Masking Creativity

Masking Creativity


Chestnut perked up and said "A friend's got an installation we should look at," so off we went. The theme was "masks" and the build is simple. The masks, tho, are anything but simple. Oversized, so you walk among them, the masks are set on simple black walls.

What takes my breath away, is the range. Abstract, Simple, Concrete, stylized, conceptual. I stand and look. Its art. Its very creative and mixed in are scripted effects, subtle texturing, incredibly good sculpted prim work. Above all, its a wonderful cross section of ideas.

We walk along the wall of installations, commenting, chatting, and I wonder. Do the original Lindens. Philip, Cory, the old hands, who brought this all to life. Do they wander these spaces and inhale of the creativity, and smile at what they have wrought?

The intersection of creativity, technical wizardry, and a social universe, where people can share ideas, and become artists and observers, is an pretty special thing. Its easy to forget, amidst the lag, the drama, the never ending oddities of the grid, that Second Life is uniquely new.

Do the new hands, the people brought in to take it from a raw unfinished tangle of rough edges and powerful ideas, come to spots like this and realize h

ow powerful Second Life is? I hope they do. I hope both old and new, wander it and see the magic.

This installation is one of many in Second Life. Those who would hope to get a hint of what makes Second Life special, and why it, and not other virtual spaces, have taken off, should wander the world, and inhale deeply of the creativity. Technology, and creativity. Audience, and Creator. Sharing. It is a heady mix, and hints of why Second Life, and Virtual Worlds matter.

"Masks" organized by Sabrinaa Nightfire, at: Erato of Caerleon

SL Fashion and Personal Choice

Today Quaintly Tuqiri wrote a brave and important blog post about fashion choices people make in Second Life. Please go to her blog and read her post "Not so funny after all."

Quaintly wrote about our tendency to judge the fashion choices of others in SL. Since we can all be perfect beautiful beings why would anyone make the choice to dress "badly?" Her point is everyone has their own personal vision of how they want to look and making fun of other people's choices is mean and just wrong. She makes the point that if everyone adopted her personal style the world would be homogeneous and boring.

I have been perking a blog post on this very topic for ages. I have not been able to write it without being mean spirited myself so I have held off. Poking fun at other people's body shapes and clothing feels like the stories my daughter brings home from middle school every day. When I see adults behaving in this manner quite publicly it just makes me angry.

So, thank you Quaintly for your insightful, diplomatic post.

Time Stands Still

I took this photo the other day. I came across these cool clocks when I was wandering around aimlessly as I often do. I cleaned up some funky spots in Photoshop and threw it up on Flickr, mostly because I liked the capture. Dale commented that he is eagerly awaiting the blog post to go along with the photo. Uh oh. I didn't actually have a post in mind. The truth is I have a bit of blogger's block, I suppose. Lately I am thinky thinky, not posty posty.

Dale's call to write and the photo got me thinking about time. I feel like time is my enemy. You know the story. Work obligations, family obligations, all of the life maintenance a mom has to take care of every day. It adds up. When I feel time pressure the first thing I let go is me. I don't exercise enough. I grab a quick dinner or don't eat at all. I miss dental appointments, don't go to the doctor when I should. I don't think I am alone in this -- right?

Neglecting the things that are important catches up with us eventually. A friend of mine always says this life is not a dress rehearsal. We don't get to live these days over and try to be better the next time around. We need to act on our intentions. So, I guess I will see you later. I am off to the gym.

Random, Random

I feel like I want to blog about a few things, most of which are topics I would probably regret talking about on teh intranets. Sometimes I miss the days when I had 5 readers and I knew exactly who they were. Don't get me wrong. I love that people are interested in what I have to say. I really do. At the same time, I have been feeling a bit like a deer in the headlights with respect to blogging about feelings and personal experiences.

The truth is I am increasingly thinking the web is no place for anything personal. How many stories have you heard about people losing jobs because of a random comment on Facebook? I think I have read 3 this week alone. I know I sometimes forget the reach of what gets published on the web and clearly lots of people do. Mark your plurk private and send it to 50 of your closest friends if that makes you happy but realize there is nothing private about it at all.

So, yeah. This blog is not the place where I can be open and say what I am feeling anymore. My mistake was thinking it ever was.



Shenlei and Rez completely renovated the Shengri La Estate. All the buildings are new, the entire landscape has taken on a different feel, there are birds soaring and butterflies flitting about everywhere. The Community Gateway has settled down and we now have a nice steady flow of new people instead of the pandemonium of the first few weeks. Everything looks fresh and bright.

I wandered around the sims this morning looking the sculpture, the lovely flowers and water. I found new spots to fish and go for a horseback ride, a picnic area, a spot to sit on the patio and read the newspaper. Once again I was reminded how blessed I am to be part of the Shengri La community. The landscape reflects the character of the people here -- interesting, intelligent, creative, open, and simply lovely.

Super low prim trees

We live on a homestead sim so prims are always an issue. In addition to the limited number of prims on a homestead there are Ode butterfly hunts on Shengri La every month, which require that we keep a large number of prims free. For these reasons finding low prim and wonderful trees is a long standing goal of mine. I say goal to be generous. Obsession might be a better word.

I have used trees by the talented Honour McMillan which she sells from her store Aintree Gardens. As you can see below, Honour's trees are very realistic and at 3 prims they really fit my needs. These trees come in several colors, they sway in the wind gently and at $400 for a copy version are more than affordable. On top of that Honour is a joy to work with so you cannot go wrong if you are in the market for trees.


These trees are made by texturing prims and placing them in a cross pattern as you can see below. This is one standard way lots of things in Sl are created. The problem with this construction method is from certain angles the object loses its 3 dimensional feel and begins to look like a flat picture on a prim. Its just a limitation of the tools.


To get around this problem, people use sculpted prims to create a more three dimensional representation. Some of the most lovely sculpted trees are made by Kriss Lehmann of Botanical in the gorgeous Straylight sim. I am sure you have seen these trees as they are used a lot, including in the little glen Zha and I built at our home.


The problem with sculpted trees is that they can be fairly primy. The trees we have are 30 prims each so to create our little forested glen with just 6 trees we have used 180 prims. Expand that to thinking about landscaping a whole sim and it becomes pretty obvious that prims are going to be a problem. Lately, I have seen a whole new breed of low prim sculpted trees that change the equation.

Recently the store called New Trail had a grand opening so I went over to check it out. I was lucky enough to grab a free copy of the tree called Arborea. This sculpted beauty is just 7 prims and comes with animated and static shadows. The mod copy version is $2,500 and is available in different shades of green and a fall feeling red orange. New Trail itself is a lovely sim and is worth a visit.


Today I ran across a store called Artis Natur in a sim called Revelations. This tree is called Sitting Giant. It is priced at $1,000 for mod copy version. This tree is just 5 prims, comes with the option to change the foliage depending on the season, has particle falling leaves, a sculpted shadow and sitting pose. Wow. Just wow.


Some people do not like sculpted trees because they can take a long time to rez. Unrezed sculpties look like big blobs that can be unattractive. Clearly, the choice between high quality conventional prim trees and sculpted trees is a matter of personal taste. One thing is certain though. Content creators are upping the bar on quality and keeping the prim counts low so I think the future of the Linden tree looks bleak.

I have not blogged in a week

This morning I asked my 10 year old son to pick up the garbage dump he calls a bedroom. His answer was priceless. The conversation went something like this:

Me: "Please clean up your room."
Boy: "I can't mom."
Me: "Please enlighten me. Why?"
Boy: "You know I am a slacker."

Now a good mother would not laugh. She would get a stern look in her eye and take a serious tone and repeat her request in such a way that the little boy would run off and clean his dang room. But, I am not a good mother. I laughed. A.lot. He laughed. Then we got on with the business of putting the house in order. That is just how we roll here.

I know I have not blogged here in a week. I am not going to say it is because I am super busy in RL, which I am. I am not going to say its because I am busy collecting events for New World Notes, which I am. I will just say "you know I am a slacker."

Great Furniture, Great Customer Service

Zha and looked for furniture for our house for a long time. We had specific requirements because we are picky like that. I did not want pose balls because menu driven furniture is out there and pose balls are ugly and unnecessary. Both Zha and I are on the small side and we wanted furniture that did not dwarf us. Amazingly, well proportioned furniture is hard to find.

Someone on plurk suggested we look at The Loft and once we did our search was over. We chose the Tennyson Sofa and matching chairs. I will say I loved just about everything in the store and could have easily purchased any number of things. We rushed home, set up the furniture and spent days saying versions of "OMG I love our new furniture" and "It makes our house seem like a home" over, over and over.

After a bit I noticed some of the poses didn't fit our avatars very well. Partly this is because most cuddle poses are created for a male and a female avatar, which obviously is not going to work for us. Sadly, we are pretty used to one of us floating in the air or getting an arm through the shoulder. (Hint, hint content creators -- make more poses and animations for female couples. There are a LOT of us.)

One of the reasons we loved the furniture at The Loft is it is adjustable. I read the note card, tried to follow the directions and was just not able to get the menu to pop up the way I thought it was supposed to. So I IMed Colleen Desmoulins the very talented creator and asked for help. After a few misses on finding a time that worked for both of us Colleen came out to my house last evening and explained how to make the necessary adjustments.

Please understand Colleen left a photo shoot to come help me. She patiently walked me through the process and showed absolutely no frustration when it became pretty clear the "problem" was that I misunderstood the notecard. Thank you so much Colleen!

The Loft has superior furniture and outstanding customer service. It just does not get better than that.

Events, Me on SLTV

My NWN post is up and the google calendar is updated. Enjoy!

I am going to appear on Paisley Beebe's SLTV show Tonight Live this Sunday at 6pm. The show is in voice so if you ever wanted to know if I have a New York accent or not, now is your chance.

In all seriousness, I have never done anything like this before so I am a bit nervous. A few friendly faces in the audience would be much appreciated.