How Our Second Male Zwicklet got his Name

Please don't let your eyes glaze over. Zwickies are fun to watch and make having land worthwhile. They are graceful and beautiful, and this post is about them in a fun kind of way. Please stay with me, and no, that is not a Zwicky. It is a magic fish bowl, which my One Who Thinks She Knows believes will make my boma, which she built, a lot less cavernous and echoing. Every time I touch the fish bowl, the fish move at different sizes, speeds, and directions. It's a random texture animator with a switch and a single prim, sculptie. Thank you ESO Torok and LC Sculpties. My One's and my theory is that we get sick of most furniture in less than six months. If the magic fish bowl still works for me three weeks from now, we are on the right road.

Actually though, my One and I are hardly spending any time at Stinky Stinky these days. My One needs to walk around with me to ease her usual retchedness. I remind her to come home and tend the Zwickies, especially when our males are getating and birthing. We came home to search for babies last week and found this beautiful creature. He really is a cut above most in terms of his coloring. My One stood there admiring. She almost didn't want to look for statistics...but she had names ready and...this was a boy! He is probably our most beautiful male ever, including specials. My One realized she would have to think of a name all over again and she came up with the name, Gedalia, which is her father in "real life's" Hebrew name, or part of it. She said that Gedalia was the leader of Jewish exiles early in the Babylonian captivity, and that he was murdered by his own people. He has a minor fast day named after him.

Then a day later, Throckmorton, our youngest male birthed this lovely girl Zwicky. Protea is her mother, and she has her mother's face and grandmother's ruff. This time my One had a name at the ready instead of dithering. She also had alternate names. The Zwicky reminded her of Hester in The Scarlet Letter's daughter, Pearl. Pearl was not taken. We welcomed beautiful Pearl into the world.

Then Geronimo, our starter, white, lunar male Zwicky birthed. His progeny was stuck inside the boma's thick roof, I had to pull the zwicklet down to get a good look. What would we name this pretty pink creature. My One looked over her name list. We took photographs, checked the newborn's statistics, and we had a second male! Among Zwicky's only ten percent are males. We usually have a male birth only once a month, even with three active breeding males and six females. Two in a row is unbearable good fortune.

Of course my One was restless and unhappy again. Lately, exploring the Yumix Archipelago has lifted her spirits, and she wanted to see more of Sudare Gami Town. As you can see by this first photo, it is a very modern sim, made with lots of mesh, shadows, and modern textures. This is beautiful stuff for a walk and for a photo shoot. For the long term though, the greyness and emptiness trump the verisimilitude. It is the same thing because it is static. In other words, it fails my One's and my six month rule. However, what makes a poor choice for an owned build can make a great place to be a tourist.

And there is just so much that Sudare Gami Town gets right. It is an ocean sim where my One said she could smell the salt air. It is a temperate coastal town with not one palm tree in sight.

Instead, the small beach with deep water for swimming (I can see this on the map. I have not gotten to it yet.) because it borders another sim, has a sense of humor that is perhaps a bit black because the Japanese, like many coastal peoples, eat octopus, though this pink specimen looks a bit big for anyone's dinner plate.

And Sudare Gami Town is urban but neither a luxury neighborhood nor a slum. This "Tokyo" street car goes nowhere. I tried to ride it and was told that only the owner could drive it. Oh well, my One and I can travel in our imaginations.

This is true even though the train tracks have soft spots. They are actually street car tracks, but they looked like railroad tracks to me. In "real life" it is quite dangerous to walk on railroad tracks. Inworld, I do it with impunity, except where soft spots get in the way.

Sudare Gami Town's gritty industrial feel is full of stories. Where is this forklift going? What is in those boxes? How did it get so dirty? What of the person who drives it? These are enough stories for several visits.

And my One only had to look once at this huge tuna before she cried out: "That's the one that DIDN'T get away!" Seriously though, you don't see much commercial fishing in Second Life, so industrial docks are welcome and evocative.

About half the buildings on Sudare Gami Town share a plateau with an air port. You can climb the plateau via two roads, or at least one set of stairs. My One says that Sudare Gami Town's architecture feels like grit or sand between her teeth.

She could not get enough of it, and neither could I. It did not matter that most of the houses were empty except for tatami mats and shoji screens. The narrow alleys were just too much fun for me not to explore.

And my One says that looking out a window always tells a story. The view here though was just too perfect. We could see over the wall we'd scaled via stairs, down to the sea and then onward. My One was in love with the Yumix Archipelago in general and with Sudare Gami Town in particular. "I have a name for that second, male Zwicky," she told me. "Wait!" I said. "We don't know what this name means. It could be derogatory or nasty." My One looked up Sudare Gami. Sudare means screen or divider, and Gami means royal, graceful, or divine. Perhaps the name is sarcastic or some kind of play on words in Japanese, but its meaning was certainly fine enough for our beautiful, second, male Zwicklet. I suspect he is the first or one of the few Zwickies to be named after a Second Life sim.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- May 22, 2015

My One Needs my Heart

It's true! My absolutely, wretched, One Who Thinks She Knows needs me to comfort her, and I am just an avie. I do think for myself some of the time, which is more than most people do, but I still don't get colds, the change of life, have to earn a living etc... What I do have is a kind heart. I care about bots, pets, etc... I remind my One what is right and wrong. She sometimes listens to me. That is why I have to comfort her when she gets like she does.

I told her that she would feel better (and so would I!) if we just went exploring. If it was bushwhacking then so much the better, but we needed to go someplace really interesting and fun. That was why we went to explore the replica of Venice on Yumixster and Yumix Prada. This is supposed to be a photorealistic Venice (and Prada. I'm not sure if there is a Prada, Italy. My One says it is the name of a fashion designer.)

And yes, it is full of rough edges. There is a bridge to nowhere, red boards in the water for no good reason, and plenty of plywood, but there is now more there than there was a year ago. The build dates from 2013, which makes it much more modern than Paris Eiffel. Raw would be a polite word.

The place also makes my One wonder how it supports itself. My One loves questions about money. Yumix Prada has working stores, but most of the buildings in Yumixster are hollow or solid blocks. This is one of the few with an interior, which is...empty.

And the builders have cut a few corners. This Italian restuarant menu made my One wince. She said: "Italian cooking is regional. I doubt there would be both fish and beef dishes as local specialties, and lobster is American!" She did her research and boy is she right, but what DOES NOT belong on this menu is tomatoes. If you don't believe me, look here. The Japanese builders of Yumixster and Yumix Prada probably just bought an Italian restaurant black board without realizing it was absolutely inauthentic. Horse meat stew or fried sardines and raisins any one?

That said, Yumixster and Yumix Prada have a lot going for them. First there is walking around. If you notice I am wearing a bathing suit. I've fallen in the canal one too many times, and it is just easier sometimes to be ready to swim. I'd found a soft spot on a bridge, and often run out of sidewalk, and just jumped in the water. My One says that in "real life" the water is very dirty.

There is also a fish market where a poor tunafish still flops around on a board. His fate is to end up on the table where I cut up one of his friends. There is a market as well, with photos to serve as fruits and vegetables.

Yes, that is a bit tacky, but the gondola building shop on Yumix Prada more than makes up for the tacky green grocer. Yes, this is plan for making a gondola. Click it to see it at full size.

And this poster near the landing point on Yumixster details gondola safety. It took a long time to rez. I wish the boats on this part of the canal worked. Alas, they are just for show.

This secret garden was on the other side of a tunnel on Yumix Prada. It has a tree full of peacock feathers and a white, baby grand piano. I sat and played the piano under the tree, and then went off to explore all the tunnels. This is one of two secret gardens. The other is hidden away on Yumixster.

And yes, I finally got to row my own gondola around both Yumixster and Yumix Prada. That was what "sold" my One Who Thinks She Knows on the two islands. Yumixster now occupies the bottom line of the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet!

That was an unexpected bonus. This picture of me in what may be Yumix Prada's rental/estate office, is here to show how modern these two islands are. My One said she hopes they don't go the way of the Trenza Archipelago. Most Japanese builds are group funded. That can make them stable. We've never figured out why Trenza collapsed. Meanwhile, we have a new male Zwicky baby on our land, and my One has managed to pull together a bucket list of places for us to explore, so hopefully soon she will be her out of sorts, but still beareable old self. Wish me luck.

Iyoba BatOni -- May 13, 2015

When We Work Together

First it was fame and fortune. Then it was decision fatigue. Then my One Who Thinks She Knows came down with a massively nasty, viral sore throat. Then she made herself sick with ginko biloba pills. She's just getting over that now. All of this means less time inworld, and all of this leaves me massively muzzled and this blog dies, which is sad. It is not just sad because I like telling you about Second Life in ways my One just can't, but it's sad for my One. She has a kind heart most of the time, and she is patient. For example, we are really working on our "boma problem." We both know furniture does nothing for me or her, except maybe when I need to sit down. Having an interactive aquarium with a moving texture seems to be what might actually solve our problem. We finally got the script right in Sandbox ABC while some fashionably dressed avie-One pair watched us make it spin over and over again. My One says she needs to do more script tweaking.

My One is also very dutiful. We've been bushwhacking. At heart, you have to believe you can use Second Life for education if you bushwhack educational sites. That means you see a lot of tax payer money wasted, but you sometimes see really good stuff too. My One and I both had fond memories of The Construction Safety Tutorial on UTEP Miners 3. This is a very interactive, seamless, low lag, game to teach safety first.

My One says that University of Texas El Paso's The Construction Safety Tutorial is about as good as games get on Second Life, because it takes the nature of Second Life into account. There is no winning or losing, though avatarim and bots can get hurt. You can play at your own pace over several sessions. If a One needs to answer the door or take a bathroom break in " real life" the game stays just where she leaves it unless you are at a decision point, but there is enough opportunity to pause action that it's very hard to time out. The tutorial game also takes advantage of Second Life's emotional aspects. Here is John, the sawing bot. You are welcome to saw with him when the game is through, or any time. Your job is to save the bots lives, and they talk, complain, and you can talk back. This makes for a game within a game.

Here I am at the trailer door. The site supervisor, is a typical tall, beautiful avie with a conformist fashion sense. I am short, dumpy, and more creative in my courture. I even have a new tunic that went perfectly with my burnt orange jeans and blue hair to match my fairly, new sneakers. True, I was playing the part of a construction management student. True I barely stand 5'0" but so what. "Ma'am," I said to the supervisor. "I'm the new construction safety intern." I gathered up my equipment and headed to the site.

The site is hard to find your way around in. That is part of the game. That lost feeling makes you feel the workers might know more than you. I, after all was playing a poor student, a little lady in ill fitting safety gear. What was I supposed to know. I knew from having played the game before, that the workers try to do what is expedient rather than what is safe. They are concerned about getting the job done, and don't care what risks they take. For example, the old hand in the tunnel had put up no shoring panels and said we could quickly climb out. After all, he had experience. You can tell I didn't agree with that. I saved both of us from having a pile of dirt bury us.

And even when we didn't know that I was more careful than the old time workers on the construction site, my One said we had to be careful about the sewers. "There's bad gas in sewers. They smell bad!" she said and we went looking for the equipment to air the sewers out. I even had a HUD that gave me gas composition. When the old hand in the sewers asked what took me so long to get there, I replied: "I was busy keeping you from asphyxiating!" Saving bots lives and keeping safe feels good. That is what The Construction Safety Tutorial teaches.

Of course not all good academic sites have to be as fancy as The Construction Safety Tutorial. It's possible to build an excellent educational space on the cheap. This library is a new addition to NOVA Annadale Camus, and it is up to date and not just decorative. URL giving scripts can bring just about any SL Library to life.

At first of course, my One and I held out no high hopes for NOVA Annadale Camus. When we landed somewhat randomly, this is what I saw. Yes, I danced in the hall to get a good picture. This empty white maze had replaced part of a "biology walk."

There were still biology exhibits, including this one that describes growing yeast on various media. What is nice about the demo is that it explains what yeast is with simple, three dimensional illustrations.

There is also the beginnings (enough to add to the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet) of a forest ecology exhibit, that includes mesh, shadow textures, and labels for southern, temperate trees. There are not that many really nice, realistic, temperate forests in Second Life, so this exhibit is also as beautiful as it is instructional.

And this little bar with poster presentations hanging from it truely impressed my One Who Thinks She Knows. Look at at the date. You can see why. It takes almost no technical skill to exhibit poster presentations or student Power Points. There are scripted texture changing scripts that handle this quite well. Currency and content. For what more can any one ask.

My One would say that following through on projects and completing them is very much a plus. The white maze that led us both to believe that NOVA Annadale Camus was on the way out instead of growing and changing is going to be a medical clinic as soon as someone textures it. If I were bulding it, it would be hot pink, hot yellow, blue etc... all different colors to show where the prims met. Some people leave the plywood unpainted, and others paint everything white.

Of course what I really want is more time with my One. She is not just out of sorts, busy, and physically ill, but distracted and wretched. It means less time in world. It means having to apologize to the Zwickies because they sense something is wrong. They are lovely, sensitive, virtual creatures. I have even told my One that we need to go back to Never B Solo and get a panel. Adoption is after all a game and one to which we add our own dialogue since we are unlikely to end up with a kid. I'm not sure my One in her current state has time for parenthood, but having a buddy to take swimming, skiing, the the beach or even bushwhacking would be fun. We can dream. We can game. And One, you need to play!

Iyoba BatOni -- May 8, 2015

Warm Thoughts and No Apologies

This is going to sound very strange, but every time my One Who Thinks She Knows travels with me to Bobcat Village she gets cold. "It is always winter in San Marcos, Texas because that was when I had a job interview there. Everyone was much colder than I was. I had the right kind of coat, but I will always remember those crystal cold nights." My One's job interview was at the Alkek Library which she says looks very much like its "real life" counterpart. Brrrr....but in Second Life it is still a real library, with catalog and databases as web site on a prim. You can see an example here.

Then we found an exhibit in the library basement that we had never seen before. It was new! There were all kinds of famous people on the wall that had little or no relationship to one another. There were ancient Greeks, Carl Marx, and others. Nancy Pearl wrote Book Lust. That makes her a famous librarian.

In fact, the whole downstairs exhibit was about famous people who had worked as libarians, either before, after, or as their main careers. It was a clever idea, my One had to admit. It even had a sense of humor, but it did not make her any warmer.

Talk about following a useless train of thought, or maybe one that I can never catch and neither can she. While the orientation building was under construction/upgrade, there was a new exhibit on Bobcat Village. Actually there were two or three new exhibits, but two of them require Unity, which lets Ones be in Second Life without avatarim which means they are in my world, but not of it. My One and I both have mixed feelings about this.

We also both felt bad for this poor, little lightbulb. He hangs in the Metaphysical temple and cries out for someone to fix him. He says he is lonely in the dark. He doesn't have a switch, and I fear he may be burnt out. He thinks there is a factory that can fix him.

The poor, little lightbulb is half right. There indeed is a metaphysical factory that can make lighbubls, machetes, and keys. I got it to make all three. In this picture you can see it finally, correctly, set up to make a lightbulb. To make an object, you have to put in all of Aristotle's four causes: What an object is called. What it is made from. What it can do. and How it is made. That is not the correct order. A single object can have mutiple causes. A lot of causes go into a lighbulb. It took me several tries to make one.

And here is a bright, shiney, and new lightbulb. I could not get it to go into my HUD. I'm not sure why. I think now it could have been a group tag issue. In a way I was relieved. Being that I never saw a light switch or pull cord in the Metaphysical Temple, I suspect the bulb there was burnt out. Factories don't fix lightbulbs. Aristotle lived before the era of mass production. I'm not going to tell the lightbulb the truth. He is after all a bot who works hard. He doesn't have to know he is disposible.

And my One Who Thinks She Knows needed to be somewhere warm. Besides, we needed to finish the Louisianna Regents Archipelago. In short, it was schadenfreude time to warm up my One. SELU Regents, however, was a bit different than what we expected. To start with there were ballons and decorations outside the building. I even got to take a bike ride around the island. Then we saw the teleport board. One of the choices was a trip to the Maya Yucatan. "This has to be a dead link," my One quipped. I clicked and....

I found myself in a rain forest with a book that told the tale of how the peacock got his tail feathers. My One said that such a tale always ends with the peacock losing his voice. Peacocks scream, but they have no need of song, because they have a visual display. My One also thinks the tale is comparatively recent, since peafowl are NOT new world birds. Still the story, is Mayan, contemporary, and it bridges the space between a different culture and our own without resorting to inaccurate cartoons. That the peacock might be a quetzal or pheasant or bird of paradise doesn't really change that much. The Maya Yucatan exhibit brings Maya tales down to the size of folk tales.

Still some of the tales are downright disturbing. A poster that was the other half of this photo of a gourd jar, explained that there is a magic cenote, whose waters will last the drinker for a month. To obtain a gourdful of these waters, however, you must feed a child to the witch-serpant who is the underground spring's guardian. My One thought of Moloch and Tophet. She asked why there was no hero with the strength and moral courage willing to slay the evil serpent, or was human life too cheap? The poster stressed the ever-present danger of running out of water in the Yucatan. My One thought the story was about the cheapness of some human lives.

And inside the pyramid temple, there are reproductions of old, Maya stone carvings and murals. This may be retouched to look like its former glory. It shows an interesting aesthetic and makes no comments. Draw your own conclusions.

And there is a wonderful video of a fiesta in the modern day Yucatan, where some Maya customs survive. Note, the dancers, and their embroidery. My One and I both like the contrast of past and present, of folk tales, and modern dances, of photos of nature and still more folk tales. It is brutally difficult to explain another culture, but the SELU Regents Maya Yucatan Archipelago very much does it right. Sadly, SELU Regents has a constrained landing point. You either need to fly up or use the teleport board to visit the exhibit.

Meanwhile, at ground level SELU Regents, also has a library. It does not just have a room full of decoartive books and fake computers, the computers really connect to web pages. My One was thrilled. We now had two candidates for the Explore SL Spread Sheet.

My One was even more thrilled to find a reference desk where during library hours (Remember Loudianna is on Central Time) you coul d chat with a librarian via Libraryh3lp's web chat, often called "Ask a Librarian." Then by the door, was a note card giver with schedules and other information about policy. "Someone has actually bothered to put off the shelf scrits to work here!" my One cried out. We were clearly going to have to rethink the ugly things we said about the Louisianna Regents Archipelago being a waste of tax payer dollras. I clicked the note card giver and...

And saw that the hours on the menu were from 2008. "This must be a mistake. I'm sure there's an updated notecard in the box," my One told me. There wasn't. Then my One looked at the web page link she had clicked. It was a 404 (Page unavailable error). She went back to the SELU library web site and learned than they now used LibGuides for their research guides. The links in the library like the schedule were old.

We can't add new facilities to the Explore SL Spread Sheet. We still have to find the contact person so we can add the Maya Yucatan exhibit. It is a wonderful exhibit, but it is the first, live, complete, working exhibit we have found in four sims of the Louisianna Research Archipelago. What else we may find is a mystery. And no, Louidianna's taxpayers and students are not getting their money's worth in Second Life.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- April 26, 2015

What Fun an Old Avie Can Have

This all started off Monday with sweet joy and a bitter insult. The joy came in the VSTE Sandbox. I made a dress. My One Who Thinks She Knows and I make lots of dresses. It helps make her feel less retched, and who am I to complain about new clothes. My One was especially proud of this dress. It has a seamless texture that was NOT made with GIMP's Map -- Make Seamless. Instead she made it with align. It is supposed to look something like RJR Fabrics' Farmers Market, only RJR never goes near raddichio, but we do! Better still, I had perfect, burgundy hair for the outfit and perfect shoes. I felt well put together and professional as I went to work Monday night.

Alas, a child avie from a group of which I am a member visited me. We discussed adoption places, and he said if I got a new avie my "chances would be better." I was old fashioned. Out of style. My One said this is like what happens when a man in "real life" tells a "real life" girlfriend or wife a dress makes her look fat. I am a bit overweight, but so what. I'm short, dumpy, and middle aged. In Second Life I can be all those things without stigma. My One said to shrug off the "boundary issue," but we both wondered how any one can be so superficial, especially an avie who gets kicked out of clubs for his short stature and dress. I suggested jeans and a shirt. Even adult avies have squirmy/fidgety animation overrides. If you want to enter into a relationship with someone that in Second Life can well mean sharing money and money commitments (My One says the money is "real." Second Life, after all, is monetized.) than appearance should be the least of your worries.

I have no idea whether I am beautiful or ugly. My One thinks I am beautiful and well put together. I kind of share that opinion. More often I feel strong and business like. We both believe that in a world of "your imagination" avatarim are to some degree palettes on which they paint their souls, hearts, and minds. Some people call me ugly. Some people call me an "artist." I call myself, a lady. I call myself strong and ready for action and adventure. I call myself a good observer of nature with a sense for and love of color, languages, and making my own fun. My One and I know you can't buy a dream that is worth anything in a store. Fantasies are born in the gut, forget the heart. The eyes can describe them and the brain gives them words and the will gives them form. If the result is less than perfect, maybe it is meant to be that way. If it half way gets the point across both my One and I are happy.

Anyway, Monday night's discussion left us both a bit stunned. I knew we needed an adventure to get back our self confidence. We needed to travel somewhere better than a typical bushwhack. We were going to explore the rest of the Arab World Archipelago. We had made a dress there, which made us too busy to explore, though what we saw we liked. My One is a sucker for big, beautiful, Arab architecture. Arabs tend to think on the round. They remember plants. They include places to sit and a public square. The other time we visited, we got chased by ever-multiplying hot pink cubes. I stuck it out while my One manned the camera. Eventually we made it to Jeddah City. The cubes stopped chasing us, and I collapsed in a lounge chair at a subterranean space that was friendly and safe. That was where we would begin our journey. Here I am at an empty bar, and ready to go and explore.

And there was a lot to see, much of it very beautiful, though not all of it the newest and the best. This gorgeous, tiled fountain in the water on Arab World consists of neither mesh nor sculpties for its main parts. It's toroids and cylinders with clever texturing and a moving texture script. Newer is not always better!

Jeddah City in particular offers some of the finest large buildings in Second Life. This is the "friendly building" wtih offices on the main floor and a cafe in the otherwise, unused space below ground. You can climb up to and walk around on the upper floors, though there is not much there inside the sphere. None of the buildings in either Jeddah or Jeddah City are Potemkin Villages. If they are multistory on the outside. They are multistory on the inside. There is something wonderful about this at least to my One Who Thinks She Knows.

And this tower in Jeddah City is seven stories tall. The elevator doesn't work, but the central courtyard is hollow and you can fly up to each and every floor, walk around, and look down. If you fly through the windows on the seventh floor, you'll find a club with a swim up pool.

And there is a beach and lots and lots of water on the Arab World Archipelago. Just dive or fall in and discover hidden treasures like this lovely coral reef. There are fancier coral reefs on Second Earth 3, but the element of surprise made finding the ones on the Arab World Archipelago all the sweeter.

And there was even buried treasure in a shipwreack. Yes, it's a cliché, but a clich%eacute that is a surprise is not a real cliché. Anyway, this secret underwater space had my One Who Thinks She Knows smiling, and that is no mean feat!

My goal as I swam had two parts. First, I had tried out the jet ski on the beach at Jeddah City. I can never get those things to work and was soon off course high above Arab World. Quite simply, I had to swim back. Also, we wanted to visit the island out in Jeddah Sea and to see if it was private property.

Fortunately, the house at Jeddah Sea had no banlines, no private bedrooms, and was open to all. There was even a kitchen with a well stocked fridge. The piece of pink meat, gave my One Who Thinks She Knows pause. Then she realized it was either smoked turkey breast or else turkey ham. This after all was Saudi Arabia, and no good Moslem would put smoked, swine's flesh in his or her fridge or offer it to guests.

Like most good Arab builds the Arab World Archipelago is culturally sensitive. At Club Hanafil in Jeddah there is a dance floor with stars, black vinyl couches, but no dance poles. There is also no bar, not even a juice or soft drink bar. In addition, the couches have only a decorous, sitting pose and there is no drunk and stupid/passed out sit. Smoking a hookah on Arab World of course is perfectly fine.

Of course by now, My One Who Thinks She Knows, who was in spite of herself was having a rather good time, asked the question she always asks when she needs to return to her state of bitter, retchedness. She can't stay happy for too long. "Iyoba, I'd like to know who owns this place," she told me. I did an About Land, got a Jeddah Builders group but no information in its profile. The land description was full of keywords related to all things Arab but nothing overtly religious, and no mention of an outside organization and not even an oudated URL. My One also tried searhing for various combinations of RAS and Saudi Arabia, but all she could find was a city near Jeddah, which by Saudi standards is fairly cosmopolitan. The city is called RAS, and it has a beach. This does not say much.

But my One Who Thinks She Knows (and I by extension since I share many of her memories and knowledge and certainly our experiences in Second Life) can sometimes hear what she calls the dog whistle. She says it blows loud and clear on the Arab World Archipelago. On the one hand, the message to everyone on this public sim is that Saudi Arabia is a modern country. You can after all go swimming. You can even dive in the deep end.

The Arab World Archipelago tells the whole world that Saudis are hardly a bunch of kill-joys. There may be no alcohol, but guests in the big house on Jeddah Sea may enjoy a sweet and nutritious bowl of their favorite, imported cereal.

You almost don't miss the alcohol which is virtual anyway, but what is missing often tells more of a story than what is apparent. This building in Jeddah City is empty. There are other empty buildings. There are no "for rent" signs. Although there is land rented on Isle Marquises (This island is locked down and private) and wearable horeses for sale on S. Haras, none of this could be enough to support a six island archipelago, and in Secnd Life if you can't pay your rent.... Clearly outside money maintains the Arab World Archipelago.

And there is something else, something that nearly escaped the One Who Thinks She Knows because she found it pleasurable rather than strange. The absence of clothing stores and pictures, also meant a near absence of depictions of the human form. This is VERY DIFFERENT from the rest of Second Life. My One likes it, but she knows she is in the minority. However, if your culture says "NO GRAVEN IMAGES" and your artistic traditions bear this out, guess how you build.

My One and I also know something about other Arab sims. Generally most Arabs in Second Life cut loose. Their avie is not them. This is an escape. It's time to take off the conservative clothes. It's time to dance. It's time to spec sims and gamble and play board games. It's time to party to a point. There is no gambling on Arab World Archipelago. It is also a stable sim. Guests are free to wear what they choose, but they won't see scantilly clad images or drink alcohol unless they bring their own. Likewise foreigners will visit a resort where they can swim or ride jet skis. No one will discuss the abaya, women being unable to drive, freedom of religion, or the war in Yemen. Those issues don't exist. Of course they don't. In Second Life freedom of the press belongs to those who pay tier for a press. For dog whistle communication, propaganda, great architecture, and great fun, my One says she just might include the Arab World Archipelago on the the Explore SL Spread Sheet. Let the Saudis fight their own political battles and use their own voices if they think the walls of Second Life will protect them. Maybe their dreams can make it from gut, to brain, to fruition.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- April 24, 2015

Where is Justice?

Yes, I have a panel on the wall again at Never B Solo. It will last for three weeks. It costs 100L. That .40 in "real life." It lets us talk in group. It holds "twenty likes." I am past the point of worrying about this. It is no longer an experiment. It is something my One Who Thinks She Knows says is a habit.

Visiting derelict or under-developed educational sims is another of my One Who Thinks She Knows' habits. This is one of the reasons this blog sometimes gets snarky. I will warn you. There is info here I can not divulge. There is a difference between speaking truth, writing reasonably truthful snark, and doing someone real harm, even if their hands are nice, warm, and comfy in the tax payers' pockets. From this nice long shot, the main building on Loyola Regents looks nothing short of magnificent. It is open to the public. It includes some mesh and modern textures that look like they will age well (simplicity really helps).

There is the beginning of an art gallery and even this rather spiffy promotional chair ride, that I really enjoyed. OK, you know what comes next. The art gallery has one or two pictures up, and who knows for how long it has been that way.

These empty arches made a beautiful picture. Students could also have wine even if there was not much to see yet. Now, the drinking age in the United States is twenty-one, and while that does not apply to virtual wine, the Louisianna Regents Archipelago of which on Loyola Regents is part, is funded with real tax payer dollars. Chances are the wine is a prefab or a cheapie purchase. With regulators far away, who needs to give final results much thought.

And most of Loyola Regents was not as much fun as walking around the balconies and riding the chair. Most of it looked like this picture. Yes, I can dance like a dice rattling around in a box. What this picture means is that the taxpayers in Louisianna are funding empty space that does nothing.

This is true even if the space is beautiful and well furnished. My One and I both really liked this round, burl, conference table we found on Tulane Regents. Once there was a Tulane Island in the NSC Archipelago. In fact there were several such islands. Then they put up ban lines. Then they vanished. Now they are half back...sort of. There were no signs indicating classes, no working PowerPoints, few exhibits, no one around, but a lot of Second Life sits empty. How do you say money sink and rip off? This could change as projects slowly come on line but until they do, that is what there is a lot of on the Louisianna Regents Archipelago, and we have only explored half of it. We are going back for more when my One Who Thinks She Knows needs to lick her wounds.

And my One had an even bigger wound licking mission in mind last week. She noticed that Mesh Templates had disappeared on Grid Survey. "I wonder if the rest of the Trenza Archipelago is alright," she mused. We checked the map and found everything under water. "We need to take more pictures before all of this disappears!" she cried out. It was the same way I had cried out "There is justice!" long ago when I could return to Club Hyades. Club Hyades is of course long gone, but we explored the entire archipelago. I was glad we did that. I was glad we explored it last week as well...

I was glad we explored because by Thursday this was all that was left of Trenza Archipelago and as of the middle of the week most of it was gone, and Trenza Resort completely off limits, though no one could have hurt it by walking around.

In fact, ruins have their own wonderful attraction. No gajin avie and One team is afraid to enter a closed club or island. That the ruins were underwater meant I could swim them, though with water above 20m my Swimmer went kind of wonky. Seeing the ruins under the sea made them all the more beautiful. This is what was left of an island called Sien. Too bad these photos are now of a place that no longer exists.

Eventually I turned off my swimmer. Here I am on the steps of Trenza Resort. While I could never make this place One of the Best for 2014/2015 (It's now a good thing that I did not but not for the reasons my One and I originally excluded it. This time it's just for being gone.) because of the way they treated Americans, I still loved the place. I did not care that I could not join the group at the one armed bandits. The house always wins anyway. I never asked for a group bing card. Bingo is not my favorite game and I was not sure they would give me one. I preferred to watch and kibbitz. It was just as much fun and cost me nothing. Yes, I liked Japanese places. Yes, I liked a place that was open late at night. Yes, I just liked the sociability. I could leave it at that. I guess now all is forgiven, and not because the owners could not pay the rent.

My One and I forgave Trenza Resort's group because they had a good build, and because what works for one person wandering alone late at night, works. Maybe it is a cultural thing, but solo wandering does not freak me out. Being on the other side of a language barrier means that mechanical translators will mangle both our tongues. And besides that, we were and are divided by more than language. The copy bot machine is both funny but also transgresses Western sacred ground. Your stuff is supposed to be original. I could really like people who were different and I knew an Japanese person who wandered into a Brazilian or American club would be greeted as a courageous soul. By the time we found Trenza Resort about a year ago, we both knew that would not happen. We could live with that. We enjoyed our exploring and could bask in the conviviality no matter how it came.

And yes, I would love to tell the owners of Trenza and the heads of their group not to worry that their sim was "closed" when we bowled our first game in the Trenza Resort bowling alley. We hoped it would not be the last game any one ever bowled. We hoped the sims were undergoing a remodel and rebuild. We were glad their were not ban lines. We were not unhappy to be underwater on a closed sim. We thoroughly enjoyed our experience. Forget forgiveness. There is nothing to forgive. You did not make One of the Best, but so did thousands of other sims. Thank you will more than suffice. That is all my One and I want to say, but it should say everything.

And I told the Ele/rabbit (I don't know what he was, but he was a bot doing the hard work a bot does, lonely and unappreciated as all bots are) that I would not be his last ride. I think I was though. I feel bad about that, but I am glad I gave him one last ride. I would also want to thank the Trenza owners for leaving the sim under water for my One and I to explore. Scoring a 117 at bowling lifted her spirits, and seeing me ride the bot made her happy. That is worth more than anything. At your end your islands were at their best and it is not snark. Your islands were at their best because even under water they were beautiful and my One needed the beauty and solitude.

Some moments are magic, and some are only meant to happen once. Some moments have yet to happen and may never happen. Some builds sit vacant, oozing rent. Trenza Archipelago at least had a glorious life that is now over. The Louisianna Regents Archipelago waits to be born while tax payers pay between $900 and $1,800 a month besides costs for builders and other staff. Trenza lived utnil it could no longer pay its rent. Louisianna Regents Archipelago will suck rent until its builds go to work or someone catches on a few years down the road. My One says that by the time any one catches on to wasted funds, usually people have lost their jobs and been hurt in "real life" One night, long ago, at Club Hyades I cried out: "There is justice!" after my ban was removed. This morning my One asks: "Where is justice?" and she knows it is a rhetorical question.

Iyoba BatOni and Eileen H. Kramer -- April 20, 2015

A Few, Sweet Beans in the Second Life Pod

All of this started out as ordinary bushwhacking. We began working from the top of the Explore Second Life Spread Sheet down. That was what brought us to Ball State University. We expected a library that really acts as a library and which has a theater where the movies about the Middletown Study in Muncie, Indiana sometimes work depending on your browser or connection in "real life" My One wanting to be diligent, decided we'd check out some other buildings, which is how I found this piano. It just makes a good opening shot.

We did the standard circuit of the island, and found an art museum! Here I am posing with one of the sculptures. There is a mixture of reproductions with original works. The building is low lag, but textured in a modern way with shadows. And then there is the kinetic art sculpture hidden in the basement. This is not your usual tortured, spinning sucltpie or pim. These blocks drop in and out of the water with real ripples, and finding the sculpture is half the fun!

The kinetic sculpture and secret rooms even made my One forget the Legend of Ball State. Here it is: Long ago, in "real life" my One Who Thinks She Know's colleague-supervisor told her that there was a state college in Indiana with a strict up or out policy and a revolving door. They were always hiring because they were always firing. This was a bad luck place. It was not really a state college. It was Ball State. Their ads in the Chronicle ran with some regularity. My One thinks she applied there three times. By the way, there are very few insitutions of higher learning to which my One has not applied for work, so she has her share of legends. She tells them when she is particularly out of sorts. I don't have to tell you that I hear lots of legends.

The next stop on our bushwhacking list was Bobcat Den about which my One had few stories, except a former colleague of her works at North Georgia College which runs the place. Say no more. This pizza says it all. If I were my altie, Shaka, I would be worried about whether it was safe to eat. As it is, they just don't make pizzas like this any more and with good reason. Both sculpties and mesh make for much more realistic food and drink.

Sculpties, mesh, and a bit of thinking outside the box, also make for much nicer furniture. My One says there are only two nice things you can say about this couch. It is red and it cost those who made it nothing to upload textures. They just dyed the default, plywood. Doing things within budget, makes my One happy. My One also says, that the more convenionally one builds the worse a build ages.

It is more than possible, according to my One, to make an old-style build that still looks fresh. These benches are a case in point. They are three prim, two hollowed out boxes and a box on top. They have no textures, but someone bothered to set the textures blank. You can sit on them because they are properly scripted with a simple sit animation. They are an indication someone cares about BobCat Den

Another indication that someone cared about BobCat Den was that the library was gone! There was an art museum in its place. That someone cares enough about a sim to have to tear one attraction down to build another means you have a real, working, educational sim, not a whited seplucher as my One Who Thinks She Knows calls them. And while art museums are easy, and most of the works here are reporductions, art museums can work without a lot of expense or expertise to make them happen.

And no, my One did not take this picture three years ago. She took it in March. If you are a long time reader of this blog, it should stir up memories for you. UAA Seawolves was once one of our favorite sims. It remained one of our favorite sims even after most of the place became off limits due to banlines, imposed after the management rid the place of squatters. And then it was gone.

One of the links in a huge pile of useless links my One and I picked up at Central Texas College included something called Multiple Intelligences. The link led to an empty plateau, but just downhill from the plateau was the....

SLENZ Midwifery Centre. SLENZ is an abbreviation and the last two letters stand for New Zealand. That's why a reproduction of what once stood tall on UAA Seawolves was waiting for me on Koru. Now you can see it too!

Just be aware, if you should need a shower while you are in labor, New Zealanders and Americans are divided by a common language, and no that is not an amusement park ride, though my One did find the sign rather amusing. She too shares my joy. It's nice to write a happy blog entry for a change. Warning: the next one won't be nearly so joyful.

Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- April 13, 2015

Troubleshooting Shooting Troubles

My One Who Thinks She Knows thinks that Passover, income taxes, and her so-called real life claimed this blog. The odd thing is we are still going in world and have been, though our time has been short and "precious." We have done our shift at Community virtual Libraries' world famous reference bunk, and when we've grown bored, we amuse ourslevs with gestures from inventory. This one is called Blair Witch. Yes, my head is screwed on straight. It's just hyeprflexible.

And we've had our usual technical problems. My One Who Thinks She Knows says one of Second Life's lessons is patience. That maybe so, but I'm the one who ends up rezzing as nothing at all.

Ironically, my One finds my failure to full rezz amusing. She doesn't laugh at me, but she leaves her out of sorts attitude and starts singing: A Shoutout for the Poor Little Puff Here's a shout out for the poor little puff. Life is hard and times are tough. She comes to Second Life to strut her stuff And all she is, is a poor little puff. Poor little puff, why are you blue It's happened to me, now it's happening to you. All of us have to just make do. Until you rezz, just muddle through. And here's a shout out for the poor little puff. You should be made of sterner stuff. Some day Second Life will work well enough, That no one will have to rezz as a puff. Eileen H. Kramer -- The One Who Thinks She Knows And yes, this song makes my One feel better, so I don't mind her singing it, and the last picture of me, rezzed as a puff is in my boma at Stinky Stinky.

The zwickies love our boma. They love it better than we do. We have problems with the place. They are the problems we always have with houses. Houses when you think about it are really big empty spaces with walls. Our boma is particularly cavernous which is odd because it is such a small and comfortable space.

It just doesn't feel small. Ironically (I guess I love that word), my One has not given up on the boma. She says I can and should have some low prim furniture. We have to do more with the place than just hunt zwickies.

But most furniture expletive deleteds. It's dull, unimaginative, and we now had an African themed house, so it was reasearch time with my One Who Thinks She Knows who came up with a Nupe table based on a Nupe stool. The Nupe live in Northern Nigeria. The red quince design is not authentic, but the distressed and pickled wood texture is. Real Nupes probably paint their stools today.

We also made an orchid-tube air planter, no soil needed. We had this orchid texture and both knew we couldn't go wrong with plants. It took two tries to get it right. Here it is in the VSTE Sandbox.

Unfortunately, neither the orchid air plant, planter nor the Nupe table really worked out. They are in the boma now. Where else would they be? We have more furniture. It is nicer than most, but I still rattle around like a little die in a big box. Dice is the plural. There is only one of me. The One Who Thinks She Knows is something different. And this light green house, which is a very pretty color is part of Loving Heart Adoption Agency's mall. Yes, they now have a mall!

This is not really big news because Never B Solo has one. I'm not sure about Next Generation. I'm not even sure where they are, but Loving Heart works on a different monetary model than Never B Solo. Loving Heart charges 200L for a perpetual panel. Never B Solo charges 100L for a panel that lasts three weeks. An attentive adult comes out ahead at Loving Heart. Never B Solo has a stream of steady funding. You can figure out the rest.

Actually writing off any Second Life enterprise is essentially a sucker bet with those betting the other way being the suckers. Nothing is permanent, and my One and I are both attracted to sinking ships. That said, there is something lemming-like about the Loving Heart Mall. I've seen these prefabs before and any one can throw up....a prefab, but novelty does sell and besides that this cookie cutter mall has to compete with Marketplace. All malls do. That simply does not bode well. I'm glad this is not my investment. My One thinks we'll get our 200L worth out of our panel. She also thinks we can fix the boma. Right now though she wants to work on this lovely scripted object. Expect to see more of it on this blog, and don't forget to air out the room when you are done.

Ioyba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- April 6, 2015

Eileen and Iyoba's Do It Better 2014 Roster
Name of Place	Why it Qualifies
TOV Korea	Ride the Witch Coaster. "Shop" in Korean stores. Visit a Korean museum and memorial.
The Grand Canyon	So much to do in a great setting. Climb ropes, rapell, canoe, or just relax. Who knew the great outdoors could be this great, and Mt. Everest is right next door (no kidding!)
The Adventure of Ruin	Indiana Jones meets a Japanese, Second Life, orientation course, but somehow it all works and it is gorgeous, scarey, and simply great fun.
Plusia Ars Island	Music, sculpture, architecture, furniture, and romance, all on one island. Give newbies what they want...and more.
Hokkaido Japan	Where retail and entertainment meet art and stay just inches clear of kitsch. Fly it. Ride it. Walk it. Puzzle it. Enjoy this authentic introduction to a different culture on an island that welcomes visitors.
SL Israel	Israel's "official presence" in Second Life. Learn about Middle Eastern and Jewish culture and religion while visiting, museums, the sea shore, the souk, and two synagogues.
The 109 Prim Circus	High above the Drill Factory is a fantasy realm where it is always steel, grey night. You can ride the carousels, walk under crystal trees, shop, or just explore the puzzles at the bottom of the moon. This sim vanished in January, 2015.
Momo Pet Land	One sweet, peach, of a classic, Japanese amusement park. There is an onsen, an art museum, pig races, a haunted house and more.
Africa Live	Celebrate African music, culture, and textiles in a club and shopping mall. Learn about African ecology on a beach next to a mangrove forest. Swim, wind surf, or ride a flying machine.