Jeri Rahja has sponsored this last art fest of the season which will be opening on Friday I believe…I’ll post the exact details as I get them… The photos are of my contribution…

There will be a little break over the summer from a stream of art fest which have regularly kept InWorldz artists busy for a good while and which have been seen by many of the regular folk here as well as people who have come in from other grids especially.

Wizard Gynoid‘s geomathematical wonders, the E8 in particular, have been posted on Prim Perfect …here. For anyone who hasn’t seen this new incarnation of this staggering [by any and every standard] construction … it is a must see. The scripting machine, commonly known as Phlox, has been able to deal with the rezzing of this huge sculpture and it’s steady rotation with no noticeable lag. This is a measure of Tranq’s great skill and thorough work with the coding. If you haven’t seen Zauber’s test of Phlox, it is worth reading even if some of it goes over your head (it did mine) … it shows this superior code to be factual and not just anecdotal…..here.

Aliz has an update on her blog which I would have mentioned before if I had been more blog-active than I have been of late… here. Her rebuild of Alizarine Lakes promises to be totally amazing and I will keep you all up to speed on that.

For my own news I have submitted my sculpture for consideration or rejection at the Mall Galleries… will hear their final views out in June sometime…

…and, playing Empire Avenue, which I am, if anyone has spare Klout to give, I welcome them gladly..:))

…and a final note… congratulations to InWorldz … when I logged on today the region count was 1002.

Have a good week

:))

He stopped short of admitting that Darwin’s latest work (1888) on Evolution should replace all Creationist teachings in schools, but his realisation that same sex couples can fall in love and marry is maybe the first step towards the United States of America becoming a secular state.

Well, in a week that leaves me struggling to find a new definition of surreal, Obama’s decision to belatedly join the 20th century was the least interesting.

Europe has been groaning under the weight of Election News. The high point for me was Professor Pongoo beating a Lib Dem candidate in Edinburgh council elections. Penguin power prevails… [great avi].

The French election was just boring, no-one here was interested, and the Greek anti-everything movement was trying to find other anti-everything parties to form a coalition with…. kinda oxymoronic really… the bookies are betting 4/6 that they’ll pull out of the Euro. The crap newspapers are talking about cheap holidays in Greece as their take on the story.

But I think this pales a bit in comparison to the Bum Bomb, or Butt Bomb, I guess, if you are in the US.

Exploding underpants stories unconnected to hot Madras curries are few and far between and should be savoured [maybe wrong choice of words there]. Yemen, a place which warns it’s tourists that there is actually no salmon fishing [it's a desert ...duh!] does do a good line in fitted exploding undies.

Just picture the scene… a British double agent walks into a shop and asks for tailor-made exploding panties… Now, does the shop keeper think “Bloody British and their perverted sexual practices” … Are we in Carry On Up the Yemen? It’s a plot that would grace any Peter Sellers inspired spy movie. Wonderful.

So…the definition of what is real and what is surreal becomes a little more misty this week …. not that it was that well defined beforehand.

Have a great weekend…

:))

Yep, very tricky to snap properly…. but as you see I did manage to get some light leaking to the feet too… so the reworked base was worth it.

:))

… but not the photographing.

I need to wait for a dry day, I think, to try photographing it outside. It’s a grey old day and there’s not enough lux to show the colours very well. So I’ll try again later.

Night time photos…obviously I’ll have to wait for this evening…and then I’ll post again.

Anyway…. 7 months after I started I have only to glue some new black felt to the underside and, short-comings and all, submit it to the second Open Show (deadline May the 23rd) for consideration.

So…more proper photos to follow.

:))

My idea is to have it as a collection of my better stuff, eventually … though it all takes time. If you want to pop over and give me a ‘like’ that would be much appreciated, as would any comments on the layout/idea. Maybe it’s a bit of a waste of time, the jury is still out.

About.me is a page which lists all your links to all the stuff you do on the net and I am trying that out too. It just means I can have a single address listing all the stuff I post/share/spam. My page is .. here.

I have also started to put together a Pin page but there’s no point visiting yet as it’s crap still … just not enough hours in the day now that the gardens are all filling with weeds and the grass is growing madly…. oh and the rabbits are breeding like .. they do.

As I have mentioned on FB and Twitter there seems to be something wrong with the little bots that visit my blog, (they all get recorded by my stats) they seem to be a little confused as they have reported back to Klout that I am influencial in Cattle and Piracy … ?? don’t ask, I have no idea. Malaya (where I have never been) and iPad (which I don’t own ) are also amongst my spheres of influence… (around 250,000 page turns and nearly 100k visitors [excluding spyders]).

Meanwhile… back in the ‘real’ world I will be entering Jeri’s art fest shortly now that I have an idea, and I should be putting something up for the UWA prize… details here. I will be turning my attention to that after I submit my sculpture to the Mall Galleries for consideration… photos next week.

Tweenk has been amusing a few of us this last week. It is a twitter linked game that uses your tweets to conquer monsters… almost no sweat is involved. Miso is the boss of the guild. If you wanna join look for the Nyms Guild … it’s full of SLers you probably know.

Join up with your twitter account … here.

In other news Wizard Gynoid has rezzed her E8 as a revolving thingy on InWorldz with a blogpost by Miso Susanowa … here. Sponsored by Jeri Rahja.  17,000 prims rotating and no sign of any lag … another reason we love Iwz.

Botgirl‘s post has a partial answer to my irritation about software updates which I mentioned in my previous post  ‘updates are a conspiracy against the people’ sort of idea. Lack of communication. I never thought I was resistant to change, but ..I am. One time I will do a list of stuff that will never need updating…tho it’s probably been listed already…like scissors, pencil, paper, wheel, spoon ..etc etc. [actually I never will, I'm not a listing sort of person]

…and I did manage to upload some photos which were on my hard drive but not in Flickr, today. I am amazed at how many photos I have of VWs really … all here.

I was recently given this great hat by Tadhq Muirin in InWorldz … not that I usually wear one…

OK… so I’m heading back to Empire Avenue for a while…. I’m still enjoying it though, as Rod Stewart said, “on the stock exchange I’m no threat”..

Have a good weekend.

:))

I hate upgrades, they are a conspiracy against me. Just when I have settled into finding ‘workarounds’ to compensate for the programmes weaknesses…the whole lot gets changed by some Fascist capitalist trying to get some more cash off me…

…and security updates are a monster that needs slaying. How secure does my email have to be? Who is interested? The various agencies read them anyway…

Some sites have pretensions of grandeur too… like someone is gonna hack into my Organic Gardening account and order kilos of bonemeal for themselves at my expense….. who cares?

I have a great problem with the idea of ‘my favourite….’, so when these stupid high security  sites ask me things like… ‘what is your favourite colour?’ I find myself pondering…
Do they mean colour of walls in an interior design scheme?
Do they mean clothing?
In a rainbow?
or should I pick a random answer that I am certain to forget in two weeks?

I was recently asked to name my favourite car (one I had owned) by Macs security idiots or… “what was your least favourite car?”  …what is this? a motoring survey?

Now even when people have said…’oh, it’s your birthday, let me cook you your favourite meal…” I am stumped. As far as I am concerned all colours look great in the right circumstances as all food tastes great if it’s cooked well and presented nicely (except cucumbers) …. and cars? I drive them til they die. End of!

What next?..”Which is your most useful body part?” “Which hour of the day do you like most?” “Which of your teeth is your favourite?”

Mac, however, went one stage further and asked me the name of my favourite teacher. My god…
…and another “What was the name of the street where you grew up as a child?” Duh…I lived in the country (several actually) and there are no street names…. do they really think I store that sort of data in my brain? I have a limited capacity for crap information… I don’t remember the name of any teacher. [“now get off my lawn!”]

You need to get asked concrete information… so..I found one question … “Where were you on New Years Eve at the Millenium i.e. 2000” … now, although I didn’t actually know, after all that was 12 years ago and it was hardly a life-changing event, I did ask a few people and came up with an answer.

It’s a shame they didn’t ask me for my least favourite question…. yes, that’s right ..”what is your favourite…”

:))

So, although it may seem a little trite to sum up my experiences in a short blog post … there is no point posting this if I don’t at least try…

Obviously there is the (maybe over-romanticised) issue of friends. I have met some great people and some complete nutters … but this is not confined to the grids which I call Virtual Worlds as people have met and grown fond of each other in chat rooms, and before that as pen pals [for those who remember the pen]. So, making friends is maybe not the unique thing with VWs even if the  intensity of ‘face to face’ real time contact is of a different order to that of chat rooms or via an exchange of letters.

Friends are one of the main reasons for me continuing to log on, that is certain, along with the other amazingly useful feature. Only in VWs can I afford to have a studio large enough to accommodate my imagination.

The studio (region) I have in InWorldz allows me to create environments people can move around in. I do not imagine I will ever be able to afford even a pale imitation of that in ‘real life’.

This last attribute brings me to the essence of what VWs have done for me and how I have benefited from these over the last five years.

It is easy to limit one’s vision to the achievable. A form of self censorship grows in us as we mature into adults and our vision gets limited to avoid disappointment and to fit in with The Possible…. thus we become more social and less crazy. It is a shame but it is a natural part of the Individual vs Society compromise that makes our lives livable. We lose a child-like madness and become more sensible.

There are, however, far fewer restrictions in the virtual realm and thus the need to self censor weakens.

I have, thanks to VWs, become a little crazier over the last few years and hope to continue down this path.

This is the gold of VWs.

:))

The underlying basis of a good deal of the report was the idea that by ‘importing’ ‘culture’ from the west Qatar would lose it’s own identity and therefore it’s own culture.

What a lot of arrogant rubbish. Rich nations, kings and queens have, for hundreds and thousands of years, imported artists of all media to visit and play at their courts, to improve and add to the native cultures of the regions. This is a long tradition.

We were pig farmers (UK) for hundreds of years wandering around in the forests and the Americans were a bunch of religious fanatics who left so that they could persecute non-believers in a New World. Luckily we both ‘imported’ culture.

The idea that adding another influence would eliminate the existing culture is such rubbish.   The unspoken cultural arrogance underlying the report was matched only by the totally false and very common idea that the USA and Europe have the best democratic system in the world and that all versions of democracy, whether they be Chinese or Arabic, are pale, inferior systems which are open to criticism etc.

Now, it is normal for small minded people to have a firm belief that their country is ‘God’s Own Country’ but that is like a know-it-all who never learns anything… because, by definition, he doesn’t need to. The West is, more and more, that know-it-all.

To question the human rights beliefs of another country when we use drones to execute “suspected terrorists” without any trial or defense is just outrageous. We stink … well, our governments do, at least, and we have no right whatsoever to point the finger at anyone.

You wouldn’t have to be a genius to improve on what we get delivered as ‘democracy’ … it’s about time we started listening instead of swallowing the lies we get fed daily by our manipulated media.

[end of rant]

Have a great weekend

:))

But seriously folks, as I’ve been watching paint dry this last few weeks as my remedial works on the sculpture slowly grind to some sort of conclusion I have, of course, been wondering what I should tackle next.

This project has taught me, amongst other things that a larger sculpture is going to take forever so I better be clear about what I would really like to see in the Real world next.

Currently there are two contestants …

This one is the Foxglove Orchid and I could build it about 4 or 5 foot high..

and this one is the 68th Ancient One…

Now, the tree would have to be at least 6 foot if not 7 for it to work. Whether or not I get a workshop space to make this in is really dependent on me selling the current sculpture in London, so the decision may be a logistic/financial one.

Still…I’d be interested in hearing what some of you think … or any other suggestions of course.

It may still be that I do not use a virtual tree as my model but make a Real Life tree based on RL prims rather than trying to imitate my Virtual work… thoughts to keep me interested while the country drowns

Have a good week

:))

I can’t imagine how many posts there are out there in the blogospere telling you/me how to write a blog post that draws hundreds of hits etc etc yawn yawn.. Everything has already been discussed in minute detail. It’s a bit like someone inventing a fridge and then 100,000 people blogging their opinions about how it works and 500,000 people ‘sharing’ those posts. All I want is cold milk… period.

Unlike a fridge, though, Social Media can and is ‘gamed’. Empire Avenue is a game that uses social media as its playground which simply means that you and I, using Twitter, for example, are bombarded by loose footballs while trying to go about our business.

My score on Empire Avenue would be enhanced if I were to set up a FB page and a blog on “The History of the Slipper’ and another on “Fun Games to Have With Your Hamster” …mind you, they might already exist. The hamster one would be a lot more fun the “How To Use Social Media for ….. [insert any word like Marketing, Sales, Organisation, traffic, money .... not one post on how to get social media to wash the floor].

Anyway, I am partly guilty; today I uploaded a couple of my vids to Google+ (never visit me there as I use it as a dumping ground for media trash … sort of like a virtual landfill site for poor-taste media terrorism)…. and then… don’t you hate it when your normal software gets an upgrade… In this instance it was ScreenFlow who wanted another $30 off me and tried to lock all my old vids until I paid up…. a sort of upgrade hostage situation. I worked my way round it eventually.

As I may have tweeted already this week I am growing webbed feet after all this drought-inspired rain, but I haven’t had as bad a week as others.

Home Secretary  Teresa May comes to mind…  a woman who, like me, doesn’t know what day of the week it is … she just gets paid more than me… and she’s a git.

The King of Spain didn’t do much better this week . He thought posing with a rifle beside the corpse of an elephant would be fine for an upstanding head of the WWF (that’s the World Wildlife Fund rather than the Windows Workflow Foundation) and got his photo taken … nice one. Nearly as stupid as the Taliban fighter,  Mohammad Ashan, who turned up at an army check-point in Afghanistan with a wanted poster with his face on it. He wanted the $100 reward.  In his defense he obviously didn’t read, so…anyone could have made that mistake, anyone with an IQ lower than the poster, that is.

Here’s hoping for better weather next week, though…I’m not holding my breath. In this part of the world it used to be called Blackthorn Weather as it often happens when the blackthorn is in flower (very pretty it is too)…

so…slosh, slosh… have a great weekend…

:))