I know, a LONG time ...

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



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

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



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

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

Anyway, more later ...

Another new book!

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



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

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

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

More later ...

Eschatos has a nightmare?

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

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



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

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

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

Anyway ... more later ...

TaaaDaaa ...

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

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



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

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

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

More later ...

Almost like old times ...

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

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



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

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

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

More later ...

Hi ...

Just a brief note today ...

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



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

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

More later ...

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

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

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



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

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

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

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

More later ...

A Long Week ...

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

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

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



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

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



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

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

More later ...

Strange days ...

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

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

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



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

More later ...

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

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



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

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

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

More later ...

Always busy ...

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



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



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

More later ...

New Year, eh?

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

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



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

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

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

More later ...

What a year ...

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 ...

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!

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 ...

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 ...

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" ...

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 ...

A very proper gander ...

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 ...

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 ...