Kim's Virtual Experiences

2012-01-02T23:03:00.000-05:00

Here's a sample flickr badge with pics that have been tagged "anonymous" - problem is thinking of the kinds of keywords people might use

www.flickr.com

and here's one for the keyword lulzsec

www.flickr.com

More photos or video tagged with lulzsec on Flickr

2012-01-02T22:37:00.002-05:00

Here is an attempt to use the customize search engine generator from Google - not sure if the code goes in a post or in the template

and here is a google news widget

Late October Snowstorm: Storify edition

2011-10-28T22:45:00.001-04:00

Newest Storify Experiment

2011-10-28T22:04:00.001-04:00

Embedding some google stuff

2011-10-14T23:07:00.000-04:00

Embedded Presentation

Google News

YouTube Video News

JohnPathfinderLester's Channel - YouTube

2011-10-12T23:12:00.000-04:00

JohnPathfinderLester's Channel - YouTube: 5 minute tutorial on Jibe

Jibe is a tool to build 3d worlds and embed them in web pages and Facebook. It uses Unity 3D for the front end. They connect to all kinds of databases for user registration. It looks pretty cool. You can host the world on Reaction Grid or on your own server (that would be more secure)

Anybody using this tool? web based MMO tool maybe? Might be a nice low cost tool for game development in school

'via Blog this'

A look back at Burn2 2011 using Storify

2011-10-07T22:38:00.002-04:00

My second Storify attempt...what do you think?

Kim as part of the camp theme

2011-10-05T11:51:00.001-04:00

I normally dress pretty conservatively in SL - not a lot of low cleavage or high cut skirts

But for the burn..decided to go crazy...and a bit scary.Check out that clinging boyfriend! The skirt is great flexi prims textured like spiderwebs. There are tons of attachments - flowers, a necklace, a skull/flower headpiece

I'll Die for You Dress by Vita's Boudoir and female metal skin by Yabusaka

Camps near ours at Burn2

2011-10-05T11:19:00.001-04:00

There are such amazing builds at Burn2. Part of it is folks using sculpties *no mesh this year* and part is that we can use the new megaprims that LL introduced. So huge prims at low cost. As you can see in these pictures..people made good use of both!

Art Cars & Playa Bikes at Burn2

2011-10-04T14:44:00.002-04:00

When i watched the live stream from burning man this year, one thing i noticed was all the bikes and how that just looked like the perfect way to zoom around the playa. Then there were the art cars - dragons and a tardis and a space shuttle...people are so freaking creative.

There are bikes and cars and the Burn2 event as well. Whooo Hoo. I blogged earlier about how we made cars and bikes. Here are some pics of me riding around the playa now that it's all open and full of stuff to run into and drive over *chuckles*

A side shot of my coffin car. Aren't the bat wings cool. Marc found these - they were full perm freebies
An inside shot of my coffin car - Turns out it's not quite balanced..gotta think about that

My teapot car..I like how the shine makes it look a little metallic

My teapot car from a distance

My marry-go-round car..the wall rotates (that's the go-round part)

Our Camp Got Finished for Burn2

2011-10-02T12:37:00.002-04:00

We got finished. Whoo. Three levels with graphics and some freebies

Problems...there are a few

1. lag lag lag...takes a while for the textures to load, it's hard to move around, and music streams can't be heard by everyone at the party. SL has got to do something so events can attract more than a couple of people without everyone being stuck in lag soup.

2. Most people so far have been paying attention to the artists and scheduled music. I understand that attention..the art is gorgeous and well worth seeing. We had fun building...and that's all that's really important.

The first floor is the rites of committal...a passage tomb filled with items found in tombs in different cultures. There is a statue of Anubis, images of modern funerals, Indian cremation pyres, and Ghanese art coffins.

The second level is rites of commendation...items and images of things we do to help the dead move on to or have a happier afterlife. There is voodoo and a senet game and images of the weighing of the souls by Anubis.

The third level is rites of commemoration...celebrations in honour of the dead. We have a family ancestor altar and images from the Day of the Dead and Asian festivals honouring the dead, including the Japanese Obon festival's ceremony with lit floating lanterns. There's a reincarnation wheel - click on it to see what you will come back as.

Brewery Build-Off

2011-09-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

Today was the second annual Build-Off at the Builder's Brewery in SecondLife and I did the first heat (out of four). They judge on MOnday & Tuesday and (hopefully) the winner is announced on Wednesday. And all the entries will be featured on http://primbusters.com/

Here are some pictures from my heat. I took them...so mostly my stuff *chuckles*

Here's a big overview of all the building platforms. I had the platform at the bottom of the picture. I like not having people too close as I zoom around checking out the build

And this is the basic sculpty shape they gave us. Each heat gets a different shape so it's always a surprise. Last time mine looked like a vertebrae. This year...it's like a twisted column, twisted piece of toffy...twisted something or other.

This was the second or third idea...I threw out those ideas and went with a sort of prim fountain. At one point I tried adding water like a regular fountain..but it looked kind of silly and in the time I had I didn't want to dink around with it.

See the clock...i was mostly done with an hour to go...and it took me an hour to finish up - dinking with textures and adding the "park"...and I came up with the idea for the "puddles"

The mostly finished product..long view and closer view. The time zoomed by..it's amazing how fast 2 hours disappears. I called it Puddles in the Park.

I popped over to look at Heat 2 - here's a pic of the sculpty they got..kind of looks like a fireplace. I like the sculpty we got in the first heat better. This is the same platform I used...hopefully their project won't be as cool as mine.

Playa Aesthetics

2011-09-22T09:40:00.002-04:00

Burning Man takes up a big chunk of the playa. 50,000+ people, trucks, supplies, porta-potties, stages, radio station...it's a town..a city. That can be seen from space! Check out this image from the GeoEye satellite. Volunteers lay out roads, camp boundaries. They put up lantern stands for night time illumination. They lay cable for sound systems. They set up generators for electricity to keep the ice cold and the coffee hot.

They have this concept at Burning Man - MOOP which stands for Matter Out Of Place. I love that word. We've been playing around with it in between building cars and finding images for our camp. And we came up with the phrase..don't be a party mooper. Mostly because I always forget to clean up after myself when I'm building - bits of cars, stray prims with images are always left laying around when I am working. Would ya believe...I'm an artiste? hmmm..no didn't think you would. I'm just messy.

I found these entries on the Burning Man blog - their Moop Map - so you can check out their efforts to control/eliminate MOOP - http://blog.burningman.com/2011/09/news/moop-map-live-2011/
and
http://blog.burningman.com/2011/09/news/moop-map-live-how-the-map-is-made/

Turns out the playa gets inspected by the Bureau of Land Management and if it isn't MOOP-free, there will be problems with getting permits in the future.

So clean up after yourselves people. No party moopers allowed.

Got Distracted

2011-09-16T21:17:00.000-04:00

I'm supposed to be researching ideas about the afterlife and death in different cultures, looking for images and artifacts. I found a Senet Table in SL (whooo...Thanks Rowena) which the Egyptians used as sort of a model for their afterlife. Marc took some pictures of a tomb and some marble memorials in England. But I need some ideas for what to put in the 2 levels above our tomb cave. Any ideas you can pass along?

But..I got distracted making bikes. Marc had an idea for a rocket car and made a great sculpty before he went on vacation. So I made a texture for it, added some sparks shooting out the back, and made a pose that makes ya look like you're hanging on tight to the rocket. Then I made one that's a surfboard. I put one of our Elvis poses (yes we made poses based on famous photos of Elvis) on it for the driver. They are a hoot to make and I have to admit that they look pretty cool too. I will clean them up, double check all the permissions this weekend and pass them on to the Dept of Mutant Vehicles, the DMV.

Here are a couple of pictures

Check out the galaxy tires..they spin as you ride the bike.

This bike holds two people..the standing driver and a passenger who sits all stretched out on the rear of the bike. It just has regular bike tires...maybe a little retro?

What our camp looks like after a week

2011-09-12T11:01:00.002-04:00

We're playing with our ideas and getting totally intimidated by the other builds around us. There are some amazing graphics and animations

We got our cloud wall going a little better, we're working on our cave shadows, and we have a sign with our camp name. We found an animation for sort of floating in limbo that we're playing with. We're researching traditions and holidays related to death and funerals. Whew..a lot in a week.

Here are some pictures.

A few from the side...still some construction scaffolding in place. You can see the cave, our "limbo" with translucent picture walls, and the start of our clouded "afterlife."

Here's me floating in the the clouded afterlife dome.

The front of the camp. You can see the cave entrance which is now all shadowy and, hopefully, spooky. Actually this is version 2 of the cave. My burn partner Marc totally redid the sculpties for the cave and they look awesome. The cave walls are thinner so there's more room inside. I put up a highway sign with exits for death, limbo and the afterlife - our three levels. Right now there are a lot of things scattered around that will eventually end up inside when we get shadows fixed up. I found some skeleton sculpties and coffins.

Started building

2011-09-07T17:11:00.003-04:00

Here's some pics of our build so far. I do like taking pictures while flying. here's the back. We have a cave..that's the tomb representing death. We have a middle layer..filmy walls with images projected on them..that's limbo. And the top will be a smokey walled space, like being in a cloud..that's the afterlife.

Side view

Front view..with the entrance to the passage tomb

some shots of other builds on the first day

We got our plot! We got our plot!

2011-09-07T14:39:00.001-04:00

I'm doing the happy dance. We got our plot for burning man in SecondLife. WHOOOOOOOO

We have about 3 weeks to get our camp built and figure out what we want to do exactly. it's so exciting.

Ok - here are some pictures. Mostly i wanted to show off how empty the playa is right now so i took some long distance pics.

i'm inside the central camp looking out toward our plot. An artist is building some big strange piece behind us.

here's kind of an ariel shot - you can see the roads/paths between the camps and the mountains in the distance. If you click on the picture you can see me standing in the middle.

Another ariel shot from a different angle looking towards the administration type buildings

and here's me...standing on our rental box. We'd been out in the motorboat..hence the navy & white outfit

One Last ArtCar

2011-09-06T18:27:00.000-04:00

Image by Michael Holden via FlickrThe theme of Burning Man in 2011 is "Rites of Passage"

I made a coffin car, because our camp is looking at death as a rite of passage.

We were joking about cars and i wanted to make a merry go round..then realized that could also be "marry-go-round"...since marriage is a rite of passage

I wanted to build a car where the driver stood still in the middle and the passengers rotated around them.. Well......that made driving tough because the car didn't want to turn to the right when it was rotating to the left.

So..a few adjustments, some tweaking..and here is the latest and greatest version of the Marry-Go-Round. The driver and passengers stand still and the church wall rotates around everybody. I still need to make a veil for the bride

Want to see some cars from Burns past? Check out these pictures: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dmom2k_darwin/tags/dmv/

Slide show of DMV pics

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

The temple burns tonight in RL

2011-09-04T23:55:00.003-04:00

Here's some pics of the real temple as it burned. It was spectacular...i can't imagine what accelerants they put on that wood. It looked like the gas fields on fire in the middle east during the Gulf Wars. (for some pictures of the Man statue burning - because i forgot to take pictures - check out http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelholden/6111738368/in/set-72157627529205924)

So in SL we're partying on DeepHole..the burning man "administrative"sim. that piece of plywood was a media player if you were using LL's viewer 2 which I wasn't.

Art Cars for Burning Man in SecondLife

2011-09-04T14:28:00.000-04:00

Well, it might be a little presumptuous to call my efforts art cars, but there ya go..that's what i'm going to call them. They are art cars for the SecondLife Burning Man (http://www.burn2.org). I hope they will be anyway; I have to submit them to be checked for script errors and terms of service violations.

I built 2 so far...The first, the coffin car, goes with the theme of our camp..death as a rite of passage. My machinima and research buddy, Marc, built a coffin car too; his looks like a 50s souped up drag car with some cool chrome exhaust.

Here are some pictures of my coffin car..that's me laying inside it. There's no steering wheel ..guess you're just "thinking" it around the playa.

My second car is a big teapot on a tray with 2 cushions for passengers to sit on. I got the teapot sculpty files the other day from a Midnight Mania board give away..whoo hoo. I used textures from Chipaholic and Sick Bubblegum. Think about it - a person size teapot = the ultimate never ending cup of tea. And instead of steam (which looked pretty cool), big yellow daisies come out of the spout occasionally.

Here are some pics of this car - i have got to learn to take close up..but check out that playa texture, with dusty car tracks to follow.

Burning Man update

2011-08-21T20:26:00.001-04:00

We'e started working on some ideas for the camp for the SecondLife version of Burning Man. We're also getting involved as volunteers - communication, making clothes, building vehicles, being a ranger. We want to tie in the idea of death as a rite of passage. Hopefully we can collect some data for our research project on virtual memorials. We're going to ask people to leave pictures or written memories of folks that have passed away, put them up on the metal tree, and see how people respond.

Here's the tree - my first idea for it anyway. It has to be made out of stuff that we could conceivably truck to the playa and erect there. I found these trusses in my inventory. Originally there were rusty metal, but i'm thinking wood might be better, lighter. The idea is that there is a central trunk - the vertical truss. And the roof trusses are the branches..right now there are 2 of them. My burn buddy Marc, who I made machinima with, thinks he can write a script to let people "touch" the branches and they will rock for a little bit. I'd like that - interactive is cool (so are bow ties and fezzes, but that's another show)

We've been looking at images of death and funerals and the afterlife...trying to get some ideas for the camp. We may put some of these images around at the burn camp..to get people talking and to sort of seed the idea of leaving memories.

Here are a couple of coffins from Ghana

And some other images I found looking around the Smithsonian website

Next Episode of SpyGirl is in the works!

2011-08-21T13:23:00.000-04:00

And here's something we learned....right down notes when you figure out how to do something. At the end of the last episode..spy girl was tied up in the back of Percy the Pliers' van. Now, we can't remember how we got spy girl into that pose. And trying to remember which camera HUDs do what takes some time. So the moral is..dont' wait as long between episodes next time!

Here's a sneak peak of a cliffhanger scene in this episode!

scary new hair

2011-06-13T13:40:00.000-04:00

Not related to machinima or my teaching...I just got a gift of some crazy scary big hair and was moved to take a picture.

and to share it with you all.

Burning Man in SL

2011-06-13T09:40:00.001-04:00

I bought a plot with my machinima buddy, Marc, on the playa for the SecondLife version of Burning Man. We're also in the lottery to win a couple of additional plots. You can check out their webpage at http://www.burn2.org. The image is from their blog to announce the theme...Rites of Passage.

Marc & I previously discussed studying memorials in SL - so one idea for our camp is to look at rites of passage involving death. This idea, of course, put new life in the machinima I was making about death of the human behind the avatar. If we can finish it, we hope to show it at our camp. It depends on how the plots are set up...we might not be able to control the media settings, especially on a little plot. It's a good idea tho.

For me, being in this event is kind of a rite of passage. I've been moving from content consumer to content creator in SL.

I used to make sculptures for me; now I have a store where I put them up for sale along with houses that I build. I'm learning about communicating in different ways in world.
I used to watch machinima, laughing at the Divas and marveling at the art. Now I'm acting in them, recording voices, and writing and directing.
Last year we visited the camps, watched them burn the man - we went as spectators. This year we will be part of the action. This camp will be something we create. We will make things to give away. We will share the "death machinima" , as we call it.

It's still a long time till the event. We don't even get our plots assigned till the end of August! Arggghhh. We need to decide if we're going to volunteer for one of the departments to help during the event. It depends on our plot idea develops. One involves a lot of updating throughout the day and interacting with the people who walk by - that might cut down on the volunteering.

We also discussed making some machinima there at the SL Burning Man. It would be interesting to see what you could record in one take with no editing. Or play around with a news format and have "man on the street" interviews. There will be live performers and street theatre and avatars dressed in their best weird outfits. So a lot of opportunities to shoot and practice editing (for me...Marc is already experienced)

I entered a build-off and discovered my inner archaeologist

2011-06-09T12:59:00.001-04:00

Last weekend the Builder's Brewery had a build-off - - you get two hours and a strange random sculpty ...go build. That was the extent of the directions *laughs* So far no winner announced, but everybody gets a gift certificate to the store at the Builder's Brewery...lots of good textures there!

A lot of people took part in 4 heats over the weekend. Here are a couple of shots of some entries

Here are some pictures of my entry:

Here is the front on view of the piece - a torso on a table with some bones coming out the back, what looks like a spine, and a bits and pieces box. My random sculpty looked like a vertebrae to me..Or a tooth. The name of the piece is Alien Archaeology: Where does this piece go?

A side view

An overhead shot

This is a closeup of one piece - a box of bits and pieces, little bones, teeth that they haven't fit into the skeleton yet.

Post from another blog about setting up a scene

2011-05-08T20:11:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia - obviously from World of Warcraft, not SL..just liked the group scene..watching the guy die..I know..I"m sick and twistedlots of great detail in this post about setting up a machinima scene in SL

and some key reminders...like even tho your shot might only last a few seconds int he finished movie it can take 30 or more minutes to set up ...arggghhh

http://celestialelf.blogspot.com/2011/04/you-cant-just-walk-in-and-take-shot-you.html

Cool location for a machinima

2011-04-21T09:59:00.000-04:00

I have a sculpture garden on the mainland and while flying around the other day looking at my neighbors to see what was new or at least stuff I'd never noticed because I had my draw distance turned way down. I noticed an island off in the distance. I flew over and it was the cutest little coastal town with cobblestone streets and a wharf and a light house and a town square. It was built by the Linden Lab Department of Public Works. The build quality is very high. If you're looking for a machinima set..this might be something to check out. You'll have to watch your camera angles so you don't get the stuff on the next sim, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Here is the SLURL and some photos.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Barneys%20Bay/142/216/29

Photos

Town square with wishing well and assorted small shop buildings, including Mole & Mole Travel Agency for your virtual vacation needs. (people who work with the Dept. of Public Works use avatars with the last name of Mole - hence the company name)

A view of the sim from the light house end. There's a little beach there too with a row boat pulled up. Notice from this high angle you can see the mainland sims behind Barney's bay.

A view from the wharf. From this angle you can't see any other land. There are other sims to the right side of this picture. Check out that sea wall and the row of little houses. It was cute. There are stairs to run up and down and alleyways to pop out of.

Learning to make poses and Animations

2011-04-15T23:51:00.001-04:00

We bought the Animare HUD the other day to play around with in SecondLife. Hopefully now when we need certain poses for our machinima, I can whip them out fairly quickly...well faster than I edit video since that seems to be taking me forever.

I spent some time today making poses and trying my hand at animations. The HUD is easy to use, tho not easy to understand sometimes. The HUD has a picture of the body with the joints. You click on a joint, then you can rotate it, move it forward or back, move it in or out...in a range of set increments that aren't always as small as you'd like for some tiny refinements. Here are pics of two static poses I made for a standing avatar and a lounge position that i'm pretty happy with.

Lounging poolside..that's me. The lounger is ugly as sin I know...it's 2 prims i pushed together quickly to put the pose into to test. I need to look for some modifiable full perm furniture I guess. I was actually thinking this would be good in a window seat. But now I really want to see it in a pool side beach chair. ANd I want to make it into an animation...with tapping foot, maybe an arm waving away a bug.

I called this one Whooops...since it looks like the avie is falling

I called this one Happy to See You...it kind of looked like someone jumping into the arms of another person they were happy to see.

A note added on Saturday evening
It is really tough to find info on animations and poses for SL. I'm trying to figure out the layout of the data in teh .bvh file that gets imported into SL. I found one source that said it starts with the hip..but not sure what is the order of the other joints. I want to be able to tweak the .bvh file in case i mess up the animare pose or in case i want a little finer movements.

A new version of the 2nd episode

2011-04-14T21:29:00.000-04:00

We're having fun...in this episode you get to hear my voice! And we have a great fight scene

More action planned for the next episode..I hope to whack Percy the Pliers with a bottle (why..because it's int he wrestling HUD we're using and it just sounds like it would look cool)

Places to see some SL machinima

2011-04-14T12:02:00.002-04:00

Image via WikipediaTHere are several "television networks" for programming made in SecondLife. All these networks have scheduled shows, live feeds, websites, and ways to talk about the shows. And many of them have ways for you to share your machinima with the world too.

Metaverse TV - http://metaversetv.com/
They have a variety of programming - news, fashion shows, comedy. They just started a new show called Claim the Fame that seems to be for fashion designers. You can watch on their web site or on YouTube and Blip.tv. I was watching an episode of the Stylist of the Year contest. The production values are really high on these shows, good sound, interesting visuals. They have a news program, MBC News, about many virtual worlds that I am going to start watching regularly. I made a post with one of their programs embedded from YouTube.

Treet.tv - http://treet.tv/
They have 2 "channels" - entertainment and business, with a variety of programs on each channel. I go to the Metanomics presentations in world. Treet.tv shows those on the business channel along with tech news programming. On entertainment they have a variety of SL sports including giant snail races, dirt bike races, sailing and hockey. There are arts and literature programs as well as a weekly fashion program and a trivia program, The 1st Question, hosted by Pooky Amsterdam . You can watch on their website or in SecondLife using a special tv viewer they created. Their shows have ads.

Metamix TV - http://metamixtv.com/
THis group is new/old. They took over an existing network (rezzed.tv) and are building a new sim, putting together a new show lineup. It's headed up by Flimsey Freenote, Chantal Harvey, Toxic Menges, Kit2Kat, and Phaylen Fairchild. SL wrestling will be on this network as is coverage of Simball matches. They host "The Phoenix Hour" with developers of the Phoenix third party viewer. They have a variety of talk, opinion, and reality programming. They plan to broadcast in HD. They interrupt their programming with advertisements. Here is one of their shows.

spoton3d on livestream.com. Broadcast Live Free

Virtual World Network VNW1 - http://www.virtualworldnetwork.tv/
This network has shows on fashion and art, and sports like automobile racing and wrestling.

MBC News April 14th, 2011

2011-04-14T11:36:00.000-04:00

Camera huds and stuff

2011-04-11T23:37:00.000-04:00

a couple of helper apps i heard about at the Machinima Monday...Haven't had time to check them out yet.

http://www.wegame.com/download/

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/TV-Studio-Camera-HUD/450814

an app to create specific sized windows for filming - http://www.brianapps.net/sizer/

Sound Ideas

2011-04-11T23:17:00.000-04:00

So I"m working on my machinima with Marc, my machinima buddy. I gave it a title..a working title, but one I like...It's called "Till Death Do Us Part"

It's not a comedy...duh!

Anyway..all machinima needs sound effects and voices and background music.

Here are some resources. Some I found, some Marc found, and some were suggested by the people at Machinima Monday. BTW, If you're making movies in SecondLIfe, you should join this group and come to the meetings on Mondays, usually at 2pm SLT and 7pm SLT.

Wikipedia page about copyleft and out of copyright music - mostly classical music. On the Mac, you ALT left click on the file name to download it. Not sure what you PC folks do.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sound/list

Freesound.org - database of Creative Commons licensed sounds/sound effects (not music). You enter keywords and get lists of sounds so tagged. You can see the other keywords used to help you find what you want. Then ALT left click to download
http://www.freesound.org/

ccmixter.org - database of Creative Commons licensed music remixes.
http://www.ccmixter.org/

Music Discovery Center - the search tool for ccmixter. I don't see keywords listed on selected songs like i did for freesound.org so it's a little tougher to find what ya want. Maybe just a matter of me playing with it some more.
http://dig.ccmixter.org/

Free Music Archive - you can sort by genre and then listen to selected tracks. Be sure to check the licenses but it seems that most are free to use for non-commercial projects
http://freemusicarchive.org/

Actors' Sandbox - voice actors hang out here. They're running a workshop for voice actors. If you need people to speak in your movie, this might be a group/place to check out. I just found out about this at today's Machinima Monday. As I find out more, I'll update this.
https://sites.google.com/a/schoolhouseearth.org/tutorial--sites/Home/actors-sandbox

iMovie coolness

2011-04-09T12:08:00.000-04:00

I just discovered I can crop clips. My machinima buddy, Marc, sent a clip with black bars on the side and of course I managed to ruin a few takes filming underlying window edges. Now I can maybe use all that footage! Thanks iMovie

and maybe I should read the documentation....nnnnnnaaaaaawwwwww

My turn as Director

2011-04-07T21:31:00.000-04:00

We - my machinima buddy and I - started a new project today, one based on a story idea I had. This is the first time I"ve been the editor and director. I made a lot of mistakes but fortunately my buddy was patient while i got the software working. He was trying to be nice when he said my project was ambitious. I'm sure he was thinking...that girl is nuts...gonna crash and burn...but he didn't say it. Thanks!

Anyone in RL will tell you..i am a slow still photograph taker. I like to line things up just so and try different angles and amounts of zoom..all before I take a picture. Maybe why i take so few people pictures in RL...trees and rocks and the sky sit around and wait for me. I digress.

I laid out a list of the scenes I want in my video, in 2 column format. And we started shooting...and my well thought out scenes fell apart. I needed some transitions. Some scenes needed changes to be more logical in the flow of the movie.

I've been trying to pick out places to film. One was a plaza with an awesome fountain. When I'm places normally, i don't notice things like advertisements and tip jars and store windows. It took time today to lay out the camera angles and think where the actor could move. At the Machinima Monday meeting the other day someone mentioned putting up transparent walls to keep the actors in the shot; now I see what they were saying. It's difficult to explain what you're seeing on your screen to the actors; walls would stop them before they got out of the shot.

Here's some footage i started editing. It's from an early scene. There's no audio yet. Just to give you an idea of what i did today

Mistakes I made today
- filming away..and then noticed i was in the shot in the background
- managed to make the filming window in Snapz not as big as the window of Secondlife
- managed to move the SecondLife window but not the edit window, so i filmed some windows that were under SecondLife...that is really irritating because I got a good shot..and don't think i can trim that line of garbage off the left edge
- filmed things before they were completely rezzed
- realized without an external mic, I can't do voice to give directions to my actors when i have the SecondLife interface turned off
- realized i need to think more about motion...moving the actors, moving the camera.

Poses for machinima

2011-04-05T12:06:00.000-04:00

Working with avatars has some advantages over working with people...hair always looks good, avatars often have amazingly varied inventories to draw on for props, and they can stand without fidgeting (if you take off their AOs of course) while you set up your shot.

There is one drawback though that I've run into so far...you can't just tell your actor/avatar..oh move your hand higher..or grab them around the neck. Well, technically you CAN tell them..they just can't do it. Without poses and animations that is

The pose fair is going on now till the 15th of April on a sim called Postura. There must be a hundred stores here. You can buy loaded AOs, individual poses and pose packs for singles and couples, furniture with poses built in, and cool things to pose with for photos. For instance {what next} has a rowboat with poses in it - photographers must love those things. Here's their SLURL at the pose fair - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Postura/153/241/26 and a picture of their little space showing the rowboat.

Here's a pic of another cool prop..a brick wall to lean on. It's from Glitterati - they have a huge real world store with poses and props. Here's the slurl to their store at the fair - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Postura/125/242/26

As a new machinima maker, I"m trying to decide what kinds of poses I need. And looking hard for animations. Probably need to invest in some specialty HUDS.

Then there's the problem of getting your actors to have the right animations..because a lot of them are no transfer...grrrrr.

A checklist for SL Fashion Photographers

2011-04-01T23:06:00.000-04:00

A good blog post for fashion bloggers with a checklist of things to do to avoid some common problems like unrezzed prims and hands buried in articles of clothing

http://itsonlyfashionblog.com/2011/03/30/the-checklist/

Another Green Screen Attempt

2011-03-26T13:26:00.000-04:00

Image via Wikipedia - not me or my avatar!The only thing i could find online about the sort of xray look some of my green screen videos had was that iMOvie didn't like perfectly flat green screens, which was exactly what i had in SecondLife. So I redid the green screen, changed the surface to be kind of a rough plaster look to add a little variation to the. And I"ve been shooting me walking. I used an animation that i had so i walked in place, that way i didn't have to worry about the edges of the green screen.

Now i have to figure out the whole size thing...how far away to shoot the avatar to make them look normal size in the video. And where to put the camera. The hard part..but at least I think with experimentation I can figure this part out.

A TIp picked up at the Machinima Monday meeting

2011-03-22T09:55:00.000-04:00

Machinima Monday is a group in SecondLife tath meets most Mondays at 3pm SLT. Lots of folks there, all interested in making movies using platforms like SecondLife and World of Warcraft. People show off current projects and ask for help. Sometimes Chantal Harvey puts updates about the group on her blog - http://mamachinima.blogspot.com/

My machinima buddy asked yesterday and Fraps and screen size. We learned that some software like Fraps and Xfire (both PC products that record the screen) record the whole screen. There's a preference you can set in SecondLife to make SL run in a window and hten you can set the size and resolution. You can pick one that's a 16:9 ratio when you're recording in HD.

On the Mac I use Snapz and i can draw a box with that software and it records only what's in that box. I haven't played around with that much. Not sure what it looks like in playback if you record just a little box recorded.

Continuity

2011-03-21T13:53:00.000-04:00

As we start to edit the 2nd episode of our spy thriller we discovered we need to reshoot a scene (because we forgot to move the mouse out of the way...see the checklist I posted earlier). The problem is I can't remember exactly what i was wearing.

In machinima, just as in RL video productions, continuity is important. There are at least three ways to deal with it. I'd say consider a combination of steps. I"m going to be doing steps one and two frm now on.

1. Take still photos. That gives you a sense of where things were in the shot, where th ecamera was. You can save them to the hard drive (costs nothing) and share them with the crew on flickr or in a google doc.
2. Save the outfit in your inventory. Give it a name like name of production, name of scene or location, maybe the date of the shoot. The new viewers just put links to the clothing into the outfit so it doens't increse the size of your inventory. Be sure to include any props or specialized HUDS you have attached to you in the shot.
3 Create a notecard and write down the names of things you were wearing and any notes about the scene. This is a good technique especilaly if you're using a viewer that doesn't use the new folder structure. This wil keep copies of clothing from cluttering up your inventory.

FIlming Checklist

2011-03-15T10:19:00.001-04:00

Image via WikipediaThis is a post that will probably be edited many times as I learn more about making machinima in SecondLife - a checklist for things to do before you start the cameras rolling. Hopefully if I follow these steps I won't have to reshoot so many takes.

CheckList as of 3/17/11

Check for other avatars on the radar - maybe warn them you're filming
Turn off HUDs - ALT-SHIFT-H
Turn off interface - CTRL-ALT-F1
Move the mouse out of the shot

A Machinima Resource for the SecondLife Community

2011-03-15T09:06:00.000-04:00

I found the machinima forum on the SecondLife Community page this morning. I have been around SL awhile but I admit I've never read the forums and blogs closely. So this is probably not a new-to-you resource, but it was to me.

URL: http://community.secondlife.com/t5/Machinima/bd-p/Machinima

People advertise/announce their machinima projects on the site. There are some posts about tools to use. And users have some posts looking for cast and crew for their projects in case you want to get started by helping on other people's projects or you have the acting bug. So looks like it might be useful on a couple of different levels.

Some assorted links

Green Screen

2011-03-14T14:56:00.001-04:00

I decided to try to do some green screen clips...film my avatar in SL before a green screen and superimpose her on some real life footage. I filmed the beach when we were in Florida...waves rolling, seagulls squawking. It's nothing exciting but thought it was plain enough i could easily put my avie in there without worrying about walking over people in the RL footage.

I built a green screen studio in SecondLife. It's a big cylinder and floor *didn't put a roof but may need to because sometimes the camera moves up sometimes as you walk and the shot of blue sky messes up. Here are a couple of shots of the studio with my avatar in it. I"m the little tiny dot since my camera is pulled way up. I used a megaprim to make the studio and colored the cylinder and the floor prim *another megaprim* just basic green.

Here's a closeup of me in the studio. You can see the seam where the cylinder meets the floor.

I played around with the windlight settings and found that one called Nam Optimal Skin1 completely wiped out that line. I took a couple of pictures with that setting. No Seam! I gotta tell ya tho - makes walking hard because there's no clue where the walls are. And sometimes you'll run into the wall and your camera will go outside. Not sure how to deal with that yet.

Here's a bit of the footage i shot in the green screen. It's not very exciting. Remember I mentioned the fact that there are no clues to where the walls are? Well that means it kind of looks like my avatar is walking in place.

Why isn't there a clip of the final product? iMovie seems to make it very very easy to do green screen..there's an option in the menu for goodness sakes. I'm doing something wrong...and yes, I can boil water and I can walk and chew gum. But. at this point i keep getting xray looking results for my avatar. The two clips individually look just fine. I drop the avatar footage on the real life footage, pick green screen..and wham...xray. Not what I wanted at all. So hopefully I'll figure it out and add a paragraph and a clip..very soon..*fingers crossed*

Here's a clip with problems..that xray issue I mentioned and fuzzy footage. Not sure what happened.

ANd here's a clip that worked..strange content I realize but I got these great wrestling action figures from my machinima buddy and wanted to play with them. No I wouldn't play with them on the beach normally. But I haven't found any good old school wrestling footage yet.

New focus for a bit

2011-03-11T10:19:00.000-05:00

Since I"m not teaching this year...I haven't been doing anything in SL with students. So I haven't been posting much. However, I am starting to get into making machinima...movies in SecondLife. I always hoped the students would get into making machinima as a way to use their media making skills combined with what htey learned in SL, but no one ever took me up on it. So, now I"m going to give it a shot. A friend and I have started making an episodic spy movie. We're not filming in order *laughs*...we filmed a bit that was fun, then decided we needed some back story and we'll need some kind of ending. So we're filming around our initial bit. Kind of like writing a research paper...we'll probably need to go back and reshoot the first bit to take advantage of what we've learned along the way.

We're also talking about shooting a video for the machinima contest sponsored by the University of We
Image via Wikipediastern Australia, a college that is really active in SL. We're still kicking around ideas for the story for this video, but probably it will be a drama. You have to start or end your movie at the SL recreation of their famous clocktower, seen in the picture over there (somewhere...look around..you'll find it in this post) We know we're up against very stiff competition. We'll learn a lot about moving making and have fun, both of which are our main goals for the project.

I'm going to play around with green screen so I can put my avatar into RL footage. I took some shots at the beach in florida; I think my avatar will look cool walking on the beach in some boardie shorts and shades. Look for a link to that in the near future.

Here are a couple of links:

the initial version of our spy video mentioned in the first paragraph..no, the woman's voice is not me - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqAz6I8EhN8
the official SecondLife channel on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/Secondlife
videos by Toxic Menges on YouTube (she's an active machinima maker in SL) - http://www.youtube.com/user/toxicmenges
videos by Chantal Harvey on YouTube (another active machinima maker who organizes annual machinima festivals in SL) - http://www.youtube.com/user/ChantalHarvey

We're playing around with some different toys - camera HUDs, fight systems, animations for holding guns. In the next few posts, I"ll talk about some of them.

Here are some links to other assorted sites and news

More on the SecondLife Shoe Fair 2010

2010-08-13T12:13:00.001-04:00

One of the stores exhibiting at the shoe fair is called ShoeFly. Above is a picture of their mascot which i thought was very cool

Shoe Fair 2010

2010-08-13T10:44:00.001-04:00

The SecondLife 2010 Shoe Fair runs through August 22, 2010; they are using 4 sims all dressed up with a farm/rural theme. Many of the shoe designers have a special design out and they're giving all the sales proceeds from that design to the Fair's designated charity, Soles 4 Souls. There are barns, silos, hay bales, milk cans. Fortunately, there are no cows wandering around since we want to take our shoes off and try on new things *laughs*

The designers set up paths to lead you through the stores from the landing point on each sim. They even have the sim crossings marked well so you can slow down and not take too big a hit.

Here are a couple of the kind of normal interiors I saw with shoes out, posters on the wall, etc. Sometimes, as in the first two pictures, you can see the walls of the supplied building.

Another kind of typical interior but this company covered the walls, not the ceiling. Interesting feeling - like movie posters in the black frames with the silk ropes. And the robin's egg blue walls and pink lights stand out in the mix of stores with dark walls and light floors.

Other stores very much change the interior look. They cover every inch of the interior with the look and feel of their main store. Bax Coen did this.

A couple of stores built boxes smaller than the provided building and that is all the customer saw. This gave them ultimate control since they could change the slant of the walls or roofs, the lighting and textures. Here is a store that used this technique. The shopper sees a stone lined space, not too deep with niches and other stone trim. If you swing the camera back behind the wall, you can see that this is a box they've placed inside the provided barn building.

Here is another store that went the box route. This is me standing at what looks like the back of the store going into a fitting room kind of door. I'm looking into the store.

I'm standing where you see that red shape sticking in the air. The store itself is very small and intimate as you can see...lots of original building not used. They shaped the box - wide at the front, smaller at the back.

OK - i gave in to peer pressure

2010-07-15T12:39:00.000-04:00

Stiletto Moody's is a well known expensive shoe line in SecondLife. Expensive like 2000 to 4000 Lindens per pair. People swear by these shoes...and then moan about how it was sooooo worth it to get them.

They put up a pair of shoes as a group gift. I gather it doesn't happen very often. There has been an unbelievable crush of folks trying to get the shoe. For most of yesterday you couldn't tp to the sim where the shoes were. This was bad since they were also having a 40% off sale and lots of the faithful wanted to come spend money on new shoes. Today they moved the group gift shoes to their smaller boutique store. Here's is the URL of the smaller store - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Stiletto%20Moody/128/128/2
They have a tp system to take you to the main store.

When it's not so crowded I will go back and take pictures of the store - big shoes on display, whole ranges of colors available.

Here are 2 pictures - close up of my feet wearing my first *and probably only* pair of Stiletto Moody shoes. They are really well made. You get 3 sizes for a good fit. Check out the detail on the streps, the highlighting, the rich color

And - unlike most clothes in SL - they have the brand on the shoe - there's a small heart on the sole. Very cool. And it comes with painted toenails...and toes *duh*

So what's this mean? Other than with a little pressure I can dress up and get out of my raggedy tennis shoes or green sandals? There is knowledge of brands in SL - people recognize the name of this shoe maker. People aren't turned off by having brand labels on their clothes. People are willing to pay an immense amount of virtual currency for a virtual good - or more specifically for a quality trendy virtual good.

Another instance of gacha machines

2010-07-15T12:19:00.000-04:00

I visited a hair store today with 3 gacha machines each holding an assortment of hair that you could win. Above each machine was a display of the hair in that machine. Each machine had some secret prizes you could win too - probably different hair.

On the other side of the store is a wall of group gifts and freebies.

The store did have things for sale - you were wondering right? They were on the back wall - and i forgot to take a picture of them!

Notice the black walls. Lots of windows - the ceiling and the front wall. It was a small store in terms of floor space. All stores in SL seem to be tall so that there is no interference with the camera that hangs behind the avatar.

Shopping Sims

2010-07-15T12:04:00.001-04:00

I visited a couple of sims that seemed to be all shopping. Individual stores around some open space.

One had a boardwalk coaster car that you rezzed to move you around the island. There were points were it stopped and you had to get out and look around/shop or rez a new car. Here is a slurl to one store on the sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/TSUKIJI/65/84/22

One the sim was all black and grays - the sidewalk, the trees. The stores had a little color in the store names that you could see from the streets. Inside the clothes of course provided color. The black/gray background made the colors stand out. Here is a slurl to this sim - http://slurl.com/secondlife/Heartless%20City/134/136/41

One was just a series of open stores around a grassy plot. Felt less permanent than the others. Definitely felt less upscale.

I didn't see any way to know what was on the sim anywhere on these 3 examples - no island directory for instance, although granted, I tp'd into a specific store on each sim and not some central landing zone. You just walked around and looked to see what was there. With SL being slow to rez, that can be kind of aggravating because it seems the store name is often the last thing to rez (kind of like finding your keys in the last place you look). The vast majority of the stores on each of these sims were women's clothing. They're kind of like a RL mall in that. But no game stores or furniture for the most part. All in all, there's not much reason to wander if you came for a specific store - nothing to lead you around the sim.

The exception was the sim with the boardwalk coaster car. That sim had little carts set up all along the waterfront with freebies and cheap things from the merchants on the sim (I think that's what was there - the signs were mostly in Japanese). There were some humorous themed elementsIt also had some machines that seemed to be set up to change RL currency into Lindens.

Here's a view of one of the stores on the Japanese sim with a view out the door

And here's a closeup of the machines you can see out the store's door.

A couple of interesting store interiors

2010-07-11T11:51:00.000-04:00

I was following some links earlier today and was really taken by the entrance to this store...unfortuantely not much else outside of this one to make it worth going outside to take a look. It was in a castle. The floors were wood planks. The walls were stone. It looked like a castle inside. The front doors were massive, metal engravings. Stained glass images flanked the doors. It was the stain glass that caught my eye.

This is a long shot of the inside of Vinyl Addict. . It's fun. There's a giant glass of milk and some cookies, some cupcakes you can sit on, a big stuffed rabbit, dance balls for tinies (little avatars that come up to a typical avatars knees), and record album covers on the wall. Nothing for sale, just a fun space as you come into the store.

Here's a close up of the milk and cookies. Big - that's me next to the glass.

Here's the outside of the store..it's also fun. Oversized fruit and mushrooms, a Mini Cooper (don't know why). There's water behind me and there are some boats out there. I'm not sure who sees it tho since the TP lands you inside the store.

This post is related to the one about TP landing zones. Where the avatar enters your store seems important. Do you feature a few things for sale, put out a gift item, visually lead them into the main retail space? If you have a central TP spot, people do tend to pile up there - they just stand and wait for things to rez or they land but can't move because of lag. If you don't have a TP landing spot, then sometimes it's difficult to tell what store you're in or where in the store you've landed this time.

Last day of the Fashion Fest

2010-07-11T11:35:00.000-04:00

I visited a rew more sims in the2010 Fashion Fest. There were 9 sims altogether in the event, each with a different theme. Today I visited sims with an Egyptian theme, an Italian renaissance theme, and an American Wild West theme. The brands or the products they're offering don't seem to have any connection to the sim theme. The retail spaces are very nicely themed tho.

This is Kunglers' store on the Italian Renaissance themed sim. There are frescoes on the wall, mosaics on the floor and clothes . That's me sitting in the chair on the left

Here's a long view of the main plaza on the Italian Renaissance sim. Lots of art, plants, and places to walk. Things are huge here. i'm the tiny speck in the center of the picture at the base of the flag pole

Here's the inside of a store ont eh Egyptian themed sim. There was a pyramid, elephants and camels. And surprisingly , lots of water features. I loved all the textures used in these sims - the architecture established the theme and all the details definitely enhanced it.

Here's a long shot of one of the buildings set up on the Egyptian themed sim. See the great desert backdrop?

I'm not sure why the sims weren't more crowded. There were some well known brands. There were scheduled events. Maybe I just went during non-peak times. But to me it seemed less visited than the Fashion Fair held earlier in 2010.

Another Fair..the Summer Gatcha Fair

2010-07-07T23:28:00.002-04:00

The summer Gatcha Fair starts tomorrow - here's the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Hyssop/54/205/61

As far as I can tell a gatcha is a machine like a bubble gum machne. You put your money in and one of the gumballs falls out. You don't know what color you're going to get. You put your money into the gatcha machine and one of the items falls out. You don't know which you're going to get. Here's a link to another blog post about them: http://loulouandco.over-blog.com/article-gatcha-machine-50349289.html

The prices aren't too high so you can buy several times from the same machine if you're trying for something specific. there are lots of different stores represented - I saw Miel and Reek.

The site is cute...a fun atmosphere. There are stand alone stalls along the edges of hte area and a long pond down the center with floats and rafts. The open area is covered with sand and there are some little dunes and a sand castle. Summer at the beach.

Here's a link to a review of last year's Gatcha Gatcha Fair - http://alberogssm.wordpress.com/2009/09/30/gatcha-fun/

And a link to an article from wikipedia about gatcha machines in Japan where they're called gashapon - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gashapon

Here are some pictures. Some of the gatcha machines look like actual gumball machines but there is an incredible variety.

Reek's machine looks like a red spaceship.

This stall had a cool treats vending machine

The machines in this stall looked like teddy bears.

Here - a photo booth dispenses shoes instead of snaps of you making a funny face

They had stand alone stalls and these little carts.

Landing Zone and Lobby - studio M

2010-07-06T11:06:00.000-04:00

Studio M is another pretty store. I admit to having a preference for light woods and smokey colors. I got a note card recently that the store was having a summer sail - almost everything marked down to $50L so I went back to check them out.

Here is a picture of the landing spot for the provided LM...it's outside, on the sidewalk, down a bit from the actual store. Very pretty blooming trees. There's an outdoor shop behind me there - an example of a store that doesn't look like a store.

Here's a picture of what I would call the lobby...a little seating, the store name on the wall, and 2 doors into the story proper. I'm not sure why this isn't the TP landing zone..might be a requirement of the sim to land outside. I don't see things like store policies or a obvious group joiner (but i think that's what hte pictures are under the store name on the green wall)...It's understated, calm....maybe more like a real life store than many I've seen.

Landing Zones - The Dressing Room

2010-07-05T10:22:00.001-04:00

I really like The Dressing Room and The Dressing Room Blue. A small always changing collection of very inexpensive items from a few designers. Shoppers can check out a designer with little financial risk (ignoring the fact that even an expensive dress in SL only costs a couple of RL dollars). THey can see outfits pulled together that they migiht never have considered on their own.

I also love the design, the look and feel, of the two stores. Very sparsely decorated. The objects for sale highlighted. Although occasionally I think something is decoration and it's really for sale. But I'm getting better at that.

They have themed landing zones for when people TP in. The first Dressing Room doesn't have a door so people don't walk in and out; this makes the TP zone an important part of the store. They're set off by curtains. There are some items for sale, the list of designers involved in the project.

Front desks

2010-07-04T18:33:00.000-04:00

I have been noticing that many large stores have front desks. They're not manned - or at least they haven't been while i've been there. They're impressive, make the store look a bit more upscale. Sometimes there are freebies on the surface, things to click to leave notes for the owner or to get customer service. Store policies can be displayed here. Usually there is information about how to join the store group or a subscribe-o-matic so the customer can get join the stores mailing list.

In each case pictured below, the color scheme and style of the store is reflected in the design of the front desk.

Display options

2010-07-04T14:40:00.000-04:00

I went to a couple of sims of the Fashion Fair 2010. They have 9 sims all together. Here are some interesting display options I saw at different stores.

These dresses are displayed on mannequin cutouts - flat people shapes all in shiny black. They make the dress stand out. And i love the grouping. There's something powerful about seeing a whole collection in one spot. It makes shopping easier too because you can see all the colors. I'm sure the designer hopes that once you see all the colors you will buy two or three or four.

This next store was very under-decorated. Nothing on the walls or floors. There are cubes and sign boards filling the space. The cubes have pictures on all four sides so it's easy for the customer to see all the options by walking around. The sign boards had images just on one side. There was enough space between them for the customer to walk and move their camera to see better.

Shoe racks...They're deceptively narrow. From the front they look like traditional stepped displays. However, since the shoes are flat pictures, the shelves do not have to be very deep. From the side these displays are very shallow. Users can see all the shoes though so it's another way to see a whole collection at once and compare features and colors.

Another display of a whole collection - one or two outfits and all the available colors. easy to see all the options.

And a close up on the wall. Users just have to click on the picture of the color outfit they want to get the option to pay.

I like this wall. Big signs show the customer that these are the new items in the store and they're all pulled together on this wall. Each section of the wall contains one outfit in all the color combinations available.

A Cute "store"....inside Peas

2010-07-03T08:42:00.001-04:00

Not all stores are square buildings. Here are some pictures from Split Pea. This store is set up like a group of peas just out of the pod....the peas are hollowed out of course. Here are some pictures arranged from far away to closer up. The store sells women's clothing. It's a fun store, and the design is memorable. Each pea has just a few items in it, so it's easy to see what's available and kind of fun to climb up and down into the peas. The items are fun too. I have a dress from here named Olive Garden Tablecloth...because it has pretty stripes in colors that fit the color scheme of the Olive Garden Restaurant. It has a hat too..but seriously..I am sooo not a hat person (see the pics at the end for a giggle).

Here you can see a couple of the peas hollowed out.

You can see the peas are pretty big. There I am standing at the base of one of the ladders to a pea.

Here's a closeup inside one of the peas. The clothes are displayed on the walls as flat illustrations. They're touching the curved walls so they're at an angle.

Kim in the olive garden dress

Store that doesn't look like a store

2010-06-30T11:27:00.000-04:00

Not all stores have to be in buildings with ceilings. This store just reopened after a redesign...pods like ancient temples. The store is in a large box that is colored green. There are big open spaces between the pods that have seating areas. The pods are arrayed around a central plaza with the main teleport landing spot and some ponds and fountains.

And yeah..that's me in the cowboy hat in one of the pictures.

A fair - the Zombie Popcorn Carnival

2010-06-30T10:47:00.000-04:00

The Zombie Popcorn Carnival is closing today. It's a followup to the Zombie Popcorn Hunt earlier this year. A lot of the same stores pulled together in one spot. Here's the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Nocturnum/154/76/24

I went earlier and forgot to go back. Took a lot of pictures. A variety of display options. And they had carnival rides, a maze in the fun house, and cotton candy. And a big soap bubble you can sit in (see one of the pics near the bottom of the post.

Most of the stores are set up in small tents. the ones below are stand alone in the middle of hte grass. There's also a ring of tents around the edge of the carnival field. They're small, small, small. Room for a few pictures, a few props. The one below for some reason had a pink hot rod.

Here I am standing in one of the tents..seems bigger when ya get inside (hmm..tardis tents?) This store has some items ont eh wall in small photos, a few medium size photos. and then a stepped set of shelves on the floor with lots of tiny pictures of products for sale.

Another tent with small images...and that's about all - just stuff on the back wall.

I just liked this tent. Fit in the carnival theme. Clowns. Scary clowns.

This little tent had a sign to go to the main store, they'd covered the floor with their store image, and covered pretty much every inch of the walls with product images. This store is in the row of shops along the edge of the field.

Promised ya carnival rides...

Another big store with some interesting display options

2010-06-30T09:51:00.001-04:00

Image via Wikipedia

Strolling down the Champs Elysees in SL is a lot like strolling down the real thing. On the side is a picture of the real thing. Your feet hurt by the time you're half way through and you can see the Arc de Triomphe. And there are some great shops. Fortunately no cars or traffic in SL.

Here are a couple of pictures I took standing on the street. The first shows a couple of the stores - notice the one has put large images of their clothes int he window to attract people walking on the street.

The second is just a long shot of the street. There are cafes on the sidewalk, French flags, long vistas, and the Arc de Triomphe at the end of the street.

Here some pictures of one of the stores - fashion design, lingerie - called Elemiah- a big store that's open and light and has some interesting
(SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Av%20Champs%20Elysees/94/194/2)

Happy Birthday Second Life

2010-06-21T13:36:00.002-04:00

It's birthday #7 for SecondLife. I'll add some pics as i check out the many sims involved

Here are some pics of the main auditorium..Philip and M Linden are both speaking here this week. Life music performers will be here too.

See those little spots in the blue center? Thos are the people. The roof is transparent..That's us all sitting waiting for Philip Linden on Monday, about 40 minutes after the sims opened. There's about 100 people waiting.

A pic of the people around the stage

Here's Philip Linden on the right - - the man who hasn't updated his look since 2003 I don't think

And a close up - check out those pants!1

Some more pictures

2010-06-21T11:14:00.003-04:00

Some interesting product displays

2010-06-21T10:48:00.002-04:00

THis store is called scribble - very monochromatic displays and decorations. The lobby/landing area is pretty much all black and shades of gray. I like the mannequins that you can see in the 2nd picture. They don't display clothes, they're just standing around.

The clothes at this store are the color. Many products are displayed on boards like you see in the next two pictures. The customer can pick out the color they want or they can buy what's called a fatpack - you get all the colors at a discount.

Beesides the boards with the color/fabric swatches as seen above, some products are displayed in niches and on shelves as seen below.

This store also has the wall of pictures kind of display that I've seen elsewhere. Their displays are different in that many of the images are "scribbled on" or seem hand drawn.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Scribble/69/69/23

And another way to display - with little mannequin statues - gotta love the blue on the walls. That is the happiest color on the planet I think.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rue%20DAntibes/221/159/28

A very small fair

2010-06-21T10:29:00.001-04:00

SlURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bella%20Isola/112/110/2993

Minimal Store

2010-06-21T10:13:00.001-04:00

The store is called Salt. A nice big building but very little inside..and a second floor that was entirely empty. I"m not sure what to make of this...new store, store going out of business, store being redesigned.

It is really, really, really white - I mean like glow int he dark white. I did like the plants at the base of some of the columns - but kind of contributed to the abandoned store feel

In this picture you can see the fish pond that is right inside the front door and one of the few touches of color in the store, then a sign advertising the group gift, and then on the walls, panels with the items currently available - summery dresses. The group gift is a nice marketing tool - sort of a reward for letting the store send the customer periodic announcements and promotions. Most groups are free to join, but a few, where the store gives out really good or really frequent gifts, cost several hundred Lindens to join.

The panels on the wall in this fourth shot are the store's sale items - jeans and tshirts.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Bohemia%20Mall/166/104/27

2010-06-20T12:43:00.001-04:00

A new view of a big store...i pulled the camera way way way back. THe lit place is a patio in the center. There are stores/departments scattered around the plaza and they all seem to be connected inside

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Fashion%20Earth%20Sky/41/137/26

Interesting packaging

2010-06-20T10:23:00.001-04:00

I visited Truth hair...a favorite among fashion bloggers

here is a picture of the outside of the building. They have their own sim, which i need to explore.

Here are 2 pics from the new hair style display area. It's where avatars teleport into the store. The area is labeled on the floor where everyone will see it. There are pictures showing off the styles. The boxes have pics showing the different colors that style is available in

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Truth%20Hair/133/56/27

A different look - no light woods here

2010-06-20T09:17:00.011-04:00

Many of the stores I"ve been visiting have had light colored walls, light colored woods on the floor. Today I visited one that was very different as you can see in the pics below. As I explored I discovered that the store also carries antique furniture where the dark woods and stained glass make a little more sense and stained glass which explains its liberal use around the store. the walls are more crowded than some other stores I"ve been to also..need to think about how much content to display and how that affects the image people have of your store

The first pic is a shot of the outside of the building - i aimed a bit higher than the door to show some more of the dark wood, the stained glass and the tin ceilings inside thru the windows

They have a couple of interesting things at this store. They have 2 ways to teleport between the 5 floors of the main building and the out buildings around the island. The first one is outside..it's a big map on the ground of the sim. The user clicks on teh green dots to teleport to specific locations.

The second device is a sign that takes you to different floors of the main building.

SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Paektu/56/177/94

A whole town

2010-06-19T11:41:00.001-04:00

Sometimes stores are on sims that look like towns with streets, sidewalks, street lights, billboards..Another choice new merchants in a virtual world have to make - own sim, rent space, be in a mall......

Here is one example - the Leezul store..i'm at one end of the street taking the picture. There are stores on either side (related to Leezul)

Here is another example - the K2 Loon sim..in this case I don't think the stores are related..There are lots of styles, things on the street to see. To me it seemed more lively as well as kind of chaotic. Notice the big billboard in the 2nd picture - some old school real life advertising

Other big stores

2010-06-19T10:07:00.002-04:00

This store has a lot of space for people to walk around I like the light color scheme. Nothing competes with the pictures of the clothes on the walls. Some of the pictures are just art - see the big scrolls in the 2nd picture..There are some big pictures with ideas of how to wear the clothes as outfits as shown in the 2nd picture

This store uses the pictures of the products approach to displaying items for sale. But they are spaced out around the room, color choices are shown in the dots on the side

I am not sure of the purpose of the little space..The store has apple in its name which explains the giant apple here and elsewhere in the store..just not sure why a little space surrounded by curtains. It did break up the floor space, added a little touch of color to the floor.

An interesting marketing idea - a room with stuff for new users..I think these things were free for people whose avies were less than 30 days old..It's a way to get a player hooked on your brand from the beginning, get traffic into your store, get your goods out there for others to see. This room was not easy to find up on the 2nd floor, kind of back in a corner..so they have to "work" for their freebies

Here's some pics from another big store (i have got to remember to write down SLURLS for the stores)
More light colors.

THis store has floors, small nooks, departments..content spread out across the big space with some organization to help the user find what they want

Here's a big open space..with seating in the center of the space...Something important is going on with seating..most of the stores have it. I've only ever used ti to sit and wait while things rez around me. But real life stores have seating because people need to rest their feet or husbands need to wait for wifes...Why is there seating in SL?

Big..i mean BIG .... stores

2010-06-17T22:20:00.002-04:00

I'm checking out different stores..trying to get some ideas for a project (see some notes about it a few posts down the page). So today for some reason a bunch of the stores i ended up in were humongous..that's a scientific term meaning really really honking big. Warehouse big. Echoes thru the space big.

Here are some pictures from Curious Kitties..a Japanese store. Big space, big signs, lots of space for avatars to move around.

This first picture shows one particular outfit for sale.It has a big picture of it in one color and then small pics/buttons on the left that you could click to get the dress in different colors. The dress was marked copy and mod, but no transfer. It's seemed a little different from a picture of a product on the wall, but not sure why it struck me that way.

This shows the size of the space..items for display go up to the ceiling and stretch back to the window. You don't get a sense that the space is crowded although some of those walls of pictures do kind of loom over you as you stand there. And you have to be good at camming to see them.

Another wallof things to buy..i liked the shape..

Another shot to show the size of the store. They have a lot of products and the store is divided into departments. There is a teleporter system to help ya move around which is very handy in that big space.

Here is Callie Cline's store. Another big space but this one is light and airy. It has a more formal feel with the magnificent staircase, the patterned wallpaper, the balconies.

There are several side rooms with different parts of the collection. You can see one in the picture below...the side room has an aqua floor.

Another store interior

2010-06-17T15:56:00.001-04:00

Another store I really like - light woods, white walls. It's circular which is different.. I like the display area in the center - shown here in the first picture. Stacks of boxes, piles of stuff, some signage on a raised platform in the center of the room

Here's a view pulled way back so you can see the curve of the store space..and some windows that let you see the sim outside I like how the clothes are displayed - hanging on hangars around the walls.

Another way to display products in SL stores

2010-06-15T12:53:00.001-04:00

This store puts dresses on hangers in niches on the walls. You really feel like you could walk up and touch them. You can see the folds in the cloth, the details of neckline and hem. THen there were bags and items on the tables. This store seems more like a real world store than the ones with lots of pictures on the wall. THis seems like either an exclusive shop with a few well chosen items..or maybe a store at the end of hte season with just a few things left. I go with the former thought - it's neat and well organized, not all in disarray like at the end of the season of frantic shopping.

Lots of dark wood on the floors and white walls - another popular color scheme. Nothing detracts from the colors of the clothes.

A museum I like on Fruit Island

2010-06-15T12:17:00.001-04:00

Here are a couple of pictures of another kind of marketing space - an art gallery There are 2 floors, assorted spaces. THey use temporary walls and art placement to move the visitor thru the exhibit. They have embedded the gallery into the hillside making use of the island's topography. Lots of windows, sliding doors out onto balconies.

More Store Interiors

2010-06-15T11:33:00.002-04:00

I've been thinking about retailing in SL...to some people it might look like i'm shopping, but really...I"m thinking about retailing. There's some research out there on how real world companies can market to real world customers using virtual worlds (as well as other technology like twitter and such)

But it's important to think about how virtual companies can market to virtual customers in virtual worlds. I'm interested in how companies that are created and exist only in Second Life can market to avatars, virtual world users. There are real world people behind the avatars spending real world money that has been converted to virtual world currency. They're buying and selling virtual goods - things that exist only in digital formats. I don't think that the fact that it's all happening in a virtual world, happening digitally, is a limitation or makes the commerce any less important. (see - - told ya I'd been thinking about this)

So here are some pictures of store interiors..I've been visiting stores haphazardly so far, taking some pictures, making notes about how they're marketing. I'll use those initial observations to put together a more orderly content analysis and build up an interview schedule for store owners/designers. Then gotta figure out how to attack the customer side of the transaction

A store with men's clothing downstairs and women's clothing upstairs..that light brown with the dark brown shadows is really popular in stores...I like all the windows here. It's easy to move around in this store..the floor is uncluttered and there aren't things messing with the camera angle.

Not all stores are large boxy spaces or permanent. Below are 3 pics from the ZombiePopcornSL Carnival - small temporary spaces, tents, boxes...and carnival rides! Here's a SLURL tho I don't know for how long this will be around - http://slurl.com/secondlife//193/51/24

DarkerSide - a store in a sky box. That cube in the center has a staircase up to a small 2nd floor room that you can see in the 2nd pic. I liked the black and white color scheme and the foliage decorations on the walls. Pictures of items on the walls. Sales, freebies and cheepies on the stairs.

New music venue

2010-06-15T11:22:00.003-04:00

I like Pol Arida - get to hear him in Second LIfe...boot stomping, guitar thumping, scary song singing musician.

He has a new venue...called home....hopes to host performers new to SL. He has video screens, it looks like you're underwater or in an aquarium. I had a ball watching the octopus squish around backstage. There were quite a few people at the opening and the lag wasn't bad.

Here are some pictures - the first from the opening with tons of people and then a few I took when i went back today

Here's the SLURL - it dropa you onto a plaza above the club..look for a staircase down to the club
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Arctic%20Circle/76/34/15

Black and Blue Fair

2010-06-09T13:59:00.002-04:00

I have to go back and look at the clothes at the Black and Blue Fair 2010 in SecondLife.. Here's the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Purgatory/67/175/2002. I was intrigued by the layout of the space..a couple of rooms, very casual, with things stacked up, shoes and hangers scattered on the floor, posters hung on the walls --- a space that looked like it will be fun to explore. The color scheme was, not surprisingly, black and blue.

One side of the main room - signs slanted up against furniture, mirrors with pictures taped to them, posters on the wall.

A long view of the room - a few not-rezzed avatars (did i mention it was a bit laggy). You can see posters on the floor, some mannequins on the left.

A shot of another room - some chairs and lighting for relaxing (maybe while waiting for pictures to rez) or talking with friends about purchases.

There's a fashion show run way on the left - casual, unassuming walkway. It's there, but not the main focus of the space. more chairs for relaxing.

Another view of the main room - shelves, clothes hanging on racks in an area raised up a couple of steps.

Many fairs are for charities - not this one tho I just found out (they put a message up when you come into the space)

Trying something new in SL

2010-06-04T07:51:00.002-04:00

Playing around with GIMP, a new drawing tablet, and the clothing/skin templates making system clothes for my avatar. It's kind of fun making the "fabric" to paint the clothes with. Here's a pic of my first shirt - made the material too. I put some more at the end of the post.

There are so many things to take into account - necklines, wrinkles (which will take me forever to figure out i think - they're just lines of black/white/gray, but they add so much depth to the clothes), hemlines, accent bits, remembering to turn the guide layers off before uploading (it's embarassing to have a grid pattern falling out of the bottom of your skirt!)

What was kind of cool to realize is that you just "paint" the clothes. I learned to sew as a kid - either for a girl scout badge or for an achievement in AWANA's (the church group we belonged to) and i sucked at it. I suck at painting too..but at least there's no sewing machine to thread or bobbins to keep full (do sewing machines even still have bobbins?)

Maybe should have learned GIMP first...but figured this was a good project to learn it with since i
need layers and filters and different brushes. There are some good tutorials out there for GIMP and i've found a couple for making clothes for SL with the templates and GIMP so i have some help.

The drawing tablet will take some getting used to - it's not like a mouse in how you move where it's pointing to (jus tpick the mouse up and move it to where it's physically more comfortable with the pointer not moving - - well, maybe the drawing tablet does that but i haven't figure out how yet since i haven't read its instructions yet

And yes - I realize system clothes aren't the prettiest or the most original...but to start thinking about fabric and folds and seam matching and alpha channels...they're not so bad. And after I get some that don't look totally awful..i can think about making prim attachments, flexi prims skirts, then sculpty attachments. or sculpty skirts...

Students presenting in SecondLife - one last time!

2010-05-12T09:26:00.000-04:00

The students from qualitative research methods during the Spring 2010 semester presented the results of their project during public talks in Second Life on our school island. They talked about art, music, games, dance clubs, tinies, anonymity, relationships, brands, real world architecture, and pregnancy in Second Life. We have about 12 sessions total with usually two students presenting at a time. So far, we have had nice crowds at the sessions and I didn't have to eject anyone. Thanks to everyone who came out to listen and ask questions.

Here are a few pictures

From the relationship talk, here's what the presenter sees:

From one of the sports presentations, a view of one of the students and the images she used to illustrate her talk. She's wearing clothes she got at a tennis club in SecondLife.

More pictures can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgregson/sets/72157623921898667/

End of the Semester - Post 1

2010-05-12T09:12:00.000-04:00

IN the business of gaming class we had a play test session for our final. They had to turn in a short paper, but the focus was on games and donuts. One of the students in class - Mack Cameron - has developed a variety of board games in his spare time. So we play tested the Croquet game - actually based on croquet but with some very fun modifications - like being able to send the ball right at another player. Lots of good violence and scheming was engaged in by all.

We also had a group playing Halo. We had hoped to play the Halo multiplayer beta but of course our wireless in the classroom wouldn't talk to the wireless receiver in the XBox. As the students said - what else is new.

Here are some pics of us having fun..ending up the semester as a pretty tight group that hopefully will do things together next year to make fun games.

More pics are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kgregson/sets/72157624046039808/

Not something a professor gets to do very often!

2010-05-05T19:31:00.001-04:00

One of the students in my Qualitative Research Methods class is studying pregnancy in SecondLife. To get a better feel for what's involved, she became pregnant..yep..that's right. Her avatar got pregnant.

She went thru several skins getting progressively more pregnant. They picked out the hair color and eyes for the baby. They went to several prenatal exams. She was weighed and had ultrasounds. ALl very much like real life.

And here's a picture of the happy couple with the baby girl which they named Adrianna...not Kim (hard to believe I know (laughs)

Cool Building

2010-02-13T14:07:00.000-05:00

I went looking for an art exhibit I"d seen in the search list and found this amazing building on Locus. It doesn't have a purpose except to look gorgeous as far as I can tell. It's so vary tall and light weight looking. Inside are lights, moving platforms, transparent floors. You can fly in and out, fall from the heights, and ride on the platforms. Move the camera around to get the full sense of scale in this building.

Here's a SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Locus/107/43/31

Here are some photos I took. Enjoy.

VIews up and down from my location in the middle of the building. That's me in my beat up leather pants and old school boots. I love that you can see thru and out of it. And transparent floors - you never know where you can walk safely and when you'll fall. Pretty and exciting..Just like SecondLife.

Steampunk Store: Grim Bros.

2010-02-13T10:48:00.001-05:00

I saw a link to the Grim Bros. store on the Search Spotlight in SecondLife and then saw it mentioend again in a blog i was reading. Decided to go check it out since some of my students are doing steampunk islands for their first observation. They describe the store as post-apocalyptical + grunge Fasion and Accessories. Here's the SLURL if you want to visit the store: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Clematis%20Island/118/50/22

It was a huge space filled with clothes and gadgets for sale. I may have to go back and buy one of the mechanical hearts I saw to wear around final exam time when students think profs have no heart. . Below are some pics of things I saw.

The store called this the "Gifting Gorilla"

Pipes, exposed beams, and lots to buy

Front of an eyeball shaped security device in the store

Back view of the security eyeball - check out the bone leg and claw feet

I never did figure out what this machine was but there was an eyeball here too

and lots of strange moving parts

A giant tophat wearing metal rabbit statue

And I got a free pair of skates - steam punk roller skates with tank treads instead of wheels. Very cool.

Toured Caledon sims

2010-01-20T08:34:00.000-05:00

(and I'm gong back to take pictures and will add them later)

there are approximately 40 sims in the Independent States of Caledon, themed British Victorian and Steampunk areas. Most touch so that you can walk from one to the other. Some are physically separate, these are referred to as "crown colonies". Some of the Caledon sims are more strictly Victorian, with a very Old World feel to their theming. Other Caledon sims have a steampunk edge with strange inventions, driven by steam (hence the name) that look like they could have been made in the Victorian era.

There are also some nearby related sims, Victorian in nature but not officially part of the Independent States; these include Winterfell (gothic Victorian), Steelhead (American Victorian), and New Babbage (steampunk).

They have a lot of events - dances, lectures, church service, weddings. And they have airships! Ok - I'm a sucker for airships/dirigibles. And steampunk ones are the best with moving gears and levers and exposed metal infrastructure.

There is an institution of higher learning - the Caledon Oxbridge University - with professors and scheduled courses, many good for new users of SecondLife. They also have a nice set of exhibits to help orient new users to the basic skills of using SecondLife. IT's much of the same info as on orientation island, but who wants to stay there?

You can become a citizen of the Independent States. Duchess Alana Steamweaver, my tour guide, made me a citizen and enrolled me in the citizens group so i get announcements of events and such. I hope to join the fencing club - that's what I took for gym class in college and really enjoyed it.

So pictures to follow

Class to teach students to write videogame music

2010-01-19T09:19:00.000-05:00

no not at our school - at the Berklee College of Music in Boston.

One of our graduates, Vanessa Schneider, sent me this link - http://www.boston.com/ae/music/articles/2010/01/19/berklee_is_teaching_students_to_compose_scores_for_video_games/

Sounds like a great class. They have a summer program, too. The prof, Michael Sweet has a professional background in writing music for videogames - almost 100 of them. If you're in Boston look for their performances. And their games.

At AgileWorld 2010 --- in SecondLife

2010-01-15T12:06:00.001-05:00

I love not having to travel to conferences especially in the winter with travel delays, hot airports, and big bulky coat.

Rockcliffe University is sponsoring AgileWorld 2010. Good info about the agile software development process. I'm going to teach a bit about this in my business of gaming class this semester. So timely quality info

here are some photos for now. of the first session about the role of testing in Agile development. The speaker talked a lot abouthow agile is about collaboration ad that includes the developers/programmers collaborating with the testers. And turns out a ot of software testing is being automated - i didn't know that so have to check on those tools.

She had some testing resources to check out
Mike Coh's site - http://mountaingoatsoftware.com
Dawn Cannan (the speaker)'s site - http://passionatetester.com
the agile manifesto - http://agilemanifesto.org
Lisa Crispin - http://lisacrispin.com
Elisabeth Hendrickson - http://testobsessed.com

Then and Now - Changes in My Avatar

2010-01-12T11:52:00.001-05:00

I"ve noticed that other SecondLif bloggers are posting pictures of their early avatars and their current avatars. In the early days I sometimes had pink hair and for awhile I had blue skin.

Here's a pic of me from probably early 2008 as my early picture and then a pic I took today. Glasses haven't changed but that's about all that has remained the same. I've learned a little more about taking photos in SecondLife, too - adding extra lights, for instance. Skins are now incredibly detailed - this one has freckles. The hair moves when i walk.

Do I look like either of these pictures? Nooo. I don't have the blue skin or pink hair from my even earlier pictureseither. But in SecondLife ou can look the way you want. So today..this is how i want to look. Who knows about tomorrow?

Some other stuff I did today in SL

2010-01-12T10:39:00.000-05:00

I went to a couple of events that visually were very cool -

The first was an exhibit at an art gallery I like. the exhibit was about machinima. It wasn't a how to exhibit or here are examples kind of exhibit. They had video tetures all over hte gallery - walls, ceiling, floor - so that when you starting playing the machinima, it was everywhere. They even had a big ball in the sky theatre. It was like being inside a video kaleidoscope. Here are a couple of pictures. The machinima was filmed at a performance of Chicago at the Moulin Rouge. I tried to grab a pic with bright colors. Here the curtains are shutting at the end of an act. You can see the video on the wall in front of you on the small screen, on the right side of hte picture covering the whole wall, and on the rug.

Here's a picture from the top floor of the exhibit. The video is on the blanket on the floor, on the screen on the wall, and on the bedspread.

Here's a couple of pictures of the videoball in the sky. The machima plays all over the outside of the sphere and then is all over inside like being inside a giant kaleidoscope.

Then tonight I went dancing (again - no pictures of me dancing, I promise). The person hosting the dance was Tuna OddFellow. The music was...strange, irritating..The real reason we were all there was for the light show. Spinning graphics, particle effects, floating spheres

My Avatar has a Segway!

2010-01-12T09:08:00.000-05:00

A club I like to go to - Wiseguys - redid their sim over the weekend to be even more reminiscent of New York City. It's looking good to.

The first cool thing I saw was at hte landing spot you can get a segway. Right now you have to go somewhere else to open the box and wear the segway. But it was worth it. Here's a picture of me doing a tourist photo op. I pulled way back so you could see the Statue of Liberty and some skyline. I have to go back and take a close up of me on the segway I think. I'll add that in a bit.

The club looks the same which is a good thing. It's a fun place to dance.

One more men's fashion show

2010-01-11T14:50:00.000-05:00

I'm not all that excited by men's fashions it turns out. Lots of dark colors, pants, capes, kilts,

I decided to go to the Black Opal show because they had a very cool freebie suit in their store on teh fashion week island. Their clothes were interesting - steam punk elements elong with capes and cool boots. I do like the long suit coats.

Here are some pics of the set - a pretty good audience and today the lag isn't bad. The island crashed several times during shows over the weekend.

Steam punk wings - the gears all moved, the wings flexed. Very cool.

Steam punk arm decorations

More pictures of me

2010-01-10T12:17:00.000-05:00

Hey - it's my blog. And over the years I've got a few pictures of me in here. Think of it as documenting the changes my poor avatar has been dragged through.

Anyway - this is my new favorite outfit. I call it my "mullet" dress. OK - i only say that to myself, and usually only in my imagination. It's business like in the front and all party in the back. I found some new hair I like too. Not something I'll wear around the students, but it looks really good dancing at a Dougie Moonites concert. And no - there are no pictures of me dancing. Ever. Anywhere.

So here it is - the mullet dress. I should mess around with lighting and stuff but wanted to post before I lost my nerve.

Front - I'm standing in front of the waterfall in my little house. The dress is this gorgeous dark gray sweater knit. So are the socks. The boots are soft black leather. What's not to like at that outfit, right?

Back - Even better! I love the collar and the bit of shoulders covered.

Made it to another fashion show

2010-01-09T14:41:00.001-05:00

And another very different, cool runway setup. THe designer today is Eclipse. THey make clothes for role players.

Here's the set up - one central runway with chairs on risers on either side.

Some interesting outfits..all very dark and moody. But with amzing textures and boots. And lots of straps and buckles. Here are a couple of pics

And Men in Skirts - gotta love it. Not sure what the purpose is of the skirts. There were some great capes too - i'd love an opportunity to wear the capes, so heavy and textured. And I got some action shots of the models walking the runway.

The Second Runway Show of Men's Fashion Week

2010-01-08T17:43:00.000-05:00

So I went to the 2nd show - and the runway area was totally different. Not just rearranged - but totally completely different. And so colorful. Nice seating by the runway too. Here are a few pictures.

Here's the door where the models came out onto the stage. Isn't that a cool backdrop? They used the company's colors. I loved the box and pole design.

Here's a view of the walkway and the seating areas. It loks like a big South Beach Miami piano shaped pool doesn't it?

Here's one of the models. I hae to admit - i'm not good at taking people pictures. Not in RL and not in SL. Here I was excited about the color and the set design. If i get to go to another show I will try to do a better job of shooting the models.

Freebies from FashionWeek

2010-01-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

I got a free suit from BlakOpal during Men's FashionWeek. It is so cool. THey have many Victorian and pirate outfits for men and women.

Here are a couple of pics. I love the long tails and the details of the scarf. So pretty! And you can see my new hair from TinyBird - went a little redder than usual.

Mens Fashion Week in SL starts today

2010-01-08T14:06:00.000-05:00

I'm not man and I don't play one on tv. But I have guy friends and guy students so I have an interest in what guys are wearing. And in some past semesters students have done really interesting projects on women's feashions. Maybe it's time for a group to look at men's fashion.

There's a whole sim set up for fashion week sponsored by KMADD. Here is a blog post with a schedule of events for the week: http://madimage.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/mens-fashion-week-sponsored-by-kmadd/ --- A lot of runway shows, parties, concerts.

I went to the opening runway show for Subversion Designs. Here are some pictures. I ended up sitting next to the designer - that was kind of exciting. The audience was really supportive. Everyone did some model ogling. And we all admired the detail the designer had put into the textures he used. The leather was especially cool to see.

The first picture is of the early crowd sitting at one end of hte runway area. You have to cam around to see everything. That was ok most of the time but occasionally lag would make it impossible to move even the camera. That's me on the right - the girl, not the guy on the wall. The designer is next to me, to my right. Behind the runway area and around the sim are stores for each of the designers created specifically for FashionWeek so you can study the designs a little more closely and buy stuff.

Here's a down the main runway shot -nice lights and textures. They had a sound track going with just music. Someone in text described the outfits.

Here are a couple of pics of models on the runway. Things were slow to rez so some pics are fuzzy.

Then the sim crashed - guess we were all having too much fun. I"ll go to some other shows and post some more pics. Go back and check out the stores this week - there are free gifts for men in some of them. Unfortunately they're not usually transferable

The SLURL for the sim is http://slurl.com/secondlife/KMADD%20Events/218/38/22

Another set of pics of me

2010-01-07T16:26:00.000-05:00

This time I"m sitting inside a piece of sculpture I built called (for now) "In a Moment, It All Flies Apart". It's nested bubbles that have trapped an explosion in a moment of time. It's big - one of the things I like about building in SecondLife. In the first picture you can see some of the buildings on the vampire land. In the second picture you can see some of the purple house I live next to. Thanks to my friends brock and Micah for their suggestions and reactions.

Sometimes I take a picture of myself

2010-01-06T15:05:00.000-05:00

Space...they keep moving the final frontier further and further out

2010-01-05T11:39:00.000-05:00

I'm on the island for the International Year of Astronomy. It's the first anniversary of that year actually. There was a press conference today sponsored by the American Astronomical Society. THey released some new images and data analysis from the Hubble, Chandra and Spitzer telescopes that make very cool pictures but also show things about the universe's distant past. Here's a link to the official press release - http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2010/01

Here's a link to the location. Not sure how long the pics will be up, but the whole island is worth investigating --- http://slurl.com/secondlife/Astronomy%202009/27/246/27

Here's a big overview pic - a not bad crowd - that's me in the sweater sitting on the left.

Here's the pic from the Hubble using the Wide Field Camera 3 the shuttle astronauts installed early in 2009. These pics were taken in October & November 2009. The dots aren't stars - they're galaxies! And the smallest, faintest ones are the light those galaxies emitted 13 billion years ago.

and here's the picture from the Spitzer telescope of the Magellenic cloud, specifically it's tail. They're studying the life cycle of space dust and it's role in galaxy formation. The blue colored dots are the older stars; they spit out dust. The green areas are organic dust and they're the hottest areas, and the red areas are stars forming that are covered by dust

And here's a cool avatar that was present - a steampunk flying cat

New Year's Celebration in SecondLife

2009-12-31T07:02:00.001-05:00

Linden Lab set up an area to shoot off fireworks every hour as the new year rolls in around the globe

Here's a pic at about 4am SLT. That's a replica of the Time Square crystal ball on the pole

At 1 minute to the top of the hour, the ball started falling slowly down the pole. Then some pretty cool fireworks. Here's a picture. I"ll try again a couple more times today to get pictures now that i know what to expect.

A couple more pictures

Final version of the Game Design class games

2009-12-23T15:16:00.004-05:00

Each of the 9 students in the class had to create their own unique videogame using the GameMaker software. They had to create the game, multiple levels, the art, and music/sounds. They're not all polished masterpieces. Each game represents the work of one single student for about 5 weeks - with help from their friends. They helped each other out with polishing ideas and debugging problems. They discovered that the design process takes much longer than they thought and the actual coding even longer that that. This was their first attempt at making a videogame. They're not completely satisfied with their games in some cases and i'd like to see them keep working on their games. But for the time they had and the fact that we sprung on them the fact that they would be working by themselves right as the project started, the games came out pretty good. There's an element of fun in most - and that's a big first step in making games.

Feel free to play the games on the yoyogames.com site. You can leave the students comments there too or enter a review of the game. You can leave comments here too on this post and i'll pass them along. Just be sure to mention what game you're talking about.

Samurai Sush - Malti Jones - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/106293-samurai-sushi
Fire, Earth, Wind, and Water - Ethan Alderman - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/107414-fire-earth-wind-and-water
Husk - Greg Schulz - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/106324-husk---the-core-of-a-game
Dodge the Planes - Sam Gutwetter - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/107287-dodge-the-planes
Akita Adventure - Chris Hendrickson - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/107139-akita-adventure
Werewolf: The New Moon - Jeff Picarello - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/show/106345
Escape your worst trip - Jesse Caruso - http://yoyogames.com/games/106348-escape-your-worst-trip
Bobby Beard: Electrician Extraordinaire V2 - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/107274-bobby-beard-electrician-extroidnaire-v2
Surfin USA - Zach Doell - http://www.yoyogames.com/games/107128-surfin-usa-final-revision

Kim's Virtual Experiences

Late October Snowstorm: Storify edition

Newest Storify Experiment

Embedding some google stuff

JohnPathfinderLester's Channel - YouTube

A look back at Burn2 2011 using Storify

Kim as part of the camp theme

Camps near ours at Burn2

Art Cars & Playa Bikes at Burn2

Our Camp Got Finished for Burn2

Brewery Build-Off

Playa Aesthetics

Got Distracted

What our camp looks like after a week

Started building

We got our plot! We got our plot!

One Last ArtCar

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