Second Life of My Dreams

A Real Life Photographic Interlude

2012-01-29T12:55:00.002-05:00

I got a fantastic Canon digital SLR camera for Christmas. Since then I have been taking pictures of places I go in my day to day life in favor of more SL photos. The images below were taken as we took a walk by the Hudson River a few days after Christmas. No windlight! No shadows making my computer crash! Just a cold nose and a patient husband were required. These image are straight out of my camera with no post processing whatsoever. How much do I love my camera? Tons.

Of course I have taken every opportunity to annoy my family and friends by pointing my camera in their faces as much as possible. In the image below both of my children are smiling and even seem to be enjoying each other's company. I am so glad I caught the moment as believe me it was fleeting. The image was taken in Boston.

I will get back to exploring the LEA sims this week. Look out for those posts in the coming days.

Happy Sunday poppets!

Today is double bonus Wednesday! LEA#2 and LEA#3

2012-01-25T20:44:00.001-05:00

LEA#2 is home to The Path which I have written about before and which I hope you have seen already. If not, what are you waiting for I ask? Here is the SLurl and you must go.

So what in the world is happening on LEA#3 you ask? Well I am here to tell you. LEA#3 is home to the LEA Theater where there has been a series of monthly machinima screenings.

January is the last in this series and apparently there will be changes to the way the process works. More information will be available soon. You can read more about the machinima screenings on the LEA blog here. For the next few days you can still go to the Theater and view films entered for the month of January. There are huge screens and its a great way to enjoy the films. Take a moment to check it out if you have some time over the next week.

Over the years I have wondered why we import our thinking about structures from the atomic world right into our virtual lives. I remember the first time this struck me as odd too. I was living on Jokung and the people across the water worked for weeks building a house. They were a cute couple learning how to build and I smiled at their flickering overlapping textures and unaligned prims. I was still pretty new and I was amazed at what they could do because moving prims around was still a challenge for me at that time. It was when they added a two car garage to the house I got cranky. There wasn't even a road on the sim and they didn't even have a car for that matter. Why the HELL did they need a garage?

It is what we do though. We recreate offices and clubs and a myriad of other true to our daily life structures in Second Life. We can sit upside down or swing on a branch attached to nothing or sip tea in a butter cup made of spiderwebs so why in the world would we arrange seats in neat little rows to watch a film? But we do. I suppose it has to do with packing a lot of people into a sim or keeping people out of each other's way at public events but still I wonder why we humans like things to be so predictable.

Yes, this little tangent was brought to you by the rings of seats at the LEA Theater.

Let's begin at the beginning - LEA 1

2012-01-24T20:23:00.001-05:00

I promised you a bit of a tour through the LEA art sims and the best place to start seems to be at the beginning. So that is why I started at LEA 17 the other day. Ooops.

Rewind.

So today I visited LEA #1. I had no idea what I would find when I opened my map and teleported to LEA#1. I don't actually recommend this as a way to start your visit as the landing point for the sim appears to be underneath a museum. Perhaps the LEA folks might want to rethink the landing point or maybe I some how managed to show my dorkiness early on in this post. Either way -- TP off to one of the sides or better yet follow this SLurl to get to the Survey of Hyperformalism 2011.

More about LEA#1 after the break

What the heck is "Hyperformalism?" Do you know? I have actually done some reading on this topic and I still don't know. Hyperformalism is a concept developed by DC Spensley who happens to be one of the people who is on the Board of the LEA. The following passage is a quote from his blog which you can find at this link.

Hyperformalism is a neologism that names something, distinguishes some observable social and cultural phenomenon. The term suggests a use for the word to describe formalist abstraction created in a hyper medium such as abstract 3D digital space or pure mathematical space.

Postmodern wisdom would have it that culture has fractured irreparably into a multiplicity of niches and that the metanarrative is passé. While I believe the former, the latter is still not true. The metanarrative is immortal, vulnerable only to another more contemporary story. Even the most pernicious and despicable narratives suffer memetic bit rot in deep historical time.

Now do you understand Hyperformalism? Me either but lets explore LEA #1 to see if this Museum educates us.

Well this looks interesting. I recognize most of those names so let's have a look. First lets start in the lobby of this "user interface." Here is what we see.

All of the work in this "user interface" are comprised of large moving prims. The textures move on the prims and the prims themselves move as well. For the most part the works are not interactive but they are colorful and mesmerizing in a "I wish I still smoked a lot of pot" kind of way.

Next I followed the teleports to the hyperformalist works in the sky. These exhibits are huge. I mean really really enormously huge, which I *think* is a key concept of hyperformalism. I can't be sure. See the arrow and the circle? I am the tiny dot inside the circle. This will give you a sense of the scale of this work by Selavy Oh. Big.

Green spinny object by Suzanne Graves.

You can walk around inside this ginormous work by RazerZ and he has a glowy spinny object you can click on to learn more about him, his art and his exhibits in SL. He also gives visitors a bunch of freebies, which is always a nice touch.

I found it impossible to do this cool work by Oberon Onmura any justice in a still image. First, like the other works at the "user interface" this exhibit is enormous. It moves and winds around itself and then it falls apart in a slow dance of movement. It was far and away my favorite part of this visit and I am sorry my images don't even begin to capture the experience. You will have to visit!

Finally, this work by Sabine Stonebender was my last stop. I really liked the way the light played on this work in the various windlight settings. Again, my images are a poor substitute for a visit.

I still don't really understand what Hyperformalism means other than really big 3d art works that are outside the bounds of space available to us in the atomic world. Now this is a secret between us because what I am about to say is heresy and I am going to lose whatever street cred I might have in the SL art world by saying this but I don't care. I don't need theories to explain my enjoyment of art. Either I like it or I don't. I liked the art showcased at LEA #1. The end.

Why don't you have a look and let me know what you think.

Some thoughts about the Linden Endowment for the Arts

2012-01-22T09:45:00.001-05:00

I support art in all of its 3D glory in Second Life. Since my earliest days I have spent my time and money supporting musicians, performance artists and people engaged in visual arts. I don't know much about art in that I am not educated and I actually (shame on me) enjoyed the Damian Hirst exhibit I saw in Kiev. I don't pretend to be an art critic or someone who understands the theory and history behind great art. I am just a person who enjoys sharing what I love with others. Art makes me happy. Simple.

So I should be really happy about the 20 sims the LEA provides to artists, right? Well, honestly I have very mixed feelings about the LEA sims. On the one hand I think its great Linden Lab is providing the land and letting a group of people who are not Lab employees manage the content. On the other hand as someone who pays tier and hosts art exhibits I have to admit I feel like an idiot paying a lot of money for something LL is giving away for free. I probably should have my head examined as the saying goes.

And yes, this issue contributed to my need for a break from SL. The LEA kind of took the wind out of my sails, you know? My art partners and I talked about it a lot. We considered giving up our sim but decided to keep going with something we love. Still, every few days I still think to myself "why am I paying tier again?" Zachh Cale is a more patient and hard working person than I am and when the November deadline for proposals to the LEA rolled around he put in a proposal to curate one of the sims. And the LEA board, in their wisdom, gave Zachh a sim.

I think I am going to use the LEA sims as blog fodder and spend some time looking at what your tier is buying you because let's not kid ourselves. Nothing is free in this world and your tier and my tier and every one's tier is used to fund these 20 sims. So, stop number one on our trip? LEA 17 - curated by my dear friend Zachh. He invited Yooma Mayo to build the fantastically detailed over sized prim bugs for which he is known. I took the images in this post at the Grand Opening of Yooma's "Under the Sky" exhibit on Friday night.

I love this exhibit! Its beautiful and playful and well worth your time, as long as you are not scared of bugs several times the size of your own body. To go see Yooma's work search for LEA on your map then scroll down to LEA17 and teleport. You will land right in the middle of this lovely build. Or follow this SLurl to Yooma Mayo at LEA. Enjoy!

Bedside musings on the risk of creativity

2012-01-21T09:23:00.000-05:00

The fear of not being good enough rules my life.

There is good that comes from this fact. I work hard. I never miss deadlines. When I commit to a task I am 100% reliable and my employers have been known to take advantage of this tendency. If someone keeps meeting every goal you set, its pretty easy to keep setting the bar higher, and higher and then higher still. It is not in my character to say "I can't do that." I just keep trying like some terrified energizer bunny.

The fact is I have achieved a lot in my life. I have a successful career, a solid happy family and a lovely home. In SL for two years I was a paid writer for a blog with a huge readership. More recently, I have had the privilege of working with two of the most amazing art curators in Second Life and I have been able to learn from them while bringing great art to the community. This little blog of mine has been around for 4 years and still gets page views even when I have not written a word for months. I have much to be proud of and much for which I am very grateful -- not the least of which are the amazing people in my life who love me.

Having said all of that -- once the "I am not good enough" freight train starts running through my head there is very little to stop it from invading my thoughts and stealing my focus. I tend to minimize my achievements and instead focus on the ways in which I could have done more. I thought about sharing a taste of my inner dialog and even wrote out a long paragraph, which I just deleted -- why? Well its not good enough to share of course.

See what I just did there?

All of this is to say, I stopped blogging for a while because every time I started to write I thought about all the other people who's images are better than mine and who's thoughts are more insightful and who have better recommendations about fabulous places you should check out. I would write three paragraphs and then think "they should just read so and so and that other person and I suck at this and I am not going to blog today." Then today turned into this week and this month and pretty soon it was looking like my blog was dead, my SL was over and my muse had left the country.

This morning I woke up and started thinking about creativity even before I got out of bed. It seems to me an essential part of expression is committing to the risk of being creative. Some days your work is going to stink. There is no way around that fact. But, the key to being good at anything is keeping at it and trying to give your best effort every day.

Yes. I do think I am back. I missed you.

Me in Skyrim

2011-11-27T21:44:00.000-05:00

I have been playing a lot of Skyrim. I am not normally much of a gamer but I do love this game. The world is beautiful and the gameplay is pretty easy and fun. Hey! It might even be fast, easy and fun. What do you know.

You be the Judge - Art in Second Life

2011-11-20T10:08:00.001-05:00

I am one of the many who have been asked to "judge" the UWA 3D Open art Challenge and the MachinimaUWA IV: Art of the Artists Contest. Here is a link to the page where you can find all 83 machinima entries. Lately I have been watching hours and hours of machinima and looking at art work after art work. My conclusion is the talent of people working in virtual worlds is staggering. Please treat yourself and have a look. SLurl to UWA Grand Finale

Now to the subject of judging - I am not a judge of what is relevant, good or otherwise valuable. I look at the work, I decide "hey this is interesting" or "this made me laugh" or "who's stupid idea was glowing, full bright lime green?" Please don't be intimidated by "art" and "artists statements" and people who make you feel like you are in no position to know what is "good art." If you look at something and think that is just some glowy, spinny prim and I don't like it - then guess what? Its probably nothing more than a glowy spinny prim (possibly made by someone with a fancy pants name in the "art world.") So what?

Trust your instincts about art. If it moves you or interests you or even makes you think "huh?" then it is good because the work has made you feel something and react. Anyone who tries to bamboozle you with fah fah fah words about laaaa dee dahh probably has spent a lot of time in academic settings. Now please don't get me wrong, I am not trying to demean people who study art and art history and who educate the rest of us. I strongly value all of that. What I am saying is no one should be intimidated and not enjoy art in SL or anywhere else because they are fearful that they don't know enough or don't "get it."

Go. Enjoy. You be the judge.

HuMaNoiD - Fabulous Art Sim

2011-11-08T19:52:00.001-05:00

Today I followed a link someone shared with me to a sim called HuMaNoiD, owned by Wendy Xeno. The landing point places you in the center of a circle of doors. You are surrounded by shallow water, dotted with random islands that call out to be explored. But there are the doors demanding to be opened too! Definitely visit HuMaNoiD when you have some time because there is a lot to see and you will want to savor the experience.

Click on the doors and walk through the openings and you will find yourself transported to imaginative places where the music and the lighting set the stage. Perhaps I was in a bit of a melancholy mood but there is a lonely feel to parts of HuMaNoiD. Not a sad lonely but more of a long walk in the cold kind of quiet solitude.

I came across people quietly talking in several of the spots so rather than disturb, I left them to enjoy the music and the expansive skies. Clearly this is a popular sim but it is on a homestead so there will never be more than a few others enjoying the spaces.

Yes, HuMaNoiD has a preferred windlight setting and in order to show the sim to you as the creator intended I have not adjusted the lighting in these images.

Did you ever feel like you were in a cage? My life has me feeling that way lately so I spent a bit longer than I intended in this birdcage. Remember what I said about melancholy? Note to self: hanging out in an actual cage does not help!

Shiny glittery trees are much more conducive to a happy mood. Many thanks to Wendy Xeno for sharing her lovely sim with the rest of us. Teleport to HuMaNoiD at this link

Saturday morning wistful

2011-10-29T10:12:00.000-04:00

It has been a while since I have posted here and its been even longer since I posted anything personally meaningful. There are no reasons and I am not going to offer that annoying blogger apology "Oh I am soooo sorry for not posting you guys but my RL has been so busy but I promise to do better soon." Damn its not like people are refreshing the page over and over waiting on pins and needles to see what is up in the life of Chestnut Rau.

The truth is I am happy in my life and when I log in to SL it is usually to listen to Zach or Grace sing. I have a few art projects I work on and I spend some time with my partners in those ventures. I did help out a little on Burn2 as a member of the Art Committee but honestly? I am not a burner. There are too damn many rules that make no sense to me. I met some great people at Burn2 but I don't think I will ever fit into that organization. I am such an introvert that becoming part of large chaotic organizations really is not in the cards for me. I sort of wish I was the kind of person who could be down with a crowd but its just not me, is it.

Instead I log in, talk to a handful of people I adore. I look at my meeroos and contemplate releasing them all and wonder why I buy food for big eared rats that chirp. I open the destination guide and tp to an art sim and wander around, mostly trying to find new artists for Art Screamer and Orignalia.

I wonder why I spend money on tier for an art sim when the LEA has taken over the role of curating the best artists in SL. It really is foolish to spend $100 a month on this hobby isnt it? My partners and I have talked about putting together an application to LEA for some land and giving up our sim. Bryn Oh was encouraging when I reached out to her to talk about an application from Art Screamers. It seems like a lot of work to write the application and so far, none of us has done much. The deadline looms large.

I could write a book about the technical issues we have had on Art Screamers which has been quite dispiriting for us. For some reason the UI sounds keep looping on the sim. LL has tried to help but found no solution. We did everything they asked which amounted to removing mega prims and restarting the sim. No. That didn't help, not that we thought it would but we were good soldiers anyway. Its so fucking frustrating to pay $295 a month between us for a sim that is broken while LL gives the LEA 20 sims to play with for art. Remind me again why being an art supporter in SL is a good idea? Yeah. I got nothin either.

So, I change my SL outfit once a week and try to find the fun in fashion. Yeah, no. I try on a green skin for Halloween and have a fondness for my steampunk monocle which amuses me for a fleeting moment. I wonder if my time in SL is drawing to a close. Then I wait for an emotional response to that thought and really? There isn't one.

Most of my SL friendships have migrated to other platforms. The other day one of my very best friends from SL said to me "Edie I want you in my life, not in my game." That is what matters, isn't it?

New Art Exhibit "Travel to Originialia"

2011-10-18T20:57:00.002-04:00

"Travel to Originalia" is the newest art exhibit on Amase Levasseur's Originalia sim. Bloggers, photographers and machinimatographers are invited to a press preview event on Wednesday 10/19 at 6pm SLT. Please contact me in SL or via your favorite social media to be put on the access list.

The show includes three exciting exhibits by award winning artists. In keeping with the theme of the sim, the exhibits include fresh new work that has never been seen before in Second Life. 'Travel to Originalia' includes:

"Postcards Home" by Callipygian Christensen

Adapt or Perish" by Cherry Manga

"Gateway to Hell" by Fuschia Nightfire

As a special treat, visitors will also be treated to a reprise of the much loved exhibit "The Docks" by Scottius Polke.

'Travel to Originalia' opens to the public on Saturday 10/22 at 1pm SLT

Follow the SLurl and enjoy your "Travel to Originalia"

The Path by Bryn Oh and a Stellar Group of SL artists

2011-10-16T16:09:00.000-04:00

Some times you get lucky - like when many of your favorite artists collaborate and produce art that defines the word synergy. I am, of course, talking about The Path by Bryn Oh, Colin Fizgig, Marcus Inkpen, Desdemona Enfield / Douglas Story, Maya Paris, Claudia222 Jewell, Scottius Polke, and Rose Borchovski.

From the notecard:

The Path is an immersive project based around the exquisite corpse concept sometimes used by the Surrealists. Essentially, each chosen artist adds to a composition in sequence. Eight artists were invited to stand upon one of eight different coloured boxes I had set up. Once all had chosen a box to stand on, a chart was rezzed which listed the order of colours which would hten dictate the sequence of artists to compose the scenes for a narrative.
So if red was the first colour on the chart, then the artist standing on the red cube would begin the narrative. If blue were next then the artist on the blue cube would continue the story after red had passed their part on to them.

The artist who goes first composes a short start to a story. They then pass on this segment to the artist who is next on the list. That artist would then write up a continuation of the narrative and pass it on to the third artist. This would continue until reaching the eighth and final artist.

SLurl teleport to The Path

"Through the Lens of Dreams" - Exhibit Opening at Art Screamers

2011-10-06T11:18:00.001-04:00

"Through the Lens of Dreams" is the newest full sim build at Art Screamers.

We are thrilled to share this build by the very talented Madcow Cosmos and his partner in sound, the equally talented Lorin Tone. Through an ongoing collaborative working relationship Madcow and Lorin explore their wild imaginations and come up with some of Second Life's most amazing creations. This interactive build is fun, outrageous and guaranteed to make you smile.

There will be a sneak preview for bloggers, photographers and machinimatographers on Friday October 7th at 6pm SLT. If you would like to be on the access list please contact me via the comments email or whatever flavor of social media suits you. Alternatively you can IM me or Zachh Cale in Second Life.

A Grand Opening Celebration will take place on Sunday October 9th at Noon SLT.

SLURL to teleport to "Through the Lens of Dreams"

I know you will love this whimsical, fantastic walk "Through the Lens of Dreams" by Madcow Cosmos and Lorin Tone. Please do let me know if you want to be on the access list for the Sneak Preview or come to the Grand Opening on Sunday. If you can't make either of these two events the sim will be open to the public from Sunday on for approximately the next month. Don't miss this one!

Please post your photographs in the Art Screamer group on Flicker! http://www.flickr.com/groups/1755605@N24/

Tour "Grail Quest" at Burn2 and Meet the Fabulous Artist - Trill Zapatero

2011-10-05T08:01:00.002-04:00

Tour Trill Zapatero's fabulous build "Grail Quest" on Thursday October 6 at 3pm SLT. Meet Trill and talk to her about her work. Tour hosted by Chestnut Rau, a member of the Burn2 Art Committee. (That is me!)

Trill's description of Grail Quest:

Welcome to the Fool's journey to the end of the universe and back., through all the pitfalls and trials of identity and desire, to death and beyond, through the gauntlet of useless rusty grails offered up by relgion and ideology, through a modernist purgatory, and into the heart and soul of the crumbling grail castle reclaimed by nature and love. all steps along the way leading to the ultimate discovery of the true grail. "A fool if he persists in his folly will become wise." William Blake

SLurl to the build. Meet there for the tour

I see how it is

2011-10-04T08:08:00.000-04:00

SL can be hard on relationships, even those that have transcended the bounds of Second Life itself and spilled over into other social media and that wonderful place called Real Life. I always struggle with not being able to look my online friends in the eye and touch them and really "see" them. It is sometimes hard to connect even when its something you really want to do.

For me, trying to communicate with people can be like when subway trains are passing in the station. Those of you who have been in the NYC subway will know what I mean -- when trains pass each other there is a lot of loud noise and a loud rush of wind but in that moment no one is communicating because no one can hear a damn thing. That is what my life has been like a lot for the past three weeks.

I am looking forward to coming up out of the subway, seeing the bright sun and feeling the cool fall breeze blow my hair off my face. Maybe I will even be able to talk to my friends again.

Madcow Cosmos and Lorin Tone Installation Opening at Art Screamers 10/9!

2011-10-01T15:13:00.000-04:00

"SL is best when its the land of the the subconcious made real, beauty, smut, crayon drawings, and all" Madcow Cosmos to me, Zach & Lorin

Burn2 Art Previews

2011-09-26T21:52:00.000-04:00

Burn2 opens on October 1st. Here is a preview of some of the amazing art you will be able to see when you go. Please click on the images to get a larger and much better view.

Claudia222 Jewell

Oberon Onmura

Do you want a Press Pass for Burn 2? Read on

2011-09-23T20:50:00.000-04:00

The Playa will be open to press and bloggers on September 29 from 8:30 am slt to 8:00pm SLT

You may view all the fantastic builds, take photos, try out the cars and bikes and hot air balloons and other interactive pieces.

How do you get to the Playa?: Apply for a press pass at http://burn2.org/presspass

Scheduled Events

9:00 to 10:00 SLT Welcome Coffee: Center Camp

Meet BURN2 Core Team Leads, Builders, and Artists

10:00 - 11:00 SLT Art Tours

Jump on an Art Tour bus!

12:00 - 1:00 SLT Department of Mutant Vehicles tour

See DMV’s latest rides along with those of past years.

1:00-4:00 SLT Roam the Playa

Many builds to see.

4:00 - 5:00 SLT Art Tours

Jump on an Art Tour bus!

5:00 - 6:00 SLT Party Center Camp, Hosted by the BURN2 Art Department

Meet Artists and BURN2 Builders

6:30 - 7:00 SLT Lamplighters Procession

Drum with the LampLighters

Playa closes at 8:00pm slt

We'd like to encourage you to use the following labels and hashtags when you write about the event: Burn2, #burn2 . We will promote those tags to make it easier for people to find your content

We hope to see you all on the playa that day and during the festival from October 1-9.

Landing SLURL/LM

Center Camp SLURL/LM

Want more information? Check out these resources

- Website: http://burn2.org

- Media Relations: http://burn2.org/media_relations

- Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/groups/burn2/

- Twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/BURN_two

- Facebook Group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/burn2/

Contact people:

Emcee Widget

Ronon Carver

Honour McMillan

Budster Bashley

Ladyslipper Constantine

Diana Renoir

Dmom2k Darwin

More information will be passed through the Burn2 Press Pass group

Secret Spheres

2011-09-22T21:20:00.000-04:00

*Chestnut shakes her fist at her missing muse*

Today I visited called an interesting sim called "Secret Spheres" built by Azee Resident, designer of the great sim "Zed" which I blogged many moons ago. "Secret Spheres" consists of a labyrinth of small scenes built inside a series of spheres, all of which are named for the music of Pink Floyd. Inside each sphere Pink Floyd plays on the stream and quite appropriately there are places to sit and dance while you enjoy the colorful trippy world around you.

From the note card you will get at the landing point:

This is the land of small worlds.... one small unique and minimalist universe enclosed in each sphere... many are intimate and romantic, others simply unusual.... How many are they? You explore and find out!... All spheres on the lower level are connected together by tunnels... or rather a labyrinth ;-) Other spheres float high up in the sky, beyond the clouds, and a few others lie underwater... You can follow the tunnels and explore... or fly through their walls as most are phantom, but be careful not to fall. Some have 2 or 3 storeys...

More after the break....

I must admit that I got a little turned around while I was exploring. Luckily, the note card you get at the starting point provides landmarks to many of the Spheres. It did feel a little like cheating to use them, I must admit! But, I am all about immediate gratification and figuring out mazes is not my strong point!

I never did find any of the secret hidden spaces, so I need to go back when I have more time to explore Secret Spheres. I think it is a great place to go with a close friend for a quiet conversation or a special someone for a romantic dance. Maybe I will see you there?

Visit Secret Spheres at this link

Teaser Images from Burn2

2011-09-16T21:15:00.001-04:00

Robot Man Flying by typote beck

Cacophony of crazy, cool art on the playa

I was specifically asked to take pics of the playa, post to flickr and generate publicity for Burn2, which I did. Then I got a message telling me to take my picture of the Temple down, which I did. I am withholding my draft post about the Burn2 leadership'a methods until I calm down. It isn't nice.

Unbelievably beautiful Temple built by damanios thetan

Ten years later

2011-09-11T09:24:00.000-04:00

(image courtesy of neckharse's flickr stream. used under ccc)

Ok. I'm going to get political here. Fair warning.

Things have changed a lot since that sunny September morning 10 years ago. That was the day that everything changed, not just here in New York but in America. I am not talking just about the police that guard my city today because of "credible and specific" warnings of new threats to kill. No, I am really talking about how we feel vulnerable now and more importantly that ever present threat "the economy."

The men who flew planes into the World Trade Center wanted to send the United States a message. The message was this "you are vulnerable and we can hurt you badly without difficulty," Message received. We know it. But the question I pose to our leaders and to my neighbors is how do you react to that? What is the best way to stay strong and live your life without fear?

I will say this - more killing is not the answer. The wars we are waging do not make us safer. I believe they make us weaker. Spending money we do not have to kill more people does not make New York City, or any city in the world, safer. Killing begets hatred which begets more killing. Its like a case of the school yard bully on steroids and there is no peace and happiness and liberty for all at the end. There is more death and more threats and more fear.

Enough.

The world economy is falling apart and I am of the opinion that much of that traces directly back to the day ten years ago when the planes struck the towers. The bad guys are winning because we are responding with force instead of finesse. All the while, my friends and family are unemployed and hurting while our politicians fight about what day to stage a speech instead of figuring out how to make our country strong again.

Enough.

Please read my story about "where I was on 9/11." It is one of my most personal blog posts and one of my favorites.

Learning important lessons about life on the Playa.

2011-09-10T12:41:00.001-04:00

Oh hai!

Today I was chatting with a dear friend about something that happened to me and he said "are you going to blog that?" See what he did there? He pointed out something insightful and important that I had totally not seen as blog fodder. It pays to surround yourself with amazing creative people.

So. I am on the Burn2 Art Committee. The whole experience is something I would like to write about but I probably won't for some time. For now, I will say Burn2 is shaping up to be a lot of fun and I strongly suggest you head over there and look at the builds and participate in the event when it opens to the public on October 1st. Read more about Burn2 Rites of Passage here. I will try to write more about Burn2 over the coming weeks, but given my blogging performance of late I make no promises.

As part of the Art Committee I was asked to create a gift for people who come. The concept of gifting is one of the 10 core principles of Burning Man, which Burn2 follows. Please do read about 10 principles here, as it will give you a good understanding of how Burn2 is different from any other SL art and community event. There is a definite philosophy and while it is not one that comes naturally to me, I have been personally challenged to think about things by participating in Burn2.

Which brings me to the experience my friend quietly suggested is blogworthy. So I was at the Art Committee plot on the playa and I was rezzing various things I have made over the years to see if anything struck me as a good gift for visitors. One of the super amazing Rangers stopped by and we were chatting so I asked her "is this good enough to be a gift?" This is where the story gets interesting. She said to me "Chestnut I don't think you should hold your gift up to some false standard of what is good enough. The important thing is the act of giving." cartoon....car.......screech. I stare at her blankly and for the first time since I have been involved with Burn I think I get it. Those 10 principles? They teach us things if we open our eyes and our minds to the lessons.

I, like many of you, am very hard on myself. I never think the things I write or make or do are "good enough." I hold myself to a ridiculously high standard and I never seem to satisfy my inner critic. When I apply those same standards to others it is just as bad. No one, and I do mean no one, could possibly be "good enough" for my inner critic. I need to be much easier on myself and I need to be easier on those I love when they are not "good enough" for my evil inner critic.

And that, my friends, is lesson number one from the Burn2. We are all good enough. In fact, we are all fabulous creatures who should rejoice in our creative selves.

See you on the playa.

Guess Who is Building at Art Screamers?!?

2011-09-09T21:54:00.001-04:00

An exhibit by two of Second Life's most talented and fun artists opens in a few weeks. Can you guess who they are from the image above?

Where in the World is Chestnut Rau

2011-09-05T10:41:00.001-04:00

So, its been a while since I posted here. Its been even longer since I had anything meaningful to say about Second Life. I am starting to feel like it is possible that after many years "Second Life of My Dreams" has run its course. When I think "I should blog something" I drew a total blank. There are people writing about things to do, there are people writing about music and art. There are bloggers offering witty commentary about the "benefits" of premium membership and others who can even get the mesh viewer to run on their computers. Imagine that? Those folks can show you mesh clothing and builds that incorporate mesh.

It isn't all that interesting to say "I logged into SL, petted my Meerooos, stood around and didn't talk to anyone. Then I logged out and played mindless Facebook games for an hour and then I went to bed where I did not actually sleep. Instead I stressed out my life and the fact that my creative soul appears to be DOA."

No one wants to read that. I don't want to write that either.

So, yeah. This blog might be finished. I don't know. If a creative muse finds her way to my house I will write something. If not? I will be playing bubble spinner and sobbing softly.

Performance art this Sunday "The Fortress of Beat"

2011-08-27T09:43:00.001-04:00

Sunday Aug 28th, 10:30 AM SLT, DRUM will perform at The Fortress of Beat, you are invited!
Watch this video to get a preview of what you will experience when you come to the event.
Click here to Teleport to the event

More after the break

The Fortress of Beat was originally a small part of an IBM Exhibits build designed and built by Madcow Cosmos. Lorin Tone incorporated interactive musical and sound elements. This display is the same build with different musical elements built in this time.

When visiting the display, you will first land on a small platform which is surrounded by rather large tuning forks. The bases of these forks are playable...simply click for menu and select a loop to play in any one of them. You will find it amusing to create lots of noise by banging on things.

After playing with this, you'll notice a machine in the bass drum across the way. Here's how you get there: Walk off the edge of the platform and land on the vibes. If you're not thrown into oblivion, there's a good chance you'll land on the other side. Good luck.

In the bass drum, you'll find the "MusiCathedral", a recent build by Lorin Tone, which is fully interactive. It works just like the earlier toy you played....click on the prims for various instruments and take your pick.

This instrument is an "Ambient Metal" kind of style which we hope you'll enjoy...and make noise!

A moment frozen in time

2011-08-25T19:30:00.000-04:00

I am back home just in time to experience Hurricane Irene again as she heads up the east coast of the US. By all accounts the storm is picking up intensity as it moves north. I was running around catching up on life maintenance errands today and as I was unloading my car this monarch landed on a plant right next to me. He held perfectly still long enough for me to get a few pictures with my phone.

Isn't nature amazing?

Hurricane Irene

2011-08-22T09:42:00.000-04:00

We knew we were booking a trip in the islands on the edge of hurricane season or "the rainy season" as people call it here in Puerto Rico. We figured the worst thing that could happen is we would experience a hurricane in the tropics and frankly we have lived through hurricanes before and the thought did not worry us.

Welcome hurricane Irene. The storm was really not that bad at all. The singing of the coqui was magical last night and the waves were beautiful. I got a little nervous when the glass door was shaking but it didn't last too long. There was a lot of water on the floor this morning but the hotel is taking good care of us and it seems the worst is past us. The worst part is there will be no swimming in the ocean for a few days. The rip tides could be dangerous but we are looking forward to seeing what the storm washed up on the beach.

Yesterday morning before the storm we visited the amazing Rio Camuy Caves. Here are two phone pictures just for fun.

The one where Chestnut admits to being addicted to RL

2011-08-18T15:24:00.000-04:00

The other day I got on a plane and flew south to where there are palm trees, crystal blue waters and most importantly a swim up bar.

This is my crew.

This is the view from our balcony.

Yes.

Who and What are "Art Screamers" Anyway?

2011-08-15T15:05:00.000-04:00

I recently posted about about the opening of Glyph Graves' exhibit at Art Screamer, which was a big success. People really love the work he has done to use Kinect to integrate RL with SL to create a blended reality. We are happy to have provided the prims for Glyph to show his work.

But who and what are "Art Screamers" anyway? It is about time I said something about us, don't you think?

Art Screamers is Zach Cale, Amase Levassuer and me. You may know Zach as a piano player and singer and I sure hope you have been to one of his shows. Zach also runs Project Z through which he provides ongoing support for various SL art installations. Amase owns and operates the art sim called Originialia, which houses all original art by top SL artists. I am blessed to be part of Art Screamers because it gives me the chance to work with these two fabulous people.

More after the break.

Together we operate a sim we call Art Screamer and our plan is to host full sim art exhibits that will rotate over time. Our goal is to make 3D art available and accessible to people who may have never spent time enjoying art in SL before. We want to share our joy and "scream" about how exciting and interesting virtual art can be if you open yourself up to the experience. We want to share our love of art with people who are not experts but who know what they like, because that describes the three of us as well.

We are in the process of creating a website and a blog for Art Screamers. When we get it up and running I will surely post here and share the link. Stay tuned!

In the mean time, please visit Art Screamer and enjoy Glyph Graves' exhibit while it lasts.

Burn2 2011 is Coming!

2011-08-09T20:49:00.000-04:00

Random Observations on a Hot Monday in August

2011-08-08T15:38:00.002-04:00

I am not going to lie. I have been having a rough time on several fronts. Without going into too much personal detail I will just say that I am feeling edgy, oversensitive and more than a little unlovable. Now, I am no Skylar Smythe or Gracie Kendal so that is all you are going to get out of me with respect to my personal struggles. Still, I have been thinking a lot and I want to throw a few things down to get them to stop eating me alive.

First, I firmly believe we create many of our own problems. I see myself creating the very situations that upset me. Why do we do this? I wish I knew but it seems clear that if by engaging in negative thinking we create problems, it would be simple enough to change our thought patterns and then things would be better. It sounds totally stupid and probably it is but I wonder what would happen if I replaced "I want...(fill in the blank) with "I have...(the same thing with a positive spin.) I should give it a try and let you know how it goes.

Just because a lot of people think something or someone is fabulous doesn't mean they are fabulous. For years and years I used to think I had it all wrong when my opinions were so out of step with the mainstream. Now, I kind of like being the weird one in the bunch.

I had my first negative experience because of my tattoo the other day. One of my daughter's friend's parents asked her why I would "deface" my body that way. I would be happy to discuss my reasons but leave my kid out of it, tyvm. I was really fired up about it but I suppose I got the tattoo in part to demonstrate I am not like the other soccer moms so mission accomplished. They can all talk about it at Starbucks over lattes if it makes them feel good.

I have discovered my well of support has a bottom. It was a bit shocking actually. I usually am only too happy to put my own needs/desires on the back burner in order to make sure people I love are happy. Lately I am feeling a whole lot of "fuck that" and "if you love me its about damn time you stopped saying it and show me." I am like the personification of Missouri the Show Me State. (For short intervals when I am not building a sim for you or writing for you or tying your shoes or organizing your closet or kissing your ass, that is of course). Hey laugh if you like, its progress.

Do you ever wish you could see yourself through other people's eyes? I really wish I could. I think it might help.

~~~~

"Sometimes people let the same problem make them miserable for years when they could just say, 'So what.'
'My mother didn't love me.' So what.
'My husband won't ball me.' So what.
'I'm a success but I'm still alone.' So what.
I don't know how I made it through all the years before I learned how to do that trick. It took a long time for me to learn it, but once you do, you never forget."
— Andy Warhol

Glyph Graves Uses Kinect to Create Real Time Art in Second Life

2011-08-04T15:31:00.002-04:00

Compositions in Reality

by Glyph Graves

Opens Sunday August 7 at 10 AM

Live Mixed Reality Performance Art at 10:30 AM
Surl to Art Screamer

In his latest exhibit, Compositions in Reality, Glyph Graves continues his exploration of mixed reality art. In previous work he's pioneered the use of real-world data systems to power virtual creations of ethereal beauty that seem to act with a mind of their own. These art objects are scripted to receive real-world data feeds, such as from weather and lake buoys, and behave in response to the changing natural world conditions with virtual world movement, sound, and texture changes.

As part of Compositions in Reality Glyph creates the data stream in real-time using Kinect by XBox. Kinect is a gaming device that uses motion sensors instead of hand-held controllers. Glyph programmed the software to capture movement and depth of field, and translates these readings into a real-time data feed that he streams in-world. During his performance Glyph will use his physical body to interactively control 3D virtual objects. Glyph intends to re-create his own face using the Kinect to control prims on the Art Screamer sim in Second Life. This is a real-time art performance piece, so you must be present at 10:30am SLT Sunday August 7th to see it in action.

Even if you cannot attend Glyph's performance, I strongly encourage you to visit Art Screamer. All of the beautiful objects were created and scripted by Glyph Graves using real world data to drive movement and sounds to create innovative virtual art that interacts with you as you explore. The island is full of elegant art and scripting, including the forest of rivers - trees with color and sound, the Magnetosphere, Lake Mendota, Polyp Ball Nova, Convoluteda, and more. Compositions in Reality is virtual art at its very best.

While many of us have been pre-occupied with virtual identity lately, this work seems to obliterate the boundary between real and virtual. One can see the future in the "face of reality" - virtual is just another color in the artist's palette, another tool in the shed. How long before the larger art world concedes the expanding palette, forged by this quickly-fading boundary?

Visit Art Screamers for our opening this Sunday beginning at 10am. Don't miss Glyph's demonstration of his Kinect driven performance art at 10:30am.

Chicago images

2011-08-02T13:24:00.000-04:00

Ok, so I have been talking about this for months

2011-07-31T20:07:00.000-04:00

My tattoo. It was done by the most awesome Dawn Grace who designed and tattooed this on my right leg. The whole process took a bit over 2 hours -- about 45 minutes for design and the rest was her tattooing me. I'm not gonna lie -- it hurt in places. But for the majority of the time it was fine and I was relaxed. I won't say I could have been asleep but I was very very chill for the most part. Endorphins -- nature's drug!

And yeah, I am planning my second tattoo already.

I LOVE Chicago

2011-07-30T23:05:00.000-04:00

I am in Chicago for the weekend and having a fantastic time. I am a New Yorker at heart but I could be convinced to live here. What a great city! I have taken about a zillion photos but for now here are two images from my phone.

Yeah. Tomorrow is tattoo day. I am nervous. I am sure there will be pictures of the process and the outcome.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge"

2011-07-26T15:36:00.001-04:00

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." Albert Einstein

(please click to a larger image)

The best love song of all time

2011-07-24T11:57:00.002-04:00

This morning when I woke up I had This Must be the Place by the Talking Heads playing on a loop in my brain. I honestly think David Byrne is a genius and this is one of the best love songs I have ever heard. Then I went to Youtube and listened to the many ways people have covered the song. Why am I blogging these videos? Mostly so I can find them later but I hope you like them as much as I did. I am pretty sure I have posted at least one of these before but you can't really expect brilliant new content all the time, can you?

First, the master himself who uses strings on this version rather than the traditional floor lamp.

More versions of the song after the break.

Next Arcade Fire, who used an interesting steel drum twist.

Ok the elementary schools kids from PS 22 usually make me smile but I am not sure this song works for them. Sorry kids. It is probably best for you to stick to Coldplay. I will say the girl who does the solo kills even though the words seem incongruous coming from a child.

My favorite cover of This Must be The Place is by Kyp Malone. His vocal is inspired and his beard is a thing of beauty. I love listening to music in small intimate clubs and I wish I was sitting at a table in the front when this was recorded.

"Its gonna be what it is gonna be." Truer words were never spoken Kyp.

New House on Harbour

2011-07-20T08:32:00.001-04:00

The other day Zha logged off to RL for a while and by the time she came back less than an hour later I had taken our greenhouse down, terraformed, put down a new greenhouse, decorated it and moved around some landscaping to accomodate the new house. Ooppps. Oh hai. I guess I changed things a little. Maybe I should have told you?

More about how much fun it is to share land with me after the break.

I don't usually plan these things. I was without something concrete to do and the next thing I knew prims were flying and houses were flipping around and...well....that is how it goes. Life with me can be a challenge. When a moment of "I need to do such and such" hits its usually best to step out of the way. Anyway. I like the new house. Its open and pretty and it makes me happy. For now, anyway.

As always, there is an open invitation for anyone to come visit our place. I have limited the pictures in this post to the house but we are on half a homestead sim and it is currently a very green park with a lake in the middle. We allow people to rez so it a good place for photographers and we do get our share of fashionistas shooting on Harbour. There are cuddles and places to hang out and a intan and we respect your privacy so there are sometimes sweet couples doing god knows what in IM. Auto return is on so sorry about that griffers. Your screaming objects will only last for so long. Our ban list is short but our policy is clear "don't be a dick."

As a matter of fact, you are not the center of the universe

2011-07-15T09:45:00.001-04:00

Years ago I read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz and it might not be an exaggeration to say the book changed my life. I have the Four Agreements on the wall of my office and refer to them often. I just learned that last year Ruiz wrote a new book called The Fifth Agreement, which I have to get my hands on and read.

I won't lie - I have a long way to go before I can claim to be true to the Agreements. In fact, I sometimes forget about them and when I find myself upset about this or that I refer back to them and it helps me to stay focused. I especially need to remind myself not to take anything personally. Because really, who doesn't need to be reminded that the world does not revolve around them?

I just had a clear childhood memory I want to share. In my mom's kitchen she had this huge bulletin board covered with kid art and shopping lists and bit of paper that she needed to keep track of for one reason or another. In the top right corner of the bulletin board was a cartoon from the New Yorker Magazine that showed a little girl looking up at her mom who was saying "As a matter of fact you are not the center of the universe." My dear sweet mom cut that out of the magazine when I was about 5 and it stayed on the kitchen bulletin board for most of my life.

I beg to differ though, I am the center of *my* universe. I am just not the center of anyone else's universe. Anyway, here is a reminder to myself - The Five Agreements.

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word – Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
2. Don’t Take Anything Personally – Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
3. Don’t Make Assumptions – Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
4. Always Do Your Best – Your best is going to change from moment to moment. It will be different when you are healthy as opposed to when you are sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
5. Be Skeptical, But Learn to Listen – Don’t believe yourself or anybody else. Use the power of doubt to question everything you hear: Is it really the truth? Listen to the intent behind the words, and you will understand the real message.

Ok now. Just Stop.

2011-07-13T08:27:00.002-04:00

I read an interesting article this morning that got me thinking. You can read it yourself here. The article talked about three ways people create stress in their own minds.

Negative self-talk about ourselves
Negative self talk about others and/or situations
Negative future fantasizing (aka worry or fear about the future)

I read that list and it was a light bulb moment for me. As I have written about as recently as yesterday, I am the master of negative self-talk. All you haters can say whatever the fuck you like about me and I promise you, I have said worse things about myself to myself. I am only too happy to believe all the negative truths about myself and while I am in that downward slide I will create a few untruths in my mind to bring to the party. Its ridiculous really.

I would go so far as to say most of us fit in one of the three categories in the list. If I think about my friends and loved ones it is pretty easy to figure out which category they fit into fairly consistently. We all have our own way of adding to our daily stress burdens, don't we? That isn't to say while we might be pro at one category we don't dip our toes in another. For example, first I often work myself up into a state about all my mistakes and failings and then I begin to worry about how those flaws will impact my relationships in the future. See what I did there? I started with now and extrapolated to the future ways I will fail. Its a special talent of mine.

So how do we break out of the bad habit of negative self talk? I am no expert by any means, that is for damn sure but I can tell you about an interesting experience I had last night. It was late and I was not physically feeling very well and honestly someone I love was disappointing me. I was beating myself up with all the reasons why his bad behavior was my fault when I just said to myself, OK enough. Really? Stop. And I did. It seems really stupid now in the light of day but in the middle of the night alone in my bedroom it felt like a revelation. Just stop.

What does any of this have to do with Second Life, social media and virtual worlds? Nothing specifically really, although I would say in our virtual lives we often only have partial information about what is going on in any interaction. I remember Botgirl wrote a wonderful series of posts a while back about a couple. One person stopped showing up online and the other created a whole lot of drama about the relationship in her own mind trying to understand why her partner was missing. In the end the missing person was offline due to a power outage that lasted a few days. Certainly, having partial information as we do online gives us ample opportunity to spin drama in our heads about ourselves, other people and the future of our relationships.

And when I do that, I am going to try to remember to tell myself "just stop." The truth of the situation is often far more mundane and less upsetting than the creative stories I spin in my mind.

Deep in the crazy end of the pool

2011-07-12T11:29:00.000-04:00

Lately my life has been so full of good things on many fronts. I feel alive and accomplished and strong. And then? Someone says something or doesn't say what I had hoped they would say or I hear someone else say something and I forget. I forget all the wonderful things about myself and the fear and self loathing grab on to my stream of consciousness and my inner dialog degenerates. For the past 24 hours I have been in a pretty bad place as the one person I confided in can attest. It has been the anti-fun.

Hopefully I will be kinder to myself today and the world will be a brighter place for me. Hopefully.

Playing with old images

2011-07-10T23:10:00.002-04:00

The more things change the more they stay the same

2011-07-08T16:42:00.000-04:00

Do you ever go back to where you used to live in SL? Sometimes I do. My first land was in a sim called Jokung. This picture is from 2007 and it was taken when I first bought the land and got my first house and omg how much did I love that place. It was a really quiet sim with very few people around, which for mainland was a treat.

Fast forward to today. You can see the parcel has changed, but the bones and the basic feel of the land remains the same. The quality of the picture is really interesting to me as well. What a difference windlight and sculpted prims make!

So, what is the lesson here? Everything changes. Sometimes things change for the better and sometimes they change for the worse. What is really important is to be flexible and roll with the changes as they happen around you. Be resilient and flexible and you will come through whatever the world throws at you happier than if you resist and hold your ground.

what a fantastic day

2011-07-06T22:40:00.000-04:00

I think I slept about 3 hours last night. Insomia is for the damn birds. Not angry birds, because you know I love that game. No, insomnia is for the birds that wake you up on a Sunday morning at 6am because they are so effing happy that its another day in paradise but you are just trying to make up for the late nights spent with friends, nursing a gin and tonic. Insomnia is for those birds. The ones you want to throw a shoe at right out the open window.

But despite being tired and cranky I had a great time on Inside the Avatar's Studio. Yes Skype was messing with my audio and that was annoying. Paying attention to the conversation while trying to fix technical problems at the same time...not fun. But all in all I had a great time.

I started the day like this

And after a great day and a super fun time in SL this evening I ended my day like this.

Someone in the audience today asked if I would ever consider doing a video blog and I said no. But maybe, just maybe I might. Let me think about it.

Now I must retreat into my introvert's cave and nurse my bordeaux. Good night.

I love you all. I do.

Come see me on Inside the Avatar's Studio

2011-07-05T19:44:00.001-04:00

Tomorrow I am going to be a guest on Inside the Avatar's Studio at 4:30pm SLT. Remember that new project I was so excited about a while back? That project is Art Screamers and I will be talking about it for the first time on Inside the Avatar's Studio. I would love it if you could be there!

In case you are not familiar with the show here is some information from their website.

Inside The Avatar’s Studio brings together innovative leaders from the virtual technology frontier to discuss perceptions, perspectives, and predictions of what ‘being virtual’ means in today’s society. Guest speakers discuss current issues and trends surrounding the implications virtual experiences based on their own areas of subject matter expertise.

Host: Kevin Feenan (SL: Phelan Corrimal), President of Rockcliffe University Consortium

Rockcliffe Rotunda (Second Life), Rockcliffe University Consortium

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rockcliffe%20Library/243/12/29
Filmed Live by Metaverse Television: www.metaversetv.com/live

Here is what the folks at Rockcliffe University are saying about the show tomorrow.

Virtual environments allow us to push the envelope of understanding who we are at multiple levels. Such self-examination can be an exercise of fear in action where we want to reach out with one hand while pushing away with another. Establishing a balance between the two is a mix of social artistry and grace.

This week Kevin and Chestnut Rau (http://slofdreams.blogspot.com/) discuss various social perspectives on social artistry and how the development of relationships push the boundaries of understanding ourselves and the world around us.

Chestnut rezzed into Second Life on June 16, 2007 and had little experience in virtual worlds or gaming at the time. Like many newcomers she was utterly amazed by what she saw and quickly developed interests in innovative virtual art, the vibrant live music scene, and photographing the wonders of the virtual world.

In 2009 and 2010, Chestnut was the events writer for the popular blog New World Notes. In that capacity she sought out and wrote about the most interesting and innovative events that were happening in Second Life every week. More recently, Chestnut has concentrated her creative efforts on her personal blog where she makes observations about living a virtual life, highlights fun places to visit and shares RL and SL photographs.

Chestnut recently joined musician and art patron Zachh Cale and Amase Levasseur, the curator of the amazing art sim Originalia, to work on a new project called Art Screamers. They will be inviting some of Second Life’s top artist to create innovative installations using the resources of a full sim. They are in the planning stages of the project and look forward to opening Art Screamers to the public at the end of July.

This is not a review blog but the Magic Couch is worth shouting about

2011-07-03T18:48:00.001-04:00

I very, very rarely review things for sale in Second Life on this blog. I am not interested in shopping as a hobby so what is "new" and "must have" often escapes me completely. In fact, when content creators do send me things to blog I find it sort of irritating. I end up feeling obligated and I really do not care to provide free marketing services just because someone gives me a copy of their work. If I do blog a review copy I feel like I am not being true to my own reasons for writing and if I don't I feel like I have let a creator down. All in all, I stay far away from the whole game of review blogging.

However, once in a while I come across something so amazing that I really do want to give the designer kudos and point you in the direction of their store. Today is such a day. The name of the store is Blue Pearl Homes and Furniture and the creator I am writing about is Marian Lean. Mind you Marian did not ask me to blog this item and does not even know I am doing so. I am writing this because I am so very impressed.

The other day I was reading some feed or other and came across a link to a skybox that sounded interesting and since I am always on the hunt for the perfect place to change my clothes up in the sky, I followed the link. I picked up the freebie not really knowing what I was getting, went home and rezed the contents.

Oddly, what I got was a couch with some instructions to rez a box and load it next to the couch, which I did. The notecard said to sit on the couch, pick how high I wanted to rez the sky box and go. Which I did. Read more about the amazing Magic Couch after the break.

Woah. This is what I saw when the couch stopped moving up to the sky.

When I stood up the magic couch disappeared. This sweet sky sphere comes with controls that allow the user to change the sky and the color of the light beams streaming through the beautiful trees. You can turn the fire on and off and of course change the atmosphere from daylight to midnight.

The little cottage has a "lost in the woods" feel to it, which I found to be a cross between "how the hell did I get so lost" and "I hope no one ever finds me here." The rocking chairs are the best seat in the house, but there are various poses around the fire as well. Certainly, you could rez your own dances or poses for whatever you might want to do at 1500 meters in the sky with no one else around. Me? I changed my clothes and wrote this post. You might have other ideas.

When you are finished with your escape to the woods you click on the controls and your magic couch will appear. Sit on it, choose ground and you will be returned to your regular Second Life. Your private retreat in the sky will be derezed until the next time you sit on your magic couch and go for a ride. If you are short on prims I think this feature is really nice. You can have a sky box when you want it and tuck it away under the couch for when you need it next. Sweet, right?

When you go to Blue Pearl Homes and Furniture you can pick this little gem up for free, which is an incredible gift. Of course, you can buy other spheres to load into your magic couch as well. The options are many and I encourage you to hop on over and have a look. This is one of the best sky boxes I have seen in ages.

Building Trust in Online Relationships

2011-07-01T00:55:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I am on transmit and not on receive. In other words, there are times when I am not a very good listener. Oh, I hear the words people are saying but I can get really busy trying to figure out what they *really* mean.

Let's face it, none of us *really* know who we are talking to online. The bit of distance between person and online persona can be fertile ground for bad behavior. We have all seen it a thousand times. People troll and behave badly because they lose track of the human on the other side of the computer screen. We react to the words and our own interpretation of the words, which may have little relationship to the other person's intent. We find ourselves angry or upset and then we begin to doubt ourselves and our friendships. Things can get pretty ugly here on the Internet.

I know I personally have planted gardens of mistrust in the gap between friends and their words on my screen. Even when a person has never given me any reason to believe they will act badly I have found myself withholding trust in them because of my own past negative experiences online.

The absence of physical closeness is a fact of online relationships that adds a layer of complexity I am still trying to figure out. Daily I wish I could look my online friends in the eyes and give them a real hug instead of *hugs* and *kisses.* Somehow, I think it is easier for me to trust someone when they are sitting next to me over a cup of coffee than it is when we are hundreds or thousands of miles apart, typing away at each other over the Internet.

Having said all of that, there are moments in any friendship when I am able to quiet the voices in my head and really listen to what someone is saying to me, as opposed to what I think they are saying to me. I do find I have to work a little bit harder to build relationships online because the challenges are real. Still, the rewards of getting to know people I never in a million years would have met otherwise are so, so worth the extra bit of effort.

Angry Gods - Art experience by FreeWee Ling

2011-06-30T07:51:00.000-04:00

You have 24 hours left to experience Angry Gods by the talented FreeWee Ling. This vast interactive build is full of religious imagery. You will try to find your way through the depths of hell on your way to heaven -- but you must be careful because the gods are Angry and they will be letting you know that in no uncertain terms! I actually found my heart racing as fire rained down on me and the ground under my feet gave way.

From the notecard:

CAUTION!!! Things fall from the sky and other things may not be as stable as they appear.
It’s the end of the world.
This is not a maze.
There are no choices here.
Your fate is sealed.
You cannot turn back.
Follow the path.
Do not deviate.
If you get stuck or lost, deal with it.
It will do you no good to complain.
Keep your head up.
Look ahead and above, often.
Watch the sky.
Be prepared to run or take cover.

For more information about Angry Gods, please read here.

SLurl to teleport to Angry Gods. Closes at midnight June 30 so please do not delay!

Images from UWA June People's Choice Challenge

2011-06-28T21:52:00.000-04:00

Visit University of Western Australia to see these and many other fabulous art works.

This is where I spend my weekends

2011-06-26T10:23:00.000-04:00

A while ago I posted pictures of the day we opened the pool. Since things were dank and green I wanted to post follow up pictures so you can all ~~be jealous~~ see how nicely things cleaned up. The landscaping is wild and all the plants fall over each other trying to get the sun, just the way we like it. There is a lot of privacy and there is little I find more relaxing than floating in the water, letting my thoughts wander.

Looking at these pictures the pool looks sort of small but it is about 20 x 42, plenty big enough for floating.

Happy weekend.

This blog post brought to you by dehydration, no sleep and the letter R

2011-06-24T08:07:00.000-04:00

I ran around in the evening with my daughter because tonight we are having an end of the school year party for her friends. It was intended to be a pool party but its rainy today so I will have a house full of 14 and 15 year olds tonight. You will be able to find me cowering in the corner of my bedroom while they run rampant, screaming through my house. I am sure there will be surreptitious games of truth or dare and spin the bottle and couples will slip off to quiet corners to make out. My role, I am told, is to be quiet, not talk to anyone (especially Dylan who is NOT her boyfriend) and don't do anything embarrassing. I can handle it.

Anyway, by the time I got to SL I was looking for a little music and as luck would have it Zachh was playing so I caught the last half hour of his show. Then I ended up on gtalk with a friend about a television show I am going to be on -- details about that in a post tomorrow I am guessing. After a bunch of talking about all kinds of projects I ended up at Zachh's second show of the night. Sometimes I am all supportive like that and I am glad I went. Tamara Hamden was there and she and Zachh did a little double streaming, which was fabulous. I started to talk to Tamara and some other local NYC people about organizing a little SL music meet up, possibly in September. How much fun would that be? I hope we can make it happen and I will surely blog about it if I do.

After all that calmed down we ended up going to a few great art builds and dancing in this amazing place that is like the inside of a kaleidoscope. I want to do a full post about it because it was wonderful. This is where I kick myself for still not having figured out the basics of machinima. A still picture just doesn't capture the crazy cool way the video and sound worked together. Let that be a challenge to myself! Fraps here I come? maybe.

I better get to work.
<3

Tying up loose ends

2011-06-23T21:33:00.000-04:00

I told the psychology student I really didn't want to be studied. The whole thing kind of freaked me out. Of course, this being the internet I am sure he could be doing whatever it was he was going to do anyway and I will never know. Whatever.

~~~

When I decided I was going to post I had all these ideas I was going to explore, but now that I am here my mind is blank. I think it might have to do with the fact that I have not slept well in...oh...I want to say 15 years but it probably just a week or three.

~~~

Right now I am at Molaskey's Pub and Max Kleene is dual streaming with TerryLynne Melody. They are singing Closer to Fine by the Indigo Girls, which is one of my favorite songs. This is one of those songs that feels like an anthem for my life sometimes. I know I listen to it over and over and have for longer than I care to admit. Lyrics below, just for fun.

Words and Music: Emily Saliers

I'm trying to tell you something bout my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
And the best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
It's only life after all

Now darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it
I'm crawling on your shores

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains,
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin, and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry, or see a b-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind
I got my paper and I was free

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains,
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountains
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
And the less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
I stopped by the bar at 3 am
To seek solace in a bottle, or possibly a friend
And I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountain, I looked to the children, I drank
from the fountain
We go to the doctor, we go to the mountains, we look to the children, we drink
from the fountains
We go to the bible, we go through the workout, we read up on revival, we stand
up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

Today was a really weird day

2011-06-21T23:06:00.001-04:00

Today was a freaky day.

I was contacted by a psychology student who wants to do a case study using my blog as research fodder. He wants to analyze what I have written to understand....ummmm...stuff about cyberspace and how people react to things. Or something. I am not really sure what the hell to make of the request. The idea of someone analyzing this blog makes me shake my head and mutter "but why?"

I have been living deep in the 9th grade girl part of my brain for the past two days. The Magic 8 ball lies but you can't convince your inner 15 year old of that when the panic sets in and your heart beats fast, but not in a good way. I fucking hate when I devolve into a high school version of myself. Take that and analyze it Mr. Psychology guy.

RL was busy and I had a raging headache all day. My friend Kris and her partner Rose bought me ice cream so the day wasn't a total bust.

My face is turning lovely shades of yellow and green now.

Yellow was never my color.

Randomized bits of stuff from the slightly foggy Sunday morning brain of Chestnut

2011-06-19T10:51:00.001-04:00

I have this idea about sampling from chat logs to create poems. I want to grab snippets of conversation that illustrate the heart and soul of relationships and string them together to tell a story. To that end, I have been reading back over conversations I have had with one person in particular over the past few months to find the perfect turn of phrase, the clever snarky response, the unintended acts of love. The problem I keep having is I read back over what has transpired and I end up thinking and day dreaming and considering the future. While its wonderful to read and to feel the love shine through the text, the poems are not getting written.

Process not product, right?

~~~

So yesterday I was once again reminded there are crazy people on the internet. They sometimes appear quite respectable and fun loving but when you push the wrong button they can turn into stark raving lunatics, with a twist of lime. While the reminders can be startling and raw, it is always good to remember we really don't know who is on the other end of the keyboard. Preserving our personal privacy and sense of perspective about social media is vital.

"Hey, lets be careful out there."

~~~

Today is Father's Day in the US and in the UK. My father died close to ten years ago and my Father in Law lives overseas, so today is all about my wonderful husband. He wants to go to the city and visit this little park he loves and then torture our children with an art museum. He says torturing the children with culture is part of the fun of being a parent so that is what we will do. Then we will come home, go for a swim and probably enjoy a good bottle of wine.

Life in my house is good.

Its my party and I'll cry if I want to

2011-06-17T08:09:00.002-04:00

About two weeks ago Zha said "hey you have a rez day coming up" and I grumbled at her because three years knowing someone teaches you a thing or two about their ability to plan something in advance and actually, you know, make it happen. I love Zha dearly and I thought she was not all that good about planning and follow through.

Well, I guess she showed me, didn't she?

Zha was in cahoots with two of my favorite people in Second Life musician Zachh Cale and DJ Marx Dudek. They threw me an amazing rez day party yesterday that had me laughing and crying with joy.

Zha created a build for the party and invited somewhere in the neighborhood of 765 people of whom everyone showed up, even if it was just for a little while. Friends who no longer really log in to SL showed up. People who I love dearly but never manage to see came. I still have to open all the boxes that the marketplace was dropping on me with ridiculous speed. Friends gave me their art and Crap even wrote story for me which he read and I have shared at the bottom of this post. Zachh played an inspired hour of music that included many of my favorite songs after which Marx played us a fantastic set of music from her extensive library.

I have rarely felt more loved in Second Life. Thank you all for last night but more importantly, thank you for being part of my life every single day. I love you all from the bottom of my heart.

~~~

When you're done working a glass bead in the torch, you can't just drop it in a cooling blanket.

You need to cool it slowly so it doesn't cool too quickly.

If the bead cools too quickly, it'll break as it cools or weaken it so it will eventually break from stress fractures.

You need to cool it gradually to relieve those stresses.

That is why we must anneal it in the kiln.

It's kinda like life, really. Taking time to cool down properly.

Now put down that knife and get off the ledge slowly, please. You're making a scene.
.

~~~Crap Mariner

Hello World. My name is Chestnut Rau and today is my 4th Rez Day

2011-06-16T06:13:00.008-04:00

Today, on the occasion of my fourth rez day, words about Chestnut Rau woke me at 4am after a restless night's sleep and demanded that I put pixel pen to pretend paper. I went back to the Lost Garden of Apollo to take a picture for this post because I had spent hours nursing a broken heart there back in 2007 when I had no home in Second Life. I remember sitting and crying and cursing a certain military man when I was approached by an enormous red dragon who said something like "hey pretty lady let me take you for a ride." As we were flying he told me SL is about magic and anyone who steals your joy is not worth your tears. I never did get that dragon on my friends list but all these years later I still remember his advice.

So, who is Chestnut Rau anyway? Like many, I have thought a lot about avatar identity and what it means for me and my ideas have morphed a lot over time. Today at this early hour of the morning I believe Chestnut Rau is the creative avatar soul of a woman. She is a temptress and a lover, a mother. She is successful in her career at a big University in New York City, so in reality (whatever that is) she is not always quite as tender as she allows herself to be in her virtual life.

Chestnut wants to call herself an artist but is waiting for someone else to use that word to describe her first. She is a friend and an advisor and a confidant and coach. She a shameless fan but often she is a very bad friend. Chestnut gets caught up in her own introverted nature and finds it really hard to write that first IM. How do people do that anyway? "Hi? Wanna hang out?" It was hard back in school and the years have not done any kindness to the awkwardness of that moment.

Chestnut has close friends that her close friends don't know about. She has a rich imaginative life that would surprise her neighbors. She has a sexy voice that one SL entrepreneur wanted to use to "create gestures that would make a million linden." Chestnut Rau is a pretend celebrity in a fantasy world and she actively rejects the notion of SLcelebrity. Chestnut loves a good bit of irony with her iced coffee at dawn.

She is riddled with anxiety and desperately wants to understand how arrogance works. What really makes you think you are better, smarter or more important than any one else, whoever you are? Chestnut shakes her fist at privilege and screams "eat the rich" before gassing up her car to go get some sushi. She is an introvert who shares her feelings and thoughts with hundreds of strangers on the Internet every day. Chestnut writes things with ease that she can never say out loud.

Chestnut wants to know you but she is terrified when you want to know her. You will have to be very persistent to push past her "busy" "working" "with friends" "gotta log" and realize that these small rejections are nothing more than fear in action. If you are clever enough to see through the facade you will be rewarded with the most loyal friend you have ever known.

Every obligatory rez day post includes shoutouts to friends who make our virtual lives wonderful and amazing. That is the truth, of course, but these days Chestnut finds her Second Life friendships spilling up and out of the bounds of "the world" into places like gtalk, twitter and a soft voice on the phone whispering "Guess what? I love you." There is no beginning and no end to these friendships and they are no longer bound by pixels.

Chestnut Rau is me. My name is Edie and its great to meet you after all these years.

Pictures from my garden, images from my head

2011-06-15T17:46:00.002-04:00

When my head is full of "woosh" and "aaaaaahhhh" and "eeeppppppp" I have learned the best thing I can do is go outside. I lift my face to the sky and close eyes and make a conscious effort to quiet the noise in my head. When it is raining softly and the garden is quiet, the dampness of the drops on my face do an amazing job of washing away the anxiety and fear that threaten to eat me alive from the inside.

I have always thought the level of emotion I experience about things is wrong and bad and something to be corrected. The other day someone suggested to me that strong feelings are part of the condition of being a creative person. I know my best creative work is almost always fueled by some emotion so perhaps there is merit in this idea.

I am always surrounded by scientists and technical people who have no earthly idea what to do with me when I get caught up in strong emotion and the gears of my mind squeak and seize up, refusing to move. If I can't get to my garden, the next best thing is a keyboard. Words flow and slowly the gears begin to move again and the sighs of relief from those in my life who are gifted with emotional control are audible.

It is really hard to explain to people who don't feel things in this expansive way what it is like. I talk about a wave that washes over me or a cold feeling in my stomach and both are associated with colors and sounds in my mind. It is complex and I find it impossible to accurately convey the extent to which it is beyond anything I can control.

Talking about this openly, much less writing it all down, has always made me feel crazy. This level of emotion is surely something a mature person would not feel and clearly would never express in public, right? Probably, but today I have been wondering if I change my thinking and grab onto the wave and the cold and use them to fuel the creative process I just might be getting somewhere.

I don't know about you but my self talk can be brutal. I say things to myself I would never dream about saying to a friend.

So rather than

I am too emotional

I lack talent

Today I will say

I am creative.

I am beautiful on the inside and out.

I am happy.

I hope to spend some time in my glass studio tonight and see what inspiration I can draw from a long day of wearing my fear and anxiety like a cardigan. I will play with pink and green glass and work to approximate the tenacious beauty of the water lily, frozen in time.

Converting to Second Life Viewer 2

2011-06-15T07:47:00.000-04:00

I am going to preface what I am about to write with a few qualifying statements. First, I am one of those non technical people who has no background and little patience for things I don't understand. I want to open up a piece of software, I want it to be intuitive and I want it to work. I do not want to fiddle with it and I don't want to optimize a damn thing. Open, understand, go. Its a lot to ask, I realize.

I am also a person who loves new things and I am always looking for new things to try, new things to learn. So when Linden Lab released the original Viewer 2 I was really excited. I used it for a few weeks and really had a hard time wrapping my arms around the new layout and because I made the mistake of switching from V2 to a Third Party Viewer I ended up with significant inventory loss. Linden Lab customer service told me they would not even begin to help me recover the loss of my objects unless I stopped using a Third Party Viewer, which in retrospect was the beginning of the end of my love affair with Second Life. But I digress.

I have been quite happy using Imprudence, Phoenix and Kirsten's viewer. I can do what I want to do: open, understand, go. But, we all know the day is coming when we can no longer log in with viewers based on the old code. I understand all the reasons why this is and frankly, we all have to move forward and its a good thing to get rid of the old clunky code in favor of something better. I know I need to find a V2 code based viewer that I can use on a daily basis.

Yesterday I downloaded the new SL Viewer version 2.7.1. and all I have to say is way to go Linden Lab. I could not believe the speed I was seeing on my home sim. Seriously, I was getting 65 fps with my draw distance *cranked* up high. Then I enabled shadows and of course my frames per second dropped but to a respectable 25, with my draw distance still high. I was able to work my way around the UI and after about a year of using keyboard commands to move my avatar my initial issues with movement on V2 have vanished. All in all I honestly I have to say I was very impressed.

Later on in the day I got a notice about a very special Phoenix Hour and I happened to be in a position to watch the show. Lo and behold, the Firestorm Viewer Beta was released yesterday too. Firestorm is a highly customizable V2 based viewer that includes some key elements from the Phoenix viewer, such as "rez under land group when available," tons of preloaded windlight settings, and a whole host of other options that allow users to make the UI work to their own specifications. Because Firestorm is built on the V2 code it provides access to all the bells and whistles like multiple tattoo layers and (I believe but I have not verified yet) html on a prim.

Sadly, shadows are not supported on Firestorm just yet. Shadows work but Jessica Lyon indicated users might experience crashes at this time. My guess is the Phoenix team will get shadows to be stable in Firestorm in time.

My FPS on Firestorm were slightly slower than what I was able to achieve using the LL V2, but having both solid, super fast options available is a very very good thing. Open, understand, go.

It has been quiet around these parts

2011-06-14T10:12:00.000-04:00

I had an interesting conversation this morning on twitter, which honestly is not the best place to talk about things like art and creativity and insecurity. The limit of 140 characters means you can't really express much complexity in your thoughts and people resort to abbreviations like "ppl" and "u" and "&" which for someone like me is slightly maddening. But, a conversation was had and ideas were expressed despite the limitations of the mechanism.

This blog has been quiet. Not because I have writer's block or because I lack things to say. To the contrary, I have lot going on in my life that I could write about and I want to share. So why the silence? Well, sometimes it gets really hard to put yourself out there because when you write about your thoughts and ideas and god forbid your feelings, people judge you and they take potshots at you and worst of all they presume to know you. Which, is kind of the point if you are a blogger, right? You want to be known, or more to the point, you want your ideas to be understood. For someone like me there is no greater annoyance than to be misunderstood.

So, when I post in frustration about my own inability to make InWorlds work and it turns into a minor scuffle including nastygrams on twitter and a post on NWN that stayed up over the course of a weekend attracting the ire of devotes of that world? I shrink into myself and stop posting for a while because I think "I must really suck as a writer if people misunderstood my intent so" and "why bother to express myself if my words are just going to attract haters anyway." Its a strange mix of failure to communicate and insecurity in my own creative abilities with the result being a grand implosion and me standing around petting my Meeroos, wondering what the hell happened to my desire to write.

sighs.

But a blogger has to blog, you know? I have taken so many images I want to share and I have posts perking in my head about virtual art, collaborations, the small communities that grow up around sl musicians, the vibrant SL poetry world, and the ways in which the virtual world supports fledgling artists and creative types like me. This post is a small start on writing about what happens to sensitive souls who dare to live life out loud and how they find ways to overcome the fear of expressing themselves. I have much to say on this topic.

To be sure, daring to be a creative person is a contact sport. Occasionally you get a black eye, but the rewards are rich and outweigh the short term discomfort. I am working on learning how to step out of the way of the punches and letting them land, unconnected, beside me.

(Yes that is a picture I took just now of my right eye, which is a whole story in itself. Another blog post for another day, perhaps.)

~~~

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us, it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

Marianne Williamson

Montreal Musicians Meet up July 29 - 31

2011-06-06T08:07:00.000-04:00

If you love good music and are free the last weekend in July you should consider attending the Montreal Musicians' Meetup. Some fabulous Second Life people plan to get together to enjoy music, some great food and good company. You can find details on the blog here. My understanding is they are doing this event in a way that is quite affordable so even if you don't want to spend lots on SLCC in Oakland, California you still have a summer opportunity to meet other virtual worlders in the flesh.

Sadly, I won't be able to go to Montreal even though it is an easy drive for me. I have prior plans and will be in Chicago that weekend with my daughter. We are going to play tourist, have some mom/daughter bonding time and I am getting my first tattoo! I am so excited. What? You mean flying a thousand miles with your teenage daughter to get inked is not what most moms do? Well, who ever said I was like most mothers. I will be getting tattooed by the fabulous Dawn Grace and you should check out her flickr so you can understand why its worth a trip from NY to Chicago.

I am sad to be missing the Montreal Musicians' Meetup but I am told the event will be broadcast over ustream so those of us who can't be there in person can at least participate virtually. Which seems quite right to me.

PS. NO, Sophie will not be getting a tattoo! We did have the chance to have a long talk about the concept of "permanent" and how at 14 years old she can't possibly have a clue what that means. A friend of mine who is a tattoo artist suggested that the best way to convince young kids not to get ink is to have them watch the process and observe the pain/blood/healing involved. See? I do get that mom of the year award, after all.

University of Western Australia Announces Machinima Contest

2011-06-05T18:28:00.000-04:00

The Journey Continues: MACHINIMUWA IV: Art of the Artists Begins!
L$230,000 in prizes to be awarded

Sponsored by UWA, AviewTV and the Summerland Estates

DATES: Submissions open through 10th NOVEMBER 2011

SUBJECT MATTER: The Artworks sent in for the Monthly rounds of the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge at the UWA Gallery (and also the artworks in contention for the Grand Prize that are rezzed till the end of the challenge on the adjacent SIM - these artworks are listed below).

NOTE: The artwork may be filmed in situ, but it is not required so long at the focus of the machinima is centered around the artworks. You may communicate with the artists to film their SUBMITTED works in other locations. Also, please contact Jayjay Zifanwe or FreeWee Ling if you need to be able to rezz blue screen, etc as part of your filming process.

THE CHALLENGE: Create a machinima that features artworks submitted to the UWA 3D Open Art Challenge. You can choose to film as many (or as few) as you like, and you may submit any number of entries. There is no enforced time limit, however a recommended time limit would be between 3 - 6 minutes.

Read more about the contest on the UWA Blog here.

While you are over there reading please take a look at the list of judges as you might see a familiar name. I was quite flattered to be asked to serve as a judge for this contest.

SLurl to UWA 3D Open Art Gallery

SLurl to UWA GRAND FINALE WORKS

I strongly recommend a visit to UWA even if you are not the least bit interested in making machinima for this contest. Some of the most interesting and innovative art in Second Life can be found there. Hey if you want company give me a shout and I will take you there and show you why I love 3D interactive art so much.

Meeroooooooooooooo!!!

2011-06-02T19:24:00.002-04:00

My name is Chestnut and I have a problem.

Ok, its not really a problem but I am sliiightly focused on my Meeroos. So, if i ignore your IM and fail to accept your TP you know why. If you do not see me at any art sims or at any music you know why. I am probably standing around my land, cuddling with my Meeroos.

I absolutely adore these cute little creatures and I have to offer sincere kudos to the creative team that made them. They have combined elements of games like Tiny Empires, the business opportunities of other breedables, with social elements in an attempt to bring Meeroo fans together. Read more at the Meerooo website here. For a great review about why Meeroos are a "game changer" for Second Life please read what Salome Strangelove has written here and an update here.

What I will say about my Meeroos is they are adorable. When they stand on their chubby back legs and lift their paws, ask to be cuddled and send poofy pink hearts from their chest to me? I literally go "awwwwww" in RL and it is damn near impossible not to pick them up for a cuddle. While I am holding them I look at their adorable little paws and the goofy smile on their faces, crafted to pluck every single maternal heart string and if I was stressed or cranky all of that melts away. Yes, I am responding emotionally in RL to an animated pixel mythical creature that costs me RL money to feed. I know. I know. It sounds crazy. But, I dare you to pick one up and not feel anything. Its impossible.

Meeroos have personality types that are scripted into their behavior so my friendly little boy Morrissey wants to be picked up all the time while my toy girl Cindy is quite shy and tends to be more reserved with her pink hearts. They dig and turn up "treasures" which give me "regard" points that improve my standing in the "community." You see what the Meeroo people did there? They got me to spend money on something that demands my attention and allows me access to an achievement system within Second Life, just like some people have been writing about for some time. And guess what? Meeroos are extremely popular. Interesting no?

Only time will tell if Meeroos have staying power, but I suspect they will. Now, if you excuse me I want to go cuddle with my babies.

Naturae in Second Life

2011-06-01T21:02:00.001-04:00

Visit Merlino Mayo's multi-level artwork "Naturae." This sim-wide project is inspired by the complicated relationship between man, nature and technology. Slurl to teleport there and explore.

I heart Cole

2011-05-30T16:11:00.000-04:00

that.is.all.

A brand new day

2011-05-29T13:30:00.003-04:00

My plans for the holiday weekend got messed up when we were one hour into the drive and we had to turn around. So, now we are all cranky with each other and don't really have plans for the long weekend. This morning was shaping up to be really bad and then I got an email from a stranger. Well, not exactly a stranger but the email was from a name I did not recognize. This person abandoned their old Slife and created a new one, which is something I can totally relate to these days.

Anyway, this person sent me a new blog template. See the lovely banner? The friend who made my old template saw that blogger had broken it when they updated and he made me a new template. For every ounce of random hate on the internet there are also people who are so giving and loving and kind that it brings me to tears. Thank you dear friend. You mean more to me that words can ever express.

Saturday afternoon at Chez Chestnut

2011-05-28T17:14:00.004-04:00

The thing about virtual worlds is you have to be patient. Some days the grid gods conspire to make the simplest things difficult and we have no choice but to be patient or to log off and enjoy some RL sunshine. The image above was taken the 4th time I attempted to teleport to my friend Zachh Cale's show in Second Life. I never did get there and the show had to be canceled. The grid monkeys were just not cooperating.

So, I forced my kids to go down to the pool. We splashed each other and made Gavin's hair stand straight up. Sophie and I tried to convince him to let us dye it bright blue and spike it but the boy was having NONE of that. The sun felt good. The laughter felt good. The RL moments with my children are what matter to me, make no mistake about that. There is nothing like a wet hug from a 12 year old who would rather *die* than be seen hugging his mom anywhere but in the privacy of our garden to remind me how little virtual worlds matter in the grand scheme of my life.
~~~
My dear friend Lanna wrote an interesting post which I suggest you read, if you have not done so already. She talks about how she lost interest in logging in to SL when it became a 3d chat room rather than an immersive experience. I am quite guilty of this standing around talking in IM rather than immersing in the experience myself. Just last night I was at a concert and had three IM boxes open and was engaged in lengthy conversations with people while I listened to the music. I had so many boxes open I could barely see the world around me. As much as I loved the conversations I was having it was not the same as sitting avatar to avatar with someone and talking.

Many of my closest friends from SL are people I rarely, if ever, see in world. I talk to them all the time via other mechanisms and feel as close to them (if not closer in a few cases) to my RL friends. Second Life has become secondary to our friendships rather than the primary means of being together. However, unlike Lanna, I still log in to Second Life most days.

Why?

Habit? Blog fodder? Photographs? Music? Art? Meeting new people or expanding causal friendships into deeper friendships? The opportunity to collaborate on exciting new projects?

I still love virtual worlds. I still love Second Life, even when I purposefully walk away to enjoy other things.

Thoughts about a fight I never intended to have

2011-05-26T14:31:00.001-04:00

Most of the time on this blog I quietly write about this or that and my small band of loyal readers come along for the ride. I am told people look forward to reading what I am up to over morning coffee and some find it worth their time to follow the links I post. While it is impossible to know how many people read a blog like mine via RSS or on a feed, I do know that I have 63 "followers"on blogspot and I get around 125 page views a day whether I post or not. On the days I post something especially good I have seen up to 750 hits in a day. I have no ads and make no money here. By any measure this is not an influential blog. I like it that way.

Occasionally, I post something that is controversial. Most often I inadvertently step in a bees nest without knowing that what I say is going to get people all riled up. If you notice, I rarely take on controversial issues intentionally. I figure there are lots of people who are more analytical than I am and smarter who will offer opinions and since I always see things in multiple shades of grey, I prefer not to take strong stands on things here on my blog. I have definite opinions and my close friends will assure you this is true. I just don't put everything out here for the world to chew up and spit out. I lack the thick skin necessary to be that kind of writer.

When I write about my personal experiences and it turns into a "war" with people and I never knew I was fighting, I get confused and for the most part I want to crawl in a hole and hide until the last bomb is blown up. I am someone who generally wants to promote the great things that happen in virtual worlds and the last thing I want to be is a critic. If you look back at this blog to its beginning in 2007 and if you look at two years of writing on New World Notes, you will see that my intent is positive and my outlook about our virtual lives generally hopeful.

I look forward to the day when there are hundreds of thriving virtual worlds where we all can do business, make art and find companionship with like minded people. I hope that each of us finds the virtual space that feels like home and we can all invite our friends from other places to visit. I do want to be able to have good shoes and hair when I get to your world, but that is a controversy I am just not going to touch.

I apologize to anyone who was offended, hurt or royally pissed off by my post about Inworldz. My intent was to describe my own personal experience and I posted in a moment of frustration. Note to self: don't do that again.

Peace.

Ches

One place I strongly recommend you visit, another I cannot recommend

2011-05-22T11:19:00.001-04:00

Last night I enjoyed the company of some friends who spend a lot of time in InWorldz. Now, my rez day over there is soon but I have hardly spent any time visiting InWorldz. Why? Because my user experience over there stinks. Nothing rezes even when I wait a long time. I find it impossible to TP without hanging up or crashing. Textures, when they load at all, flicker in an epileptic fit inducing manner. I can barely walk without rubber banding or getting stuck totally. Seriously? SL in 2007 worked better for me.

Me (the small person) next to another avatar. The store around us may not rez but some things are exactly like SL. Tall amazons rule!

This is what I saw *after* waiting for the store to rez for a while. Things actually got worse, instead of better.

I just wanted to buy shoes! If I can't customize my avatar and feel comfortable I just can't see how I will want to spend time in a world. Not that I could actually see what this shop was selling, but what I did see was not compelling me to stick around until next week when the vendors would finally rez. I know people love InWorldz. I just can't recommend it based on my experience. It makes me sad.

After the break: "Our Place in the Cosmos" which is a fanfreakingtastic art exhibit by Pixel Sideways.

~~~
Pixel Sideways is a very talented artist who creates fabulous, moving immersive works. TODAY is your last chance to see "Our Place in the Cosmos" which is one of the most thought provoking and moving installations I have seen in a while. You will need to enable media to experience this lovely lovely art and I strongly encourage you to do so. Flat images simply cannot capture "Our Place in the Cosmos" so please, if you have any time at all today to play? Follow this link and GO.

Strange days near the end of the world

2011-05-21T22:46:00.000-04:00

Today was a really weird day.

First I slept until almost noon. Those of you who are paying attention know I have a terrible time with insomnia so sleeping a lot is a rare treat or a sign of the impending Apocalypse.

Then my cat killed a mouse and dropped it at my feet. A little while later she killed a baby bird. This too is a sign of something, probably not the Apocalypse though. It likely means the killing instinct is strong in cats and in spring the baby critters have not yet learned how to avoid predators. It was sad and more than a little gross. Thank god for husbands because I am not in the business of corpse disposal.

Eventually, I made an amazing dinner which everyone in my family ate. This is surely a sign of the impending Apocalypse. I mean it.

After that I logged in to SL and someone I admire asked if they could add me as a friend. It made my day.

Now I am sitting with the killer cat on my lap, drinking a big glass of wine wondering if I will indeed be up all night as payback for sleeping a lot yesterday. I am listening to Marx Dudek spin crazy tunes and doing her best to conjure up the impending Apocalypse. It isn't working.

Risk City, a fabulous art sim owned by SuzeLaRousse Milo

2011-05-19T22:17:00.000-04:00

Today I visited a sim I found in the Second Life Destination Guide called Risk City. I find the "destinations" in the LL guide to the highlights of SL is hit or miss. Sometimes the locations are shops or hunts or things that are all about commerce, which is uninteresting to me. Some of that art locations are galleries of 2d pictures, which even when they are done well are not what I am after when I am searching for a virtual world experience. I crave places that are, to use a tired old phrase, immersive. I want to be inside the art, I want to fall through a crack in my every day experience and feel the experience.

Why yes I did do a lot of drugs at one time. Why do you ask?

Risk City scratched my itch. I arrived at the landing point and immediately knew this would be a fun place to explore. I saw oversized sculptures in the ocean, odd textures on the ground and spider webs big enough to swallow an airplane. This is the kind of sim where I feel at home.

There are places to explore high in the sky like the structure above. I loved how it was interesting to look at from the outside and once you got inside, there were surprises to discover as well as cool places to hang out for a chat or a dance.

Risk City has a teleport system which allows you to pick your destination or, if you are like me, you can click and teleport randomly to see what you can find. I love the unexpected so I let the teleporter drop me from place to place. At each destination I found interesting art, places to sit and take in the world around me and animations that were odd, funny and romantic if you are looking for that sort of thing.

I strongly recommend a visit to Risk City, owned by SuzeLaRousse Milo, if you have not already had the pleasure. TP at this link to start your adventure

My blog broke!

2011-05-19T11:14:00.000-04:00

Blogger is busy making their tools better, which I appreciate a great deal. I appreciate far less the fact that my blog template, which was a surprise gift from a friend who has since left SL, was broken in the process. I will have to figure out how to improve the look of this blog in the coming days. For now, I am concentrating on the fact that I can make my images much bigger with Blogger's new tools. So, there is the silver lining in this cloud.

Anyone want to volunteer to make me a new blog format? I didn't think so.

sighs.

The Power of Words and the Brave Writing of Carrie Lexington

2011-05-16T19:28:00.001-04:00

Words have the power to make us cheer or move us to tears. How many times just today has an email or an IM made you feel something? Perhaps it was a text that said "what is it sweety?" or perhaps a news article or a blog post made you laugh or shake your fist in frustration.

As someone who writes and has the audacity to put my words out in the world for people to see, I have experienced the power of my own words. There have been times when people feel like they know me or they are my friend because they have read something I wrote and it resonated with them. I have at least one "enemy" because of my words. Words are powerful, make no mistake about it.

Recently the use of a single word moved my friend Carrie Lexington to write a poem. It is a powerful and strong poem and she is brave to share it with the world. I hope you will read Carrie's words and think about her message.

The beat that my heart skipped

2011-05-15T11:35:00.002-04:00

"We want to be loved for who we appear to be instead of who we are

So our real selves take a backseat behind the pomp and the facade"

Another day in my garden

2011-05-14T19:48:00.008-04:00

My family and I worked out in the garden today, cleaning up the mess left over from a long winter. We raked and picked up dead bits of things and we took the cover off the pool. The kids fought and complained about being made to work. My daughter really thinks that people should do things for her while she watches make up videos on Youtube. My son, quite correctly, points out that he has a Minecraft server to run and his clan is lost without him. Nevertheless, we evil parents insisted they had to help and help they did.

My husband barked orders as if we were one of his work crews and we made faces at him behind his back. The dog ran around like a lunatic getting underfoot at every opportunity. I totally screwed up my manicure, which kind of pissed me off but what with all the whining about Youtube and Minecraft I just made a mental note to take a trip to Sephora and buy that new OPI color I wanted after we finished working.

The pool cover came off revealing a dead mouse and pea green water. I made Mr. Barking orders remove the corpse and I swept down the pool deck so we can power wash the mud off tomorrow. By the time it started to rain I was well on my way to the mall to worship at the church of Sephora.

I had to take this shot to show you the wisteria blooms that hang down under the massively overgrown (and soon to be trimmed considerably) structure we built next to the pool. We don't really know what to call it - it is not really an arbor nor is it a trellis so we call it a "structure" but right now all it does is hold up the most amazing smelling wisteria. It really is a shame the flowers appear when the rest of the pool area is mucky and the water is green and smells a little like the bottom of a fish tank. Still, the wisteria is glorious.

Speaking of fish, here is our goldfish pond. Its a bit of a mess now as well but soon enough it will be sparkling and full of baby goldfish. This band of happy fish started with about a dozen feeder fish from the pet store a number of years ago. We have a bunch that are every bit of 6 inches long and there must be hundreds of them. Its a pretty stable little environment with the plants feeding the fish and the fish poo providing food for the plants. We have about 6 huge frogs that occasionally sun themselves on the edge of the pond and croak longingly for each other at dusk.

When the weather is nice, you can find my husband and I in these Adriondack chairs in the evenings talking about the day and watching the birds bathe in the fountain. We usually have a glass of wine and enjoy how lucky we are to have each other and live in this beautiful spot. Sometimes the kids sit with us as long as we don't make them work and they can watch Youtube and play Minecraft. Luckily the wifi extends to the garden or we might never see them. Join us, won't you?

Three faces of Edie

2011-05-14T09:45:00.001-04:00

Tipsy stream of consiousness

2011-05-13T23:43:00.002-04:00

I have been writing a lot lately, not that you would know it from this blog. I have been writing poems. I don't know anything about cadence or rhyme. I don't know how to take a nugget of an idea and pressure my words to perfectly fit into a prescribed form. I don't really even want to follow the rules of poetry but I do want to take the feelings that have been threatening to overwhelm me at a moment's notice and tame them or possibly beat them back into the dark hole from whence they came. Glass isn't doing it and blogging isn't doing it but there is a glimmer of a poem on the tip of my tongue. I keep trying to grab it and true to form it runs away, laughing at me over its shoulder leaving me empty and frustrated and so fucking tired I could scream.

The poem is about friendship and love. It is about the slow fade into emptiness and it is about not knowing how to stop being angry. It is about never feeling worthy of being loved and the acid etched pain of self loathing and the loop running that will.not.stop. The words are not carefully chosen, they are the freezing water running down the side of a mountain, finding their way through the cracks until they land in a dirty puddle. The poem is fast and angry and childlike and sullen. It flails and screams and builds to a full on tantrum and it ends in a sobbing heap. Unfulfilled.

Cerridwen's Cauldron

2011-05-09T22:16:00.001-04:00

Visit the Floating Isles: RL & virtual art gallery, fantasy temples , sculptures, landscaping, fantasy avatars & the popular line of fantasy plants & trees. Relaxing, exotic & beautiful.

Visit Cerridwen's Cauldron in Griffin

A spring evening in my garden

2011-05-08T22:17:00.002-04:00

All of these pictures were taken with my phone and uploaded here with no editing whatsoever. Please do click to get a larger view -- these pictures are worth it!

Mother's Day and other emotional hot spots

2011-05-08T13:55:00.000-04:00

I was my mom's first child and I was born on Mother's Day. I can't think of a better gift, can you? I am not being sarcastic! There is nothing quite so profound as those first few moments when you experience the perfect love a parent has for their infant child. Things change when they become teenagers and you start checking the calendar to figure out just how much longer it is before they leave for college, but those first few moments of parenthood are like nothing else I have experienced. To become a mother on mother's day must have been incredible.

On the other hand, my mother lost her own mom to brain cancer while she was pregnant with me. I think she must have felt such a mix of emotions on that day. If she is lucky a new mom has her own mother by her side and she learns how to care for her infant from the person who nurtured her as a baby. My mother didn't have that luxury. Sadly, I did not either. I learned I was pregnant with my daughter just two weeks after my own mother died from complications of lung cancer.

It is impossible for me to experience the happiness of Mother's Day without thinking about my mom and the odd parallels that surround my birth and the birth of my daughter. The years where my actual birthday falls on Mother's Day, like this year, make it really difficult for me to be joyful. The circle of life is beautiful and wonderful, it just isn't always easy.

(I am sure I have written about all of this before, probably even here on this blog. If I repeat myself I do apologize.)

Nordan Art Opening May 7th at 2pm

2011-05-06T07:27:00.002-04:00

Read about the Opening at the Nordian Art Gallery, scheduled to take place tomorrow May 7 at 2pm, on the fantastic new SecondLife Art and Entertainment blog here.

University of Western Australia Machimina Contest

2011-05-05T12:38:00.000-04:00

The University of Western Australia and Jayjay Zifanwe have emerged as leading supporters of art and machinima in Second Life. Their current project is a machinima contest which you can read about here. Please do click through to that blog because there are links to fabulous films by leading machinma makers from across the world which have been entered in the contest.

Also please check out the list of contest judges which include SL leaders such as Chantal Harvey, Paisley Beebe, Mal Burns, Nazz Lane and many others. Notably, acclaimed British film Director Peter Greenaway is also one of the judges.

Jay just told me the contest prize pool for machinima creators has increased to $600,000L and the prize pool for members of the audience has increased to $60,000L. Great art, wonderful people and chances to win! What could be better?

Attend the Ceremony where the winners will be announced on Sunday May 22nd at 6am SL time. The entrance to the Amphitheater can be reached via this SLurl or this SLurl.

LEA – Linden Endowment of the Arts, and the official opening of MoM – Month of Machinima

2011-05-03T07:51:00.001-04:00

You are invited to the kick off of LEA – Linden Endowment of the Arts, and the official opening of MoM – Month of Machinima.

When: May 4, 2011 at 10 am SL time
Where: LEA theater in Second Life – see SLurls below

Theater 1

Theater 2

Theater 3

Theater 4

MoM has it s own YouTube account: http://www.youtube.com/user/MonthofMachinima
After the openingsceremony the machinima’s will be included on the MoM YouTube playlist.

A very special May pole dance

2011-05-01T20:03:00.000-04:00

Bleeding Hearts

2011-04-30T17:22:00.000-04:00

Bleeding hearts are my favorite flower. There is something so delicate and perfect about the blooms. The picture above was taken in my garden this afternoon.

"The Secret Talents of SL Residents"

2011-04-29T07:42:00.003-04:00

I make lampwork beads and have a small studio in my basement, which has been largely ignored for a long time. Glass is a funny medium. Sometimes it does exactly what you want it to do and other times it seems to have a mind of its own and the chemical reactions inherent in the process can lead to unpredictable results. Right around the time I joined Second Life my glass work was frustrating me and I became easily distracted by the opportunities presented by the virtual.

Lampworking is an expensive hobby. The cost of glass and the materials you need to explore making things is not inconsequential. So, the combination of my own crisis of confidence, cost and the lure of meeting interesting people instead of sitting in my basement with my music resulted in me turning away from my beloved glass. So, my studio sat. It got lonely. Since it is in the basement the crickets and spiders eventually squatted. Then my studio started to be a scary, cold place. After a time I was actually afraid to turn on my torch and face the 2,000 degree fire.

Once a week I would go down to the studio and look at my tools. I would think about lighting up the torch and then I would walk away and log into Second Life. In retrospect it makes me sad.

I have been having extended conversations with a friend lately about creativity and the things that motivate us. The itch to melt glass got to be stronger than my fear of the torch. So, last night I evicted the spiders and the crickets and spent a few hours at the torch. Because a blogger is going to blog, I took some pictures and will share them after the break.

Here you can see the torch, some tools of the trade and my safety glasses which protect my eyes from flying glass and allow me to see what I am doing in the flame. If you notice there are two hoses running into the torch. I use a minor burner which runs on a mixture of natural gas from my house and pure oxygen which I create using a medical device intended for people who need supplementation.

First I turn on the gas and light the torch. See the big ass flame? Its hot but not that hot -- just wait. When I turn on the O2 the flame gets hot enough....well...to melt glass.

See my nice blue flame? Its delicious, isn't it?

These are some of the glass rods I use which is known as "soft glass" or soda lime glass. I have a collection of colors in a cabinet off to the side, which I didn't take a picture of because I really need to clean it up a bit. Here you can see some stringers which I made by melting different colors of glass together and twisting them and pulling them into tiny stings as the glass cools. Stringers are used to create decorative elements of glass beads.

To create a bead the glass is melted and wound around a steel mandrel that has been dipped in a clay-like substance. This is necessary because glass sticks to metal and eventually you want to get your bead off the mandrel. In this image you can see the yellow "soda flare" that happens when the bead is in the flame. You can appreciate why the glasses are essential. It is impossible to see the glass without them.

Once the bead is formed and decorated it rests in a fiberglass blanket to cool. Glass needs to cool slowly or it will crack. I normally anneal my beads in a kiln overnight but since I was just experimenting last night I did not program the kiln and fire it up.

The beads rest overnight to cool. One of the fascinating and frustrating things about working glass is there is a bit of alchemy that happens. It really is impossible for me to predict how what I have created will look once it is totally cool. The waiting can be difficult for someone like me who lacks patience but you risk cracks if you let cold air hit the beads before they are ready. So, wait I must.

The "reveal" in the morning can be exhilarating or quite disappointing. Since I have not made a bead in years I was thrilled to see that my beads were round and did not have jagged holes. I made no real effort to design these and just messed around with glass, letting it tell me what it wanted to do. After a couple of hours I was so happy I was bouncing around my studio dancing. It felt great to let my creative juices fly.

The white spots on these two beads are a reflection of the nearby window. Each of the two beads above are about the size of a US dime so they are pretty small. Also, these pictures were taken with my phone so the image quality is not that great. You get the general idea, right?

Now, please tell me...what is your secret talent?

Sexy Succubus

2011-04-28T13:36:00.000-04:00

I used to be Princess Chestnut but lately I have been feeling more like Succubus Chestnut. You know how that is, right?

Wikiopedia defines Succubus this way

In folklore traced back to medieval legend, a succubus (plural succubi) is a female demon appearing in dreams who takes the form of a human woman in order to seduce men, usually through sexual intercourse. The male counterpart is the incubus. Religious traditions hold that repeated intercourse with a succubus may result in the deterioration of health or even death.
In modern fictional representations, a succubus may or may not appear in dreams and is often depicted as a highly attractive seductress orenchantress, in contrast to the past where succubi were generally depicted as frightening and demonic.

Urban dictionary is always good for a laugh.

Succubus	351 up, 54 down
	buy succubus mugs, tshirts and magnets 1. One who leeches on and eventually completely consumes the very essence of man's soul, leaving an empty and shattered shell of what once was a free and ultimately superior human being destined for greatness. 2. Also known as 'bitch', 'heartless whore', 'evil slut', or 'lying cunt'. The evil spirit of these heartless creature is almost invisible at first sight; however, after a few months, one could find himself with: no money and no friends, lack of hobbies, little or no sense of reality, and/or self respect. These evil demons begin their hunt at age 14 and continue until they have successfully stripped one man of all his pride. "That fucking succubus destroyed my respect for women!" said Jimmy, "I just want to get laid now!"

The truth is, sometimes I get tired of my cute girl next door avatar and just want to be a badass. I won't bother your sleep. Most likely anyway.

Adorable, adorable WarBugs

2011-04-27T21:08:00.000-04:00

This is going to be a short post because Blogger is being cranky today. I was hopping around the grid today looking for something blogworthy. I TPed to a sim quite randomly and came across Warbugs, which is a company that makes the most adorable planes. Of course I got the Princess model for $190L, because I am Princess Chestnut Rau, right?

What is fun about this is that I had seen the strawberry Warbug in a sandbox once and I thought it was the most adorable thing ever but never managed to find the creator or the store. Today looking for something else entirely I found the place. Lucky for you I am going to give you the SLurl so you don't have to rely on random good luck.

Go. Buy a Warbug. Its a ton of flying fun in an adorable package.

Remembering to remember

2011-04-25T07:16:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was a hard day for me. I was edgy. It was the last day of my mini vacation and you know how that goes. I had all these plans for what I was going to do but what actually happened was -- nothing. I slept and was lazy. I hung out in my house in my sweats with my kids.

Last night I listened to some music with friends in SL and it was fantastic to climb out of my virtual hole and see people I love. The uber talented blues guitarist Komuso Tokugawa was playing at TriBeCa Blues and it was great to listen to his fresh, experimental take on classic tunes. I was in a great mood, finally after 5 days of "meh."

I started to play with images and what you see here is the result. It is interesting. As I played and played in Photoshop, letting my eye be my guide instead of my overactive brain I started to be happy. Really, really happy. It might have been the wine, of course, but I think it was the process of stabbing my inner critic until she STFU and creating something that pleased me.

When I was done I got a comment on yesterday's post from Komuso who basically said art is about the process not the product. Which? Yeah, I knew that. I am glad I finally remembered to remember.

Embrace It

2011-04-24T19:52:00.001-04:00

Crap told me I should stop worrying about producing good art and I should just embrace sucking. That is one option I guess.

I messed around with some older images I had today. How is this for embracing it? (They suck less if you click on them and view larger.)

<3 you long time Crap. You know just how to cheer me up. ish.

Past the Sell by Date

2011-04-23T19:48:00.000-04:00

Things are changing for me. Good things.

I am hatching a concrete plan for my tattoo. Yep I'm one of those past the "sell by date" women of a certain age who say "fuck it" I am tired of pleasing the world. It is time I please me.

All I can say is - watch out.

Friday Night at The Pocket

2011-04-23T00:08:00.000-04:00

I went to The Pocket tonight. I was every bit as hard as I thought it would be, maybe even harder. I am pretty sure I cried the whole hour. Grief is so ridiculously difficult. One minute you are fine, then the next you spill your coffee and you are sobbing but it ain't about the spill, is it?

Connection between people is tenuous and fragile. Sometimes you can feel so close to a person and then they are gone. The empty spot is never filled. It just isn't.

Random collection of thoughts for a lazy Friday morning

2011-04-22T10:24:00.001-04:00

I have been phoning it in here. You may have noticed. My heart is not in my 365 this time around. I find myself going in world, searching to find a new place to visit, walking around for 5 minutes, thinking "yeah this will do" snap, crop, post. Blah. There really is no point if I am not enjoying the process and if I am not providing you with quality content then its time to stop. Especially since Honour is on a roll and producing the fabulous travelogue posts daily so its not like anyone needs me to be doing a lame job here. Go. Read Honour's blog.

Ok I feel better now. How about you?

Having said that I did visit a sim today, of course. I noticed two interesting things. First there were people running around doing a "Happy Christmas" gesture endlessly and handing out an object that purported to be a Christmas gift, which they wanted me to wear. Really? Come on. First, I hate gestures. Hate, hate hate them. Playing gestures says to me "I don't have anything interesting to say so I am going to seek your attention in any way I can." Seriously, it might seem like running around a sim at 7am SLT and playing a Christmas gesture is amusing and for a moment it might be. However, look around. This sim is a forest. There are couples animations and people having quiet conversations. There are bloggers floating on the water who are trying to come up with a single thought. Shut the fuck up. Really.

Ok I feel better now. How about you?

Have you seen these script counters people are putting out on sims? I think its such a great idea. Instead of ARC turning people into the "take off your prim" police, these nifty little devices tell people how much they are adding to the script load on the region. I think this is a far better way for people to figure out what they need to do to improve sim performance.

And, I am quite proud of my numbers. I am a green dot all the way baby!

Ok I feel better now. How about you?

Visit the sim Orange Tree

One of those days where nothing is ever the same again

2011-04-21T16:18:00.001-04:00

Visit Garden of Dreams

Yesterday was a incredible day, in both good and bad ways. I spent time with friends listening to great writing and soothing music. I had conversations both terribly upsetting and incredibly intense. I stayed up until the sun came up and then woke up wanting to do it all again. I am enjoying a short break from RL work and SL is providing a much needed outlet for friendship, art, music and connections that would never have happened elsewhere. I am tired, moved and really need a nap.

Native Sunset

2011-04-20T17:01:00.000-04:00

Visit Native Sunset

SL blogging and the incessant truth that haters are gonna hate

2011-04-19T10:53:00.001-04:00

I missed blogging a couple of days. Honestly, I had other things I preferred to be doing and the tedium of 365 and my OCD need to do things that I set out to do, especially when other people might notice that I am a flawed individual who sometimes fails, just wasn't enough for me to give a shit.

Then yesterday my spidey sense told me I probably should pay attention because my name was being tossed around in the blogosphere. Now mind you my blog was only tangentially related to what was being said and the controversy is not about me, nor am I "jealous" of the attention others are getting, which was suggested to me as well. Is there such a thing as blog jealousy? I guess there is but I am damn sure I don't feel it. This blog exceeded any expectations I had for it somewhere about 2008 when I finally had more than 20 readers a day on a consistent basis. So jealous of traffic, hits, attention, link backs? Not so much.

My friend Myg told me way back in the day if I blog what I love and write for myself I can never be disappointed. She suggested to me that blogging for hits and dredging the blogosphere for link backs is a way for some but she didn't think I was that kind of blogger. It was the best advice about this project that I ever got and I never forgot what Myg offered.

Of course, for some people blogging is a job, a business. They do not have the luxury of ranting when they are pissed off or not writing when they have a tattoo to design and family and friends who's attention is more compelling than a stupid SL blog. They write because it is their job. Some days I am quite sure that job sucks just like your job sucks some days and so does mine. They have to keep their words fresh and interesting and they have to drive readership or the advertising dries up and there is no food in the refrigerator. That writer is doing a very different thing than what I do, certainly. I have written for money and while it is fantastic to get paid to do something you love, once it is a job? It is a fucking job.

One lesson I have learned, the hard way I might add, is when you create anything at all and have the audacity to put it out in the world, some people are going to love what you do and a vocal minority are going to hate you, your work and everything you ever did or thought about doing. This hate is not restricted to your ideas or your images or your music. No. This hate is personal. It is not "I disagree with the idea you have expressed" or "I disagree with the way you conduct your life." No. It is "You suck" and "You are a bully" or "You opinions are so disagreeable you should not be allowed to express them."

This is just fucked up people.

Hate some one's ideas? Say so. Mount a counter argument to disprove the assumptions they make and tear down their conclusions with every venomous word you have in your arsenal. Leave the comments section with your smoking pistol in your holster and your head held high, lies and false conclusions in a steaming pile on the ground. But, please do not undermine your own credibility by resorting to personal attack and insult because when you do? You show the world the world that the biggest tool in your tool belt is not your intelligence and your ability to express your ideas with carefully chosen words. Yes haters are always going to hate, but is that really a valuable contribution to the conversation?

How about we discuss ideas?

~~~
ETA: I loved Miso's post and agree with just about every word. In fact, I was enormously flattered by what she wrote. My strong reaction here is mostly to people spewing hate for the sake of it on Twitter.

159 of 365 7 Days Magic Bakery

2011-04-16T21:06:00.000-04:00

Come play with your food! Meet rebellious robots and maestro bakers! Design, eat and trade your own custom pasties! A rich, whimsical bakery theme park … there's lots to do!

More images and a SLurl after the break.

Visit 7 Days Magic Bakery

158 of 365 "Delicatessen Petrified"

2011-04-15T20:14:00.000-04:00

Floating islands, like a Roger Dean album cover, idle over the sparse landscape — each containing a diorama of haunting and unsettling sculptures. Your fight-or-flight reflex will kick in as your brain struggles to make sense of these bizarre scenes.

More images and a SLurl after the break.

Visit Delicatessen Petrified in Porto

157 of 365

2011-04-14T21:24:00.000-04:00

I saw a LM to Hangars Liquides today and I thought, wow its been years since I went there. Indeed, it was 2008 when I blogged about this sim, which was new at the time. A lot has changed over the years. Sims have been added, the city expanding upwards as well as north, south, east and west.

This is one of those cyberpunk sims where the vast scale of the buildings force you to look way up in the sky so that you see everything. More images and a SLurl for your visit to Hangars Liquides after the break.

Stay on the paths so you don't fall to the ground. I made the mistake of thinking I could wander and ended up hurtling to my death and being teleported home.

You also want to be sure to put on your headphones and turn sounds up. The soundscape of Hangars Liquides is interesting and adds an incredible life to this dystopian City.

Visit Hangars Liquides

156 of 365 "Vader"

2011-04-13T19:44:00.000-04:00

Visit Vader

Still under Construction.

From the Notecard:

Welcome to The Fort Hood Resiliency Campus!

The Fort Hood Resiliency Campus program is the integration of Body, Mind, and Spirit to produce a balance lifestyle. It promotes a sense of becoming, changing, improving, and growing.

One of our main goal is to provide service and support to US Miltary Service Members and their Famly. But, All are welcome!!

Coming Soon:

Functional Fitness Cente- It’s time for a healthy make over! Change your life and improve your health by visiting the Functional Fitness Center for fun and exciting classes and programs that will have you feeling like a whole new person. With a vast array of exercise machines, yoga, Cross-Fit, massage therapy, and Tai Chi, it's evident why you should visit the Functional Fitness Center today!

Wellness Center- The AWC offers programs for: tobacco cessation, weight management, self-care, weight loss surgery nutrition, and fitness testing,

Warrior Adventure Quest-The WAQ is a vehicle to assist Soldier re-integration, empower small-unit leaders, maintain combat readiness, and rebuild unit cohesion.

Culinary Arts Center- Have a party coming up? Cooking for someone? The Culinary Arts Center will offer classes on Starters, Entrées, and Desserts.

Army Center For enhanced Performace- The Army Center for Enhanced Performance (ACEP), founded at the United States Military Academy at West Point, has been developing Warriors since 1993. Employing West Point’s strategies and techniques for developing mental strength, ACEPs are now opening at installations throughout the country. Army leaders, units, Soldiers, and their Families will benefit from cutting edge, research-based mental strength education that provides the foundation for bettering performance.

Personal Financial Assistance Center- The Personal Financial Assistance Center (PFAC) works with Army Community Service (ACS) to proactively provide information and resources to educate Soldiers, Family members, Retirees and DoD civilians on matters of personal financial responsibility.

Spiritual Fitness Center-Any human being functions in three modes i.e. Physical (Body), Mental (Mind), and Spiritual (Soul). These three aspects of our lives are not independent from each other, but dependent and usually intertwined. They are reflected in our behavior, our relationship to others, and also seen in the way we respond to challenges and crisis.

Here at the Spiritual Fitness Center, we respond to spiritual needs. The Fort Hood Spiritual Fitness Center works in conjunction with other spiritual leaders on post and in the larger community to help individuals find serenity.

We offer a place of peace and tranquility. It is a place where you can fade the outside world and tune in to your inner-self in a serene atmosphere where you can ask the Ultimate questions:

Who am I?

What is the purpose of life?

What do I believe in?

How does that make me who I am?

Our real world location is::

31st & Battalion Avenue

Fort Hood, TX, 76544

You can Visit our website at:

www.hood.army.mil/resiliencycampus

155 of 365 "Veparella"

2011-04-12T20:33:00.000-04:00

Veparella is a fantastic interactive art work by Maya Paris, with music by March Macbain. It is located on a sim operated by Santa Barbara City College, Santa Barbara, CA. It floats 1800 meters high in the sky and is well worth your time. Grab the contents of the basket at the landing point, wear the contents and you become a superhero with a very special superpower!

More images, information and a Slurl after the break.

This scissor-happy superheroine, who was unleashed in a freak sewing accident, invites you to join her in a fairytale caper! Put on the free superhero outfit, cast some snippy spells, leap on a thunderapple, kick rogue peas out of bed and spin spiders 'till you're giddy!

Visit Veparella

154 of 365 "The Arcipelagus"

2011-04-11T20:21:00.001-04:00

Enjoy the Summer evening breeze, the rich Forest's scent, the powerful or quiet Sea and all the imagination and comfort it can bring to your eyes and peace to your senses. Take a walk, listen to music or to the Sounds of nature and environment, play with time and sky environmental settings to discover which atmosphere fits you most.
Hidden Treasures and secrets may be found too...

I hope truly you enjoy your stay,
Wishing the Time flows slow for you,
Alia Baroque

More images, information about these lovely islands and SLurls after the break.