Friday, May 30, 2008

Moving ...

Doesn't Eschatos look stressed?

I suspect that it's because he doesn't get out into the Real World much ... but there he is, standing in the intersection (thanks to Google Maps' "street view", which is also providing the white lines impaling his neck) in front of Simuality's new corporate HQ ...



If Eschatos seems to be M.I.A. in the early parts of next week, it's because we're in the process of schlepping the desks, computers, printers, routers, and all those Avatrait framing supplies from one side of Evanston to the other. After all, Eschatos is a bit "manifestation challenged" when the computers are all packed up and not connected!

This is going to be a Good Thing, because it puts me only a two-block walk from my subway stop, effectively freeing me from the schedule tyranny of the suburban bus system ... however, it will be a huge hassle while it's happening.

More when we get set up ...

Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Something to check out ...

Usually in this space we look at stuff that Eschatos has been doing in S.L. ... but today I'm writing to pimp the Grand Opening of the new Non-Profit Commons sim, "NPC2 Aloft" (LINK). The festivities kick off at 12:30pm SLT and run till 9pm SLT, tomorrow, Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 ... do try to get over there to check it out!



Aside from the expected "speechifying" and open-houses at the various Non-Profits whose groups now have offices there, a full program of live musical performances is scheduled through the day, plus lots of "fun stuff" to enjoy. Eschatos is seen here previewing the "magic carpet tour" of the island ... there's also a horse-and-carriage tour, and bicycles that you can rez and ride around the island! In addition, there's a pool, with diving boards, canoes that can be paddled around the outside of the island, hidden waterfalls, and a bunch of other amusing touches.

Of course, a lot of these are going to be on-going attractions of the NPC2 Aloft, but if you want to check out the music, and get a chance to meet a lot of the folks involved, you'll want to try to make it over there during the Grand Opening tomorrow.

More later ...

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

It's not ALL fun and games ...

It's amazing how cool and refreshing a steaming hot cup of coffee can be when you're standing on the business end of a volcano! Here's Eschatos checking out one of the new features installed by the lovely folks at Linden Labs ... luckily for him, they haven't "enabled damage" there yet, as he even wandered deep into the mountain and sat on big chunks of semi-molten lava that were rezzing there waiting to become fiery ejecta.



That was yesterday, today Eschatos attended a birthday party for one of the Paradise Builders crew who are working on the "fashion district" centered around Club Mannequin (LINK). Virtual ribs were on the grill, and virtual sushi on the table ... and much virtual beer was being consumed.

Eschatos had to beg off early (missing the virtual cake), to head over to the "Large Scale Immersive Events Seminar" that was happening over at chez Clever Zebra ... which was very informative in a general "measure twice, cut once" mode (OK, I'm a former Certified Meeting Professional, so a lot of the stuff was aimed to folks with somewhat less-specific skill sets), plus held out some fascinating hints about stuff that is being developed "out there" for integrating virtual worlds like Second Life into the web!

More later ...

Monday, May 19, 2008

More fundraising ...

Well, we followed up on our Myanmar kiosks with another fund-raising effort, this for helping out the Red Cross with their relief program for the Chinese earthquake ... on Saturday we turned over Club Mannequin (LINK) for a 24-hour event, featuring a large kiosk in the middle of the dancefloor ...



... as well as others around the club and in various locations over on Simuality Island (LINK). While the dollar amount raised was modest, we did get a lot of attention, getting an SL traffic figure of 10487 (which I guess is quite good), as well as having good pick-up for the press releases that went out thanks to the generosity of the folks at PR NewsWire.

If you feel like making a "virtual" donation, both the Myanmar Cyclone and Chinese Earthquake kiosks are still up over in our little corner of Second Life (and may possibly be in various other locations, as we structured these so that folks could take copies to rez in their own areas), so it's not too late. We'll probably leave them up through May, and then cut a check to the Red Cross.

More later ...

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Nothing specific ...

Hey, a guy can post just to foist a pic, right? This lovely shot of Eschatos languidly leaning on a lamppost in some louche locale was actually taken over at the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) in part of the new Corbett Howard Unwarranted Exposure exhibt.



The show's promo poster features Corbett in a similar pose in some dark alley somewhere in S.L. ... in the Gallery there's a place with the lamppost and a sufficiently seedy looking background, with the same poseball so that you can snap a pic of your av. The only problem is that I tend to keep my "environmental settings" at Midday, and this really needs to be set for Midnight ... which makes the post's shadow (which does not include the av's shadow - how vampiric!) less noticeable than it is here, and the "pool of light" from the lamp more evident.

Heck, I guess I screwed up ... but let this be a tip for you when you pop over there to take one of your av! By the way, instead of a freebie pic this show, Corbett's done a parasol and accompanying pose that you can take with you ... such a deal ... Unwarranted Exposure will be up for the rest of the month, so don't dawdle if you want to check it out.

More later ...

Monday, May 12, 2008

Wow ...

Well, I'm impressed. The Boss had decided that we should do donation pylons in-world to help raise money for the relief efforts in Burma ... and last Friday we whipped up these little units and started distributing them where we could ... here's one sitting outside the Simuality Island Welcome Center (LINK).



They can be "taken" and rezzed in other places (we were having a heck of a time with the script for that), so this should be spreading around in-world.

The folks at PR NewsWire had a very generous offer of putting out complimentary releases about relief efforts for the Myanmar Cyclone survivors, so I wrote up something and shot it out to them ... and I've just been blown away with the pick-up ... we've been in Forbes.com, FoxBusiness.com, Yahoo news, and dozens of others!

If you're wandering around Second Life, drop by Simuality and make a donation, or "take" one of the kiosks (right-click, more > take copy) and set it up in your corner of the metaverse to help out!

More later ...

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Video ...

Eschatos spent much of the morning over at the Welcome Center on Simuality Island (LINK), working on putting in a display featuring our recent coverage by NBC5 Chicago (a story called "The New Reality" by reporter Kim Vatis which aired this past Monday). You may recall my having blogged about the TV crew being up here (and our creating an Avatar for her) a couple of weeks back. I was slightly miffed that they used maybe 15 seconds of the 45 minutes of so of raw machinima footage that I'd shot then, but I guess they decided to shoot their own scenes.

Eschatos set up a big screen TV that cycles through various screen caps that I'd snagged from the video, and then added a sign with link coding which goes out to a page where we have a copy of the video available.



I almost experimented with the "upload video" function on this blog, but figured I'd leave that for another day. One of our "still developing" plans is to be shooting a lot more machinima of events, etc., in-world and foisting them on the unsuspecting world via YouTube and these other outlets.

Gotta go write a press release about our next gallery opening at Avatrait ... more later!

Monday, May 5, 2008

New toys ...

So, I got caught up with the Second Life Blog this morning and downloaded the new Release Candidate that they were touting ... this has a fun feature that, when activated, shows the "rendering costs" of different avatars. This appears as a number, in green, yellow, or red, hovering over the head of the avatar. Eschatos here barely registers, with a score of 190 with his coffee cup (and its animation and steam effect), and a mere 142 without ... I was looking around Simuality Island (LINK) and saw other folks at 9180 (red) and 829 (yellow), so I guess I'm "treading lightly" on the servers!



This, by the way, is Eschatos in his current digs in the new offices on the second floor of the Simuality office ... the ground floor having being turned into a SlippCat demo store. So far we've been having to find our own furniture (we lost all our old desks, chairs, computers, etc. in the island re-boot), but I'm guessing that we'll eventually have a standardized look again ... but this stuff will do for now.