Wonderful paintings on display at a virtual gallery

Four Yip's paintings at the gallery

Four Yip's paintings at the gallery

One of the websites that takes priority for having a button on my Firefox browser bar is New World Notes.  Here’s one of Wagner Au’s postings on artwork created by Four Yip.  Tonight, I went to visit the gallery where her work is on display.  It’s lovely, and I would recommend it.  The paintings are well done, and have character to the people/avatar’s that she has painted.

My favourites are the lady with the cigarette, and one that I think is of Torley Linden.  She’s even given him the pink/green eyeballs in Torley’s favourite colours.

If you want to take a look at the gallery, here’s the link.

You can also see her art work on her Flikr feed.

Coming out of hiding :-)

Me and Anna at Chouchou

I’ve been down for a good few months, and progressively just ran away into playing games.   First it was Darklife within the world of Second Life, but then that gave me a taste for a fuller online game based in a virtual world of sorts.  I chose Rappelz, and I’m still playing that, but there is just no way I want to leave SL or my SL friends behind.  Finally I got to see the gender therapist provided by the National Health Service here in the UK – after 15 months FFS!  So I’m picking up a bit and seem to be getting somewhere.

Here’s a few photos of me and my friend Anna Zwiers catching up recently.  The last bit of my SL land has sold, and for now I’m going to rent from Anna, next door to her main plot.   I’m still getting into things, and have been forgetting to take photos, even while we’re running around some simulation of Japanese demons tearing up a city and torturing poor ickle people.

Speaking of other virtual worlds/MMOs

Speaking of other virtual worlds, and particularly game based ones, here’s a video from JellyBean Madison. She tends to specialise in making SL dance videos and celebrating her SL life on her blog, but here she’s making a little foray into World Of Warcraft.

Also, here’s a trailer for the game Rappelz, thta me and Anna Zwiers are going to check out. It’s free, but I’ve read that it may cost money to teleport to different zones, and that weapons cost real money. We shall see!  Original YouTube page.

Then there’s this one that comes to mind.  FlyFF (Fly For Fun) looks interesting, just for the fact that it’s cute and involves solo or team based battling.  Original YouTube page.

And indeed, here’s a sci-fi MMO called Anarchy Online.  Here’s a video from a guy explaining how to choose your avatar on Anarchy Online.

A handddddbagggg!

If you don’t get the title, then you’re not familiar with Oscar Wilde’s play ‘The Importance of Being Earnest,’ which funnily enough I went to see again only in the last couple of weeks.  My best friend Anna Zwiers IM’d me while I was playing DarkLife this morning, and gave me a notecard for some 5L hair with a flower in it.  I got the hair and another 70L style that I like (in above pictures), and then Anna came over.  While we were chatting, someone hovered past in A HANDBAG AVATAR!  The woman in question was Volflo Writer, and clearly she must like to shop – having become a handbag and all.  I asked Anna if she had seen her, and we ended up chasing round the mall to go look at her.  Volflo kindly posed for us for a moment before going off to see a friend.

It was really nice to meet up with Anna, and we then went off to see Animania, a place with scripted, animated sculpty animals for your land, and another shop selling pets.  We were chatting about a friend who’s thinking of leaving SL and going on World of Warcraft instead, and then we got chatting about possible gaming based virtual worlds/Massively Multiplayer Online Games.  I am in no way contemplating leaving SL, as it is just a fabulous world.  However, we’re going to start checking out the likes of Rappelz and maybe World Of Warcraft.  I also fancy checking out other free MMOs, and I have a list here to look through.

Lost in Darklife

My friend Anna Zwiers recently introduced me to the game of DarkLife, within Second Life.  It’s safe to be said that I’m addicted, and I have been rather lost there for the last week.  Rather stressd IRL, and it’s escapism without a proper balance right now.  Still, it’s a very good laugh.

In pictures we have me and Shion about to enter the graveyard, and then below Slayen (Evil Bunny), a dark mage taking on an Ether Warlock.

I haz yr bucket!

Taken in the sea outside of the new location for the Gnubie Store. If you don’t get the joke, then you need to check out

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2007/01/14/i-has-a-bucket/

icanhascheezburger.com/?s=bucket

slurl.com/secondlife/Powder%20Mill/153/116/14

Brief thoughts on the increased supply of land in SL

Linden Labs have announced that they are going to increase the supply of land by opening another continent and they are going to reduce the price of buying private islands. Their announcement got over 130 comments before they closed comments on the blog post, and they closed it in less than a day. The Massively news service reported on this also here.

There is a lot of moaning from big land owners/landlords who will inevitably see the price of their investments fall. However, it may help to encourage a lot more people to buy modest plots to put a single house on. The big worry though is tier fees. I know some people that have bought their modest plots and indeed a few that went in together and are now selling up. It’s hard to afford the land, and particularly the land tiers, and I’m even asking myself, do I need all of my land? Over the hill from me in the neighbouring sims of Pavonia and Nolidae etc, I recently saw big swathes of land up for sale at about half the price that I paid for my land. Then again, my land in Sabre seems to hold value a bit more, because of it’s nice protected location.

I would be a bit miffed to make a big loss on my land if I sold some or all of it, but then if more people get to own land in SL, then I’m up for a broader, happier community. I do wonder if Linden Labs are just trying to bring in more tier fees to increase their own sustainability, and are prepared to do so to the detriment of land barons’ own profitability. But then again, a more sustainable Linden Labs company makes for a more sustainable SL in the broad sweep of things.

If a few selfish real life economists manage to talk us into the threatened RL recession, and end up making a profit out of market turmoil, then this is bound to have an effect on the SL land market. Simply, if you don’t have the money to pay your bills so much, SL land becomes a luxury that you can’t afford. What would Linden Labs do if they created all of this new land and then there was say a 20% increase in land that was vacant at any one time? Would they close sims, and concentrate people on remodelled ones, saying we’ll move you there for no extra charge? Surely, running all of those extra servers that actually run that new continent costs Linden Labs extra money, and their sustainability would be hit big time by running this with a hight vacancy rate.

One final reflection, and I can’t find reference to this anywhere in those blog postings, is the issue of maybe making land that bit better for land owners of all sizes. At what point will the advance in the power of computers make it possible for Linden Labs to process more activity on land. Primarily I mean, upping the prim count that you can have on land. When I bought my first house, I got a nice big villa and it ended up with rooms that needed to be filled with furniture, and furniture eats prims big time. I now have a house that is by no means low prim, but it doesn’t need all of that furniture to make it look nice. Should Linden Labs keep focussing on expanding more of the same thing, or on a mixture of more land with land being more productive/useful for everyone?

I’m pondering on just where the balance lies in all of this. Balancing the interests of our gracious hosts, Linden Labs, without whom we wouldn’t have SL; the interests of big land owners, and the interests of those that might make the plunge for a modest plot if only land were cheaper to buy. Also, consolidating the experience of your average modest land owner by making land that bit more pleasurable and useful. I do hope that they get the balance right, in the long term.

The cave underneath Tesla – those crazy girls!

Giggle, I like the Tesla store, and Tesla Miles was the first person, if I remember rightly, that really got the sculpty hat and shoes thing going. Her business took off and she moved to her own sim, with her partner Lyanis Sin, and this seems to have given them a bit of freedom to play just for the fun of it.

There are more places to explore in their sim, that I’m not including in this post. There’s an underground railway station with wacky adverts and graffiti all over the place, courtesy of wotsisname – the guy who did the hobo sims. Then there’s the bizarre tunnel thingy that has you fly loop-dee-loop until you find things like a spot to sit and chat, with a horses head lying there for some reason! And a dance club at the top of a tower block, and and. Lots to explore.

The picture above is of the cave underneath the sim. The cave roof has been ruptured, maybe by the giant sculpty robots that stalk the streets outside, or maybe by the JETPLANE that is crashed in the lake, in said cave. Oh, and then there’s the pirate galleon, er….with a tree spirit hiding in one of it’s cabins. A tree spirit from the Japanese anime film Princess Mononoke (Mononoke Hime). The plane has a picnic rug and basket, for you to sit and chat, and the galleon has a burnt mattress with 62 sex poses. Crazy shit, and I like it!!

In the pictures above you see me standing on the shore, by some poison barrels, tainting the romanticism of the gorgeous prim light pouring in through the ceiling, onto the windlight rendered water. I love the cave texture also. The other picture has me and my friend Anna Zwiers, on board the galleon.

Here’s the SLURL to teleport to Tesla. You’ll have to find your own way down to the cave, and that’s part of the fun of SL – exploring:

slurl.com/secondlife/Tesla/32/82/54

New facelight for Windlight being given away in Tesla

Tesla Miles is giving away a cool facelight, that has been updated for Windlight. It’s by the lucky chairs, along with the really nice free Elise2 Mary Jane sculpty heels. Here’s the link to teleport to her store, and while there do check out the fab sculpty shoes and hats.

slurl.com/secondlife/Tesla/32/82/54

If you want to look at others, you may want to check out the freebie facelight for Windlight in BareRose Tokyo.

Oh shit, just don’t mess up my hair

Last night I visited Deadshot with my friend Anna Zwiers and her RL brother. It’s a zombie combat area, which I found on this blog post by Garth Goode (SLURL included there)

slwtf.com/2008/03/30/killer-zombies-from-japan/

This photo belies the fact that I kicked ass in the combat zone, as these zombies are just here for posing outside the store. Goddam, I’m so tough, when I chop onions, I make the onions cry