Appearance on “When Worlds Collide” on Monday

[UPDATE 30 June: I've had a personal emergency which will keep me off the grid for a little while...odds are that Cypress will have a replacement guest this week. Tune in regardless - I had a chance to listen to a couple of his past show podcasts, and it's a REALL good show.]

In case anyone is interested, I will be a guest on Cypress Rosewood‘s “When Worlds Collide” radio show(podcast link), which is broadcast live from Nashville, Tennessee (on Radio Free Nashville) and streamed into an in-world studio in the Jarang sim. The show will be on Monday, 2 July from 7-8PM SLT. It’s a fascinating mixture of music and talk, largely revolving around the ever-growing SL cultural scene.

Cypress has told me that I should plan to talk about Oyster Bay and other notions creative and artistic. Seeing as I’m the least creative and artistic guy associated with the place, I hope I have enough to talk about to help fill the hour!

It’s Friday, I’m gonna gripe

One SMALL gripe about life in SL: Why in the world do people think that I would want to stop everything I am doing and take their teleport invite without knowing why I’m going? Common courtesy dictates that the inviter give some rationale for sending an invitation first.

Dear God, I’m becoming the Miss Manners of SL…either that or the cranky old man…

At long last, the Black Tie and Blues photos!

First, props to Kronos Kirkorian and Isolde Flamand, who have some great shots on their own. Everyone should go take a look.

As for my photos, take a look in “Moresville….”

YOU wanna talk to ME?

Thanks to Pamala Clift for reminding me…

It appears that Linden Lab has enabled the Oyster sim (and I believe Shepherd too) for voice per the Second Life First Look: Voice viewer interface.

Pamala (not the “oh so attractive” avi to the right, thankfully) and I had a rollicking conversation as we tried to make our live dialogue interface with a non-voice user. Sadly, she was laughing so hard that she had to keep turning her voice client off. Such is the life of hanging in the mirth of Oyster Bay!

For those who have not tried voice out, it’s a bit of a challenge at first – and some systems just can’t handle it. It’s a whole different world of SL… one that will clearly sort itself out as the days move ahead.

Rezago Kokorin interview/profile on YouTube

Oyster Bay artisan and storeowner Rezago Kokorin alerted me that a video interview featuring him has been posted on YouTube, the first of a proposed series of such videos by Magellan Egoyan. Here’s Magellan’s Virtual Artist Alliance posting on the topic.

Nice work highlighting one of SL’s great artists – up to the level of the Oyster Bay ArtTalk series! I hope to see more of these.

Report on Second Live love (No, not “Why we love SL…”)

Perhaps one of the most interesting people I have come across in SL is Pamala Clift, a self-described “roadside philosopher” who has taken to investigating the world of SL relationships in-depth.  Her initial findings on the world of love in SL is right here.

To summarize quickly, Pamala came to the following conclusions:

In talking with all the relationships that have lasted these are the things that seem to work, and some items just so happen to have great bearings also on RL relationships.

Communication: How you feel must be honest. The more things that you can find in common that u enjoy talking about the better the relationship. The more common goals that you can share and work toward the more complete things will feel and the relationship can grow.

Respect of RL’s trump cards: Knowing that RL will still take precedence and not putting guilt trips on the partner for having to comply with the realities of RL. This also has to include a talk and understanding of how and what would happen if the dissolution of the partnership becomes necessary.

Breaking the sameness rule: Doing the same thing over and over is just as boring in SL as it is in RL. No matter how much u enjoy each other’s company typing the same thing or doing the same thing can tax any relationship…especially since time moves so much faster in SL.

Don’t have your Sl relationship compensate for anything lacking in RL. It won’t work! It can add to your enjoyment of life, but can not and should not replace RL.

Once you cross the line of SL into RL well then, real life rules enter in. Volumes of material has been written to try an analysis what works and what doesn’t in real. I will not venture into that arena. So since it is so hard to develop true love in real and not that hard to do in SL, my advice would be to stay happily in SL and try not to make the cross over. The song that says: What happens in Mexico stays in Mexico would definitely apply to SL. 

She also reports that men appear to fall in love faster in SL than women, offering a couple rationales why as well.  I’ll let you read the report for yourselves; it sure is fascinating.

Kronos makes it big

Yesterday I received this note from Kronos:

Hi, Discovered I have a picture on the  front page of the  NY Times, Arts and Leisure section today! Big surpise. lol  From a shoot for Sundance Channel. Here’s the web version.

I then asked about the picture – if it was him in the RL photo, in the audience, or taking the picture.  He said:

Mine is the title shot. They didnt give credit

So, to make sure fair is fair, here’s the photo – giving credit to the photographer, Kronos Kirkorian!

Well done, Kronos!

Kronos Kirkorian photos

Oyster Bay machinima creator Kronos Kirkorian alerted me to some SL photographs that he took during the “Black Tie and Blues” event…check them out here.

Also, I stumbled upon Kronos’ photo work from the Finny Yates “Avatar Morphs” open house at Oyster Bay.

Great stuff!  Thanks, Kronos!

Black Tie and Blues photos

Look for photos next week – I will be out of town for a wedding until late-ish Sunday.

Thanks to everyone who came out and enjoyed themselves!  What a wonderful experience – Doubledown Tandino, Kronos Kirkorian’s machinima and Komuso Tokugawa…..all amazing artists in their own right!

The Nicholaz SL viewer

Lordfly Digeridoo tells the story better than I, but I’ll add that I’ve been using the Nicholaz open source SL viewer for about a week and it has not hurt my viewing experience in the least. So this might be worth investigating, if you haven’t tried it already….

• OPEN SOURCE DELIVERS: NICHOLAZ CLIENT PATCHES MEMORY LEAKS

[UPDATE 27 JUNE 2007: The newest revision of the standard SL viewer (1.17.2) appears to have integrated Nicholaz' fixes. No need to use this viewer any more, I would guess.]

[UPDATE 28 JUNE 2007: Nicholaz himself set me straight. Keep using his viewer!]