soror Nishi

There are plans afoot to start shortly issuing ‘Scenic Regions‘ on the Inworldz grid.

The basic idea is very similar to the old ‘homestead sims’ of Second Life, with the exception that Tranq and co. want to get all the rules and limitations clear and fully understood before they become available.

As far as I have understood an owner of at least one region currently will be able to buy a (up to 8) 5000 prim region for $20 per month to use for non-commercial use, i.e. scenery [as it says on the box]. So, for sailing across water sims, gunfights in forests etc… it will be a great addition to some peoples land holdings.

Fuller details are available on the forum …here (courtesy Jim).

There is a small problem with crazy people in Iwz ….

…some of whom lurk in bushes disguised (badly) as fauna..

Luckily this isn’t a wide-spread problem.

The new rollout of R1733 is now complete and gridwide… discussion of bugs and fixes, again, on the forum … here. The thing is, that even though I don’t understand a lot of this stuff, it is very heartening to know that, slowly but surely, bugs are being identified, hunted down and killed where possible. ["Exterminator!!" was the first thing I heard on awaking on my first day in New York. A strange experience for a Brit]. It is an almost perfect communication line between bug hunters and Us, so simple and yet so far beyond LL’s capabilities. Go figure.

Lots of chat on other blogs about LL and their SLB9, none as good as Botgirl’s, I think. Maybe my SNB5 (5th rezzday) should be a random event … organise-it-and-I-won’t-come, sort of affair.

Oh…as a public service announcement… If there are any creative people looking for a free home with prims in Iwz, get in touch with me as I know of someone who has land and would enjoy a little company … light social interaction for the right candidate.

Time for me to get a creative head on for this last of Jeri’s art fests before the summer …

hmm … if only I had an idea what I was doing, I’d be dangerous.

:))

There is one aspect of cloud computing that fails to get mentioned in the plethora of articles surrounding the various marvels that will rain down on us like manna.

For those living in the States it maybe makes no difference, but there are legal implications of storing your stuff on US-based servers… namely, you are subject to US law…. no matter where you live.

This, combined with the very one-sided extradition treatise, means that, like with the Megaupload saga anyone could be flown off to a US prison on the thinnest of evidence for committing something which is not necessarily seen as a crime in, for example, the UK.     [. com = USA].

Just embedding a video, for example, has now been declared by a federal judge, to be a crime if the copyrights are infringed.

It could be argued that the legal system is just as good in the States as anywhere else but, again, there is a huge difference when it comes to technicalities, sentencing and, most influential, who is doing the heaviest political lobbying.

The movie empires, long a heavy-weight lobby, have a substantial effect on how US law is enforced. As a dying dinosaur it is lashing out in it’s death throws unable to follow the lead of iTunes and other music-related solutions to the problems connected with easy internet access, choosing instead to escalate and legal-napalm everyone they can.

I chose to move my blog to Iceland, partly because I like the existential nature of the name soror Nishi.is and partly as a token protest, partly for green reasons. They are trying to implement a new privacy policy, the IMMI, to protect jounalism. I am not naive enough to believe that Iceland could in fact rebuff a concerted US diplomatic attack, but I don’t plan doing anything bad enough to warrant that.

There is, many might say, no reason to be alarmist, “abide by the law and you have nothing to fear”, however…. the laws are being manipulated as we speak and..there’s the wild card thingy…like drones getting buggy software. Innocence is no protection under the law.

So, be mindful as you upload to the cloud, that you enter US legal space.

:))

There are probably good reasons to class EA in either category and some would probably go further and claim that it is a social marketing tool …

In the Viral Trash corner is the principle problem with all attempts at measuring social media interaction, Klout et al, namely that quantity can be measured, but quality is tricky.

One aspect of the game is to complete ‘missions’, i.e. you are given virtual bucks for retweeting or liking stuff that you normally wouldn’t touch with anyone’s thumb, let alone your own. This, though it may earn a few bucks, does nothing for your virtual credibility …. I am a reformed character in this respect after a few sluttish retweets.

Botgirl actually pointed out the major weaknesses in her lucid article where she names the Devil …

..” Social Network games are a junk food pleasure; endless rows of bottomless bowls of lard-drenched frosted pork rinds. Too lazy to plow the soil of our subconscious, sow the seeds of creativity and feast upon its ripened fruit, we instead stuff our meaning-starved minds with the crackling crunch of gamified pseudo-achievement.”

It is also a complete timewaste… but a bit of fun.

Viewed as Just A Game it has a few things going for it. It requires a bit of thought, a bit of strategy and the forging of very superficial links. If you normally spend some time on social media then it’s probably not gonna cost you anything like as much as, say, SL. It is a game you can play for ‘free’.

As a Social Marketing Tool .. well, there are people who are charged with getting the maximum number of ‘likes’ or followers for their company/client and these people are using the incentives to drive traffic to a particular site or person. Here, however, is the whole problem with Social Media as marketing tool, Likes, Hits, Followers don’t seamlessly convert into sales/cash. Similar to traffic anywhere, your blog, sim or FB page something more has to happen before you convert that into any non-virtual event.

Probably it is beyond my ability to say anything very astute about Social Media Marketing… Marmite has a FaceBook page… but Xmillion Likes isn’t going to get you to eat it if you hate the taste …. and surely, only people on a wage, in an office, bored, would visit… ???

Social Media Marketing, with very few exceptions I believe, is probably the new Emperor’s Clothes.

..but then, what do I know…

:))

…but drowning. Drowning under the weight of Titanic overkill.

The media has gone into a wordy equivalent of a feeding frenzy and every possible boat story (even Time Bandits) and dubious television programme imaginable has plagued me for the last two weeks and shows no sign of abating. “Why Do Ships Sink?” was one which I made sure to miss as it was far too long to simply name the answer to the rhetorical as ”Gravity. Period.”

Every conceivable over-romanticised scenario has been woven into the various versions of life aboard ship ensuring Class, Love, Human Error, Fate, The New Life in the New World and other well worn cliques are all present and accounted for. Dodgy rivets, lack of binoculars, the history of the iceberg, you name it and it’s been on TV … ad nauseam.

Now there is an interesting side to this preoccupation with drowning, it’s a Jungian archetype connected to the Unconscious overwealming Consciousness, and in itself a psychological phenomenon … not discussed, of course. The Hubris connected to an unsinkable ship, or any manmade object (earthquake-proof building) which is claimed to ‘beat’ Nature is bound to fail at some point to some peoples surprise [not mine]. The Greek myths are full of sea gods wreaking havoc, it was a sort of hobby with them … but that’s too classical to be on TV (which execs think is watched only by amoeba-like intelligences).

Those who read my musings on a regular basis may have noted before my distaste for themed art gallery shows but these pale into insignificance when compared to mass media events, like the Titanic and, even more terrifying, the prospect of the Jubalympics [the sitcom "2012" is a Must See in my book] which will outstrip the cooking programmes and the This-Idiot-Has-No-Talent type of shows on TV for all of the summer.

I do have to admit though that the All Time Low has been reached in a programme called Man vs. Food, a situation where what is on the plate has a higher IQ than the humans involved…. hmmm .. there are quiz programmes which come close “How many heads do you have?” [multiple choice] “Is it One, Two or…Three?”

My other pet hate, while I’m ranting, is the fascination with seeing people cut up in hospital while I’m trying to eat my supper… what is this obsession that a percentage of the population has with operations? Are we a nation of Wannabe Doctors?

I have to agree with Lady Bracknell “ Well, I must say, Algy, that I think it is high time that Mr. Bunbury made up his mind whether he was going to live or die. This shilly-shallying with the question is absurd! “

I guess I have to stop watching TV while I eat …. could give me high blood pressure and end with me starring in my own melodrama … yikes!

:))

{EAV:5171ccb443eeb35e}

Just ignore this post, it’s me upgrading my EA status ..:))

I had to remake the canopy on my sculpture, it just wasn’t up to scratch as I said before… so I remade the mould using a 4 inch drainage pipe and filled it with silicon which seemed to work well. It looks a little like an alien I know…

I was happy with the results, the shape was much better and, although I had a few bubbles to fill, the colour blending in the resin should fit better with the overall scheme.

I hope to finish some aspects of the base over the next week and will post some photos of that too.

In InWorldz the Mad Hatters Art Fest has been busy. Lots of live music events which have been very well attended.

This one, last night was Russell Eponym playing guitar and singing… a good night.

I know Jeri Rahja has been putting as lot of work into these art fests and there is another one due before a sort of summer recess .. “Express Yourself”… details to follow.

I got involved with Empire Avenue this week which is unusual for me as I normally shun games, but this one is a bit like Klout With Cash and it appeals to my old interest in stocks and shares. I’ve been enjoying it.

On the SL front..well, I haven’t been there for a while, it seems like Marketplace is still a mess… so nothing new there then…

I did read something very much worth passing on tho, thanks to someone’s Tweet, can’t remember who… it’s a quote from Ira Glass who is, apparently, a radio presenter. He may be good or bad, I have no idea, but what he has to say on this is sound..

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners. I wish someone had told me.

All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple of years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase; they quit.

Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know it’s normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you have to finish one piece. It’s only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take a while. It’s normal to take awhile. You just gotta fight your way through.”

Well, I thought it is always good to remember that there is a large difference between vision and technique…. The fact that I am my own harshest critic is because I have an inkling of my potential, but there’s no point being unrealistic.

Perfection is in the mind, not in the atomic world.

Matter is a tricky chap.

:))

Those in power in the US are more than slightly annoyed. Their super computer is currently only the third largest in the world after Japan and China, and this is not a situation that they are pleased about. After all, the world’s greatest super power should have power-coordinated hardware to match their egos.

So, in order to rectify this poor situation the NSA has got a nice building plot in Utah to erect a huge monument to national stupidity, called the Utah Data Centre…. full details thanks to Wired … here.

Every boring conversation about everything will be recorded and stored, probably forever, in this shrine to paranoia at a substantial cost to the tax payer. The electricity bill alone will be in the order of $40 million which is even more than my utility bills.

This is of topical interest to me as a UK tax payer as our Deputy Prime Minister has recently come under fire for suggesting that we do the same here….i.e. record everything. Our government has done a U-turn, currently, and promised all sorts of safe-guards that anyone with more than 5 brain cells knows is all lies. The truth is that in this the US is more honest than UK’s power crazy fools. Probably Mr FaceBook was correct when he said that privacy is a thing of the past… he knew more than we did when he said it.

Interestingly enough though there have been a few comments in the media pointing to the fact that George Bush’s statement after Twin Towers than “If you aren’t with us you are against us” (i.e. if you don’t agree with me then you are terrorists) is starting to wear a bit thin. It seems like the days when anything was accepted if it was labelled “anti-terrorist” maybe be fading. Certainly the anti-paedophile card isn’t used so often as it was to justify the erosion of our rights.

Anyway.. yottabytes and petaflop sound suspiciously like Douglas Adams was involved in the whole project …. and maybe white mice are running the show… who knows…

They say that there are tiny amounts of gold suspended in sea water….. and similarly there may be tiny amounts of National Security Gold suspended in The Great Email/Mobile Sea amongst cat talk, new shoes and everything else  [... doubtful though as, really speaking, though, only the stupidest of terrorists would email stuff to each other]  The difference is, however, that the The Email Sea is growing exponentially and I. for one, think this is an Information Escalation that, although seemingly logically, approaches, and surpasses the absurd.

I like to think that, after years of building, recording and sifting, they too will wait with hushed breath as the new Deep Thought spouts out the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything Terrorist…

“Hello Mr. President…. Yes,… it is 42..”

:))

I’ve had one of those weeks. Not really anything mega, nothing like a Whiskey week, but a load of minor annoyances and irritations. A touch of flu, bruised coccyx, burnt my tongue…just a series of crap. I have suddenly become very busy with the gardening and this is the major reason why my virtual absence has been noted and remarked on…. but this is very welcome as the 1st of April is a day when quarterly, six month and annual bills for house and car cascade though my letter box and drag $1500 out of my account before I blink. So, it’s all good.

I have been working towards a new canopy for my sculpture too as I was not very happy with the original. The beeswax former I used with the current offering seems to have tinted the clear resin, much to my surprise, and it has a sort of Old Nicotine hue which is not ideal. So I have finally finished rebuilding the mould after a few mistakes, oversights and general cock-ups …. and I’m now ready to pour a new experimental colour mix. ooooooo…slight trepidation. I actually think that if my heart is in my mouth as I do something then it must be good. If I have no idea how/if something is going to work then it must be ‘stretching’ the limits a bit.

Unsatisfied with the base of the sculpture, I have been redoing that too…so…anyway that’s probably why I’m a bit absent. My new deadline is May the 31st… plenty of time to get a good photo done.

It hasn’t escaped my notice that a bit of heated debate has been going on around Maria’s suggestions for improvements to InWorldz although there is no way I am going to read through the 100+ comments that ensued. Maria has a perfect right to her opinions even though apparently her facts were somewhat wrong (I don’t pride myself on my research, which is normally nearing zero, either) and there will always be advocates of different forms of grids and interaction.

[I don't actually want to get into the whole debate here as it's been more than thoroughly discussed. Personally I favour a slow, methodical, secure approach to new whistles and bells having experienced for years (in SL) the total chaos that comes from not building on solid foundations and just slapping a new feature on top of rotting code i.e. I like Iwz]

Apart from the obvious relevance of the blog title to the date, it has crossed my mind how much over the last X years I have developed a sort of Emotional Waterproofing. Crap hits the fans [ha!] and life is full of people and events that seem to be Out To Get You even when you know that compared to some people’s lives you are actually in clover. More and more, though, I seem to be able to shrug it all off and think… OK, people don’t like me/what I do/what I say …. so what? I know, when I look in the mirror how well or poorly I’ve done.

Opinions are opinions … and basically worth little. I once witnessed a person coming into the house saying “it’s raining outside” to which a person sitting by the fire said”I don’t agree”. That sort of sums up my feelings about other people’s opinions.

The death of the Old King is an ancient Alchemical archetype not unrelated to the Ego stepping aside so the self can take it’s place and the hero hanging from the tree is a very old myth [Sir James Frazer and The Golden Bough] but only Monty Python has managed to change Hero Myth to Life Style Advice…

Have a great week end.

:))

I really appreciate the fact that VWs give so many a chance to discuss, in a fumbling sort of a way, the concept of identity.

Identity was the first thing that drew me, seems like many years ago, to Botgirls blog and then to Lalo. Whiskey has also very good points to make in any discussion apart from her amazing sense of humour. Lalo’s blog has attracted a multitude of different comments, mostly with very different opinions.

For those of you who haven’t followed, the question is whether the disclosure of RL identity alters your perception of an avatar positively, or negatively, or whatever…

I like the fact that there is such a diversity of opinion and that there is no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ or even, ‘fashionable’ guideline … everyone has their own take on the situation.

Personally, and excuse me if I have blogged this before, I do not really care much about who did what, more about what they did… let me explain. If I read a book, for example, I am totally uninterested in the author. I do not read the dust jacket. I actually have a real talent for forgetting actors names… Jack Sparrow is Jack Sparrow and a great guy… the actor’s name escapes me for the most part and who they marry and where they live is of zero interest to me. That is obviously an uncommon standpoint compared to the mass celeb culture of today, but it is true.

I am, however, totally focused on the art, the product, the manifestation of what someone does. A good book I will not forget, a great piece of art I never forget, but whether the writer or artist was a mass murderer, racist, paedophile or not is of no major interest to me whatsoever. I judge by result…. and look no further, mostly. To put this in a real context… there was much discussion at one time about Michael Jackson, [a Virtual Identity in that I had never met the person only the virtual reports of his existence]… to me he made some great music, did some great videos and could dance. I don’t need to form a judgement about his moral fibre, I just want to dance to his music. If I only listened to the music of saints I would be disappointed.

So, for me there is an almost total separation between the virtual and the real, and I like it that way.

Now, it is true that I may be curious about the RL identity of a very good friend, but so far this hasn’t happened. The one person I met in RL, Pixi Cosmos, will always be Pixi Cosmos, just as she always calls me soror. That reality is stronger for me than a family-endowed name.

This has recently become quite real for me in that I have to submit my RL work for consideration in RL shows. I use my name, soror Nishi, that is the name of the artist who designed the work… might sound weird, but that is how I see it. For soror Nishi, the organic/atomic world is only a virtual reality, her real reality is Inworldz and SL…

… but I’m happy to accept anyone’s opinion on the subject, just…. don’t send me your photo.

I forget where people live even…. and will almost certainly forget a ‘real’ name within two hours.

:))

For those of you who know the work of Alizarin Goldflake, and for those that don’t, I can thoroughly recommend a visit to Dividni Shostakovich’s brilliant sim called Split Screen…. SLurl http://slurl.com/secondlife/Beleza/37/219/1501

Davidni has shown some very impressive artists there over the past while and has Blue Tsuki showing next door to Aliz this month.

Some snaps… just to wet your appetite…

Aliz is a texture queen who makes the most amazing digital drawings. More details of her piece on her site… here…. and details of her RL work on her RL site….here.

The opening party is on Sunday…check her blog for details.

:))