Uh ... hello?

OK, so Eschatos had been so hopeful that he was going to be appearing on these pages with substantial frequency after his back-to-back posts last month, but it's been over a month and he's not been back until now ... for which he apologizes (as he glares at his typist). Things have been chaotic, though, and showing up in SL has not been fitting easily into the schedule!

Today, however, Eschatos attended the Job Fair that Amazon was hosting in-world:



That's the aerial view of the event with a couple of insets of Eschatos ... who, despite this being supposedly a business event, was seriously over-dressed! He even got a shot with Jeff Bezos (well, with a magazine cover). If Eschatos had been running the event (which he would dearly like to be in a position to do in the future!) he'd have had a virtual "cut-out" of Mr. Bezos so that Avatars could get their snapshots with the boss!

Speaking of things that Eschatos would have done ... there were a LOT of things that were just "not right" at this ...



... as you can see there, the concept was that there were going to be "virtual first-round interviews" happening ... and they had "booths" (the little "huts" in the top pic) set up for various functions and divisions. But, nobody was manning these, there were a lot of "Amazon Employee" avatars around, but there were only a handful that were communicating with the visitors. Now, you have to remember that Eschatos' typist is a former Certified Meeting Professional, so this was driving the whole "team Eschatos" nuts ... and I guarantee that we would done a far better job of running this if WE were in charge! As you can see from the other pics here, there were no bodies in any of the desks, or (with the sole exception of the IMDB "booth") in the specific job areas.

It wouldn't have taken very much to have assigned two of the various Amazon folks to each of the "huts", had somebody AT the "reception desk" to specifically answer the "what/how?" questions, and provided more details about the whole process. Essentially, an Avatar visiting this today could drop their resume (on a SL notecard) in a mailbox, and try to ask questions of the folks milling about. Aside from picking up some free swag, that was the extent of it.

Needless to say, Amazon COULD USE SOME IN-WORLD MANAGEMENT/PROMOTION STAFF (hint, hint, nudge, nudge), and Eschatos hopes that is OCD-enhanced typist will be relentless on following up the few leads he was able to extract from this!

More later ...

Well ...

Bet you didn't think you'd be hearing from Eschatos this soon, did you? To be perfectly honest with you, Eschatos is a bit surprised too, but happy to be back into the word spinning biz. Aside from all the Zen stuff about what happens to an un-rezzed avatar, Eschatos would rather be out and about, given the choice.

Now, he's a bit sensitive about this, since just about the only things of interest he'd come up with over the past many months were announcements of the books for Avatrait Gallery showings, and here is his again shilling for another book, but that's just the hand that fate's dealt him, and he'll simply have to get over his fear that his readers (if there are any left!) will consider him a "one trick pony".




This is a little peek into the WSI SL HQ ... Eschatos is very proud of how this is turning out. The shelf in the background there is made up books that link to alphabetical listings of downloadable .pdf books from the WitchSchool Library, but the focus here is on the new .pdf-only release of Ed Hubbard's "Witch Wars Defense Manual" ... a notorious volume that had been out of print/circulation for the better part of a decade. Drop by the SL build or the WSI Ning Site if you want to pick up a free copy!




Of course, Eschatos is never happy until he gets his picture into these blog posts, so here he is ... out on the deck outside of the classroom space on the upper level of the WSI SL HQ. He's very excited to get a program of classes/talks/workshops going up there, but we're just now getting the inSL volunteer force (we're hoping to have the center staffed 24/7) organized, so it might be a few more weeks until that can happen.

Needless to say, if having back-to-back missives here is any sign, you'll likely be hearing every little detail in what's happening in-world!

More later ...

Soooo ...

I'm guessing that if Eschatos had "regular readers" in the past, they have all given up on him by now. It's been nearly 3 months since there were predictable updates here. And it's not been pretty on the other end, let me tell you!

In his last missive, Eschatos was talking about a big new project that was taking up nearly all of his typist's time (which was why he hadn't been showing up much back then). Well, that FELL THROUGH. Yes, all these contracts were executed, a press event was held in NYC, lots of grip-and-grin ... then KABLOOEY! Total, unmitigated, picture-in-the-dictionary SNAFU. Two weeks into the deal, both sides were looking across the table and wondering where the money was.

Eschatos, being made of pixels, is fortunate to not usually have to deal with these sorts of things (although that reminds him that he owes rent on his apartment over in Broadway Live), but he can't understand how this whole thing progressed as far as it did without those involved in the negotiations getting around to the dollars (Linden or otherwise). It's CPU-boggling!

Anyway, this pretty much proved to be the coup de grâce for the company, which had been crawling towards a "promised payday" in April. Instead of a payday, there was having to give up the offices, sell the furniture, and skulk off to other zones to reel at the unrelenting string of bad luck that had manifested over the past six or so months. And Eschatos was very unhappy to discover his office (and massive colonnade) evaporated, along with our other SL stuff. Sucks to be us.





Anyway, Eschatos' typist had brought in a piece of business back when there still was a company to handle it ... it was a multi-platform project for WitchSchool International, which has web, video, social networking, classes, and Virtual Worlds aspects involved. Over the past couple of months, Eschatos has gone weeks of not being rezzed when his typist has been cranking code to get the WitchSchool.com site up and running. Eschatos has, however, played a significant role in getting the WSI SL HQ (the pic is of him sitting at the "welcome" desk) up and functioning.

The build features a downloadable library, a video collection, a classroom, extensive literature racks, and an outdoor multi-function space. While it's not "finished" finished, it's quite well along, and we're anticipating starting to do classes there in the next week or so ... so do go and check it out!

Eschatos' typist is integrating this blog in a site he's developing, so the odds are pretty good that you'll be seeing more frequent updates ... even though Eschatos (and his typist) are spending the majority of their hours looking for work. If you know of any opportunities out there for communication and/or management gigs that require a solid Virtual World background, please give us a shout, either here or on LinkedIn!

More later ...

I know, a LONG time ...

So, it's been over three weeks since you've had an update from Eschatos ... that's very bad, since he really would prefer to have something in here a couple of times a week. Unfortunately, Eschatos has a problem. It's one of those "made of pixels" issues ... when his typist can't make it into Second Life, poor old Eschatos stays "unrezzed", and if Eschatos doesn't rez, he can't go do stuff to report to y'all. It's frustrating for everybody involved, and is always in danger of floating off into metaphysical navel-gazing about the nature of the un-rezzed Avatar!



So, Eschatos begged and pleaded and got onto the schedule. Having nothing "topical" to illustrate, he opted for "tropical" and headed over the Visit Mexico sim, one of his faves. He discovered something over there that he hadn't been aware of previously, now at the "ballcourt" (where he's pictured), they now have animations so that you can bring a bunch of people over and actually play the Mesoamerican "ball game" ... although Eschatos wonders if they have the sacrificial parts of that scripted in!

Eschatos supposes that you're asking what's so important that his typist can't even run him off to the NPC meetings that he'd attended week in and week out for months? Well, it's still a bit of a Big Secret Project ... but one where the tarp's getting pulled off of it about this time next week. Here's a bit of a hint, as he went off to our "DJ club" build to check on what needed to be done there ...



Needless to say, with only a week to go, Eschatos is itching (looks like he's scratching something in that shot) to spew out all the details, but he's controlling himself. He did want me to tell everybody that they could get the general story by checking out Joey Seiler's Virtual World News article which covers the main points. Plus, you can go to the site, http://PlanetsBestDJ.com and sign up (please do!) and be around for all the excitement.

Anyway, Eschatos is sorry that he's been invisible for so long, but he wants me to remind you that he doesn't have a whole lot of say in the matter. Once we get the Virtual World part of this project rolling, he'll have LOTS of news, with celebrities, foreign locales, and all sorts of unusually exciting stuff to report. He's also looking forward to the start of another project that is just waiting the go-ahead, which will be developing a new thing in SL, and has been hinted at in this space previously. Oh, and Eschatos wanted to mention that since he last did an update, there's been yet another Avatrait Gallery Show book published ... to check that out, either go to the Avatrait.com site (do go and sign up!) or to the books site.

Anyway, more later ...

Another new book!

Yes, Eschatos has been busy ... we're finally getting a schedule together for the upcoming shows at the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) and he's responsible for a whole bunch of stuff, including getting things ready for the real-world print storefront for each show on the Avatrait site, and a book of the images, and even a CafePress store just in case you can't live without a coffee cup, t-shirt or thong with the current show's graphic on it!



Here's Eschatos admiring his handywork on the in-world version of the real-world book of the show that's opening this weekend. As Avatrait is going to two featured shows a month, he's going to be filling up that rack in our shop over in Publisher's Village (LINK) real soon!

The best way to check out all this is to head on over to http://avatrait.com, heck, go there to sign up for a free account if you haven't already!

Aside from all this stuff, Eschatos has been deeply involved in some Big Secret Projects that are very near the point where he can talk about them ... so, stay tuned!

More later ...

Eschatos has a nightmare?

Eschatos has been existing in that un-rezzed limbo (where trees falling unobserved in the forest reside) for much of the past week. Things around the RL office have been way too hectic to allow much in-world activity. However, his rent over at Broadway Live was late, so we made the time for him to take care of thst!

When he got back to the in-world office, he went to sit on his desk chair, and suddenly found himself in darkness, at coordinates 0,0,0, and, further inexplicably, in the middle of a frame from an old Avatrait gallery show!



OOOOOH, spooky, eh? The spell was broken by taking this snapshot (I guess the silly "say cheese" animation over-rode whatever sent him down there), but at least the moment was memorialized!

It seemed like quite a bit of random flotsam and jetsam was lost down under the Island, and Eschatos (ever the dutiful manager) got as close to it as he could and sent the various chunks of primstructure back to their "owners" before turning the clock back over to his typist.

As always, there are Big Secret Plans in the works, but much of the time crunch is trying to get the Avatrait site up to full functioning before some major media hits next month ... and right now Eschatos' typist is the only pixel-pusher and HTML monkey available, so has been working 10-14 hours days for weeks.

Anyway ... more later ...

TaaaDaaa ...

So, if there are long stretches of time when Eschatos seems MIA to our loyal readers ... well, you know, there are other things than Second Life out there, right? Right? OK, so you won't get very far trying to sell that to Eschatos, since if he's not being rezzed, well, that's when the metaphysics kicks in.

Anyway, Eschatos is very excited that there's a new book out as of this weekend ...



... actually, this is the first in a whole series of books that will be recording the various shows at the Avatrait Gallery (LINK)!

This also comes with a new "storefront" for each in-world gallery opening, where Real World versions of the featured artist's works are available for order ... I know, it makes Eschatos' head swim as well.

All he can say is that you need to surf over to http://avatrait.com, and poke around in all those tabs and sub-tabs ... sign up for a free account while you're there and "tell 'em Eschatos sent ya!" (not that he's actually participating in the current "membership promotion" contest).

More later ...

Almost like old times ...

Back in the day when we were doing more in-world "development" we had lots of "team meetings", but these has fallen off as more of the company's focus has moved to the out-world aspects. Needless to say, this leaves Eschatos in the lurch a lot, and he gets cranky at being "unrezzed" (hence his recent building outbursts!).

However, yesterday we had the first of an on-going regular Team Meeting for the Avatrait managers, up in the new boardroom on the Avatrait Gallery sim.



Around the table are Avatrait artists/managers Shoshana Epsion, Stephen Venkman, our new CEO Dash Panthar, Eschatos, and the legendary Track Hax.

Eschatos's typist has been spending a lot of 12-hour days cranking code to get the e-commerce parts of the Avatrait web site up and functioning, and this meeting was discussing ways we need to move the Gallery and the Web into closer cooperation.

Thought that this would be a bit of a change of pace over Eschatos' "solitary confinement" over on the old island!

More later ...

There he goes ...

Well, you can't say you weren't warned. Eschatos was needing to work out his "building" muscles, and had a monomaniacal itch to scratch, so he built himself a peristyle suitable for Speer's Germania, all around one end of the island!



Rumor has it that he's contemplating installing search lights, some additional banners and maybe 8m braziers on the top.

Hopefully something more useful will draw his attention next week.

More later ...

So what do you do when there's nothing to do?

OK, that's a totally unfair question, as Eschatos' typist has been racking up a long string of 12-hour days, which leaves Eschatos "unRezzed" most of the time. Admittedly, there isn't very much happening on the island these days, and whatever amusement there was with having the Pattern9 sims next door has gone away.



So, Eschatos has been up to no good ... he'd gotten that groovy "socialist leader" image done a few weeks back, and was trying to think about how to add it into his environmnent ... somehow having it right over his desk was too cliché ... but then he recalled having all those huge prims! So now there's a 32x48m poster of it hanging over the island, all nice and Big Brother-ish!

You can tell Eschatos is pretty proud of himself, and figures that as long as nobody's coming to see him over there, he might as well be the megalomaniac ruler of his little corner of Second Life ... heck, he might even get all Albert Speer over there and start building columns!

More later ...

All alone ...

Well, Eschatos went up on the roof today to take a look around ... things are very quiet on our island, but are tidied up, waiting for the next big (can't talk about it yet) change.



However, we're suddenly all by ourselves. The whole "Pattern9" complex, six sims worth, has gone away. I understand that a couple of those sims got moved elsewhere, and the rest, well ... it looks like they just sank beneath the waves.



We'd been the initial developer on the Club Mannequin and Pattern9 project, but the client decided that he could "do it himself" and hired some in-world day labor to get it set up ... and never ever had any traffic (except for the pitiful camping mall) after we weren't managing things. Pretty sad, actually, as it was a great initial concept.

Eschatos is sad that his buddy ChooChoo ended up disappearing with the rest of that ... her store (full of really cool sculpty prim furniture) did end up moving with the remaining 2 sims, but now they can't just yell across the lagoon at each other!

Not generally one for making "mix tapes", Eschatos is considering piping through the Gilligan's Island theme through the media feed, maybe broken up with and occasional playing of "So Ronery" from Team America.

More later ...

Hi ...

Just a brief note today ...

Eschatos has been very busy managing aspects of the new
Avatrait Web site, which has grown out of the Avatrait Gallery (LINK), which he's visiting in this shot:



One of the things that Eschatos has been doing is keeping track of the sign-ups over there, and he was very impressed at what a "global" community we're building! He wanted to share the country list of the most recent 30 new members:
                    Brazil (2)
                    France (3)
                    Germany (2)
                    Greece
                    Iceland
                    Ireland
                    Italy
                    Japan
                    Mexico
                    New Zealand
                    Peru
                    Portugal (3)
                    UK (2)
                    Uruguay
                    USA (7)
                    Venezuela (2)

Anyway, Eschatos thought it was so cool that Second Life art fans from all over the "real world" were coming together on Avatrait.com to see, share, and discuss images of his pixellated home! He'd be much obliged if you'd come on over and sign up for a free membership there too!

More later ...

"Look for what seems out of place ..."

Eschatos is having one of those weeks, and it's frustrating the virtual heck out of him. He really really wants to shoot some machinima to post here, but there's been NO TIME ... and the home computer (assuming his typist can go without sleep) is just not up to making movies. Bummer.

However, Eschatos did get a number of things taken care of in world. Here's a shot of him when he got done with the "biggest" of these projects ...



... do you notice anything different? Why ... didn't there used to be a big honking multi-unit gallery hovering over that plaza?

Yes, it was finally time to ship the old Avatrait Gallery buildings off to storage (as noted in a previous post) and possibly get the island ready for a total revisioning. The fact is, we had a BIG PROJECT come through today, and we have a scant few weeks to make stuff suddenly appear as part of that, so we could very well be handing over the island for a substantial make-over, or we might just do all this stuff up in the air above it.

Speaking of missing buildings ... one of the new Avatrait Island (LINK) buildings suddenly disappeared around new year's and we'd sort of been waiting for it to re-appear ... after several weeks, Eschatos figured that it was time to ring up the builder and ask him if he knew what was up (heh, heh, floating island humor!). As it turned out, he was as mystified as everybody else, but re-installed a copy of it ... just as well we hadn't moved anybody in there yet.

Speaking of moving folks into places ... WHY DON'T YOU GO OVER AND SIGN UP FOR THE NEW AVATRAIT WEB SITE???!!! It's going to be a veritable temple to Second Life art, and already has some very cool stuff, on its way to becoming totally awesome. We want everybody who has an interest in SL, and appreciates art from the virtual world, to come on over and sign up for a free membership ... don't make Eschatos hold his breath, purple is so not his color!

More later ...

A Long Week ...

Eschatos almost didn't manage to get an update in this week. Frankly, Eschatos has been MIA from SL quite a bit due to the grind at the RL Simuality offices, getting ready for several new things, as well as updating some old stuff.

One of the things that Eschatos' typist did was cranking out the HTML "templates" for the new Gallery section over at the new Avatrait site. Right now there's just one artist's stuff available for real-world sales, but another 50 have pages set up and it's just a matter of adding new art in there!

Even the thought of that coding is exhausting, and the prospect of finding a nice comfy chair like this sounds very appealing ...



... there's Eschatos with his "neighbor" (her store and his office are right across the Pattern 9 lagoon from each other) Choo Choo, in her store full of very cool furniture called "One Grid", checking out one of her new (and obviously very comfortable) Flower Chairs!

Eschatos had a disappointment today ... he'd gotten a notice that there was a new Chicago-themed sim, and he scooted right over to check it out. There used to be a couple of very cool Chicago sims (like the one that used to be around the Four Deuces poker hall), but most seem to have died when gambling got kicked out of SL. So, he was excited when he saw the pic on the Landmark that was sent out.



Unfortunately, it turns out that this is a "role play" sim, and you can't even get out of the upper levels of the Sears Tower without signing up to play some game. Eschatos is not a gamer, so he peeked around as much as he could using Ctrl-Alt zooming, and headed back home. Now he's doubly bummed due to this not being open, and it reminding him of the cool places that have disappeared!

Speaking of home, Eschatos' typist should be heading that way as well ... this week has been a long string of 12-hour days at the office, and it's beginning to tell on everybody involved. Eschatos had actually really hoped to have surprised everybody with a machinima post in here this week (well, he sort of wants to do it for another project, but it would work here too!), but there weren't enough hours to even shoot some scenes, let alone cut it, record and synch an audio track, and get it up on the web. Maybe next week!

More later ...

Strange days ...

Eschatos had a very frustrating day. His typist was working from home today, which meant that Eschatos had to deal with rezzing via a Celeron processor rather than the quad-core he gets at the Simuality offices. Eschatos does not like having to manifest through that home system ... he is OK if he stays in one place and doesn't look around too much, but if he has to walk, or fly, or even ctr-alt zoom, it's bad news. Heck, even making/editing things is hard as it takes the better part of a minute just for the edit screen to figure out what's in something!

Fortunately, just about all Eschatos had to do today was go to meetings. Starting off with the regular Friday meeting of the Non-Profit Commons. Now, at that point, Eschatos was already feeling frustrated, and actually timed how long it took for the NPC amphitheater to fully rez once he sat down ... ten minutes! He later had a voice conference with the Avatrait team over in the Simuality conference room, and then an IM conference with one of the track chairs for SL-BaSE ... but at least he was "parked" for both of those.

Eschatos had snapped a couple of pics today, but when he checked them out, there were a lot of "Ruths" and un-rezzed landscaping in them, so didn't feel like sharing. He did, however, take a recent pic of himself over to the ObamIcon site and made this very "Big Brother"-esque image!



Perhaps he could have come up with a cleverer saying, but having things rez was pretty much top-of-mind for Eschatos today! If you were a bunch of un-organized pixels and were being stared at by this poster, wouldn't you try your darnedest to resolve into whatever you were supposed to be? You betcha!

More later ...

New S.L. art site ... Go Sign Up!!!

Oh, dear ... it's another dreary picture of Eschatos standing by a computer monitor trying to express excessive excitement and enthusiasm across the electron stream. But, yes! He is very excited about the new Avatrait Web Site, which has opened its doors this week.



This is the long-awaited (yes, for those paying way too close attention to these scribblings, this is the third "new site" in a year) Avatrait "Second Life Art Site" that we had hoped to have been able to announce in tandem with either the debut of the Avatrait book or the opening of the new Avatrait island over the past few months. However, we wanted to get it right this time, so had to deal with a mountain of technical issues that took way longer to resolve than we had anticipated.

The new Avatrait.com is a special site, dedicated solely to the art of Second Life, that not only features the works of the Avatrait Gallery artists (available to order in real-world framed prints), but will also allow other users to store, show, and even sell their images on-line!

Being the SL-pixel kind of guy he is, Eschatos was an "early adopter" over at the Avatrait site ... and if you're real nice, he may even embarrass himself by posting some of his "snapshots" over there (amid all the awesome art that's on display). But do take a click over to sign up for a free account ... it would make Eschatos very happy to have all his readers on board with Avatrait!

More later ...

Another tease ...

Things have been insanely busy around the Simuality offices trying to get preliminary paperwork together for a HUGE project which will hopefully be coming to fruition in the next week or so ... frankly, Eschatos' typist is likely to be working most of the weekend on this!



Here's a bit of a tease, though, about what's coming up. Yeah, Eschatos is not exactly the "DJ type", but he's running the turntables up in a skybox garage club. He'd been busy shooting SL snapshots of various avs up there today to provide some illustrations for the documents we're working on. Hopefully we'll be able to say something more substantial in the next week!

More later ...

Always busy ...

Some days Eschatos has inexplicable gaps in his schedule ... times when specific things don't need to be done by particular deadlines ... and he looks around for stuff to do. The early parts of today (before he ended up scooting off to an unscheduled meeting with the developers of two multi-sim university builds) were one of these times.



Well, as you can tell from the pic, Eschatos is pretty proud of himself ... ever since the Avatrait Gallery moved to its new, dedicated sim (LINK) the old gallery building had been sitting empty, and looking rather desolate, over on our main island. While he'd put numerous signs up noting the move and offering the new SLURL, folks were still following old links there, and Eschatos would often have to go over and explain that Avatrait was not gone, but just in a new location.



So, Eschatos got out his tool kit (including some previously unused "mega prims" whee!) and set into boxing up the old gallery, and having it ready to send off to storage. There has been some talk about having a significant re-design of the island, and clearing the old Gallery space would be a good start on that. As you can see from the aerial view, these are big boxes ... and Eschatos has been chuckling that he may have given Disney an idea for a new building for their Pop Century Resort!

More later ...

New Year, eh?

Well, Eschatos thinks that he will have some Very Big and Very Good news to report in the next day or so ... which is, of course, a Good Thing! However, at the current point, the details have not filtered down to him, so he's waiting for his "being in the loop" before getting all excited about the second-hand report of a recent phone call.

Aside from all the other stuff that Eschatos has to keep him busy, he's done some "volunteer" work for a friend's group, having previously set up an info center in the same high-rise where he has an apartment. With the end of the year, there were some big changes in that group, and it looks like they might be getting a bit more involved in SL, so Eschatos went "house hunting" for them, looking for a good spot for them to have a "center" ...



... he found this swanky place right over on Broadway Live, with two floors so that they could have their info center and a shop downstairs and hold classes upstairs, and he's feeling quite pleased with himself! If he gets the go-ahead, he'll grab the place for a year, and start moving down the stuff from the high-rise location.

Eschatos has been doing a lot of "beating the bushes" to find some new business opportunities for Simuality, and has come up with a Very Good Idea, which he's hoping to get rolling in the next month or so ... once again, it's nothing he can talk about right at the moment, but another Big Secret Thing that he's dying to let you in on.

Oh, by the way ... do drop in over at the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) and check out the new show by Monroe Snook that just opened over the weekend!

More later ...