Eschatos In-World ...

Uh ... hello?

2009-07-14T09:40:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2009-06-11T20:26:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2009-06-10T15:59:00.000-07:00

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 ...

2009-03-27T15:07:00.000-07:00

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!

2009-03-05T07:30:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-02-27T18:36:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2009-02-23T09:17:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2009-02-19T08:49:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2009-02-15T20:13:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-02-13T17:48:00.001-08:00

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 ...

2009-02-10T09:37:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2009-02-03T09:39:00.000-08:00

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 ..."

2009-01-28T15:37:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2009-01-23T17:18:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2009-01-16T23:29:00.000-08:00

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!!!

2009-01-13T17:11:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2009-01-09T15:55:00.000-08:00

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 ...

2009-01-06T15:47:00.000-08:00

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?

2009-01-05T14:29:00.000-08:00

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 ...

What a year ...

2008-12-31T13:42:00.000-08:00

So, there's Eschatos, up in his Broadway Live apartment, sitting around contemplating the meaning of life as a loose collection of data points and pixels ...

... Eschatos is never much for partying, so he may just see if there are fireworks and otherwise commune with that bottle of Wild Turkey he has out on the bar.

Sure, there were good things this year, the Avatrait book, the trips to Florence, Tampa, and New York, the new Avatrait island, and stuff like that ... but over-all it's been an emotional buzz-saw with precious little to recommend it. As such, all concerned are pretty happy to see 2008 get the bum's rush out the door.

Here's hoping that 2009 will be all bright and shiny and full of fresh possibilities.

More later (next year!) ...

Ho, ho, ho ...

2008-12-23T13:25:00.000-08:00

Eschatos was running around in-world today looking for just the right Xmas tree to serve as a background for a "festive" shot. Yes, that is Eschatos trying to look "festive".

Somebody should have suggested to him that he take off the SL-BaSE convention badge before posing!

Eschatos may or may not be much in circulation the next few days, as his typist is off on a road trip ... which always leaves open the question of internet access. So, if Eschatos doesn't have the chance before the end of the year, he wanted to make sure to wish everybody "Happy Holidays" and remind folks to get in those presentation proposals for SL-BaSE!

As there are a few hours left of shopping frenzy, Eschatos also wanted to suggest that the bestest gift ever for your favorite Second Life avatar would be a copy of AVATRAIT: From Second Life To Florence, and for their RL associates the very cool swag available here and here!

As always, lots of Big Secret Projects in the works ... hopefully Eschatos will have exciting news to report as soon as he resurfaces.

More later ...

Eschatos Speaks!

2008-12-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

Well, not in here, of course ... but last night Eschatos was on a panel about "Business in SL" along with Aimee Weber and MadamG Zagato, on a program hosted by Shiger Seattle over at the "Bright Idea Lab" on Canada Post's "Maple Grove" sim (LINK).

As I understand it, there was a "podcast" being recorded, but I can't seem to track down the URL for that, just in case you really wanted to hear Eschatos speak!

Eschatos got to cover Avatrait, SL-BaSE, and a number of things that we have in development (you know, the Big Secret Projects), plus a bit of the history of Simuality. Eschatos was, however, mortified that he neglected to plug the Avatrait book during the panel (although he did bring it up right afterwards), but this was a relatively new experience for him, and he was working without notes!

More later ...

Busy, busy, busy ...

2008-12-12T13:49:00.000-08:00

Eschatos has been bad about keeping up with posts here ... and he's very sorry about that. Unfortunately, part of the side effect of "big news" (like the new Avatrait Gallery opening, as noted in his previous post), is lots of work which even keeps his typist out of SL for days at a time!

However, Eschatos came into a few Lindens this afternoon (thanks, Track!) and ran around in-world paying his rent. After finally getting the rental box to rez over by his Maxwell Street pad, Eschatos took a bit of a walk-around, and had this snap taken in the lobby of the theater that had recently appeared on the ground floor of his tenement.

The past few days, Eschatos has been very busy creating real-world "swag" for various Avatrait projects ...

Right now there are just two stores up, one with Avatrait Logo stuff (as pictured) HERE, and one with Avatrait Books stuff HERE. Avatrait chief Track Hax has started a contest among the Gallery Artists to have a design for a promo for the gallery, and that will likely be the next of these "swag shops" going up. We are also planning a rather extensive series of "wearable art", possibly in connection with each month's Gallery shows, and are looking at how closely we can parallel the same items in-world!

Anyway, Eschatos didn't want to let this week slip completely by without checking in ... he was very miffed that he didn't end up with any pictures of his presentation to the Non-Profit Commons folks (about the SL-BaSE program) last Friday, but he really wasn't in much of a position to do any snapshots.

More later ...

No more teasing ...

2008-12-03T10:55:00.000-08:00

The brand new Avatrait Gallery (LINK) opened up over the weekend! Eschatos missed the party (RL AFK ... it happens) but understands the place was rocking. Here's a view of the various floating islands with the parts (main gallery, classroom, machinima theater, and alternative exhibit space) of the new build ...

Here's a shot looking up from the "classroom" pavilion up to the main gallery building ...

And here's a look inside the gallery ...

Do go over and have a visit! There's a "special" show on, featuring images from most of the Avatrait Gallery Artists, to celebrate the AVATRAIT: From Second Life^® to Florence book.

Eschatos also wanted to pass along a big "THANK YOU!" to the folks at ROLE Magazine who featured a 2-page spread in their first issue on both the Avatrait Gallery and avatraitbooks.com ...

There's Eschatos visiting their rather snazzy build (LINK) in-world!

Anyway ... more later ...

Waiting for "Black Friday" ...

2008-11-26T13:33:00.000-08:00

Ah, there's Eschatos, always the eager one ... sitting in the Avatrait Book Store over in "Book Island Publishing Village" (LINK), waiting for the turkey-besotted crowds to surge over the parapets with lust for literature (or at least picture books) gleaming in their eyes!

Obviously, he's a bit ahead of things, as the traffic by the store has been less than dramatic (and yes, he does look bored). However, he wanted me to specifically mention that if you're looking for that special gift for the Avatar in your life (first or Second), a copy of AVATRAIT: From Second Life^® to Florence could hardly be beat!

This full-color hardcover "coffee table" book features the works of 47 of the Avatrait Gallery artists, and has a Foreword by S.L. creator Philip Linden ... and is available for direct order from http://avatraitbooks.com now!

Speaking of the Avatrait Gallery artists ... here's a cloud-occluded sneak peek at the new Avatrait Island:

The Grand Opening of the the new sim will be on Saturday, 11/29, at 1pm SLT ... featuring a gallery show of all the artists from the book, and a party featuring music, fun, and fireworks. The new place (while still "under construction" to a certain extent) is quite impressive, so do drop by on Saturday!

More later ...

Another day, another in-world meeting ...

2008-11-21T14:27:00.000-08:00

Eschatos has been very active in-world this week, and feels like he's done little else than sit in meetings, classes, and get-togethers! As wonderful as Second Life is for being able to do this sort of thing, some days there is SO MUCH going on that Eschatos wishes he could split his pixels and be two places (or more) at once!

This morning at the Non-Profit Commons meeting Eschatos had a last-minute chance to give a bit of a shout-out about the SL-BaSE conference that Simuality is doing (through the Metaverse Conference Management division) next June out in Portland, OR. Initially there'd been discussion of having a full 15 minute slot, but it turned out that there was just time today for Eschatos to rez and arrange his boards (seen here after I'd been up) and make a bit of a pitch. The "full presentation" has been re-scheduled, however for two weeks hence, and he will then hopefully have some more Track Chairs with him (Coughran Mayo, our Non-Profit track chair, had a conflict today and couldn't make it).

One fascinating thing at today's meeting was a demonstration of Virtual Guidedogs, a sculpted, scripted, assistant for blind users of Second Life! Needless to say, in a largely visual and text-based environment, there are huge challenges for the sight-impaired. These guidedogs provide info about things in the virtual environment in tandem with text readers that turn typed conversation into audio. I guess there are some significant problems still (like logging on ... the form is not audio-friendly) but this was a pretty amazing bit of virtualization!

Just in case you might have had some trouble picking Eschatos and the Virtual Guidedog out of the NPC overhead shot (had to get those SL-BaSE boards in frame, y'know), we've added handy arrows from insets of other pics taken at the meeting ... although I suspect that it might have just been a ploy by Eschatos to get a bigger image of him in the blog!

More later ...

A very proper gander ...

2008-11-17T12:08:00.001-08:00

Yes, there is a long joke involved with the title, deal with it. Eschatos and I are very confused, however, as we thought we'd updated with the below picture on Friday, but here it is Monday and it's not there! We even remember somewhat how the title of that went, something like "A peek for all you lookie-loos!" ... how odd that it didn't "take".

Anyway, here's a picture of Eschatos, over by the soon-to-be-unveiled new Avatrait Gallery, eyeballing the "propaganda" that he set out right by the main entrance. That's a stack of in-world postcards that parallel the real-world postcards (promoting AVATRAIT: From Second Life To Florence, natch) that we're having printed pretty much as I type.

As you can sort of see, there has been some substantial progress in the Gallery sim, with three and a half new buildings (one building really feels more like being inside a sculpture) in arcane juxtapositions requiring nearly non-Euclidean geometries to explain them (we have Avatrait Board members designing the new sim, and I'm convinced that one or more of them are graduates of Miskatonic U.!). We're due for a Grand Opening a week from Saturday (yes, you will be hearing more about it in this space ... what, are ya new?) and Eschatos figured it was better to be early with the propaganda than late!

We're still scratching our heads about this not going up on Friday, but here it is ... a peek at the gallery, and yet another reminder to wander over to http://avatraitbooks.com to take a peek at (and order) the book!

More later ...

No, it's not déjà vu ...

2008-11-13T14:42:00.000-08:00

Yes, the last three pics in here have looked remarkably similar! However, most of the recent "news" has dealt with stuff on the web ... so Eschatos has been doing nice shots with computer monitors in various locations.

Eschatos has looked approvingly on images of the http://avatrait.com site (which keeps getting better and better ... with a new update just today!), and the new http://avatraitbooks.com, which now features ordering directly through us (which should speed things up as opposed to everybody ordering the book having to wait 2-4 weeks!). Well, now he's sitting having some quality time with the Second Life web site! The book, AVATRAIT: From Second Life To Florence, just made it onto the "Recommendations" page, in (naturally enough) the "books" section.

So, it's not that Eschatos has done nothing but surf the web over the past few weeks, but most of the "news" has been coming from that front ... and, don't be fooled by Eschatos' dour expression here, he's understandably thrilled that Linden Lab has put us up on the site ... and he's fervently hoping that all and sundry will head on over to order a copy!

Oh, yeah ... hopefully Eschatos will have some Big News (with more interesting pictures) to report about the new Avatrait Gallery in just a few days!

More later ...

Oops ...

2008-11-10T14:07:00.000-08:00

My, how time flies ... I can't believe that it's been TWO WEEKS since we last checked in on Eschatos! Frankly, in the wake of all the news around the Florence trip, there's been very little to report. Somehow something like "Eschatos went here, here, here, and here to pay his in-world rent" doesn't have the post-worthy ring to it that we're looking for in this space!

There has been one reasonably significant change to update y'all on ... we got blind-sided by Lulu (the print-on-demand place that we're using to do the Avatrait book), first with a fairly substantial price increase on the printing (after we got locked in to the $49.95 cover price), and then discovering that they only print the hard-cover books in the USA, which has been resulting in insane shipping charges being quoted to our European artists and friends ("insane" as in €71 ... well over $100! ... to ship book that weighs under two pounds).

Obviously, "that would NOT do!" ... and may have seriously cut into the potential orders that we would have had from the Festival della Creativita. So, we have opted to pull all orders in-house, and are hopefully setting up a system where we order the number of books that we guess we'll need over the next month, and have them on hand to send out, and then re-order (due to this being a print-on-demand, large-format, hard-cover, full-color book, the printing costs are very high, and we have a razor-thin margin) as the money comes in.

So, please go to http://avatraitbooks.com, and take a look ... there is now a little green "ORDER" button which takes you to a page with twenty payment options (19 via PayPal, and one via Lindens) in everything from Euros to Zlotys to Yen! Also, once "the system" gets rolling, it will be MUCH faster, as we'll be doing the 2-3 weeks of waiting up front, and will be able to just shoot the books out as you order them!

Everybody with an interest in Second Life, and Virtual World art should get a copy! It really IS a "landmark" in the field of "Digital Impressionism". You can also visit our in-world storefront (LINK) for previews of the art.

Oh, yeah ... one more thing. The Avatrait Gallery is temporarily closed at the moment allowing us to make a "clean move" between the long-running site on Simuality Island to its new home on Avatrait Island ... look for the Grand Opening announcement soon!

More later ...

Back from Florence!

2008-10-27T16:12:00.000-07:00

So, you were wondering what had happened to Eschatos? Not paying attention, are we? Eschatos (or at least his typist) has been off in Florence, Italy for the opening of the Rinascimento Viruale exhibit, part of the Festival della Creativita art festival.

Aside from the big news of the launch of the new book AVATRAIT: From Second Life to Florence at the show, we also announced the exciting new Avatrait.com web site. Eschatos is checking out the front page there, but if you click through on the center logo it will take you to the fabulous new "gallery" site where S.L. artists (and art fans) can upload their works, share them, form groups, and even sell their art to the general public. The site's only been "live" less than a week at this point, so there are new features and design elements being added daily, but go have a click and sign up for a free account!

One thing that we'd hoped to have good-to-go by the Florence event was the new Avatrait Island, but that is progressing at a bit more reserved pace than we'd anticipated. However, when Eschatos went over to check that out today, he found that there is at least a pretty snazzy sign waiting for the finished Gallery. When completed, Avatrait Island is going to have a big new gallery, classroom and workshop spaces, offices, a gift shop, event spaces, and a swank European café! Needless to say, you'll hear about it here just as soon as that's ready for visitors.

More later ... ciào!

Here it is!

2008-10-17T17:49:00.001-07:00

Frankly, Eschatos is exhausted ... the new book, AVATRAIT: From Second Life^® to Florence is finally available, and he's been beating the Internet with press releases and other propaganda ... all while still trying to get everything together for that trip to Florence!

He still needs to update everything with the new links ... but is relieved that one big thing is crossed off the to-do list!

More later ...

Uhhhh ... wow!

2008-10-15T14:51:00.001-07:00

Well, Eschatos had to run over to the Firenze (Florence) sim today to take a look around because he (and his typist) discovered just this morning that we're off to Italy on Sunday!

Simuality's Avatrait division has been invited to participate in the Festival della Creatività next week with some of our artists' creations being featured in the Rinascimento Virtuale show through the end of the year. Track Hax, fearless leader of the Avatrait Gallery (LINK), is going to be giving a presentation, and Eschatos has been tapped to keep everything moving with optimal propaganda goodness!

Another key feature of the event is the "official" launch of AVATRAIT: From Second Life to Florence, a full-color hard-cover book featuring the work of 47 of the Avatrait Gallery artists, that's been mentioned previously in this space. You can check out the Avatrait Book Store (LINK) for previews. We're hoping that we'll have some other exciting Avatrait stuff to premier ... but are still seeing how much can get done before we have to jump on a plane!

More later ...

We're getting press!

2008-10-10T17:20:00.000-07:00

Here's Eschatos working late again at his desk ... he's not really feeling as grumpy as he looks, but he's tired and sure seems like he could use some virtual eyedrops! He's actually pretty excited, as the Metaverse Messenger he's reading there has a story about the SL-BaSE conference (LINK) on the front cover of its latest edition!

This was somewhat unexpected, as (aside from these missives) there's been no official promotion of the conference as yet, as there are still bits and pieces of the "registration backbone" of the web site yet to go live ... so he's been holding off on a lot of press releases and stuff waiting to have all that worked out.

Eschatos has been busy setting up in-world resources too ... aside from the Portland Connection sim "info desk" previously noted, there's now the beginnings of an SL-BaSE communications nexus right on Simuality Island (LINK).

All sorts of interesting and exciting stuff is just on the verge of being "announceable", and we should have at least some of it good-to-go by next week, so don't forget to check in!

More later ...

Still waiting ...

2008-10-06T08:49:00.001-07:00

Well, Eschatos got some decorating done in the Avatrait Book Store (LINK) over in the Publishing Village on Book Island. Those framed pictures on the back wall are new, and give a low-res preview of all the images that are going to be in the Avatrait: From Second Life to Florence book.

We really had hoped that this would have been available by now ... we were taking pre-orders for it at the SLCC, where the Linden folks suggested that we could get an "official" Foreword for the book ... but they've had the materials for that since 9/10 and we're still waiting for approved copy to come back ... bummer!

Anyway, the big sign in the shop allows folks to still pre-order at this point, which will be shifting around to a link to the order page as soon as we get that last bit of the book. In the meanwhile, though, folks can come by and sort of "flip through it" (albeit without the accompanying text) via the new pics!

More later ...

Finally ...

2008-10-01T16:53:00.000-07:00

Yes, there is finally some news that can be let out of the bag! Here is Eschatos checking out the "Portland Connection" sim (LINK). Why, you might ask, would Eschatos be checking out that? Is he off sight-seeing around SL again? Well, no, not really ... he's actually working as Portland is the location of the first edition of the new SL-BaSE conference, the "Second Life Business and Social Expo", to be held June 4-7, 2009! This is a 3-part extravaganza, with a 2-day Business conference, a 2-day Social conference, and a concurrent 4-day Expo of products, innovations, and SL services.

As may have been mentioned previously, Simuality is not just a virtual world developer, but an "incubator" for other projects (such as Avatrait and SlippCat). This is our latest, with a new company called Metaverse Conference Management, and its initial product, SL-BaSE!

And, not only did Eschatos check out the environs there, he actually rented some space in their "downtown" area, and set up the beginnings of an info center for SL-BaSE. Feel free to "ooh!" and "aah!" over the spiffy desk he whipped up after having spent way too much time looking around in-world for one to buy ... if Eschatos keeps getting projects like this, they may make a builder of him yet!

In case you were wondering, this is just one of the many "news" items that we've not been able to tell you about before now ... hopefully we'll have others shaking loose over the next several days.

More later ...

Oh, hi ...

2008-09-25T13:59:00.000-07:00

Eschatos feels so bad about not keeping up with posts in here that he's insisting that we go ahead and put stuff up even if it's pretty much "content free". And, yes, this is another one of those posts.

Being the vain accumulation of pixels that he is, Eschatos thought that just focusing on some pics of him would be enough reason to make a post. Not having anything better (other than the usual litany of "big news coming soon") to suggest, I went along with his plan.

Of course, were things not so insane around casa Simuality, there would have been lots of time for meandering around in S.L. finding cool stuff to chit-chat about, but it's been a grind, and there have been numerous days when Eschatos hasn't even been powered up! Needless to say, we're hoping that we'll have all sorts of exciting news coming soon ... there's been a heck of a lot of work done on a whole bunch of projects, so eventually something has got to reach a "we can talk about it now" phase!

In the meanwhile, there's a charming portrait of Eschatos ...

More later ...

Opened a store ...

2008-09-18T12:36:00.000-07:00

I'd mentioned a week or so back that we'd "premiered" the new Avatrait book at the SLCC, and were very encouraged that there were lots of pre-order sales. Well, things are moving along with that (we're just waiting on a Foreword by a Very Famous Person) and the idea hit me that Eschatos should go check out the "Publishing Village" over on Book Island.

Back in the day when Eschatos wasn't working in Second Life, he used to hang out over on Book Island, Info Island, and some of the other "bookish" places (having followed the LibraryThing.com crowd into SL for the weekly get-togethers). The Publishing Village has typically been hard to get into, and Eschatos wanted to see if there were any storefronts open ... he was so excited to find one right on one of the squares!

The Avatrait Store (LINK) isn't much to look at yet, but we've got the basic stuff set up. Aside from the real-life hard-cover "coffee table" book that we're working on, we're also going to be producing an in-world version. Needless to say, things will be more interesting in the store when folks can come in and flip through a virtual copy, and then buy one to keep!

By the way ... if you're wondering about the "Eschaton" on the signs ... that's actually where Eschatos got his name ... much like how Iggy Pop was named for his earlier band the Iguanas, Eschatos' typist used to be publisher of Eschaton Books (which has been resurrected, with its over 900 unused ISBNs, to be the "publishing arm" of Simuality/Avatrait), and when thinking of an SL identity, chose "Eschatos" as a name!

See ... not only do you get content today, but a nice story too!

More later ...

Just had to share ...

2008-09-16T14:07:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to the guys over at KZERO for pointing out the "Wordle" site (http://wordle.net/) which lets you do really cool "word clouds" ... Eschatos wanted to see what his blog here looked like ...

Of course, when he saw his name all big like that he wanted to get in on the action, so we went and took a nice snap of him and slipped him in back behind the text!

Yes, this is yet another pretty much "content free" post, but, hey, it's two posts in two days, which, given the recent traffic in here, is remarkable!

We have a Big Important Meeting tomorrow, and I'm hoping that it's going to lead to my being able to make Big Announcements (of good stuff) soon afterwards ... really, so much stuff is happening behind the scenes, and it should be soon that we can start spewing the details!

Anyway ... more later ...

No snapshot too risky ...

2008-09-15T15:15:00.000-07:00

Yes, Eschatos got out-and-about today, and decided to risk life, limb, and sanity for your viewing pleasure! He first dropped by Broadway Live to check in on his apartment (Eschatos has been sleeping in the office a lot lately, rather than heading home to crash), and decided to have a bit of a wander by Toxic Avenger land ...

Remarkably, a whole new toxic sludge spew has opened up at the end of the street! Undaunted, Eschatos went right up to it to get a good shot ... never mind his pixels blistering in the high-radiation glow.

And, if you think that was brave/noble and/or reckless/stupid, observe the following ... Eschatos even went to virtual St. Louis ... that's where those insufferable Cardinals fans come from! Eschatos might have gotten a cut and the locals would have seen him bleeding Cubbie blue ... and that wouldn't have worked out well for anybody (by the way, the virtualization of the St. Louis Arch is pretty cool, with a subterranean welcome center and teleports to the observation area at the top of the arch).

As you may have surmised by this point, this post is rather slim on "content" ... Eschatos is dying to talk about all sorts of new projects, but the only one that's at a "revealable" point is the upcoming Avatrait book (see previous post), and we don't even have a web site for that yet.

I am hoping that come the later parts of this week we're going to have a lot of good news to report ... but right now you're just going to have to be satisfied with Eschatos' in-world meanderings.

More later ...

Back ...

2008-09-11T16:02:00.000-07:00

Yes, I feel very, very bad about not updating this as much as I both want to and have assured my intrepid readers that I would be. However, sometimes there are just not enough hours in the day, and sometimes the days just go away.

An example of the latter was recent, when I found, the morning of the day that I ended up flying out, that I was unexpectedly going to be attending SLCC08 in Tampa! Not only had nothing been shipped but I had stuff that needed to be finished before it could go ... and there was the matter of running back downtown to get my bags packed before heading out to the airport.

No matter. The thing that needed to be "finished" (although we're still waiting on a couple of things for it) was the book that Eschatos is holding here. It's a big hardcover "coffee table" art book featuring 46 or so of the Avatrait artists.

This was quite a hit (in its pre-publication ring binder form) at the convention, and there was such interest in it that we whipped up some pre-order forms and sold quite a few. Amusingly, the most popular way for folks to pay for it was with Lindens.

We also sold several large Avatrait images ... which was great (as we didn't have to ship them back). Despite all our better efforts, a lot of folks didn't seem to previously "get" the fact that one can order very nice 13x19" real-world prints (in 21x27" matted frames) from the in-world gallery. Having an array of these on display behind our tables at the conference certainly brought home the reality that one could "bring home" the work of the Avatrait artists!

Speaking of which, noted Second Life blogger and artist Looker Lumet is currently having a show at the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) ... why don't you drop by and check out his stuff?

More later ...

Uhhhh ... still waiting ...

2008-08-20T07:47:00.000-07:00

Eschatos has been very busy working on things that he'd just love to tell you about, but it's all still "big super secret" stuff, so until he gets greenlighted for communications, you just have to wait. Sorry! This has also been limited the fascinating blog posts that he could be making ... sort of hard doing 12-hour days on hush-hush projects and then trying to create some side deal that he can talk about.

Now, Eschatos is not much of a "builder" ... sure, he does excellent signs and reasonably serviceable promo coffee mugs, but his building efforts in-world have largely been along the lines of slapping textures onto boxes (hey, he's got some great bookcases, sidetables, books and magazines!), but we were in need of some promotional items to fill up a "gift shop" for a machinima we were putting together to give a potential client a walk-through of a concept that's in the pitch. Not having time (or budget) to bring in a real "virtual designer", Eschatos jumped in and whipped up a very nice Teddy Bear ...

Needless to say, Eschatos has been very pleased with himself, and has been wanting to show everybody, so, lacking any other "interesting" thing that he could entertain y'all with, we opted to go with the bear!

We're having a meeting today with an Ad agency (which is bringing in a bunch of new clients), so maybe we'll get something signed and Eschatos can start doing "show and tell" on some of these new projects!

More later ...

A whole new world?

2008-08-13T13:46:00.000-07:00

OK, so Eschatos had to check out the new "photo-realistic" LivePlace virtual world demo, supposedly run via "cloud computing" (or is that simply "vaporware"?), given there's been such a buzz about it!

Eschatos would be more impressed if a lot of their demo reel didn't look a whole lot like using a SWAT-team "snake cam" in and around miniature models, intercut with suitably grainy outdoor shots and tight close-ups into G.I. Joe's highrise pad (just watch the video), in an extended homage to Art Clokey.

Sure, Eschatos would love to live in a photo-realistic world ... but he likes to point out that the New York Times says that us "meatworlders" might well be living virtual lives controlled from some guy’s couch (a must-read article), so "photo-realistic" isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be!

Eschatos is busting his britches to talk about Simuality's own Big Secret Projects, but he can't quite yet ... but let's just say he spent a chunk of time this afternoon looking at web sites for people who wrap ads on buses. Needless to say, he'll be spilling the beans in a TMI-frenzy just as soon as he can.

More later ...

The best laid plans ...

2008-08-06T13:28:00.000-07:00

Yes, Eschatos had every intent to have at least two posts up in here per week ... really ... unfortunately, his typist ended up in the hospital (for real) last week ... talk about 1st Life imitating 2nd Life. The Powers That Be around here suggested that I figure out some way for Eschatos to win the lottery, and wait around for that to swing around into reality!

Since we're still breathing (or whatever Avatars do), Eschatos decided that we needed to go off for some in-world culture, since there was nothing concrete to report other than TMI-like details of the real-world hospital stay.

Here is Eschatos hanging out outside the "Second Louvre" which is quite an impressive building. We'd hoped for more "real" art in there, but it seemed to be pretty much all virtual. Heck, if we wanted to see virtual art (and, as you know, Eschatos has built up quite a collection in his Maxwell Street pad), we'd go hang out at the Avatrait Gallery (LINK)! Actually, Eschatos was over there today to get some details down for a press release going out this evening. Oh, well, we seem to be blithering at this point.

More later ....

Guitars ...

2008-07-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

In doing research for the recently mentioned super-secret project that's coming up in a scant few weeks, Eschatos journeyed over to the new Gibson Guitars sim (LINK), which is very well done. They have a lot of activities there to keep you amused, including a very cool hang glider (great job of coding on that!), a train, lots of movies, and this "rope climbing" thing up a giant Gibson mandolin ...

Up top there's an "observation deck" with a viewer thing, which Eschatos is checking out in this picture! What's very cool about their grand opening is that there are free guitars ... Eschatos got about twenty ranging from an insane cut-out "Flying V" to an Angus Young (of AC/DC) model Gibson SG, plus guitar bags, t-shirts, etc. They even have guitar-body shaped tables if you want to start up (or re-equip) a club. One caveat, however: the guitars are small for the "average avatar" and the attached animation is sort of lame, so actually playing them looks pretty goofy.

Their main island seems pretty much complete at this point, but they are developing connected sims, one "French Quarter" themed, one "bayou" themed, and one that seems to be some affiliated media group. You really should check out the top of the mountain on that island as they have this totally freaky "time tunnel" thing in which Eschatos is sitting above. There is probably some HUD which goes along with that, as it had some info hovering inside, but Eschatos just wandered in and took a seat on the rough-rezzed cube that was floating in the middle of it ... it may be still "under construction", but it's way trippy!

More later ...

The Theatre!

2008-07-22T09:21:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Eschatos got snagged by his Second Life friend Gwenette Writer to teleport off to a floating theater for a performance art piece called "THE RING" by some associates of hers. Despite Eschatos missing a bunch of it due to crashing and having to log back in, what he saw was quite impressive. The group doing this was CARP - Cybernetic Art Research Project (LINK), which has previously produced a recurring "cyber version" of Pink Floyd's "The Wall", which I understand plays every weekend in-world. They also have an on-line magazine, the latest edition of which can be found HERE.

Eschatos was very happy to be immersed in "cyber psychedelica" as he's working on a VERY EXCITING (and, as always) super secret project that has an aspect of that. We're planning on doing a big intro for this at the Virtual Worlds Conference in six weeks in Los Angeles, as well as piggy-backing on Avatrait's exhibition at the Festival della Creatività this fall in Florence ... but if you're good (and he gets permission) you may see some teasers leaked here!

More later ...

Life's a beach ...

2008-07-17T08:02:00.000-07:00

Eschatos was sure that his readers were just burning to find out more info on the new Avatrait Island ... only, there's not much to really report as yet. As always, when transferring islands around between people and groups, there have been some snags (the first Avatrait Board members who showed up at the island couldn't "terraform", for instance), but we should have that taken care of today.

Eschatos, however, couldn't resist having 65,536 square meters of sand to play with, so he set up a beach chair and some decor right in the middle of the island, so it didn't look so desolate. Then, using his rudimentary SL building skills, he put together a big honking sign and smacked that right there as well, so when the Avatrait Board do start showing up, they'll know they're in the right place!

Yeah, it's not a big update ... but that's what he's got at this point!

More later ...

Yeah, it doesn't look like much now ...

2008-07-15T13:38:00.000-07:00

Don't you just love "big secret projects"? Eschatos can't get enough of 'em (which is why you keep hearing hints of upcoming stuff in here), and now he's getting to "pull the tarp off" of another one!

Ta-daaaaa ...

Huh? You're not impressed? Just a brown parallelogram floating on a dusky sea? Oh, you of little vision ... THAT is the brand new Avatrait Island in Second Life!

As those who were paying attention (and the might yet be a quiz) will no doubt recall, our Avatrait division is growing remarkably, and our current (very popular) Avatrait Gallery (LINK) was just starting to feel a little cramped. So, we decided "why not do a whole island for Avatrait?".

Not only will Avatrait have its own island, but the celebrated Avatrait Artists will have pretty much free reign for designing it! There will be a big new gallery, a "classroom" building for the Art seminars, an office for the gallery managers and advisory board, a theater for outdoor events, an Avatrait store, and lots, lots more.

We don't know yet what the Artists will come up with, but we're sure it will be very exciting ... no doubt Eschatos will take you all on a number of tours as the work progresses ... which will certainly be more interesting that the view of the current sand patch he's hovering over!

Anyway, more later ...

Two weeks!

2008-07-11T15:20:00.000-07:00

Every day Eschatos thinks about his blog readers ... well, the days when he gets a chance to, that is ... some days his typist doesn't even get into S.L., so he isn't rezzed, and well, what do unrezzed avatars dream of? I'm sure the unrezzed Eschatos is dreaming of coming up with exciting things to write about, though!

Things have been alternately frantic and insane (well, with interludes of being both frantic and insane) around the office, and taking the time for Eschatos to even go do something interesting has been hard to come by. But Eschatos was mortified to realize that his last entry here was two weeks ago ... quelle horreur!

Since it would be simply too stressful to relate the actual blow-by-blow of the past half month, Eschatos decided that he was going to come up with a cover story ... and he's sticking to it! If anybody asks, the reason he hasn't posted anything to his blog here is that he had to have his virtual gall bladder out over at Cisco's Palomar West Hospital in Second Life (LINK)...

Poor Eschatos! There he is being medevac'ed to the hospital, in his room chatting with the doctor via video phone, being scanned, then being operated on (through his suit no less), while remote teams looked on, and, finally recuperating post-surgery. The hospital was so thoughtful, allowing him to keep his steaming hot mug of coffee with him, even during the operation!

You see, it wasn't sloth or lack of a deep, abiding, concern for his readers ... it was a medical emergency which caused this two-week silence! In the words of the petite flower, Judy Tenuta: "Hey, it could happen!"

Anyway, Eschatos is feeling chastened by this whole experience and says he will try way harder to make your visits to his blog far more frequently rewarded with new stuff, and the stuff that you'll be being rewarded with being all sorts of cool and fun and newsworthy and all of that.

Or, as most of the other posts end ... more later!

Hello again ...

2008-06-27T08:15:00.000-07:00

Well, how time flies when ... well ... all sorts of stuff is competing for a limited slice of time! It looks like I'm going to be falling well short of my "8 posts a month" target this time ... sorry about that.

Anyway, Eschatos was poking around in some of the SL "5th Birthday" activities yesterday, and stumbled over this rendition of King Kong on the Empire State Building ... I have no clue who did it or why, but it seemed interesting enough to share with y'all! That little fly-like spot hovering over the big ape is Eschatos ... doing his typical alt-zoom wandering.

Eschatos had been over that way to check out part of the program being run by Gwenette Writer and Trip Potvin of Broadway Live (LINK) Trip's a long-time real-life Broadway performer and producer, and they've put together some real top-notch entertainment as part of the SL celebrations.

I know these folks because Eschatos' first "permanent home" in SL (once he quit "sleeping" in library lounges over on the old Info Island!) was up in the Broadway Live Tower ... here he is on his balcony overlooking the ocean. If you're interested in finding a very reasonable place to rent that is fun, classy, and well-ordered, you should check out the various options there. They have two high-rise buildings with apartments as little as L$250/week (that's just a real-life buck), and various other "vacation housing" down by the beach.

I'm hoping to have some very exciting news to report next week ... this is big, and it's going to make things very busy around Simuality (although the work itself is going to be outside of SL) ... but that's pretty much all I can say about that right now!

More later ...

Oh, look ... a NAME!

2008-06-17T12:48:00.001-07:00

Well, we finally have the domain lined up, so I can start using the name of the "fashion district" that I've been mentioning ... it's going to be called Pattern9 and, as you can see from these snaps, it's a lot more than just clothes!

Here's Eschatos perched on one of the cupolas of the "white palace" which is going to be the major "mall" of designer showrooms. The dock area just went in yesterday, with big yachts that are available for rental. Our client is big into "fun and games", and there will be cars, boats, hang gliders, surfboards, jet-skis, etc., etc., etc., available across the current six sims of Pattern9!

Most of the planning and work over there is in the hands of our in-world build team, so it's always amusing for Eschatos to take a bit of a fly-around over in Pattern9 to see what's new. This is all centered around Club Mannequin (LINK), which was the start of the "fashion & fun" concept, but it grew so much bigger than that ... and speaking of bigger, the waterway in the above pic (going under the bridge) connects with the Mannequin lagoon, and out into the open ocean which will be navigable out a full sim's worth on each side, making the water activities much more satisfying than just playing in a land-locked lake.

Last time Eschatos posted here, he was checking out the new buildings on the other side of the complex ... well, here's a little peak at the "southwest" corner (although I'm pretty sure that it's actually on the south-east sim), with a railroad, a giant "chopper shop", a Native American village, and circling buzzards (which may even be ridable), looking back towards those apartment towers.

There's lots of stuff still to come over there, with even more expansion plans, so Eschatos is probably going to be foisting more about it to y'all in here ... hope you don't mind. I'll probably be grinding out some P.R. releases too when we start getting the sign-ups for the designer showrooms set. Anyway, Eschatos is excited about all the new stuff, so wanted to share.

More later ...

Geez ... ya go away for a few days ...

2008-06-12T15:13:00.000-07:00

So, Eschatos was MIA from SL for quite a few days. As noted previously, we've been moving the Simuality offices and that went OK, but my computer was feeling poorly from the ride, and it took until today to get back in-world.

In the meanwhile, the build team seems to have been busy working on the upcoming fashion district, so Eschatos had to head over to check out what had been whipped up whilst he was in virtual limbo. Here he's standing over in the "residential" area, on top of some of the boutique buildings.

Just in case you couldn't see him in the wide shot, here he is up close (you know how he gets when he feels like he's appearing in an off-brand "where's Waldo"!). Maybe later this week we'll be able to show you the bridge that's appeared on the other side of the lagoon ... it's in, but the road sort of doesn't go anywhere yet and there are some strange "placeholding" brightly colored blocks where "stuff" (the nature of which, I've not been informed) will eventually appear.

Anyway, we're back ...

Land, lots of land ...

2008-06-05T11:31:00.000-07:00

Not too much to report ... we're still waiting for the City inspectors to tell us we can move to our new offices ... and I'm sure we're going to be insanely busy once we get in there (we just heard some news from a client-in-waiting than makes us think that's about to start rolling!).

Eschatos decided to take a walk and check out the new islands that got delivered last weekend south of the Simuality (LINK) sim. These are going to be part of the "fashion district" that's being built around Club Mannequin (LINK), which is very "unfinished" at the moment, but will be very cool when done!

Anyway, it was a dramatic sunset when Eschatos got up on top of the as-delivered island, so a snapshot seemed to be in order ... he even put away his coffee cup for the occasion!

More later ...

Uh, oh ...

2008-06-03T10:12:00.000-07:00

Oh, dear ... I guess showing Eschatos where we're moving the RL office was a mistake ... he seems to think that we're moving the in-world offices as well, and has boxed stuff up and appears to be waiting for the moving van!

Around Simuality, we're sort of in the same place ... obviously, we've not boxed the computers as yet, but we've got all the files, kits, promo stuff, etc., etc., etc., packed up and ready to go ... we're just waiting for the various City of Evanston inspectors to tell us it's OK to get into the new space. As soon as they say "go" we'll be into moving mode.

Oh, by the way ... the two other islands that we've been waiting for (to complete the "fashion district" being developed around Club Mannequin, out the window behind Eschatos there) arose from the virtual depths over the weekend, so things should be picking up on that project!

More later ...

Moving ...

2008-05-30T12:05:00.000-07:00

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 ...

Something to check out ...

2008-05-27T13:27:00.000-07:00

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 ...

It's not ALL fun and games ...

2008-05-21T14:45:00.000-07:00

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 ...

More fundraising ...

2008-05-19T11:02:00.001-07:00

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 ...

Nothing specific ...

2008-05-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

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 ...

Wow ...

2008-05-12T12:49:00.000-07:00

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 ...

Video ...

2008-05-07T12:36:00.000-07:00

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!

New toys ...

2008-05-05T10:03:00.000-07:00

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.

Lions and Tigers and BEARS!

2008-04-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

Eschatos went off to the SLCN taping of a Metanomics show with Beyers Sellers interviewing the Non-Profit Commons' Glitteractica Cookie yesterday. Beyers is actually going to be out at the Simuality real-world offices later today to check out all the stuff we're working on ... so I figured showing up at his gig in-world was the polite thing to do!

Of course, one of the topics being discussed was Glitteractica's "five minutes of fame" courtesy John Stewart (see my April 10 posting for details), something that Beyers (who is a Cornell University economics professor in meatspace) was thinking could be usefully spun to bring in more "entertainment media" to Second Life. He was specifically thinking of "John Stewart's little brother", Stephen Colbert, and, to this end, suggested a "Bear" theme to the audience. As you can see here, many ursine avatars showed up on cue, and Eschatos did his best with wearing the "home team's" colors!

Frankly, I'm not sure exactly what Beyers was implying ... while offering Colbert a lifelike eagle avatar, his "Truthiness Encylopedia", Wikiality, defines bears as: "soulless, godless, rampaging killing machines ... they are Satans minions and the TRUE symbol of the devil and evil", which is not exactly putting out the welcome mat! Maybe Colbert is a Packers fan.

Anyway, this dove-tails with some news which I am likely going to be announcing next week, so watch this space!

Fascinating ...

2008-04-25T12:08:00.000-07:00

The folks over at Clever Zebra have put together a very ambitious program called "vBusiness Expo" which is running 8 hours a day (from 7am to 3pm SLT) for four days, Thursday through Sunday. I attended two presentations yesterday and have been at two today. Last night at the Chicago Metaverse Meetup I spoke with Jeremy Hunsinger (one of the few who braved the rain) who is speaking on the program tomorrow (but I'm likely to be AFK at the time, so will be missing his presentation).

I've been in the meeting/conference business for a long time, and I'm impressed with what C.Z. has put together here, as much of the planning and logistics are the same as doing a "meatspace" conference, just minus the registration, travel, housing, etc. What I've found is very nice is that this allows one to "cherry pick" what presentations one wants to show up for ... like being at a conference but back at my desk for the stuff that I'm not immediately interested in!

Their main auditorium at C.Z. is on the juncture of four Second Life sims, which allows them to have a whole bunch of avatars around at once. If you click through on the pic to the full-size version you can see the light blue lines on the floor which indicates where the sim borders are ... the lay-out allowing them to pretty much have a quarter of the audience on each sim. In the pic here there was streaming media coming in from a real-world location, but the rest of the time they had the audio coming through on the music channel, which I guess is easier to make "seamless" across sim borders.

As you can probably tell, Eschatos (in the lower right corner here with the glowing steam wafting off of his coffee mug) is very envious of putting on such a great show!

More later ...

Whew ...

2008-04-23T11:58:00.000-07:00

"Life is change, how it differs from the rocks" and all that, eh? We're in the process of turning the ground floor of what had been (and, I guess still is) the Simuality office over on our main island (LINK) into a SlippCat store, to sort of demo what that would be like once everything is up and running.

What we're initially doing is creating virtualized copies of everything in our Amazon "A-Store" and putting that on shelves. Eschatos and I have spent the better part of the past 3 days creating SL books of all the titles currently in our store ... here's Eschatos surveying all that work once we were finished:

Somebody else is going to be adding the SlippCat coding to these, but they're now all set up on shelves down in the "store" so that it at least looks like we've got some "stock".

Our next project is adding "stuff" to the store, which means another week of deep Amazon immersion. If you don't hear anything from Eschatos for a while, you'll at least know where he is!

More later ...

Media attention ...

2008-04-17T15:37:00.000-07:00

Now, being the ~~Minister of Propaganda~~ Director of Communications for Simuality, I should be more excited about this, but I really didn't have anything to do with setting it up (aside from providing some key background info on Virtual Worlds, etc.), this being a project by Avatrait head honcho Track Hax.

We had a reporter and camera crew from the NBC "O&O" here in Chicago in our offices for hours today, shooting stuff about Second Life, and checking out the Avatrait gallery (as well as other live-person interviews). Very cool!

The avatar standing facing out in this shot is the one we did for the reporter lady, and it looks a good deal like her! I'm really looking forward to seeing the coverage, which is due to roll in about a week.

More later ...

More changes ...

2008-04-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

Well, things have been hectic around Simuality Island (LINK) since we got back from New York, with getting both SlippCat rolling and setting up the even-more "brand new" project called RetailGenics! Things have been "complicated" as well, as we're still being "griefed" by disgruntled former associates, but that's only marginally slowing down our big re-visioning of our home island, and the major expansion being built around the Club Mannequin (LINK) sim.

This pic is Eschatos checking out one of the cool additions that suddenly appeared down the hill from his in-world office ... a hot speedboat in the Mannequin lagoon! When done, the expanded "fashion district" around the club will be six sims, with a roadway with under-water tunnels, a drag strip, hotels, beaches, surfing, and lots and lots of designer showrooms, featuring both real-world designers' virtualized styles and outlets for in-world designers.

Not much specific to blither about today, but I figured the shot of Eschatos down in the boat was too groovy not to share!

Eschatos goes to a public protest ...

2008-04-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

O.K., so "protest" is sort of over-stating it ... this was, however, an organized response by the Non-Profit Commons to Jon Stewart's "Avatar Heros" piece, which aired a couple of days ago on the Daily Show.

This piece was nominally about a Congressional hearing about virtual worlds, and ended up focusing on TechSoup/NPC head Susan Tenby's testimony ... largely due to her adding into her "on the record" introduction that her avatar's name is Glitteractica Cookie (Susan and Glitteractica are shown above).

At this point the story veered off from the Congress and focused on the name, with Stewart claiming that he had to settle for "Glitteractica Cookie2" (a joke that continued into the next segment when Nathan Lane claimed that he was "Gitteractica Cookie3") ... ignoring, of course (as had CSI:NY with "Don Juan Two Three") that Second Life avatar names "don't work like that".

Anyway, here is your 'umble narrator in the teeming throng (and in a cameo shot since none of the crowd shots were particularly flattering of Eschatos) wearing a box on his head with a pic of Jon Stewart, up in the "alternative" NPC auditorium over in the new "aloft" (LINK) island expansion.

A couple of folks were shooting "machinima" of the event, which included SLNN.com's reporter Aldon Huffhines' avatar appearing as a dolphin (much like the Daily Show corespondent in the clip, but without the breasts ... just watch the clip), swimming back and forth in front of the crowd. I anticipate that this will be appearing on YouTube sometime soon, or, perhaps, on The Daily Show!

More later ...

I'm Baaaaaaaack ...

2008-04-07T12:25:00.000-07:00

I am mortified that it's been nearly two weeks since I updated here, but things were a total buzzsaw around the office over that time and as 15-hour day rolled into 15-hour day, and the calendar ticked down to departure to New York, there just wasn't the opportunity to get this done.

And, it's not for lack of news. Several times I'd even made a point of grabbing in-world snapshots to post, but never got around to being able to write anything up.

Anyway, here's a virtual version of our booth at the Virtual Worlds conference ... with Eschatos manning the same side that I, your 'umble narrator, did at the Javits Center.

Now, this isn't quite exactly like the booth ... which was bigger, and had tables with schwag piled high (I need to share pics of our goodies ... we did coffee mugs, cool little LCD clocks {"time for SlippCat"}, mousepads {"a whole new cat & mouse game"}, post-it pads, and colorful imprinted pens), along with lots and lots of info kits.

Between the "teaser" SlippCat web site (which, unfortunately, still has the teaser up instead of the "proto site" which will be there later in the week) and our "Gold Sponsorship" of the conference, and our Big Huge Booth (almost everybody else was "pipe and drape"), we certainly achieved the attention that we were looking for at the convention!

Unfortunately while we were out of town, our former Head Builder (who had quit in a major hissy fit a month or so back) decided that she was going to "ruin our show" by attacking our island ... which caused us huge amounts of hassle, but little actual harm as we were doing only a few "live" things. I suspect that this little battle is going to get uglier before it gets settled, but when you start getting noticed, it brings out the trolls!

More later ...

Happy RezDay to E.!

2008-03-25T06:54:00.000-07:00

Well, actually, yesterday was Eschatos' "RezDay" so donuts were brought into the Real World office ... but it was an insanely busy day, so there was no time to go donut shopping in-world. Alas, Eschatos going uncelebrated in-world (where he actually lives), how sad ...

However, to somewhat rectify the situation, Eschatos' co-worker over at the Simuality offices over on Simuality Island (LINK), Innerlite Voom, kindly rezzed a box of mini donuts on Eschatos' desk this morning!

Hello ...

2008-03-21T09:32:00.000-07:00

So, Eschatos wakes up back in the office this morning and decides to take a look around Simuality Island (LINK) ... as I've noted, there are big changes going on, and stuff has been disappearing and moving and new stuff showing up frequently now. Look at what he found out by the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) ...

It's a waterfall ... who knew? Of course, being an inquisitive monkey, Eschatos noticed that there were steps leading into the waterfall, so had to go take a look at what's inside ...

There he is, enjoying his bottomless cup of coffee, while the mists swirl around him and get his suit wet. Not as wet, of course, as when he wandered behind the inner waterfall and sank down to his waist in the pool he found back there ... thank goodness that virtual suits don't need dry cleaning!

So much for this morning's adventures ... more later, I'm sure ...

And the walls ...

2008-03-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

Well, lookie there ... the big "corncob"/"stack of pancakes" amphitheater (that was never used) is GONE! And, off in the distance, exciting new things (soon to be part of the greater Club Mannequin [LINK]) are rising from the briny deeps! Three of the eventual five new sims have appeared, with the other two (mentally fill in the outer corners) following soon.

Now, it's not really bragging for me to say so (since I, personally, have scant little to do with it), but the stuff that's going to be happening over on that eventual six-sim build is going to be totally awesome!

The disappearance of our corncob is the first phase on a "re-imagining" of what the Simuality island (LINK) is going to be. We're going to be expanding as well, but we're wanting to get "all spiffed up" to show folks when were're off at the Virtual Worlds Conference (LINK) in April.

Speaking of April ... we just have two weeks to crank out a HUGE amount of stuff for that! I don't want to bore you with the details of what I've been having to write, but there's a ton more to come. In fact, I just had word today that one of the BIG ANNOUNCEMENTS that I've been waiting to hear about just got "inked" today, so I'll be doing a huge national press release in the next day or so!

Anyway, I need to get back to putting words to screen (well, other words to screen, I decided to update here to give my poor brain a rest!)... more later.

Wowzers ...

2008-03-14T08:34:00.000-07:00

The Simuality Big Boss spent all day yesterday down at the offices of one of our Really Huge Potential Clients, hoping to come back with signed proposals so that we could get rolling with their first (of several) builds in-world. What he came back with instead was news that we're going to be doing a massive, on-going, complicated, and ground-breaking joint venture with them for bringing virtual versions of all their real-world facilities into Second Life!

Here's Eschatos in his high-rise digs, getting ready to burn some midnight oil on these new projects ... as busy as we were getting ready for the Virtual Worlds Conference (LINK), we're going to be having to ratchet things up to a whole 'nuther level, as we need to have a "demo" version of the first build on this up and running by mid-May!

Needless to say, we're going to be needing to add on quite a lot more staff ... we need in-world builders, scripters, designers, etc., and will need real-world programmers, project managers, etc.! If you think you'd fit in as part of the Simuality team, come on over to Simuality island (LINK) for the in-world gigs (ask for Evermore Noel), or to the Simuality web site (LINK) for the positions up in Evanston, IL.

More blitherings on this as I get "releasable" details ...

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes ...

2008-03-10T14:45:00.000-07:00

Whoa ... things are getting busy, busy, busy over on Simuality Island (LINK), as you can see from this snapshot from this afternoon, I'm no longer the one lonely worker in the Simuality in-world Office ... I am frequently joined by Evermore Noel and Guy Winkler (whose real-life counterparts, oddly enough, sit just about as far away from me as they do from Eschatos!).

We're also looking to do a major over-haul of the island before the Virtual Worlds Conference (LINK) in New York next month. So, within 3-4 weeks, this ...

... will be out-moded, with some things gone, some things added, and a whole bunch of stuff just "looking different" ... all in the interests of being ready for (what we hope to be) massive traffic coming from the exposure at the conference, and the addition of the new island devoted to all things SlippCat (LINK)!

Now, if you'll excuse me a Ron Popeil moment ... But wait, there's MORE! ... if that sounds like it's rattling my virtual reality, you should see what's coming to our south side! The Mannequin (LINK) build is going to be blasting out into a huge fashion/entertainment complex all the way around the club. It's going to be amazing ... more details here as they become prudent to unleash!

Lookie there ...

2008-03-05T10:49:00.000-08:00

Eschatos doesn't get much chance to build or script stuff, but every now and again he finds a situation where he needs something now, and doesn't have time to wait around to describe the situation, line up a builder/scripter, and get it done by somebody else. This was the case yesterday, when we were finalizing copy for an ad for the VWC08 program, and I needed to have some SLURL to have the info for SlippCat pointing to in-world.

There is Eschatos standing in front of the new sign stuck in the middle of the amphitheater on Simuality Island (LINK). While it doesn't look like much, it's got the logo on four sides, has link coding on the upper part, and is merged with the lower part, and in pulling it together, I learned the LSL for changing text color (it's an odd 0-1 scale, so you have to divide the RGB values into 1 and then use the resulting decimal) and transparency (its "click me" label is not transparent here, it's just that the SL camera doesn't pick up floating text!). One of these days, I'm going to have a better grasp of LSL, but this will do for the moment!

Anyway, though I'd share ... oh, by the way, do drop by the SlippCat site to see the unfolding "teases" we're doing (ala the old Burma Shave road ads) leading up to the conference!

Speaking of pyramids ...

2008-03-04T07:45:00.000-08:00

I first found the Visit Mexico build (as discussed yesterday) when searching for the Xibalba site (LINK) after it got bumped off of the old Info Island when they were making room for more universities.

"Xibalba" (pronounced something like "shih-bal-ba") is the name of the Mayan Underworld, and it's a project in-world for presenting Mayan culture. The main feature is a virtualization of the Temple of the Inscriptions from Palenque (which is also being re-created at the Mexico build), including a mini-museum inside the pyramid:

I figured that since I was "on the subject" I might as well pass along this place as well. Oh, and if you do go over there, don't miss the 200m-high tower with the Mayan murals on it ... I'm not sure what it's supposed to be, but it's one of those odd things you find in S.L.!

Cool stuff ...

2008-03-03T08:30:00.000-08:00

I know that it may be hard to imagine, but Eschatos here isn't ALL business ... sometimes he just goes wandering around Second Life just to see what's out there. One place that's cool is the "Visit Mexico" build, by the Mexican Tourist office (LINK). They started out with a (somewhat cramped) replication of Chichen Itza (LINK) featuring the Castillo, the Temple of the Warriors and part of the "Court of 1,000 Columns", and the Sacred Cenote (and an incongruous beach area with shops and a dance club) all on one sim.

Well, they've been expanding, so far adding two more sims (which don't appear to be "officially" open yet, as your av can't "walk" into the new parts), one of which has a splendid (and much more to scale) rendition of Tulum ...

Over the years, I've been quite a fan of "archaeological tourism", and have visited both Chichen Itza and Tulum multiple times, and it's so cool to be able to poke around the ruins in-world!

One of the best features of the new build there is that they've taken detailed photographs of the various sculpted panels on the actual ruins and have applied these as textures on the buildings ... resulting in a very realistic look:

They've also been experimenting a bit with "sculpties" in an area where they've replicated some of the giant Olmec heads and thrones with 3-D prims wrapped with photos of the actual sculptures. I have a feeling that the "Visit Mexico" build is going to be getting more awesome as they feel their way through making the whole thing "photo-realistic" ... I hope they end up having the budget to add on another dozen or so sims and recreate the Puuc Cities, Coba, and the whole Teotihuacan area (which in itself would probably take a dozen sims!). This is like watching a whole new type of "living museum" come to life at my mouse-tip!

More later ...

What difference "current tech" makes!

2008-02-29T08:06:00.000-08:00

Well ... that's just lovely ... suddenly Eschatos is able to actually walk through doorways and stuff without bashing into the doorframes and having to back up and try again ... and everything in-world is so pretty (and I've not even installed WindLight yet)!

Yes, we got our new computers this week, and while I am insanely frustrated with the typical transitioning-between-computers headaches, I now have a box with a quad-core processor, 3 gigs of RAM, half a terabyte of HD storage, and an overclocked GeForce 8800 with 512meg of video memory!

I'm also hoping to have an upgrade finished on my home system by the end of the weekend ... I'd gotten a GeForce 7800 for that, and tried to install it last weekend, but I got nothing but a blank screen. It seems that the 350w power supply that was listed as a minimum requirement wasn't quite the whole story ... it turns out that the damn card needs a 20amp rail, which was way beyond what my system had (and was mentioned nowhere on the box). So, I had to throw more $$$ at it, but lucked out that TigerDirect had a 600w power supply with one 20amp and one 18amp rail on an insane sale (more than half off), so I ordered that and now have it sitting waiting for another expedition in amongst the wires.

What does this mean for you, my intrepid readers? Well, it could make for a lot more machinima showing up here! Stay tuned.

P.S.: If you click through to the full size image of that pic, it sure looks like Eschatos has had quite enough coffee this morning! heh ...

Drip, drip, drip ...

2008-02-25T12:07:00.001-08:00

Oh, sure ... you try to look nonchalant, but I know you're burning with curiosity about our "big secret project"!

Well, over the weekend we finally ended up with both a logo and a web site ... not that there's a whole heck of a lot of info there yet (it's doing a bit of a "Burma Shave" tease as the weeks leading up to the Virtual Worlds Conference roll by), but you should probably go check it out ...

We're a Gold sponsor for the conference, and I hear tell that there's a whole lot of folks wondering who these SlippCat fellas are! Well, you, my so-far extremely anonymous readers, know that Slippcat is a project of your old pal Eschatos and the rest of the real bright folks at Simuality, so you've got a leg up on the head-scratching masses!

Lebensraum ...

2008-02-21T07:21:00.000-08:00

Eschatos has a tendency of "playing things close to the vest" figuring that when it comes to potentially sensitive info, it's better to not say something than to try to "unsay" something (duh!) ... but here's a peek at "exciting upcoming stuff" that I figure is close enough to being real that it won't hurt to brag a bit ...

Here you see where the current Simuality and Simuality2 islands are, with Club Mannequin (LINK) in the latter. This particular project started because Mannequin has be so successful that we need more "server room" to allow us to have more Avatars in-house for the big events. So, we're going to be adding on 3 sims, and having the club at the center, allowing us to have 4x the party-goers than we can currently get in! We also have some Big Surprises coming for what's going to be happening with the rest of that real estate ... but I can't blab everything all at once!

Also, as anybody who has come over to Simuality to visit the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) or do business at the SLurrency Exchange (LINK) has noticed, things have been getting a bit crowded on our little island ... so we're going to be doing a similar expansion for that, adding on 3 sims, and shifting the amphitheater (yes, that's what the concrete pancake stack in the middle of the island is supposed to be) to the four-corner zone on the new bigger, better, badder island! You might ask, "Why does Simuality need a 400-person amphitheater?", but I'm not going to tell you, at least not yet ... but let's just say that all sorts of very interesting new things are percolating under the surface in Simuality land!

Oh, perhaps there is one cat I can let out of the bag ... at least as far as the "tease" site for SlippCat goes!

More later ...

Buzzsaw ...

2008-02-19T16:15:00.000-08:00

Well, we finally got our "demo phase" funding in the door for our Big Secret Project, which means that Eschatos here is going to be logging a whole lot of hours in the office. However, if you happen to meander by the Simuality offices {LINK}, you might want to IM him instead of just trying to strike up a conversation, because He That Is On The Other Side Of The Keyboard is very likely not going to be having "eyes in-world" much as there are multitudinous projects which are demanding immediate and in-depth attention!

There's Eschatos trying to chill out in his Maxwell Street pad ... but he looks stressed, and is doing something twitchy with his non-coffee hand. Poor Eschatos ... he still runs into walls and doorframes and now he's got nervous tics on top of it!

As noted a few weeks back, this is all leading up to a "grand unveiling" at the Virtual Worlds Conference in New York the first week of April ... which, if you do the math, means we have six weeks before we get on a plane ... and some of the printing will take 2 weeks, meaning ... well, meaning there are a whole bunch of words which need to find their way into camera-ready form in the next 2-3 weeks!

Yeah, I'll try to keep posting here on a regular basis, but if I "go missing" again, you'll have a good guess as to why.

Strange Days ...

2008-02-18T07:41:00.000-08:00

"Bad Eschatos!" ... really, I have been fully intending on updating this blog several times a week, but things have been such a roller-coaster over the past few weeks that I've been just not getting to it.

Eschatos has been wandering around in-world looking at various types of "bots", researching a project for which some sort of a "bot" might be an ideal solution for an on-going issue with some of the stuff we're developing.

One place I'd seen some "functional bots" (not "campers", but automated Avs performing some on-demand activity) was in Kalimero DeSantis' freaky subway underworld (which is VERY NAUGHTY - be forewarned!) under his Maxwell Street build (LINK), so I headed over there to see what info I could get about both the bots there and the "prim people" that he's been working on.

Things are always changing down there and I found this new hide-away bar, and figured I'd take a bit of a break and park Eschatos there for a while ... he looked so "natural" in that environment that I figured I just had to take a snapshot, and there he is!

Anyway, now that half the office's back from Las Vegas, I'm hoping that things will stabilize a bit around here and I can get back to more frequent posts.

Eschatos M.I.A.???

2008-02-10T09:15:00.000-08:00

Well, not exactly, but the RL me was very ill the end of January (a viral infection in the ear had triggered a bad bout of Vertigo which was initially thought to have possibly been a stroke!), and I was so backed up on stuff that this past week was pretty much a blur, leaving me precious little time to do anything interesting in-world or to blog about anything else.

However, one of the projects that I just got done yesterday (yep, working all day on Saturday) was finally getting a bit of machinima edited. There were all sorts of issues about this, from sourcing to codecs, but I finally got everything pulled together by about noon on Saturday, so that we could embed this into a PowerPoint that's going out with the Club Mannequin team to the "MAGIC" (fashion industry) convention in Las Vegas next week. Simuality boss Hendry Goldkey liked the edit job on this so much that he wanted me to get it up on YouTube, etc., so I figured I'd share it here as well ...

I ended up doing the voice-over for Keen Marksman on the front of this, so that's what I sound like (I'm sure that will elicit some confusion at some point). This will be part of an introductory presentation for Club Mannequin (LINK) to various designers who will be the "fashion partners" in the club and the new showroom complex (Mannequin is soon to be expanding from one sim with the Club to four sims, centered on the club {which we'll then be able to get lots more people in} and with designer showrooms around the periphery!)

Anyway ... I didn't do the music video here, just the intro part (and a bit of editing). One of these days I'm going to have a more "machinima-friendly" computer at the office that will allow me to do stuff like get rid of the "screen capture" elements, and have tools for smoother zooms, etc., but this is pretty good for what I presently have to work with!

Wow!

2008-01-29T08:47:00.000-08:00

I have been trying to get this news up here since yesterday, but I was too busy with other stuff related to it at the office, and then promptly passed out when I got home, so was unable to get to it till now.

Out of the blue (or, out of the mailbox, I suppose), a couple of copies of "AD COLLECTORS" showed up here late last week. This is a special supplement to the Italian edition of Architectural Digest magazine, one specifically targeted to "collectors" to give them tips on what's "hot" and is likely to be greatly increasing in value over the next several years.

As you can guess from these scans of the various pages involved ... they are recommending the collecting of "metaverse art", and specifically mention (in the expanded blurb on the page with a lot of portraits) Avatrait, both the in-world Gallery (LINK) and the sales of hard-copy framed prints through our Evanston, IL offices (via Avatrait.com).

In the article (which we had translated over the weekend) they discuss Second Life art with various gallery owners in Europe, who quote pieces going for as much as 7,000 euros ... needless to say, Avatrait's current pricing is a steal! As it happens, the majority of the images they used (including the cover) are by Avatrait artists ... so you know we're excited.

More later ...

What a day ... in-world, yet

2008-01-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

One thing about Second Life that I have a love/hate relationship with is the ability to do a LOT of meetings with a LOT of folks ... on one hand, I never had to venture away from my desk today to forge out onto the frozen tundra of Evanston to go anyplace, but I still took 4 meetings over about 5 hours and I'm beat ... I mean, the efficiencies are awesome, but it's hard to say "can't make it" unless things are actually scheduled for the same time slot!

The first of these today was the regular Friday meeting of the Non-Profit Commons (LINK). All sorts of exciting stuff was introduced, including concepts for their new (second) sim, and Rik Riel's announcement about the "Best Practices for Non-profits in Second Life" report (funded by the MacArthur Foundation via the GlobalKids.org group), which he'll be doing a presentation on during the regular Friday meeting (at 8:30am SLT) on February 8th.

The other conference of note that I ran off to was the presentation that Jeff Barr of Amazon.com (Jeffronius Batra in-world) was doing as part of the "GeekEnd" conference that they're running today and tomorrow over at Orange Island (LINK). Barr was discussing some awesome new things that Amazon either has available now, or under development that will greatly improve Second Life (I may be stretching his words, but it sounded to me like he was implying that we may finally have real on-demand sim server scalability coming soon). I'm so glad I made that presentation! The files don't seem to be up yet, but they said that the transcripts (the presentations were in text instead of voice) would be up on their site (LINK) at some point.

One other brilliant thing I picked up today was a way of circumventing the 25-group limit ... I've bitched a lot about having to belong to so many groups in the course of all our development, and having to drop out of others that I would just as well have been in order to keep under the limit ... but what the folks at Orange have done is set up Avatar accounts who are named "EventReminder (GroupName)" and instead of having group announcements going out, there are IMs from the Av, and they have signs to click which automatically "Friend" you with them, effectively giving you unlimited number of announcement outlets ... like the Guinness guy above is saying, "Brilliant"!

More gallery fun ...

2008-01-24T10:51:00.001-08:00

Well, last night was the debut of the new series of art classes over at the Avatrait Gallery (LINK) with Ryker Beck doing "SL Art 101: An Introduction". This proved to be very popular, and most of us "Simuality Management" types ducked out early to keep the stress on the server at a minimum (and we did manage to have well over 40 Avatars in the classroom, following an audio/visual presentation, without crashing!).

The start time of 6pm SLT was not very popular with the European S.L. crowd (as that was around 3am their time!), so Ryker has agreed to do another session of this class on Sunday, January 27th at 9am SLT (about 6pm in Europe)! Given the popularity that these classes are evidencing, it's probably a good idea to double up on them like this, because were everybody to try to get in all at once, it would surely have crashed the server. I hope that Linden Labs is working on the "scalability" issue ... it would be great to just "order up" extra bandwidth when events like this were happening.

Next week brings the start of the Art History classes at the gallery. S.L. newcomer Hitoshi Mayako, who has an MFA from the University of Chicago, and is on staff at the Art Institute, will be bringing top-level expertise to the subject. That's going to be happening at 7pm SLT (sorry Europe!) on Tuesday, January 29 ... needless to say, we're probably going to have to look at doing a "reprise" presentation of this as well!

Here we go ...

2008-01-22T15:24:00.000-08:00

We have been "waiting for funding" (the eternal bane of I.T. start-ups!) for quite a while, as the better part of a dozen Venture Capital entities looked us over, and having Big Project after Big Project just stacking up awaiting the dollars through the door to get these things started. Well, finally one of these guys "pulled the trigger" and, like a dam breaking, we're now hitting the ground at the speed of sound.

One of these (and rather central to my upcoming activities) is our participation at the Spring 2008 Virtual Worlds conference in New York. We had hoped to have been the "lead sponsor", but time got past us, and another company got that, but we're going to be a "Gold" sponsor with some other options added on.

Aside from builds that we're developing for clients (such as Club Mannequin {LINK} and the stuff I've been writing about of late), we also have some Very Exciting Projects that we're developing in-house, and one of these we're planning on "officially unveiling" at the Virtual Worlds show!

Of course, in the eternal twist of phrase by The Rutles, "All You Need Is Cash" ... and now that the cash is on hand, ALL of the parts (press kit covers, pamphlets, booth design, promotional items, travel plans, etc., etc., etc.) need immediate attention, and we have only 9 weeks before we get on a plane! I just booked our exhibit package today, and have a printer coming in to give us some quotes tomorrow, etc.

It's amazing that I haven't been back to New York in as long as it's been. I grew up on the Upper East Side (from ages 2-9) and used to go back either for business or to hang out with friends several times a year. I don't know if the last time I was there was for the Kalachakra Initiation that the Dalai Lama gave at Madison Square Garden back in 1991, or a trip my wife and I did out there sometime around then (we went to see Blue Man Troupe when they were still only at their little theater in lower Manhattan), but in either case it's been nearly 20 years since I've been back.

Needless to say, I'm excited ...

Whew ...

2008-01-17T18:38:00.000-08:00

Well, we're almost done with the project that needs to be all tied up with a nice little bow tomorrow morning. The Boss and I were in at the office till 11:30pm last night, and there are five us "burning the midnight oil" tonight ... although I really expect that we won't go quite to midnight!

Because of working on this all day I've hardly been in-world, but I thought I'd share a pic of Eschatos over at his Maxwell Street "ghetto" place, communing with his growing collection of pinball machines as the El train runs past ... although I must once again apologize for his "half-rezzed" suit jacket ... it always seems to be the last thing to rez up anyplace Eschatos is, and ends up making him look like he's been sleeping in the street!

Anyway, tomorrow morning we'll be done with this big project ... I spent most of yesterday stitching together bits of Machinima, and today I was doing audio editing, adding "PowerPoint slides" into the video and trying to get the voice-over to fit as near as possible to the pictures. We still need to fit this little 2:22 movie into the bigger Machinima that's part of the Client's eventual PowerPoint presentation, but I'm pretty sure we'll be good to go by midnight.

All sorts of cool things are happening ...

2008-01-16T09:51:00.000-08:00

But I can't really talk about them at the moment!

Let's just say, as busy as I am today (and I'm only in here right now because I'm waiting for a download to finish), is likely to be the base-line for the next several months.

Here's a shot of Eschatos setting things up over at the Avatrait Gallery's "classroom" space for an in-world presentation ... don't mind the fact his suit hasn't rezzed yet. Right now I'm working on a project which involves a Machinima within a PowerPoint within a Machinima within a PowerPoint which will be presented by one of our Big New Clients (press releases coming soon!) next week.

Ooops ... the thing I was waiting on is done ... gotta go!

Awww ... bummer!

2008-01-15T11:21:00.000-08:00

One of my least favorite things about Second Life is that things that I think are way cool will suddenly disappear, and this happened again today. It looks like the Four Deuces folks have finally thrown in the towel. Now, if you're not familiar with them, they had started out with a multi-sim build that was focused on a Poker casino ... the whole sim being "Chicago themed" with stuff like the Art Institute, the Palmer House Hotel, Navy Pier, and the Chicago River with various bridges getting at least "name-checked" in it. After Linden Labs pulled the plug on in-world gambling, most of this stuff disappeared, and what was left (one sim centered around the Art Institute) had moved to some other place (or, at least when I used specific landmarks I was dropped into empty sims).

Now, aside from the fun Chicago build, Four Deuces had a fabulous radio station that not only could you hear over there, but was available on the web as well (as of today that's gone too). They seemed to have been trying to re-envision the "Four Deuces" sim as something of a "nightmare" Chicago, with meat packing plants, a morgue and funeral home, police station, and some really creepy stuff tucked away here and there ... plus two night clubs, a version of the Sears Tower, and the in-world "studio" for the radio station. The only thing was that there was never anybody there, except sometimes a lone builder fixing up details on things like the loading docks outside of Chiapetti meats. I kept waiting to hear something about them opening ... but nada ... which is too bad because they'd obviously spent a TON of time on making a very fascinating and detailed build.

Here's what's on the other side of the landmark today ... the name's been changed to "Carthage", and there's one stockade (with several people dancing in it ... go figure) and one Gothy-looking tower that had a bunch of "oooh, spooky" stuff for sale inside. As you can see from the inset, the S.L. map hasn't updated, and it still shows the lay-out from it's most recent Chicago manifestation.

I suppose if the same folks are involved, this will end up being as cool as the various "Four Deuces" builds were (and the audio stream was still pretty good), but it's awfully sad to have a "favorite place" (no matter how empty of other avatars) just up and disappear like this!

Hither, thither, and sometimes yon ...

2008-01-10T15:43:00.000-08:00

Well, Eschatos was unexpectedly all over the place today. Frankly, I had a big research project going unattended in the task bar while various places drew our virtual presence. First was a bit of "getting ducks in a row" over at Club Mannequin (LINK) where I snapped this pic of club manager Jada Hoyer getting the music mix together for an upcoming fashion show ...

But that didn't take much of my day, however in the early afternoon, a call went out to the Non-Profit Commons (LINK) group list from Kali Idziak, asking if anybody could come by the sim to act as something of an impromptu "welcoming committee". It turns out that MSNBC had published a rather extensive article about the NPC entitled Pixelanthropy: Charities tap into Second Life this morning, and that quite a few folks were wandering in, having read that.

I hung out there for a while, and then went to check out Coughran Mayo's new island for his non-profit (I don't think they're quite ready for visitors), and then followed up on some really cool in-world features that I'd noticed In Kenzo's phone exhibiting (going over to a build that she'd done for the Canadian "Telus" phone group). Hendry Goldkey, founder of Simuality, has the same phone (a MotoQ) and was very interested in all the stuff Telus had it doing. Needless to say, I'm sort of hoping that this will end up with us all getting "company phones" that will shift phone calls and e-mail in and out of world!

So, here I am, stranded in Real Life ...

2008-01-09T09:47:00.000-08:00

J-U-N-K-I-E ... yep ... not doing too well without my in-world fix ... I mean, it's not like I don't have the Internet or anything (so my skin's not crawling), and I'm catching up on a lot of blog reading, but I feel so exiled!

Have I mentioned how amusing I find the 2001-themed "Grid Down" graphic that L.L. uses for these planned outages? I do ... hear me giggle while I keep frantically hitting reload on the SL BLog like a rat in a Skinner box.

Maybe I should go have lunch early today and hope that SL's back up when I'm done.

Whew ...

2008-01-08T15:56:00.000-08:00

OK, so if you were watching Eschatos today, you'd say "Hmph! He barely ever moved from his desk!", but the live body on the other side of the keyboard had quite a day.

One of the many, many things cranked out the door today was a press release about a new series of Art Classes that will be held on Wednesday evenings (at 6pm SLT) over at the Avatrait Gallery's (LINK) upstairs classroom space.

This is going to be very cool. It's starting on the 23rd with the first installment of "S.L. Art 101" being done by Ryker Beck, who is known for her helpful tutorials on graphics, photography, and scripting.

There are going to be three "regular" (once a month) classes, "S.L. Art 101", "Art History" and "Art Appreciation" (I guess we're still getting folks lined up to teach the other two), plus special classes and "meet the artist" discussions on the other Wednesdays.

I had some other Very Cool Things run through they keyboard today, but I suspect they're still in the "can't talk about 'em" state, but it was a very full, if exhausting day.

Hopefully I can get Eschatos unchained from his desk for a bit of a walk-around later in the week ... I'm hoping to have more varied stuff to write about in here than just what happened at the SL and RW desks!

Some days are more active than others ...

2008-01-07T13:37:00.000-08:00

Yes, there Eschatos sits, all alone in the big conference room. There was supposed to have been a meeting this morning, but everybody had too many RL things to do. We may yet have a meeting this afternoon, so instead of dragging back down to his virtual desk on the virtual ground floor, Eschatos sits and waits.

I, however, have been pretty busy ... resourcing some of our printing needs (and we have a LOT of printing needs) for the Virtual Worlds Conference in New York City in early April, and getting out an in-world press release about Jada Hoyer taking over the reins at Club Mannequin (LINK). I'm going to be typing my fingers to the bone this week, with as many as four in-world releases and at least one headed for the dead-tree press.

In-world on a Sunday ...

2008-01-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

I guess it's a testament to how disconnected I have become to the current football season (alas, my Bears tanked early after having lost in the Superbowl last year) that I was in-world instead of watching the Wild-Card playoff games (in my defense, I did see at least part of all four games, just not all of any of them).

Once again, Jada Hoyer managed to put on a hot party over at Club Mannequin (LINK)...

... I'm hoping that she'll get some time today to send off some biographical stuff to me so that I can get a release out about her taking over Manager duties at Mannequin ... I think she's being modest, but we want to let folks know that she's running the show there!

Busy, busy ...

2008-01-05T13:55:00.000-08:00

I really didn't think that I was going to be able to be in-world today, as I usually have to take my daughters up to their martial arts class on Saturday, but I needed to do some repair to The Wife's computer, so I got to stay home and she took them.

I actually had four "social events" that I would have liked to have made it to, but the party over at Broadway Live had pretty much wound down by the time I got there, and ditto the "sports gear" party over at Club Mannequin (LINK). Oh, well.

I did make it over to the grand opening of Kiva.org's new space (LINK) over in the Non-Profit Commons (LINK). Kiva is an interesting concept ... they are a "micro-finance" network which allows folks with a bit of extra money (and we're talking as little as twenty-five bucks per loan here!) provide a cash infusion to a third-world entrepreneur who needs a resource for financing. Now, I suspect that the lenders aren't making much cash return on their money, but if they've been able to help somebody bootstrap themselves out of poverty, I guess that's its own reward.

Needless to say, Kiva's very cool and you should go check them out, either in-world or at their web site!

The other thing that I was able to make it to was the mentioned-yesterday opening of the Clarrise Cinquetti show at Avatrait Gallery (LINK).

These opening parties are always fun, with lots of folks turning out ... in the above are Track Hax, Avatrait founder, and Stephen Venkman (with his back to the camera), Avatrait gallery manager.

If you want to check out more of Clarrise Cinquetti's art than you can see in these snaps, drop by the gallery in-world, or at the Avatrait site (where you can buy real-world framed prints of her work, as well as that of the other fine Avatrait artists!).

Anyway, that was my "surprise" social excursion in-world today. Back to your regular programming, I'm sure, in following posts.

As I mentioned yesterday ...

2008-01-04T15:08:00.001-08:00

OK, so I went out and snapped a picture of one of the mysterious floating objects ... this steaming cup of black coffee is hanging over the PeoplePool office over on Simuality (LINK), right next to where I sit at a desk all day.

We're still working on getting me set up with the right "permissions" to make these random items go back from whence they came, but they do add a certain air of serendipity on the island!

In the background is the very popular Avatrait Gallery (LINK). The new exhibit featuring Clarrise Cinquetti opens tomorrow (Saturday 1/5) with a big bash at 1pm SLT. Her show will be featured through the end of January ... so do get over there to check it out.

By the way, speaking of "random items" ... Avatrait Gallery always has a free framed graphic from the featured artist available by the front desk ... I just picked up a copy for my in-world art collection!

Uh ... Eschatos NOT In-World at the moment

2008-01-03T11:30:00.001-08:00

OK, Second Life is off-line at the moment (horrors!), so since Eschatos can't be sitting at his desk (as realistically depicted here), I figure I'd pop in to update the blog.

Frankly, I'm still "feeling my way" through on what to address in here, although I'm leaning towards doing "my adventures in-world" ... but with a certain level of "editorial control", of course!

I'm hoping that the current "Inventory Issues" that is the cause of Second Life being down won't end up spewing "lost items" all over the place. Our chief builder, Rosalie Rothlisberger, ended up having a bunch of stuff disappear the last time something like this happened, and I'm still running into things that went missing then, coffee cups 50m up in the air, laptop computers sticking out of walls, umbrellas slowly rocking in the currents on the "sea floor", etc.!

There are still a few of these "missing items" out there ... maybe (once I can get back into S.L.!) I'll snap some pics and show them to y'all in a subsequent post.

well, here it is ...

2007-12-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

Been a while ... this is the "company blog" for Brendan Tripp at Simuality.com ... known as Eschatos Graves in Second Life.