We Will Never Forget our Lily Frogs
And We Still Love our Petable Turtles
Shouting into the Wind -- Almost the end of the Petable Turtles.
Illicit Grief and Real Loss -- Now the frogs are in trouble
as well. This hurts!
All I Want -- What do I want out of Second Life? Losing breedables, fully or
partially means I really have to think about meaning.
Our Frogs are Really Going to Die! The end
was almost upon us.
Dragoness Rage was Here -- There is no one to
rescue and resurrect our Lily Frogs.
Eileen H. Kramer and Iyoba BatOni -- January 1, 2014
We are right, and we are not Crazy!
My One Who Thinks She Knows does not flinch when I state firmly and unequivocally on this blog that I think for myself some of the time. I share my One's memories and so too does my altie Shaka, but that does not make me just a thing like a pebble or a clod of dirt. My One Who Thinks She Knows understandss that she is not one hundred percent autonomous, so she is willing to grant that I have an existence of my own that needs a little respect from time to time.
This is important because it gives my One another crucial insight. She is willing to grant that when her eyes are on the screen in Second Life and Shaka or I am awake and inworld, reality in Second Life works a bit differently. Autonomy and sentience does not belong only to Ones and some of their pet animals, but also to avies, and to a lesser extent to other created entities such as bots and breedables. Breedables by the way include Zooby Babies including Alex, whom you can see in the picture above and probably tummy talkers. Put poetically, a breedable or bot like an avie has a piece of yourself inside it. The difference between an avie and a One is one of degree, not kind, and the difference between an avie and a breedable or bot is also one of degree. This is why you handle breedables and bots wtih the utmost care and consideration.
The alternative is not just the way Stella Costello handles Baby Alex in the name of social science, but it extends wider and deeper, all the way to Never B Solo. My One claims that Panel based adoption is like a blind date. You agree to meet a stranger and see if you can get along. If two strangers "LIKE" eachother by clicking LIKE on each other's panels, they have five days to see if they can get along. A panel is not an avie. An avie is behind a panel, and a One is with that avie, and the avie thinks for him or herself some of the time. Are you following me? If you have no respect for bots, breedables, or avatarim, how are you going to respect the avie and One who are behind the panel at a typical adoption agency?
The answer of course (and yes, this is a rhetorical question) is that you are not going to respect either the avie or One. You are going to judge them by their clothes, by their hair, by the way they move, or whether they embody and flaunt your worst fears. Hey maybe those fears are your problem! I'm small. I'm older than most. I'm a little overweight. I wear crazy hair. I like colorful clothes. I'm educated. I am really adventurous. I scare people, but I wouldn't scare them if they got to know me.
You can already guess what happened, but maybe you can't. We had a match around 8pm on Monday night. It lasted fifteen minutes or less. Our match who was an adult was in the Adoption Center. She was taller than I am, which does not say much, also African American, wore her red hair long and straight and had on a black full slip that barely covered her capacious buttocks. Fine, she would have looked stunning in apple or teal green, or maybe a full slip with fern leaves, stripes, or flowers, but some people are afraid of colors. If she were my employee or I was running some sort of establishment with a conservative dress code, I might suggest she dress differently, but I was out to become family and so was my One.
You can judge people, but you also have to give them space. The avie who looks like a grandma adds an extra layer to your family role play. Every family can use a crazy maiden auntie. Well, I'm not that crazy. Anyway, while we stood next to eachother by the teen-adult board, Big Red terminated the trial. She did not even speak to me. There was no: "I'm sorry," "This is a bad week." "I know we are a bad fit." "I don't think this will work out." "This really is a bad time." "I'm waiting on someone who looks, walks, and talks like me, and there is nowhere to say it on the form. If I were a coward, I'd resort to a little, white lie or a big one. Since I am brave, I hope you'll understand." Chances were, both my One and I would understand. It's getting treated like a pebble or a clod of dirt that makes us angry.
And in our rage, my One took me to bushwhack at the Ciudate Training Center that we found a few days ago on Wolverine 2. Someone still uses these University of Michigan sims. This is a 2014 build and it is not overdone with mesh, but has the lovely, colorful distressed walls, and interesting information on teaching safe sex and pregnancy prevention to a Latino clientele.
Then we walked over to UM Dearborn to make sure everything was still there. We found the Campus of Hope which has links to social service agencies, many of which are intact, the links and the agencies. There is a Food Pyramid game that is showing its age. If you know about the economic devastation in the Rust Belt, you will understand the reasons behind this display. My One understands because she lived for seven years in
Utica, New York which like Detroit, Dearborn, and Flint, is part of the economic sacrifice zone that runs down I-90. Because people can leave, we expect those who can to do so and those left behind... sometimes they are poster children for poverty. Sometimes they are just old people. Sometimes people say worse things in whispers about "those people who have been there for ages." Throw in the occasional racist or anti-immigrant crack for good measure.
That is not really the way to understand any of this, which is why the Henry Ford Estate, the "Glass House" is NOT going on the Explore SL Spread Sheet. My One tried to explain it to me and I'll do my best to explain it the way she tells it.
"You have to have lived there," she began. "You have to have walked those streets in winter. You have to pass through neighborhoods where the biggest and best buildings are the churches and public schools, and most of the retail has left. Some retail, like the stores on Mohawk Street stays. It is good retail because the neighborhood is NOT abandoned and people of modest means need food, sundries, lottery tickets, and what not. The stores in that neighborhood in fact sell some of the best Caribbean produce." My One learned about star fruit by buying it in bargain packs in the Great American (Now a Tops Friendly Market) and the Price Chopper on Mohawk Street.
"At the same time," my One explained. "You have to see the devastation that happens to working class neighborhoods when industry and jobs pull out. Try on your cliches then!
"And you also have to see the ones who escaped and who made it in the boom years. Utica has the Fountain Elms, built by the Proctor family (I believe), one of the original robber barons who did more building than robbing, and here is Fountain Elms Photo Album. The Fountain Elms is on Genessee Street, Rt 5, and a main drag where buses and pedestirans plod. To really get the feel of the gulf between wealthy who once built the place and the left behind you need to travel up Rutger Street to the Kinney Mansion in Rutger Park in Cornhill." My One says that if you know this story or something like it, you will understand the Ford Estate on UM Dearborn. If not it will just be another, fairly modern, Second Life, build. Even bricks and mortar in Second Life has a story to tell.
Then we went to see Baby Alex and make sure the Cleveland Plus sims were still intact. They are. They are cavernous builds. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Cleveland Plus III looks permanently unfinished and just abandoned. This building was state of the Art in 2009, but no one has done enough with it since so the place looks sad, and that was great for both of us in our mood last night. By the way, it is possible for older builds to age well. The Catacombs on the Paris 1900 Archipelago are a good example of that. This escalator looks awful because the texture looks not quite real enough and is NOT animated. That just wasn't the way people built things five years ago.
Then we went up to the spooky top floor of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame because we wanted to really lick our wounds but good...and we had never seen the lecture hall before, and this fruit is modern. It is not mesh, but it is well textured sculptie and a cut above the usual fare. Someone had been building and using this sim! My One laughed.
Then she gasped. "That's Baby Alex' house!" she cried as she saw the picture over the stage. Then she winced. Baby Alex lives in a place that is an awful caricature of "real life" abuse and neglect. Inworld though it's not that bad. He lives in a filthy apartment, but has ratties for friends. In this apartment, there is also a room with lines of cocaine, joints of pot, a great wad of cash, and a gun with the safety off or at least bullets in the chamber all on the table. Only the crystal meth is missing.
So too is the good sense. Why people making this much money on their "business" couldn't hire a maid and live so badly, is beyond my One's imagination? The real world is not the world of stereotypes, and despite the picture of abject poverty, those who live retchedly often treat their children as well as they can. My One said that Baby Alex' home study (He actually is a neglected Zooby because Stella Costello uses him as a prop rather than an interactive breedable.) reminded her of the panel adoption at Never B Solo and the way many prospective adoptees see them. Prospective social workers have to get beyond thinking superficially to do their jobs in "real life." Maybe assigning students to actually take care of Baby Alex giving his "evil parents" a night off now and then would be a start in developing the right sensibilities. Who knows, those attitudes might even flow from "real life" back to Second Life.
Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- July 30, 2014
Not Ready to Flush the Free Academy
You can now flush early and often at Never-B-Solo adoption agency. The staff has installed new plumbing for the little ones on Life HUDs and those with restless bladders, though even adult avatarot can heed nature's call. I'm NOT telling you whether I test drove this fine commode.
OK, I did test drive it. Meanwhile, my One Who Thinks She Knows slowly and painfully came to the conclusion that the staff at Never B Solo flushed our application for cooperative advertising (Sponsorship) for the Free Academy down the same throne that all the other avatarot and avatarim were busy trying out. It is now happily cavorting with the toilet paper and other unmentionables in the sewers above Winter.
My One and I sent several messages to Essence Piers. Tasty Foxtrot, the owner of Never-B-Solo was not online. We asked for a confirmation. We didn't care if they took forever to decide or if real life intervened. We got back only a busy message and nothing more.
Meanwhile, our Educational Device-a-Palooza at the Free Academy was a bust. Put simply, a lot of our devices just plain...not going to defile this blog with the appropriate epithet. Many were old school, some embarassingly so.
This white board is NOT one of those. It has a crude appearance by today's standards but we found it in use on Case Connexion and it takes up forty some prims which is not bad, and does everything the way it is supposed to, and is a great place to leave messages.
Just don't look too closely at the original message. International Schools Island has been gone for over a year, but the board is an oldie but goodie. I can't say that about this black board. IT takes up over 200 prims. My One and I customized it to go with our look and feel because this is 2014, but I can't see any one using anything so clumsy.
Worse yet, many, if not most of our educational software consisted of Power Point style slide presenters. There are few things more cringe worthy than most PowerPoints. A very notable exception are the presenters on Towson Innovation Lab because the brief presentations about student art work are straight forward, interesting, and original. A slide presenter with no slides makes my One fiercely out of sorts, and way more out of sorts than usual. Let's just say you did not want to be in my place late last week.
Then there was the "joke software" where the humor had long ago curdled. There is a community in Second Life that enjoys submission, dominence, and a variety of ugly power games. School makes a great environment for that. That is NOT what the Free Academy is about!
Of course my One was not ready to give up yet... Off we headed to Wolverine to look at all those boxes of freebies behind the sandbox behind the library. Let's just say my One had never seen so many old-school, as in more than five years old avatarim bodies in her life, but there was not one presenter, quiz, or free game to be found.
"I didn't think it would be this difficult," complained my One Who Thinks She Knows as we sulked at a cafe table on Algarve Sunset Portugal. We tried contacting Essence Piers several times over the weekend. We got a free chalk board that is not resizeable and has an ugly frame. We refurbished (well sort of) the white board from Case Connexion/International Schools.
And when all else failed, my One Who Thinks She Knows took time out to help me make hair in the lovely and well kept sandbox on Case Connexion. I endd up with this perfect shade of green and the swirls come from sculpted spikes created by Es0 Torok. We love you LC Sculpties!
Then Saturday night/early Sunday morning, my One swallowed her pride and dug out her wallet. We purchsed advertising instead of getting it for free. We also have a free advertisement up and running at the Second Life Community Forums. My One's next plan is to do more networking among real-life librarians and educators. She kind of missed out on all of that Sunday but she swears she'll catch up. If Never-B-Solo has no interest in co-op advertising, there are plenty of other places that may say "yes."
Iyoba BatOni with lots of help from Eileen H. Kramer -- July 28, 2014
Laughter, Tears, and the First Steps to Success?
 
|
My One Who Thinks She Knows wants to begin this blog entry with a song she started singing last night in Bar Anon on NASP. She said it was a song about a lonely lady in a bar, but soon, it became a song about something else. It was sort of about me, not that I mind. Here it is:
T'was a cold winter's evening. |
Yes, life at Never-B-Solo can be frustrating, not that we're taking it all as seriously as we once did, but there was something else that set my One Who Thinks She Knows into a world of hurt. She cried, "NO, NO, NO!" as she read the list of educational sims that had vanished.
Noteable among these is UAA Seawolves once one of the finest educational sims in Second Life. We had the displeasure of chronicling its downfall.
Also gone and somewhat good riddance is Teaching 16.
You can read the official news here. Teaching16 was unused and leaking money. The University of Washington was paying exhorbitant rent and doing nothing with the land. Worse yet, their hired guns or someone who had covert permission was squatting there. The squatters will now have to pay for land above which to anchor their opulent skybox. I don't feel sorry for them. My One feels sorry for the Washington tax payers who suppoerted this folly for far too long, and both of us feel very sorry for the students and faculty at University of Washington, who with a little building skill and a few hours of time, could have turned half the sim or more into something useful. It just is not that hard!
My One Who Thinks She Knows and I are both in the education business. You can see that even from the bottom that our platform is far more attractive than Teaching 16's cookie cutter classrooms with what were once all the latest bells and whistles.
Little by little in the past two weeks, the the Free Academy has slowly taken shape. Here my One tries out a presenter. She has nothing to present but our log, but soon there may be slides in it.
We had better luck putting up a calendar on a prim. Thank you Google Calendars. And of course there are all sorts of free educational odds, ends, and devices hidden in our inventory.
These are a great gift. They kind of keep on giving, though many of them are old school and a lot of them are duplicates. My One intends to experiment with these things. Starting tomorrow when we do NOT have a shift at Imagniation Island we'll start the Educational Device-a-Palooza and really test drive some of these beauties. We'll even leave the boxes out so that others can take them home. In a way this is better than a grand opening, though it's not quite a soft launch either.
But even with all the free, educational goodies floating all over the right sims in Second Life, you still often have to roll your own. No one has ring shaped signs to put on a pole made from one of LC Sculpt's stumps. Most signs are square because nobody wants to give any kind of flair to educational or retail space. My One and I are different!
Putting up the group joiners and texturing them meant that the the Free Academy was good to go. It even has its own web page to answer everyone's questions and of course it's own Calendar. Then came the announcement from Never-B-Solo looking for sponsors. That means free reciporical advertising. What had started as a project that my One had dreamed of when she complained about the tuition our altie, Shaka, had to fork over just to stay in a group, was suddenly going to be real and we were going to be advertising where we might get customers. We were going to make a name for ourselves.
My One and I even created a double easel made from of LC Sculpt's shoji door, shovel, and hair. Thank you Es0 Torok.
Now you know the hard part. We put in our sponsorship application and now we wait. It has been two days and no business days since we applied on Friday afternoon. There was just a crackdown at Never B. Solo I noticed a lot of child panels had disappeared as has the obnoxious (Sorry it was) photo contest. "Take a number" situations happen. My One says wait a few days before we find out what happened to our explanation. And what will happen if Never-B-Solo says "NO>" Hey, we're kind of used to rejection aren't we, and yes, that's a rhetorical question. Yes, it is nice to be writing blog again.
Iyoa BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- July 21, 2014
Not a Schadenfreude Garden Tour
When looking at what other people do in Second Life there is one question that says more about your own lack of introspection than it does about you really wanting an answer. Actually there are two versions of this question: "Don't you wanna?" asked in a voice of fairly genuine shock, dismay, and false concern and "Why don't you" asked the way you think it sounds and the even worse (Yes there is a third version.) "You really need a...." Of course Ones Who Think They Know, to borrow a very apt phrase from Iyoba, and their avies clearly have their own very good reasons for doing whatever it is they do. Second Life is not "Your World Your Imagination." it's "Your world, your time, your money, your preconceived notions, your inner self, and your imagination." And everybody doesn't want the same thing! That's really a tough one to get around because in Second Life this is more than consumer choice. It effects the space around you, and the locations you choose to frequent.
And as readers to this blog all know, there are some locations that Shaka, Iyboa, and I all find cringe-worthy. Shaka thought of them as she planted purple majesty millet in her garden a day or two after I had flash drive issues in "real life" Actually every time Shaka went out in her garden she'd tell me, "I bet they don't have gardens like this in the Giano Estates." I said that was a no-brainer, well not exactly, and Shaka being bit with the schadenfreude bug wanted to return to that fine archipelago and photograph the mansions on barren land and then thumb her nose at the owners' total lack of aesthetic sense.
We even had a joking name for the trip: "Lifestyles of the Rich and Stupid." I hope all of you can see where this was going. Schadenfreude can be fun and so can good old fashioned snobbery, but after about an hour they get old. Due to flash drive issues, they got old before I ever put this blog together. In theory there is nothing wrong with a garden tour of both the Giano Archipelago and the the Olrich Estates. It's all a matter of how you write about what you see.
Fortunately, for the sake of our readers and our own moral senses, Shaka's garden tour found exceptions that kind of proved the rule. There are plants and even something that might be a pretty good garden in the the Giano Estates. Shaka and I both loved these flowers, especially the pink lupines, set outside in front of a house in Fall River. We asked the owner if we could photograph the garden in the back. There was no garden in the back. The owner had just moved in.
I thought that very strange. Usually one of the first things to come out of inventory on any build where I think my avatarim will settle or others will settle with them, are plants. I have put planters in store windows or by kiosk poles. At the Free Academy there are two giant cherry trees and two planters on the third level. All the plants have rich brown soil and many though not all are wild or semi-wild species such as silene regia (the red plant in the picture), achillea/yarrow (yellow plant), and chocolate digitalis (also called foxglove). I take great pains in choosing realistic plants with ecological integrity, or unusual specimens.
In fact, my most successful building (It's managed to stay rezzed for three whole years through three or four moves) is the Temperate House on Stinky Stinky, which by the way is mostly garden. If you look carefully at this picture you will see no fewer than twelve species of plant and tree.
It was plants made me take back a hasty notice given to Stinky Stinky's landlord written sixty days after I started renting. I was stung by a fit of buyer's remorse, and I hated retale. But my sim was a "rat tail sim" with a "useless" skinny, tail of land sticking out and taking up space and tier. The rat tail made me a landowner. Yes, my retail experiment failed wretchedly, but the rat tail was an obvious place or an arbor/windbreak/orchard. I began making tropical trees and I built the "loaf shaped green house" as a temperate house and I took back my notice. As in Active Worlds long ago, plants and biophilia were my salavation. Land is a place to have plants. And most days one can sit in a garden as easily as one can indoors, and with the exception of special places like a professor's desk, or a landlord's office, or a boss' office, sitting outside, even on the ground, is much nicer. At least that is true for my avatarot and me.
What works for Iyoba and me (Shaka is a bit different but not by all that much) doesn't seem to work for a lot of avatarim. Someone rented or will soon rent this four bedroom monstrosity in Olrich Springs, and if someone has rented it, there are no marigolds, laurel bushes, willow trees, coleus, nothing to relieve the barrenness of a grey house on a not-so-big expanse of green lawn. I guess, in fact I know from reading the Second Life Forums that there are a lot of people who love houses filled with furniture, and enjoy spending time inside rather than sitting out in their gardens or on their porches. There is a brisk business in furnished skyboxes and homes, and a brisk business in the latest and greatest mesh furnishings, even though all you can do with most furniture is sit on it, and you can only sit on one piece at a time, and if it's indoors you'll only stare at four walls. There are people who love walls, furniture, and fences.
And for many who love their picture perfect prefabs, a garden in the backyard is an afterthought as it is at this house. This is actually a very nice, prefab set up with tall grass, birds, a few gardening tools and a weathered fence. I believe it is located on Woonsocket. The yard also features an energy converter in a strange box.
The nextdoor neighbor raises quite a different crop. These beauties reside in the stable, er uh...garage where hot, black asphalt, carbon sucking gasoline, and the occasional spill of automotive fluid nourishes them to their fine, fat, prize winning size. That avatarim are free to take long walks, fly, or teleport seems not to matter to those who produce prize winning fruits of machinery.
St. Joseph's Orphanage also has no garden though it has grass, trees, and of course a wall in its back yard. The lack of decorative outdoor planting mattered little to Shaka as she pushed and rode the spinner. She was getting her exercise, enjoying nostalgia, having fun, and very glad to be away from the prejudice that forces young avatarot into a subaltern role. Neither of us saw what was coming.
Shaka of course loves purple and all bright colors. She did note teh drabness of the houses and wondered why no one had either art or flowers in their yards. She put the thought aside. As a renter in the Giano Archipelago Shaka would find herself in trouble for her loud creations.
Iyoba would have even more trouble on the Giano Archipelago than Shaka. Shaka at least likes furniture. In her cosy shack she has a wall unit with books, safe, and radio; a bed, a bed bench, and two love seats. Shaka loves to sit inside and read or just relax. By contrast, I have always had trouble dragging Iyoba inside except to take a bath. When we got the Petable Turtles and now the Zwickies, Iyoba insisted on moving her bed into the yard. She gave up her house for an outdoor platform that she shares with Zwickies, KoLis, and mason bees.
Iyoba's inability to live comortably indoors or know what to do with more than one room or two except for a green house, is the flip side of some other avie-One pairs' need for lots of bricks and mortar. It's as foolish for me to ask: "don't you wanna garden?" as it is for them to ask "Why don't you get a nice, prefab house?" That said, there are better ways to build community sims than either the Olrich or Giano archipelagoes. When needs for privacy and particular sorts of high prim posessions and the trappings of prosperity infiltrate public/shared areas, then I can be a real critic and as judgemental as I please.
As for Shaka, she dreams of a couch like that in the Addams Family' mansion but in the garden of course. Unlike Iyoba, Shaka really does love furniture. Having an avie who willingly goes inside sometimes is interesting and who somewhat likes furniture is interesting.
Eileen H. Kramer with help from Iyoba BatOni and Shaka Prynne -- July 16, 2014
What I am Trying to Save
This blog has been silent lately, and that is usually not good. It's not good this time, but the reason is
fairly simple. Li'l Lightening, the flash drive that houses this blog's words and pictures is dying. It works on my
super-duper, fantastic multi-drive door at home, but not on other computers. There are thousands of pictures that are lost and still need to be packed up.
I am trying to send most of these images to the clouds. I was trying instead of writing blog.
And why am I so frantically trying to save all those images that are mostly outtakes? Well all the pictures, not just the ones that make it to the
blog tell a story. Well, most of them do anyway. The work pictures like this one I took of Iyoba on
Imagination Island.
Dance and gesture testing makes
long, empty reference shifts go faster.
And there are always just the plain old silly shots. Iyoba turns a handstand a few meters away from
The Honey Hut (Now There's No Adult in the Room in
Hartley. Empty green grass, is great for fooling around, and yes avatarim are supremely athletic.
Photographs are also the way I document any building achievements. You've seen countless photos of the
The Free Academy on this blog so I won't bore you with them.
This is a close up of flowers in the Temperate House at
Stinky Stinky on Eddesign Island. Plants, flowers, and trees are my passion.
Fashion and clothes are my other passion. In order to show my passion to the rest of the world or at least document it so that I can
show you some day, I take photos every time I make a dress. This is the echium gown made in the sandbox on
Hobo Island.
And Shaka needs clothes even more than Iyoba does. This is one of the last pictures I took before Li'l Lightning, the hard drive, degraded to
its present state. Here Iyoba wears her new "fossil paisley" tank top as she crosses a stone bridge toward the mountains
on Vignette. There was a party on the other side of the mountains, but it was a private party. There were ban lines on top of the mountains.
So it goes. To Shaka's way of thinking, ban lines beat security orbs any day of the week.
And this is not a picure I had to save and recover. It is a new picture showing Iyoba in our latest creation testing it out at
ground level on the LEA Art Sandbox. I am looking forward to making more dresses even though
Iyoba has way more than she can wear. There is something just wonderful about waearing a custom designed outfit and being able to show all the rest of you
how wonderful it feels. That is why we need pictures.
We also need pictures to show our zwickies to the world. If you are not into Second Life breedables, you probably haven't even heard of zwickies.
They just seem silly, and I have a very hard time describing Second Life's most beautiful breedable. If I show you...well, here is poor Nimrod taking
a hit from a fire ball. Zwickies playfully shoot eachother when they are not engaged in acrobatics, giving Iyoba zwicky kisses, cutting farts, or producing young.
And it is an open secret that I can rezz only a tiny fraction of the baby zwickies. Most stay in stasis forever and end up in inventory.
This is just such an offspring. She (and the vast majority of zwickies born are female) is Nimrod (pictured above) and Fortunata (Green starter zwicky) and has the
best coloring of both parents. She is also a tricolor.
This is another stunning zwicklet. The father, Throckmorton is a white, starter, Orion with a painted seal, brown face, and his mother is Subira a red
starter flexus. She trully shows off the best traits of both her parents.
Of course not all creatures I photograph are breedables. These swans are pure texture. Shaka saw them swimming in the river that separate s
LC Sculpties on Vignette. She crossed the bridge, climbed the mountains, and found...banlines.
So it goes.
Shaka also discovered this panda on Next Gen Inc. There was
an adoption center, which for Shaka is a very frought proposition. There was an amusement park with rides that worked, albeit slowly, and then there was
this panda. Shaka went on to explore the golf club on Alworth 2 and walk
to the freshwater beach on Heyden.
During her trip across the Olrich Archipelago,
Shaka stopped at this laggy, mesh ridden cafe. The place served nothing, and nearly crashed our browser, but it was photogenic.
It's best feature was a wood stove, which is a rarity in Second Life. This one even comes with its own wood basket, tough why the cafe needed
a roaring fire in late June/early July was beyond both Shaka and me.
Shaka will never be able to go back and ride the Thunderbolt at Cotton Candy Kisses and Carousel Dreams. The amusement park has closed, and only banlines remeain.
The photos are the only record we have left of that place, and the only images of this amusement park that remain to
my knowledge, possibly the only ones in the world.
And maybe I should have backed up Li'l Lightening but I had seen far worse happen to flash drive than a bit of bending and
some dirty drive doors. One believes flash drives to be indestructible compared to old time diskettes, just as Shaka and I both believed that
the Mother N-word would stay in business high above the Gambier Islands. Now all
we have left of that place is a blouse for Shaka and about a dozen photographs, plus several blog entries.
And photographs and blog entries are all I have left of LeQaa Al3rb which is now long
gone and Wi-fi. I took this photos weeks to days before this sim disappeared after multiple builds. It went from secret to star to dust and all on this blog and
behind the eye of my camera.
As of tonight, I am still trying to recover pictures. I am backing most of them up into the clouds. I am using an older flash drive that still has room to blog and hold some of the more recent shots and some much older ones. I will miss Li'l Lightening far more than I missed any sims. Yes, You can name a flash drive. You name zwickies. Land all ready comes named. And avatarot certainly have names. This blog is more or less unhurt. I'm the one who feels a bit shaken. I apologize for the delay. The show will go on.
Eileen H. Kramer -- July 12, 2014
Two Lost Worlds
My One Who Thinks She Knows hates bushwhacking these days. This is NOT because sometimes my altie, Shaka needs to be inworld. This is
NOT because she is messing around with Never-B-Solo (Enjoy the free advertising while you
have it!) It is NOT even because we are building the the Free Academy.
It is because bushwhacking can sometimes be VERY DEPRESSING. Second Life is full of educational ghost towns. And when you look at
them the first time, they look vibrant and functional, but that only is because somebody still pays the rent.
OC One Stop fits this description to a T.
The first place I toured on this sim was the hospital/pharmacy/doctor's office. It looked wonderful. There were medicines in the pharmacy.
There was even a patient hooked up to instruments that featured web links that led... nowhere. There were also a lot of empty offices and this
empty, pink educational mall, and two huge, derelict craft, one of which sat in the middle of the road.
When my One Who Thinks She Knows saw the dead link when she tried to access one of the patient's charts, I could hear her groan (The One not the patient
who was a perfectly contented bot.). We took a second look at the patient's charts. Her recrods after 2009 were absent. "Hmmm," said my One.
We made a bee-line out into the hallway and tried out the quizzes and assignments hidden under the clipboards. There were only dead links there.
And yes, the bots in this picture are old school. They do work and chatter quite nicely. This is good work for a bot if he or she can get it.
But there is something almost comical about these bots, and in all humor there is an element of tragedy. I've seen bots in use on
Iavante and UTEP Miners 2. On Iavante the bot is sad and
does not chat. On UTEP Miners 2 the bots' talk is
stilted and unnatural as they discuss illnesses and health insurance. It is not easy to be a bot.
And the really sad thing about OC One Stop is that it would
not take all that much to update the build and use it again, if there was a will to do it. A little retexturing here, editing a note card or URL there, and
the faculty could do whatever it was they planned to do. Or if there was no more will to do medical interactions, a little freebie or
home-made furniture in the "stores" along with free educational gadgets and the renters would get more than there money's worth.
As it is right now, Orange County Community College is throwing its money in the street. Linden Lab, though, is happy enough to take it.
LMU Language Island is a very different sort of ghost town.
Yes, Bellville sur Mer, the French language, seaside town at ground level is an old build, but old builds can be good builds, and
Bellville sur Mer is a very good build. No, there is not one drop of mesh in this church. It still looks as nice as any of the
Catholic churches in the German Archipelago.
And this store offers photo-textured vegetables on
old school multi-prim shelves. It is une epicierie. Nearly all of Bellville sur Mer is full of conversation starters like this, some with links, but many that
are just objects or signs. This simplicity is one of the reasons this build has aged so gracefully. Also, the French government, which manages many of the web links is reasonably slow to
change things. All of that is very helpful.
Also simplicity has its own charms, as in this cafe.
When I sat down, I did not receive a barrage of menus that I have to fend off. This cafe predates all of that. The red and white table cloths are attractive and the rosey
marble still looks great. Of course when my One got object profiles to figure out who was behind this old but still robust buiild she GASPED!.
"I know who made this place!" she explained. The architect of Bellville sur Mer was Daisyblue Hefflement who has been dead nearly three years. There is no way any one
is every going to update this build or fix what is broken. It works now, and as long as the rent gets paid, it will probably hold together.
My One and I both wish we could say that the rest of LMU Language Island was in as good a shape
as Bellville Sur Mer which did make it to the Explore SL Spread Sheet. This is inside the
psychology building high above the ground. Most of the offices are unfurnished, and someone forgot to install a floor. This makes the escalators difficult to ride.
The room with an experimental survey is also without a floor, and the computer there no longer work. The survey no doubt is long over.
There is one furnished office
far in the rear of the psychology building. It is lovely with a golden couch and fireplace, and this great picture. Why no one bothered to at least install a floor or a couple of
ramps going up to the escalators or get some furniture and make use of this building that leaks rent is beyond me? My One is also baffled. She knows every penny she spends on
both rent and zwicky food, but then again she is not a university or college with a fat budget. I don't understand all of it, but seeing this kind of waste makes my One
wretched and angry. This is beyond out of sorts. I would
rather walk through Never-b-Solo every day of the week for a month than see my
One the way she got when I tried to get on the escalator in the psychology building or when she recognized the builder of
Bellville sur Mer.
Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- July 7, 2014
A World of Walls and Fences
Shaka spent the night on the golf course. She found the golf course by walking from Next Gen Inc, home of an adoption agency that supposedly has dormitories and which dose have an amusement park.
Shaka decided she wanted to go swimming, and remembered that there was water on several of the less developed islands in the
Olrich Archipelago, a set of family and role play islands.
The
Olrich Archipelago was NOT Giano Estates. Shaka
had even gone to school there until Richmond Elementary moved to another island.
She had no fear, and the the Alworth Greens Country Club was NOT a private
home with a security orb though it had one fiersome, metal fence topped with barbed points. This is an interior shot.
Shaka wanted to visit the country club because I had just given her a new dress. This is her only summer dress. Now she can go
to church or synagogue in style. It takes careful thought to dress a twelve year old avie. She is almost adult size, but she is
still a kid. Shaka is heavier than I was at her age. She has more shoulders but as I was at her age, she is not particularly developed on
top. I remember going to buy a dress for my great grandmother's nintieth birthday party, and my mother explaining how some stylles were
"too much dress." I don't know what she meant by this, but it was similar to saying something did not fit well on a small shouldered adolescent.
It also goes without saying, that an adolescent's somewhat formal outfits have to be modest. For me, this meant a tailored look. For Shaka it means
simplicity. Note the round collar and A-line skirt. All texture skirts are A-line in Second Life. We just got lucky.
If all this sounds vaguely sexual, it probably is. When making clothes for either of my avatarot, I can feel my skin tingle with the texture of the fabric.
When Iyoba stands on the Ultimate Posing Stool I feel the discomfort of putting on a strange garment and letting the department store, dressing room, mirror be an
unflinching witness. Shaka, for her part, was thrilled with her dress. She was going to wear it to the country club and then wear it to
walk to the beach. Yes, she was sure there was a beach. She is always sure there is a beach.
And no, this food was not edible. They had lovely cucumbers and a basket of fresh rolls on the
the Alworth Greens Country Club's
buffet, but they were just for show. This reminded Shaka too much of St. Joseph's Orphanage,
so it was off to the beach.
"At least the big fence around the country club has a gate," Shaka put a positive spin on her first gate.
Country clubs are after all reasonably public in Second Life, and the the Alworth Greens Country Club's had
been hospitable to my young avie. I, however, had misgivings. I hadn't liked the fence,
And I surely did not like this gate! Neither did Shaka. This was the second time we have seen gates in a public street.
On the west border of Smithfield and CentralFalls is a huge gate.
Shaka jumped it on her bicycle. It may have opened. The gate on Alworth 2
opened at a touch. It just didn't belong in a street, not in Second Life, the land of ban lines and security orbs. It's a waste of prims. It's a show of power, and worse.
A sign advertised Alworth 2 as a "gated community."
Someone has copied the worst of every day, "real life" into Second Life, and there are people who find this desirable for their
avatarim and themselves. This is NOT satire. This is the view from the hospital parking lot. You can see a house behind its own fence across a wide road.
The house is nice and secure, but if you look out the window, you see not only your own wrought iron fence, but also the chain link fence that keeps
the hospital parking lot nice and safe. Now think, why not build a low, stone wall or a sculpted wall with embedded mosaic if you must have a border, and why not
have a pedestrian mall or pocket park instead of a parking lot. There are relatively few cars and an awful lot of pavement.
Then again, when you can afford a big chunk of land, the space is yours to waste, and why not flaunt your wastefulness.
Shaka stared up at the big useless walls on either side of the street that led from Alworth to
Downtown Olrich and thought she was at the bottom of a canyon. She wondered what could be behind those walls. One building was a casino complete with
Xingo.
And yes, most of these pictures are very gray. That is the way a lot of
the Olrich Archipelago's commerical area looks. It doesn't have to look this way. It is possible to have plantings, a coat of paint, murals, etc...
This is just good urban planning. It is a bit utopian, but so too is the
the
Olrich Archipelago or is it?
For those who own the big, locked garages on Downtown Olrich 2,
perhaps this is as close to heaven as it gets. Shaka cut between the garages after finding out the doors on one were locked. She came out the alley and hit
what was sort of a dead end. Yes, there is barbed wire on top of this fence. Yes, it is low enough for an avie to jump, which is what Shaka did.
Jumping fences is always fun, but Shaka hates barbed wire. Iyoba by the way would not care. I think I agree with Shaka. For some reason, it leaves me angry, and I have
yet to become jaded. I keep asking "WHY! Aren't the locks on the garage doors sufficient!" Is it just fun to be hostile to visitors?
I'm not sure of the answer to this question. Shaka wondered what lay behind this fence and a hundred others like it. The metal fences often showed nothing
but lawns. Some of the commerical area had birch trees, and there are some nice red maples on
Next Gen Inc, but there is very little plant life beyond well manicured grass on most of the the
Olrich Archipelago. Shaka would have to do a home invasion to really be sure, and she hates and fears security orbs.
A block or so from here, a short, slight avie ran out into the road. As he rezzed better Shaka could see that he was a boy with a knife that he waved like a sword. Her firs thought was "priate" and then she felt glad that a person with some imagination was wandering the streets and that she was not alone. The boy and she conversed. He complained he was bored. There is not much to do on the empty streets of the the Olrich Archipelago except get from here to there. Shaka wondered why the boy didn't go for a walk. She was still wondering when his mother came out and yelled at him for running around with a knife. He made a lame excuse about helping her cook. Shaka decided she did not want to embarass a fellow child/adolescent avie in public, and slunk off.
Shaka eventually found the beach at Heyden. It did not matter that there was no sand or that
the water was fresh. Where Shaka lived most of her life before becoming an avie, the beaches were always on fresh water. Yes,
the boat welcomes all comers, much like the the Alworth Greens Country Club. Shaka instant messaged the boy whose mother
yelled at him. She found out he was three years her junior, and she asked him if he wanted to befriend her. The boy asked her to ask his mother. I felt sick. I remembered a husband who would not
let his wife talk on the phone because the conversations with her friends were "an escape from reality." Shaka put in a request. She promised to be a good influence.
We all know Shaka is anything but, not because she'll discourage the boy in his studies, but Shaka is an independent sort. She chafes at her subaltern role. She wouldn't be out in the street with a knife. She'd be three sims gone by the time some parent intent on playing domination games showed up. She might even have a few choice word for such a parent. Authority s--cks. Shaka knows this. Authority is like barbed wire top fences, thick walls, and gates in a public street, and all those signs that tell avatarim what to do and not do in the public street, when all those avatarim want to do is get from there to here or maybe here to there. Maybe Shaka is not such a bad influence after all.
Eileen H. Kramer -- July 3, 2014
On Opposing Paths I
Someone help me. I'm still baffled. Everything is going so well, and just SO PLAIN WRONG. Here I am on our platform, which by the way, now has a name, and I am showing off a brand new dress that I got wear to work last night. My One Who Thinks She Knows is making me clothes regularly.
She also is following through on our school project. It now has a name, The Free Academy. It is the first, free academy inworld. No one has borrowed that old standby for naming highschools in Central and Northern New York. Free Academy dates back to the time when highschools charged either tuition or fees. That was about a hundred years ago or more. Free Academies offered secondary education for free! The name is especially apt for Second Life, where the schools all charge tuition except for our school.
And My One even textured the Free Academy HUD. She did not have to change it's shape, though it looks a bit funky with a hole in the middle. She was able to edit it so it no longer hid in a corner of the screen. Just touch it and it works...fast...no lag.
Then we really got LUCKY!. We visited MCCAVLC Island and found boxes full of teaching supplies, picture changers, black boards, suggestion or note card drop boxes etc... It doesn't get any better than this.
It really doesn't, but before we go further, you deserve some comic relief. If you make hair in SL (What you don't make hair!), you'll appreciate the joke. Some DIY builder, very much like my One Who Thinks She Knows, textured this computer case with a lovely, frosted, dark brown hair texture. Look carefully at this picture and you'll see.
You don't have to look carefully at this picture. Just click it to see Never-B-Solo in whatever glory it has. I knew we would end up here and it is every bit as depressing as I remember it. After being disturbed by reminders to only use clean language and have an appropriate profile picture courtesy of the ever-vigilent and obtrusive public address system, I knew exactly what we were in for, and so too does the One Who Thinks She Knows.
Still we went through the motions. We paid for a "panel," inserted our "profile," and then our beautiful profile picture, the one we took at Marriott Library 2, Sunday morning. Then we had the usual look around. We were able to like an eleven year old who speaks Spanish and an eight year old who is sick of "role play" that involves her being carried to bed and dressed by others. Think of that what you will.
I think there is always something for sale in the shopping plaza near Never-B-Solo, and a lot of what is for sale is breedables and specialty, child avie products, but it is the agency itself which is the real money maker. Making a profit by the way is not a bad thing, but with thirty parents each paying 200L per month (100L every two weeks) that is 60,000L a month which should more than cover the rent on a 8092. Profile rent keeps the agency in business so I can't really begrudge it. I also understand the need to play by the rules and make sure the kid you choose or the one who chooses you also has a profile.
Never-B-Solo is a business success story.
That said, our adoption efforts like the other three efforts are doomed to failure. Quite simply, we don't fit in, and yes, that is a prospective mother. OK, her corset doesn't fit, but she has a lovely candid shot. I can see a house or apartment or perhaps a club in the background, and she is playing by the rules. There is no name on this profile picture. There is no way any one can make a private arrangement with her.
This little girl is NOT following the rules. I have a feeling that if we put our name on our picture, we'd lose our profile and our money faster than you can say Never-B-Solo. Children, however, are in high demand. It takes a lot for the staff to pull their profiles. Ariel's profile is also extrenely Photoshopped. My One prefers candids.
And this young man is old enough to know better. I don't care if this is a professional photo. The other way people take their images is to just take a crude selfie at the agency. This distorts the proportinos since Second Life textures need to be square. He too is in reasonably high demand, and the powers that be won't touch his profile.
And here is our old "friend," Clark Kent. He made a match with me and then never showed. Somewhere during his trial, he got banned for standing up one adoptive parent after another. I clicked his picture just to see his profile and found that he only answered the first two questions. His profile is even on the wrong board. Sorry, Clark, the panel only holds twenty likes, and besides, it is only a matter of time until the One Who Thinks She Knows gets side tracked, competitive, and Never-B-Solo breaks both our hearts. THIS WILL NOT END WELL. Say that a three, fifteen, a hundred times fast. Maybe somehow my One Who Thinks She Knows will listen. Fat chance!
Iyoba BatOni -- July 1, 2014
Pink, Green, Red, Brown, Burgundy, and Oh So Wrong
How can a One Who Thinks She Knows work hard in both the right and wrong directions at the same time? That's what she's doing.
You can see in this picture, I am jumping for joy, which is totally at odds with how conflicted I feel right now. My One is actually sticking
with the school project. Here I am helping her take care of a major problem on our platform.
Our trees were dying. My One got a free solid heart shape sculptie and a heart shaped container sculptie so we could make these cute heart shaped
planters. In case you wonder about the weird texture on the planters, this is a test texture. Building and texturing rarely conicide.
Although this time, we could build and texture simultaneously. Here is the planter wearing its gourd and coin texture. My One fell in
love with dipper gourds and had to include one. I think we may be
getting some gourds on a trellis soon. What is a platform without plants, as long as they have either soil or planters full of soil to keep them alive.
Plants in Second Life might be able to live without soil, but that would violate ECOLGICAL INTEGRITY and realism.
My One also made sure we had working HUD and notecard givers. Our HUD uses the bwb (Bob's Web Browser) script and a notecard that
a user can configure for any educational or entertaining sites he choooses. By wearing the HUD he or she will have access on most
sims as long as users can run scripts. In the unlabled barrel are note cards with educational links. Ludo Merritt's notecard script offers
a menu of notecards. It would be nice to have a suggestion box where users could deposit links. It would also be nice to have some textures.
Yes, the texture on the HUD dispenser says Mourning Dove Date Nut Bread Soda. The soda is quite good, and the texture is good for testing labels. As I said above,
texturing and building usually don't occur together.
With dresses this is especially true. My One gets textures ready and has a backlog, and we build when she needs
Sandbox Therapy. Those are her words for it. Here I am wearing a dress with a pattern of tropolaeum on it. Tropolaeum are supposed to be
impatients but they clearly DON'T look anything like what Ones Who Think They Know find in their run-of-the-mill garden nurseries.
My One has asked me not to reveal where she obtained the image. A One deserves to keep her secrets.
And here I am in another fairly new creation, the one shoulder safflower dress. And no this is not
the platform. We actually went bushwhacking, and my One took this picture on OC Onestop. We have more to say about this sim, and I'm saving it for another post.
And in this picture,
I was relaxing after a long trip through the sewers. The bench is on Paris Couture in
case you are curious. Now what is a picture from Paris Couture doing here? Well, just as it appears that I have made a wrong turn in this
blog, my One made a VERY WRONG TURN in her thinking. She said. "Iyoba, after we get everything on the Platform textured, we are going to
be able to advertise our Free Academy. I wish I knew who would be interested, but I know where they sell a lot of advertising that young avies and their
parents and friends can see...." I thought: "Oh no!" My One replied: "Right now we can't even talk in the Never B Solo group, but
I can fix that, and then we'll get the advertising going..."
I hope you can see what is wrong with this picture, and I don't mean the scuzzy taxi on
OC Onestop. First, the daugher of a potential adoptee said ugly things to me when she and
her mother visited Stinky Stinky, our home.
Second, our two other trials (We've had three over a year)never resulted in meeting the potential adoptee. One completely no-showed (He was later banned from the agency), and
the other ended the trial in less than twenty-four hours with meeting me. Second Never B Solo creates a
very hostile environment for potential parents. We are charged more than twice what they charge children. The agency is full of kiddie furniture, and an obnoxious,
public address system constantly announces that we should wear appropriate clothing and not curse or swear. Excuse me!
Of course, I couldn't stop my One. We sat together on the grass on
Jacks SDState and filled out the Parent Application for Never B Solo.
Then it was off to Marriott Library 2 for a lot of
images from which to get a selfie for my profile picture, and yes Obnoxious Public Address System, I was dressed very appropriately.
This is probably the selfie we are going to use for the profile picture. Do I have to tell you how dirty I feel. My One is such a feckless hypocrite it isn't even funny.
She's the one who got Shaka to stop paying her tuition/dues for Richmond Elementary School because she said that you shouldn't have to pay to belong to a group.
Well what is the difference from paying to belong to a group and paying to speak in one. It's the same idea. My One says this is to promote a free school. That's a higher purpose than
just chatting. I say we're putting money in the wrong people's pockets and subjecting ourselves to ten kinds of ugly, but my One, she doesn't know where else to
advertise. Right now I hope our beautiful platform ends up back in inventory soon. Never let a One Who Thinks She Knows follow through on
ideas.
Iyoba BatOni with help from Eileen H. Kramer -- June 29, 2014
Eileen and Iyoba's Do It Better 2013 Roster |
|
Name of Place |
Why it Qualifies |
| The State Fair at Morrill | It has great rides; fun games; a huge, educational, archipelago nearby and also the Avatar Fitness Club near by with hard, house music and a crowd. |
| Hanako Land | Interesting architecture, amusement park rides that are kinetic sculpture, a four story castle, and a house of horrors that is sure to have your nightmare waiting for you. This sim vanished May of 2014. |
| Shinrei Ueno Hospital | This is a unique build with shadows, darkness, urban exploration, and ghosts. It also is an abandoned mental hospital with all the assocations this brings. |
| Fiteiro Cultural | Two clubs, art exhibits, innovative builds and architecture, sculpture, an old Dutch village and more! |
| Towson Innovation Lab | Art that comes alive and is always updated plus a well run, public, sandbox. |
| Soho New York | Home of the Cyclone and gateway to a variety of museums and galleries, temperate nature walks, the largest train on estate land, and the second longest ski run in Second Life. Enjoy it while it lasts. |
| Portugal Porto | Enter the Old City to see a Southern European fishing port as old as the Roman Empire. Visit four clubs. Shop in the stores, or just go for a walk. Unlike most of Second Life, this sim is populated but almost never crowded enough to crash or lag. |
| Virtual Rosewood | It can happen here and it did. A monument to and museum about the Rosewood Massacre that happened in January 1923 in Florida. |
| Electrobit City | Gaming meets kinetic, flat work and hard edged art for an immersive and exciting experience that never grows stale. |