogs also have a breeding life of ninty days, which forces you to replace stock. This is not a good thing in a small breedable likely to be good for small timers. There is no harm in someone just buying food and becoming attached to a particular group of frogs. I stopped retiring turtles about a year ago. I just haven't done it. I could do it, but see no reason. I'd like to have the same attitude toward my frogs. I also would like to know and find whoever's out there so I can swap eggs. And yes, the frogs are producing chimeric young again, phenotype from one mother and generation from another. I don't really mind that part.

What worries me is that without a base of devoted enthusiasts, such as Petable Turtles still has, when Lily Frogs go "unsupported" and all good things come to an end eventually, they will "croak" rather than continue with just food and no development. I don't mean for this blog to be so down. Since Thursday, Iyoba and I have done some rather useful bushwhacking and found two academic sims that are giving back at least one site to the public. This means that we can add as well as grey out sites on the Explore SL Spread Sheet. Of course so far we are still behind in replacing the losses, but who knows, with dedicated bushwhacking that could change.

Eileen H. Kramer with help from Iyoba BatOni who has every right to be emotional if I have a right to be out of sorts -- January 20, 2012

A One who Tells Stories

Guest Post by Iyoba BatOni -- It is no secret. When my One who Thinks she Knows is really out of sorts, and boy was she out of sorts, she tells stories, mostly about her "real life" but sometimes about my world as well. Right now my One is too busy telling stories to write this blog, so I get a turn, not that I mind. This is the church at Santa Clara University. It is a thumbnail so please click it.

Also please remember that where my One lives right now, she hasn't seen the sun any where but Second Life for four days. If you don't believe me check the National Weather Bureau's weather history for Atlanta, Georgia. As my One has told you, water is very scarce in Second Life. I can have the sun shining all the time, instead of night. Grey skies are rare and precious. For me, rain is a godsend! I love to dance in it. In "real life" it is very different.

Any way, my One said that Santa Clara University reminded her of spring time and made her feel like someone was stroking her cheek with the tip of a leaf. That must have felt very good, but instead of making my One very happy, the lovely springy campus made her tell a story.

"I wonder how much this looks like real life," she said to me. "I have a friend named _____ and he sometimes uses the library at Santa Clara University in 'real life' to do research. He also goes to church near the campus or goes to meetings in the church. I wonder if this is a replica of the church that _______ has discussed in his email. I wonder how much this looks like the real thing."

Of course that was before we discovered the museum. "Oh my God, they have a museum here!" exclaimed my One who is very much impressed when academic sims give something back to the general public.

Of course we had to explore it. It was a huge cavernous space, but there were windows to let in the ever-present sun, and there was all kinds of art on the walls. Some of it was beautiful. Some of it was grotesque. All of it was big, and it had the artist's name posted on a sign above the paintings and photographs. I'm not sure if the illustration to the right is a painting or a photograph. My One thinks it is a photograph that has been put through something called Photoshop. She likes that the humming birds don't have ruby throats.

Then it was on to the library. They call it a "learning commons" which made the One laugh and tell a story. She said that once upon a time "information commons" were the new thing in academic libraries. These were groups of computers where students could not only do research, they could also work on their assignments, since many of them required computers. Then all kinds of libraries got "information commons" and some of them renamed their computer labs "information commons" too. "Information commons" were no longer new, so those libraries that wanted something new and special improved and renamed their "information commons" (sometimes just renamed) "learning commons."

Inside the library are the usual "fake computers" except when you touch them, they link to a menu of links that take you to over a dozen LibGuides which are ready made pages where librarians display links of all sorts along with text that explains them. LibGuides can also include videos, feedback forms, and a host of other widgets.

My One was utterly impressed with this. "This sim is really giving back!" she cried out, and she put both the library and the museum on her Explore SL Spread Sheet.

Then she told me a very interesting story. She said that we were adding Santa Clara University's library and museum for the first time, but they had probably been around a while. In fact GridSurvey.com says they have been around since 2008. Why did we only find them now? Meanwhile, SJSU SLIS, San Jose State School of Library and Information Science, has been on the the Explore SL Spread Sheet since my One took it over to get rid of all the dead links and add more places. Now a basic reason for this is that the SJSU SLIS sim is part of the Info Island archipelago and Santa Clara University is not, but my One finds all this strange because according to Bing Maps San Jose and Santa Clara are only about five miles apart. That is not much distance, and those at SJSU must know about their cross town rival. It is just no one has ever gone looking, and as my One says, academic sims, even those with easily identifiable names, have a way of hiding in odd corners of the grid.

Well we found Santa Clara Univeristy and now you can too. My One lives three thousand miles from California, so she doesn't care about cross town rivalries. She says the East Coast and West Coast are very different. Atlanta is East Coast as much as it is the South. She says what separates the East Coast from the West Coast is that a lot of the United States, especially a whole swath along something called I-90 is an economic sacrifice zone and the Southeastern US is full of economic migrants. This kind of slow destruction and migration, has no counterpart out west except maybe in the Great Plains. My One says that she lived for years in a sacrifice zone, and that she herself is an economic migrant. In Second Life of course as my One says economics is much simpler: "If you don't pay your rent you're gone, and if you don't feed your virtual pets they die!"

Iyoba BatOni -- January 17, 2013

Before and After Iyoba Fell Out of the Sky

The first, and unplanned half of our twin repurposing missions which have now spawned half a triplet in addition, did not go as planned due to lag on Selmo Park where there was a sandbox. The lag had spread over to Glidden making our plans unravel. We headed over to Ohio University for a quiet sandbox in the clouds, and went to work. You can see Iyoba dancing in the end product. To my surprise, the eel dress was not a turtle neck. I intend to make Iyoba a red turtle neck before the winter season is over, and the design is let's just say, very appropriate.

Building skirts is both routine and relaxing. I used one of LC Sculpties' bottle corks for the waistband in case you are curious, and made the waistband a blank texture to fit it better, and then put the pattern on it again. Making dresses is like trying them on in the fitting room, with that same squicky feeling about what they will do on your body. I often feel my skin crawl while Iyoba stands immobilized on her ultimate posing stool. And yes, please click the thumbnails above for a full size view. This is how I see Second Life.

We headed out to Never Be Solo after that and then I decided to finish bushwhacking on Selmo Park, but instead of landing where we expected we fell through the sky. I got out Iyoba's Chute Roop (a handheld parachute. You never know when your avie will have to sky dive in a dress!) and the Chute Roop did not work. Then I noticed we were in an area where scripts did not work. No scripts. No Chute Roop. Fortunately, Iyoba only fell a couple of hundred feet, and was unhurt.

But where were we? There was a whole, rather down at the heals neighborhood located some 2500 meters above ground level. Here is a thumbnail of Iyoba emerging from an alleyway. We both wondered why any one had built this place. My guess was that this was for some sort of educational role play: judging from the condition of the buildings probably nursing or health or maybe criminal justice. The scuzzy house is a common but fun theme in educational builds. Of course we saw no notecard dispensers. We did not receive a HUD.

Somehow after taking photos for our own amusement, Iyoba and I figured out that we should touch some of the mesh figures who were more detailed than most bots. The bots talked. They spoke about an air plane crash. This was a journalism role play. Iyoba and I were supposed to travel from building to building questioning the locals by touching them. Of course they were not chat bots so we couldn't ask them any questions.

We roamed together all over the seedy city. We even found the plane crash which had spewed debris and claimed three lives. The police did not stop us from getting near the scene of the disaster, from which the medics had fled. I guess a press pass does wonders. Of course we also stopped to refresh ourselves in the neighborhood tavern. That is a picture of the barkeep.

Of course after a while, I began to question whether the real story was the crash of a mall plane. The neighborhood was full of other stories. There was what looked like a toxic waste dump near where the plane went down. Poverty and urban blight are perennial stories. The neighborhood is also a food desert, with no grocery stores, but just a bar and a fast food restaurant. Why did only the plane crash make news?

The build has almost too much detail and included mesh, but it's not new. I recognized the sponsoring institution's name, and even though I was on a semi-secret build hidden in plain sight (What kind of a name is Selmo Park to outsiders like me?), I knew where I was as the memories came flooding back. On the now gone, Edu Island 4, the free to stay rental lots sat across the river from a disaster of broken buildings. It was a journalism site, often closed off by ban lines and maintained by the University of Central Missouri. This was the old site in a new home!

I'm not sure what to make of this latest discovery except to add it to the Explore SL spreadsheet. It belongs there, though it will load very slowly or incompletely for some users. I hope that builds like this will keep the Art Cafe/Glidden/Selmo Park/Kamimo Island Archipelago in business for a while, and encourage the sponsoring institutions to stay current with the rent, because if you can't pay your rent in Second Life, you're gone!

Eileen H. Kramer with lots of help from Iyoba BatOni -- January 15, 2013

To Bury and Not to Praise

I want to start with this picture for a very good reason. It is a thumbnail. Go ahead and click it. I took this picture as I sent Iyoba over with the rent for Stinky Stinky tonight. In Second Life, if you don't pay your rent, you're gone. It does not matter if you are a great artist. It does not matter if you are an overextended consumer. It does not matter if you are an educational institution.

In a way this is a good thing. If you are not getting your money's worth, you stop paying and put your rezzed items back into inventory and that's it. Note: I didn't say "if you don't make a profit." That doesn't happen too often. Artists and developers often rent out sims to break even and support large builds. Hmmm...wonder where this is heading. You know all ready.

Believe it or not, I try not to report on sims disappearing because like builders playing with prims (The land is there and the oversight isn't so why not), or squatters, or just plain wasted space and misused space, the stories repeat themselves. Sometimes though, I just have to speak out. You can guess, the deathwatch report from Grid Survey confirmed that NC WebIEE 2 had died. I know the name does not mean much to you, but it smells academic and it was part of a three sim (down from five) build that was actually functional enough to make the Explore SL spread sheet two or three times. Now I'll be greying out space again, but I did not know that. Friday, I rushed over to see what had happened to the rest of the sim. NC WebIEE 3 is still intact, but NC WebIEE 1 did not look good. It looked bare, and I knew it hadn't been taht way before.

Here is what it looks like today. It is empty. There are no objects. I checked. These sims have been repurposed before, so maybe this is not the end. Who knows...Here is what was here before. This image is a thumbnail.

The beautiful colonial hacienda, the village with the gallery, and the lecture halls are gone. Also gone is an archaelogical site that adorns the next paragraph. In the picture, Iyoba walks up to Maya ruins and Stonehenge. A lot of this stuff did not have the notecard givers or explanations necessary to make it spread sheet worthy, but some of it did, and what didn't was fun.

Even what was not strictly educational content, in this case the archaeology exhibit, was still a lot of fun to explore. Some of it even cried out for repurposing. I'm going to be doing some of that. It was not the repurposing project I had planned. It's going to be a twin.

I was impressed with the shellfish vendor on the waterfront by the archaeological site entrance's textures. I photographed them. I took lots of pictures at the NC WebIEE archipelago, and now I'm glad about that. I'm not glad this set of sims is apparently dying. It really should not happen this way.

On NC WebIEE 2 stood an amazing castle. It was three or four stories tall with lots of dark passages and tunnels. The doors opened. The decks had lovely views. The tiles were covered with verdigris, and the copper plaque in the image gave the builder's name, which was different from the builders who had worked on the other islands. The castle, like many old time, academic builds was empty. There were not even seats for lectures or the obligatory, empty slide or YouTube presenter. It was abandoned. Perhaps someone had been playing with prims. It happens a lot. It is old news. NC WebIEE 2 disappeared on Christmas Day, and now NC WebIEE 1 appears going the same way, but without the builder who was fired, lost interest, got squeezed out through academic politics. Yes, I'm speculating, but the plaque piqued my interest and now I have it on this blog.

The NC WebIEE archipleago (not even NC WebIEE 2), was not the site I'd pick for an academic fail, but its story highlights all that has gone wrong with academic sims in Second Life. Lack of accountability makes a juicy place to start. I am all for creativity and taking the initiative without a lot of worry about beaurocratic inertia usually instituted by the least productive and most law abiding, but playing with prims and producing no useable content because your organization has rented a sim, is a bad idea. That said, prim play that produces public content that is more than just rezzing a prefab or building an empty structure is probably excuseable. A large sculpture or walkable garden or a labyrinth for orientation all give something back. When prim play gives something back, it's not prim play any more. A private skybox, a prefab with little modification, a luxury liner with no modifications are all examples of prim play at its finest. The ocean liner parked behind the library at Buffalo State is useful space. The entire UTSA Roadrunner II is an even better example of prim play turned productive.

Second, academic sims overextended. The most famous example of this is the University of Texas archipleago which is an epic fail with more than half its original sims missing. Quite frankly, most builders, including must academic builders don't need a whole island. A 4096 should work, and a 2048 might be just as effective. Now, the end of the academic discount in Second Life has made the overextension problem worse, but the problem was there all along. And do I think Linden Labs was wrong for getting rid of the educational/nonprofit discount?

I'm not sure. In many ways academic sims have failed to hold up there side of the bargain. Besides giving prestige and gravitas to Second Life, I believe academic sims should give something back. Art galleries, museums, quiet sandboxes (my favorite), libraries of sorts, are all examples of giving back. Even innovative architecture might be part of giving back. Academic sims took their discount and often, though by no means always, did not give back. Empty space, slapped down prefabs, faculty and student only standboxes, ban lines are all there. Worse yet, academic sims are islands. This makes them hard to find, and the few closed sims (There aren't that many but it's a noticeable percentage) make people think all academic sims are off limits. Worse still, Linden Labs allowed sims taking the educational discount to hide in plain sight or in the corners of the map. Unless you get good at deciphering sim names, something called Black Bear Island is going to sound like a private estate, and not the University of Maine's educational sim. Then there's all that alphabet soup of abbreviations, UTSA for University of Texas San Antonio or SUNY for State University of New York. Second Life's search engine does not help matters either. Nor, alas, does the attitude of some educational sim administrators to treat their sims as walled gardens or make peace with mainland culture. The the TTU Libraries with their famous Conditions of Welcome in their sandbox is a classic example of this.

So given that that many academic sims don't give back more to Second Life than private ones, why should Linden Labs charge them less. And if you ask me if I would start an academic site in Second Life, my answer would be probably yes, if I had a distance education class I wanted to meet in real time, or a sociology class, or an art class. If I wanted to teach LSL as a programming language that might be another good reason to have a presence, but it would nto be a whole sim. I'd start with a 4096 or 2048. I'd do the building or someone else on my staff whom I know would do it along with me. This increases accountability, and I'd keep in mind about giving back. I might offer up to date links to the rest of Second Life or exhibits of art work or student presentations. I probably would not have the prims to run a sandbox, though I think that is one of the best ways to give back.

Still it is sad to see academic sims vanish. This one was called Diamond and it was run by Temple University (Yes, notice the hiding in plain site.). I found it by accident as a newbie playing with the search engine and often took photo shoots there if I had new clothes. I was a proud little newbie back then, but I also loved to let Iyoba run around in the labyrinth of walls. Like any really good build, this one let you go off the trail or make your own. The best mazes are the ones you could never leave or where there is more than one right course. This thumbnail above is not the greatest picture, but you can see an arcade on Diamond with Iyoba among the flowers that grew in the bricks and concrete. I will miss Diamond and will repurpose NC Web IEE 1 even though it too is effectively dead.

Eileen H. Kramer with invaluable help from Iyoba BatOni -- January 13, 2013

Beans All Over the Floor

See, I really do shuck beans while playing Second Life, though usually I'm up at Club Valkyrie or some other familiar haunt. The music is playing, and Iyoba gets to dance. It is not a good idea to shuck beans while doing any kind of social experiment.

Of course just as I planned a repurposing project and was about to work toward executing some personally satisfying scullduggery, Second Life had to shuck a huge pile of beans for me. Here is a picture of Iyoba standing in a cotton field on ASU Virtual HeritageS. The cotton field sits in front of a plantation. ASU Virtual Heritage S, ASU Dyess Colony, and the rest of the Arkansas State archipelago are public, content rich, and offer visitors from all over the world an educational and fun experience.

Of course ASU Virtual Heritage offers an education of the heart as well as the mind. Meriman's Emporium is a must-see, for some of the most elegant furniture in Second Life. If you don't think modern was born in the 1930's think again, and if you think Arkansas was untouched by international influence and high style, Meriman's will prove you wrong.

Meanwhile, turn on the sound for hits from the 1930's. I loved the music, and even though I could not ride in the roadster parked proudly outside of the Emporium, it makes a wonderful photograph. I could just picture it parked there and gleaming as working folks and farmers coming in from the country admired it.

Then walk over to the movie theater past the architecture office, and the music vanishes. Cross the street to the tenant farmer shack and shrug. You might even smile. The shack is in many ways more handsome than many glitzy prefabs. The wood is lovely. Even the newspaper on the walls and the pot bellied stove could add style.

Then step inside. ASU Virtual Heritage, Virtual HeritageS, and Virtual Dyess Colony all have lots of pictures taken during the 1930's and 1940's of rural folks, but the tenant farmers and their families are the most shocking. It happened here, a landless peasant class condemned to live for generations in abject poverty until mechanization, the Great Depression, and two world wars drove them to more opportunity. The child in the picture is so small because she is malnourished.

Unfortunately, what Second Life gives with one hand, it takes away with the other, and yes Niseko Annupuri, was in sad shape, but the slope was still there, and the map showed it was in snow. I wanted to go back. It was my first ski area, and still one of my favorites. On December 22, 2012 it vanished.

Then today I saw that Beppu was gone. Beppu was home to an onsen, snow for cross country skiing, a lovely temperate shoreline, and wonderful Japanese rural architecture. I wish I had taken more pictures. I meant to come back soon. One always means to come back soon.

So what does any of this have to do with Arkansas State University's fine educational offerings? In Second Life, if you can't pay the rent you're gone. It's that simple, and Arkansas State University has three prolific builders and six sims. The budget gets tight, someone moves on or gets laid off (Oh those euphemisms!), someone does the work of three and Second Life is not a top priority, and you know the rest.... As much fun as well planned, big, educational projects are in Second Life, they are not sustainable any more. The Explore SL Spread Sheet is full of grey spaces, and there are few if any newcomers to replace those who leave.

There are solutions of course: Nobody needs a whole island (Well maybe some body actually does eventually...but not when they are starting out.) A 4096 may be enough for most educational needs. A good estate manager or even a Linden Premium Account, may do the job. Enjoy the ASU archipelago while it lasts, and pray the next round of budget battles do not strangle financial aid to students at institutions with enrollment and retention driven budgets. Now I have to sweep up all the freshly shucked beans Second Life spilled. Thank you.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 10, 2013

Repurposing with Style and Class

It began Sunday night. It continued Monday. We started in the Sandbox ABC down by the script yard, since my Looprez is scripted but unlikely to be harmful. The dress turned out to be utterly conservative, which was just what we needed.

Here Iyoba dances in her dress. The lady bugs, are not ladybugs, but a fungus eating, coccinelid beetle called tytthaspis. Anyway, sometimes colors and styles just work. Iyoba even had the right hair and matching shoes.

You have to have those things some times especially if you are heading for Anima. This is the private property of its creators who run the place with an iron hand. It's a beautiful sim, if you are prepared to uphold the utmost in decorum. You can see why conservative dress is a good idea.

There is even a lovely art gallery at five hundred meters. The gallery is a reproduction of a museum in Philadelphia with lots of famous works. This was our destination. And no, we did not use Anima as our sandbox. There are plenty of other sandboxes in Second Life. That is too basic an idea for my nefarious, repurposing scheme. It's coming....

Meanwhile we got to take this lovely picture of a painting. Since this is a high class, repurposing project, there was no problem soaking up a bit of culture.

And here is what we came for.... Sorry, for the tease, but I couldn't resist posting this image of Iyoba skinny dipping on CHICO ISLAND. The place has an adult rating. Take the elevator down to the floor, but I'll warn all of you. Iyoba found the place a disappointment. There was not enough water for a swim. A beach with all sand and no water is a desert.

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They Paved Paradise

The thought of traveling to ASU Dyess Colony and the associated sims was still giving me hives last night. The sims are fine places. I'm just not in the mood, so we tried out a new sim called TUV Nord. It was a corporate sim that promised to take me to the future.

And yes, they had a huge garage for orientation, and their project to enhance women's advancement in the work place had a lovely, manicured garden outside and was decorated in hot magenta, but TUV Nord is an engineering/inspection/human resources firm, and a lot of their job deals with roads and cars. If any one is going to pave Paradise and put up a parking lot, these are the folks.

That said, TUV Nord had two exhibits worthy of the Explore SL Spread Sheet, a giant fuel cell and a ground penetrating radar that you can actually use to locate all kinds of surprises.

Let's just say that the paving job has a few delays and that is a glorious thing. The lovely brown sand dunes of the island's temperate coast, and the birch and aspen trees, along with realistic wetlands made it a wonderful place just to explore, and it was wonderful in spite of a few ban lines. Those were annoying!

And here is a shot of those glorious wetlands. Iyoba stands looking at the cat tails and breathing the virtual salt air. Maybe TUV Nord will really think twice about building that parking lot. There are enough parking lots, and cars are really ugly decorations.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 8, 2013

Second Life is Going to Start Shucking Beans

And I mean it! It's time for Second Life to do its weight and play its role in my life, providing me with the respite and refreshment of an hour or so of relaxation and recreation. My real life is currently unbloggable, and my emotional baggage has been following me inworld like a set of tin cans tied to my rear as a prank, except it's not funny and platitutdes don't untie the tin cans. Getting pissed off, as well as pissy seems to work a lot better. Quite simply, I hope that I have drawn the line, and said, to the inner demons you are not getting my Second Life time. You can have a lot of the rest of my life, but Second Life...

You can guess that I am not fully successful, but even half a win is going to feel a lot better than just lying down and taking it. The first demon I slew, and I think I really got this one, is vicious cycle of admiration and disappointment. Part of seeing every one's content on display, part of often enjoying Second Life without sound, or with voice turned off or not working well, and part of being a builder and explorer, means that I think those around me in Second Life are more brilliant, sophisticated, and knowledgeable than those I see around me in the real world. Staying away from the English speaking parts of Second Life only reinforces the illusion, and every now and again it shatters. It has to shatter. It's kind of like envy in reverse, except it comes with the consolation that someone is doing much better than you, so at least it is possible that there are heights even if you can not reach them. When this illusion dies, it hurts.

This weekend I took myself in hand and told myself that: "this is only an illusion." And that's all it ever was. The people who adopted you are wonderful and accepting. They are running a sweet, clean, well lighted space of a club. They have no dress code. When there is a DJ he (and it's usually been male) gives 1000%. Yes, that's what he gives. Who says numbers have to be possible. As for the rest, so what! And nobody has done anything. I've just imagined an unrealistic ideal which I expect those I know to excede because it's nice to think that the ideal exists somewhere.

Anyway, Club Valkyrie is a great club. They play classic rock, 90's rock, some blues, some metal. When there is no DJ they have a Citadel or Clear Channel, classic rock station playing. I wish they picked a less corporate stream, but it's their club. I will suggest it. They don't have to listen to me, and again...it's their club. The people there are pleasant. There is a vote box. "Slap it until it turns red," and no I don't know if it can turn red.

Another part of keeping the real life demons outside of my Second Life is taking pleasure in "daily do's." Taking care of the turtles, zwickies, and Lily Frogs is more than casual gaming. Yes, it is routine, but I keep in mind the words of Voltaire: "Tendez votre jardin!" The exclamation point is mine. Seeing Jurgis, who has cheated death three times, and produced close to a thousand offspring if not more, always inspires me. These eggs are not his. They are Billie and Shais and probably F2's though I am not going to have successive generations of turtles.

My zwickies also probably going to stay my starter generation. I am attached to them. They kiss Iyoba. They cut farts. They shoot stars at each other. They fly. Sometimes when I am too tired to do anything in world, I zoom in on one and "fly with it." I also hop with my Lily Frogs and walk with my turtles. Either way, it's a form of bonding. This is an image of Throckmorton, my white, Orion, starter male, and Bishara, my blue, ice, F1 female forming a zwicky star. I just managed to get in a good shot with the camera.

A zwicky star is a symbol of friendship and love between critters. Here are three of my females, Fortunata (green), Yocheved (blue), and Subira (red), all in a star. It's sweet to look at and a miracle to capture on film from a decent angle. Enjoy... This weekend, I found out my zelly blossom, which keeps zwicky young and fertile, had expired. I got them a fresh, free zelly which has yet to bloom. My zwickies lives are extending, and they are due to mate in a day or so.

Of course exploring and a sense of adventure are good ways to keep a Second Life free of first life demons. I saw Little Zion on a map and seeing that it looked different from all the other islands, had a landmass shaped like a Lion of Judah, and a name that was unforgettable, I took a chance on going there and hoping I did not hit a ban line or security orb. I also hoped I would find an educational exhibit worthy of The Explore SL Spread Sheet. Little Zion turned out to be an exquisite resort island, designed for walking, swimming, exploring dancing, swimming, and just having fun. Here is Iyoba trying the straight bar that turns her into a magnificent gymnast, even in a semi-formal club dress.

Of course Little Zion also features a juice bar that nearly puts my Mourning Dove Soda machine and Upset the Apple Cart to shame. Leave it to the Japanese to come up with great food and drink related creations that all avatarim can share. Of course, the juice bar does not feature flavors such as Frosty Maple or Etrog, but hey it's great competition! And the picture of the menu is a thumbnail. Please click it for a larger image.

I will have to go back to Little Zion. I hardly explored the whole place, but I have a couple of more errands. This morning before having to go out and shop (It was getting on to afternoon if you want to know the truth.), I did not have the time for wholesale exploration or creativity, so I sent Iyoba to dance, and we purposely tried a new place. The The Purelife Lodge on Unpredictable Isle is all decked out for winter except for a comfortable wooden dance floor so that avatarim don't freeze their feet. Iyoba was of course warmly dressed. There appeared to be some kind of birthday party in progress, complete with Sunday morning oldies. There was also line dancing with pads, which is a good, uncomplicated, lag free way to dance. The snow covered trees though were the best attraction. Yes, it takes a while for all the avatarim to rezz in a crowded club, and sometimes they never all do, but you have to learn to live with that or you never get out and around in Second Life. I left the interface on in the above picture which is a thumbnail (click it), so that you can see the world sa I see it. Lag is a part of Second Life.

Of course there was no lag up at SUNY Oneonta. I am still quite pissy, as you may or may not have guessed, and I went up there to see if the hospital was still in disarray. It's in a lot cleaner shape but still not working, but a short walk away, I found this farm and an unfinished veterinary clinic. The clinic is a novelty, but the farm is pure joy, and it would have been utter joy for me as a newbie.

When I used to play Active Worlds, I hypothethisized that biophilia made virtual worlds sticky and attractive. Let's just say I have a soft spot for virtual critters, be they breedables or just plain sculpties like these beautiful chickens. They have wonderful life like movement, and I just adore their rusty feathers. Yes, there are real chickens like this, though they belong to back yard farmers and hobbyists mostly. One is likely to find chickens like this in New York's Southern Tier, which is where real life SUNY Oneonta is located.

And who can resist this sweet, little bunny. Even though he is not a breedable, he hops around happily with others in his hutch. There is just something about those big, black, virtual eyes. No, I am not rushing out to get a pack of Ozimals or their competitors' rabbits. I have enough critters to take care of, and in Second Life. Everything costs. You can't get over extended. Someone out there is doing it better for less, but that is not you etc...

And if this were an inspirational story or a motivational piece, I wouldn't be writing this paragraph or inviting you to click on this innocent looking thumbnail for this innocent looking picture above. Ah, it still looks innocent, well I warned you all my demons aren't dead, not the real life ones. Right now I'm looking for a wall to put my fist through, metaphorical of course. Psychologists would say I have the urge to "act out." Sometimes this takes strange and creative forms. My radio on Stinky Stinky had two broken stations. I wanted to include WVBR but it is Live 365 and doesn't release it's stream for playing away from its walled garden. Well, let's just say there are ways to read source code and put the puzzle back together. I now have WVBR as one of my radio station choices. If you're curious how I did it, talk to me inworld. It took more persistence than technical know-how.

Any way, Iyoba and I have another acting-out adventure planned. We'll probably blog about it. It's going to take a few days. Don't worry, I doubt it will get us in trouble. We'll be somewhat discrete. Just hang on. The demons aren't all going to die just yet.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 6, 2013

A Striking One

There's no bargaining in sight, and besides a bargaining table would take up too many prims. Iyoba does not care if I walk off the bushwhacking job. She does not care if the thought revolts me. She does not care if I don't want to visit a multisim museum that nobody visits and that is laggy, and the subject matter of which does not amuse her one bit. Sorry, some sims are like that.

We were bushwhacking on Wednesday. In this picture, Iyoba plays the drums at the top of the mountain on Preferred Family Health Care Island. Preferred Family Health Care is a Canadian HMO or PPO or their equivalent and they provide a lot of psychiatric services. They manage to provide informatino without too blatant a sell job, and they even provide fun. Iyoba, however, is no musician.

I love taking action shots, and Iyoba enjoyed the hang glider which was easy to steer, stayed up a long time, and did not fall in the water. Way to go!

Of course I figured some sandbox therapy would give me the strength to take on the two sim museum without devouring myself with jealousy for their prim riches and my prim poverty. Second Life is monetized. There are limits. I can't have a Zooby Baby of my own, and if I did manage to put the money toward one, it would be an endless budget drain, and I'd be paying someone else to do all the work. Right now four years of monetization have made it so I can't make anything for a big build any way. I would not know how. None of this will make me want to trash somebody else' big build, or destroy their sim. I'll snicker behind my hand at their being over extended. I'll repurpose their build and grin from ear to ear. I don't have to squat. I can even clean up after myself. You can tell where this is all going.

It went to the UCISE sandbox. It went to my favorite sculptie, the 22 pinchpot from Cel Edman, and I made Iyoba hair. Hair is so much more creative than dresses. I can stick twenty-two prims on my avie's head, while her house has only fifteen prims. Iyoba's head is free real estate. Here is a clickable image of Iyoba receiving blue tresses with lots of crinkles nad wrinkles. Click to see the interface/building shot at full size.

Of course Iyoba hated the hair. It looked too much like the original texture hair that used to adorn most avatarim's heads. The problem with this hair is it is stiif, and there's a bald spot at the back of the scalp. I supposed Iyoba had a point, even though the hair covered the back of her scalp quite well and had no sculpty bald spots. .

I promised Iyoba new hair after she complained and complained, but it took us a few sandboxes to find one that would let us build. Iyoba even narrated our tale of woe, along with a big screed against the hair piece. She warns the world never to let a One who Thinks She Knows fall in love with a sculptie. Well, I'm not in love with Cel Edman's 22 pinchpot. It just has a lot of potential. It's bumps become realistic, hair piece ripples. The trick is getting the pot set on the hair piece base at the right angle, and round additions always make a challenge. I've got a lot more crazy hair piece ideas too. It's time Second Life did something to make me feel better! Sorry, I need it and I pay for it. My world, my imagination, my bills, my happiness.

In other subjects, my trips to Never B Solo have given me one informal mother daughter (Me being mother-in-law from Hell I guess...) relationship. SL daughter is off getting married in real life. Congratulations!!!!! Also, I'm part of a mixed species horde of humanoids which gives me other family. I guess all the networking really works, but now my new families both make me feel guilty that I am not spending time with them. I'm not sure how much I owe these folks. You can see why bushwhacking to some rich institution of higher learning's island would only make me feel worse. Oh well...I guess I'll figure all this out eventually.

Meanwhile, Iyoba has a new head of hair, something that tickles both of us. It is a classic, short, fluffy bob, but that is fine. I make clothes, though I'm no fashionista. I like short bobs on Iyoba because I can photograph "back work" without hair getting in the way. Short, stiff, bobs also reduce draw weight (formerly avatar rendering cost). I made the texture for this bob myself so it looks just a bit coarse. There is not a lot of coarse hair in Second Life. I hope I can figure out a way to get Second Life shucking beans for me again, and if I need to do something more gratifycing than bushwhacking for a while, I'll do it.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni (for real!) -- January 4, 2013

Starting off 2013 on a Pissy Note

Sometimes it's way too easy to get pissy, even when you want to start out happy. Travelling around Second Life and taking pictures and raising breedables is like throwing the dice. Sometimes you are elated. Sometimes you get positively pissy. Breedables of course make me happy. Even when they are nothing special, because all my critters are special. My Lily Frog females are all pregnant, and Throckmorton, my male Orion starter zwicky birthed an Angel Zwicky, a special. She is not the most beautiful zwicky, and I'm itching for a male (They happen in about one in twenty births so it may be soon.), but here she was born on New Year's Eve. I named her Maddia for Maddio's Pizza which is springing up like toadstools after a rain all over Atlanta.

Then this is the first Petable Turtle egg, I found in 2013. I wanted to name it Auld Lang Zyne but there is a fifteen letter limit on Petable Turtle names. Auld Lang would have to do. Billie is the mother, and Jurgis, the turtle who has cheated death twice is the father. This was there only egg. That was fine with me.

And of course nothing raises my spirits like watching my Lily Frogs hop and photographing them. They are truely lovely too. These are all my females, left to right: Tzipporah my Refuah Shelema frog and my only revived specimen, Tamar named because I have an Absalom among the males, and Absalom tried to do right by his sister if you remember the story. And last but not least, Raine, a green, Mississippi Gopher frogs. Forget that mating these to most of my males is as biologically possible as mating a cat to a giraffe. Rana like Mammalia is an order. I wonder if somewhere frogs keep Lily Mammals. After all, all mammals are pretty much alike, aren't we?

And of course it takes two Lily Frogs to reproductively tango so here are (left to right), Absalom who is Tamar's brother and also a pickerel frog whom I think is uncommonly handsome and Yechiel an Indian Cane Toad given to me by Jeep Streeter when I begged for new blood. He has lovely blue legs and is flaming scarlet. A lot of people who are into Lily Frogs are into strong, primary colors. I really am not, but I want to see what those blue legs do. I suspect, I'll have geen and silver legged babies. Of course some of these eggs may be specials...or maybe not....

After photographing my own frogs, I went out to Tempy's Animal Ranch on Carpathian Island to take pictures of allt the frogs in his big pen and I found the pen full of chickens! The image above is all of Tempy's frog eggs. His frog egg show room is also gone. You can see why it is so easy to fall from joy to pissiness.

Clearly I was in no mood to party, so off I went bushwhacking. Marriot Library was up on the list, and it is a great sim! It really is. It has libraries and museums more than worthy of the Explore SL Spread Sheet. It is also well made, with modern architecture, a rustic ski lodge, different sorts of landscapes and... what's not to like.

Above you can see Iyoba emerge out of the elevator at the Ski Archives building. This structure is both useful and drop, ,dead gorgeous. You can obtain links to the ski archive web page. There is a theater upstairs. The warm wood and windows with their huge, alpine view give the place an airy feel. Also, your avie does not have to stand in the snow. There's a big, warm, fireplace and comfy chair. No cold avie, means a happy One who Thinks she Knows.

The problem with the Ski Archives and a few other places on Marriot Library is that while the architecture is beautiful and there are some links, there is not enough there to justify the size of the big, empty build. And while, this must make a great place for an assignation, I have to ask who comes here?

And worse yet, in the year since I've been following Marriott Library, no one has ever put a working movie in the Ski Archive Theater. You can see that in the sign, my ever ready camera caught. In a metal structure offering, commercial, violence, and sex free links, there is at least one very dead SLURL. The art gallery on the water is still full of test paintings in more than a year. Beneath this wonderful architecture, I can smell deferred maintenance and lack of use.

And we all know why this is a very bad thing. Academic sims either find a use and grow, or they die. They are sink holes for money, and why waste money? Well, institutions of higher learning and other nonprofits can waste money for a time, but sooner or later, they wake up or someone hits them over the head with a clue by four. What happens when the University can't pay or does not have enough students using the expensive, two sim build? In Second Life, if you can't pay your rent, your gone. If you think it's too expensive, don't buy it. If you don't want the long term committment, say "NO!" Those rules apply to nonprofits and academics just as they do to individuals which is a shame, even with the bamboo floor (Sorry I hunt for woodgrain textures) on the ski archive. Even with the beautiful building, beautiful doesn't pay the rent, and it hurts to wonder if the the University of Utah can or should pay for two islands that don't get that much use on a long term basis.

Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 1, 2013