Postcard from Second Life., originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion.

Another draw!

I did win the third match, though ;-D

Postcard from Second Life., originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion.

A draw!

I count myself a lucky little Burro for many reasons and chief amongst them is the simple fact I have some truly splendid friends. Young Geoffrion is just such an example (I’ve mentioned before how much I love her blog) and my time spent with her is always a pure delight.

Due to my current addiction to Left4Dead2 & Borderlands, I’m not getting in-world as I used to & I don’t see my friends as much so it was a real delight to manage to get in for Young’s first every art exhibition. It was held in the new Mysterio Gallery in Grignano and I had a blast! I had guessed Young was a talented artist, but bloody hell! She is brilliant! I took a few shots (below) and I’d encourage you all to pop over and take a look. I understand that the pieces are for sale too and I’ll be buying one – that will mean I have works from Os, Enjha & Young now *does a happy dance* Quite how I who can’t draw a line and know nothing about high culture know such wonderfully clever peeps is beyond me, I’m just glad I do

Here’s a handy cut-out-n-keep SLURL to the Mysterio Gallery in Grignano: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Grignano/118/126/36/?title=Mysterio%20Gallery

P.S. Once you’ve been to Enjah’s gallery in Grignano, why not explore the surrounding city of Nova Albion. This is the oldest city in SL and its neighbour, Bay City, one of the newest – take a looksee and touch some of the history of the grid!

P.P.S Here is a post from Young about the show. One from Enjah (with a video!). And one from Os.

Big time kudos to Holo, Mari and the others from Bay City for organising the first ever Tri-Cities parade (and to Osprey for her usual bang-up job on publicity) because the Halloween march through the cities and leap off Shermville bridge was a hoot! Everything happened on time and the party under the water afterwards was a blast!

Here I am (a zombie version of me) on my steampunk horse

The Nova Albion Parade off to meet the others on the bridge!

BAT!

The bat killed Lucy!

LisaHot plays a mean drum and fires a meaner cannon!

On the bridge a the sun came up…

Osprey looking teh sexeh!

Lucy needs a shave!

Kumi gets it oooonnnnnnn!

Holo leads the Bay City parade up the bridge…

Getting ready to jump…

Heere we all goooooooooooo!

Party with da fishes!

I’m sure most people in SL have heard of Metropolis, the live recreation of Fritz Lang’s film done by CARP. Well one of the TSMGO troupe, Karuna Sands (1), is tied to the history of the film and his friend and fellow TSMGOer, Lucy Tornado (2), urged us all to go and see this amazing spectacle. After a few false starts I finally got to a show on 16th October and I can honestly say I was blown away! I *LOVED* this show! It held me from start to finish and the hour whizzed by – I *have* to see it again!

Without spoiling it too much (although for a film made in 1927 I doubt I need to worry too much about spoilers – and it does follow the film closely if my memory serves me correctly) let me tell you a little of what to expect when you go (and go you must!) and see it.

First off the set is huge! I seriously need to go back there and see how they did it, because every thing is done in the same Borg-like block – all the sets are buried within it and around it. At first I was worried I’d have to walk & fly around and that’s always a nightmare of lag and folks getting lost and crashing out. CARP have thought of that – your theatre seats (complete with nice sit poses, it should be noted) are your vehicles around the huge set. As one the entire audience flies hither and yon to the correct area for the scene underway.

Oh!, I hear you wail, what of cameras and having to focus on the right bit of the action – that must suck! Calm yourself, dears – CARP have solved that too. The seat, once sat in it, takes over your camera and uses a huge series of viewpoint cameras buried around the immense set to show you exactly the right scene and ensures that everyone sees the same scene at the same time. Nifty, huh? Think of it like watching TV – it’s that good (3).

Then throughout the show there are great touches that really show the creators know SL’s limitations and are more than capable of working around them – crowd scenes done with animated textures; animation loops used cleverly to give the impression of live, free-movement; music & camera angles that really added to the mood; and, my favourite of all, cue cards in the style of the original silent movie at key points to help lead you through the tale.

Don’t take my word for all this – take a looksee at the pictures below (and more on my flickr) and get your arse down to the next showing! Here’s the SLURL: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Benvolio/35/72/1497

(1) The pregnant man this year and Lucinda’s dummy last year, among many other roles.

(2) The doctor this year and tons more characters as well as set builder and writer.

(3) Osprey didn’t like that bit so much, but she doesn’t like people taking her camera away so I can see that it would irk. Mind you, she hasn’t had a telly for 20 years so has to be classed as odd(4) in my square-eyed book

(4) Lovely as well, obviously!

 

Postcard from Second Life., originally uploaded by Vivian Oblivion.

I won using a Fantasy deck.

Happy Hallowe’en!

This isn’t very Fantasy-y nor yet futuristic, but instead looks like it needs a steampunk series.

Not an exciting picture, but when I take exciting pictures I always get killed.  Here tiny robot Os fights tiny panda Mich.  With just one little detail pending, the Tiny Combat Cards deck is soon to be released.  We shall need to have a Tiny tournament of some kind.

Mmmm, why hello there little Osprey…

Eeek!

When my event listing disappeared I sent a notice cancelling the non-existent event – and immediately got fighters teleporting in just itching to slay me .   The event that wasn’t to be wound up taking place anyway. Thanks Mich, Cal, and Rich!

Combat Cards Event – 20 Sept 2009

I am trying to keep track of my event listing by publishing it here.  I’m not sure WHAT I did to make it disappear last time, but I’m going to keep tight hold on this slippery devil.

Cal Darkfold is holding Friday afternoon events on his land in Ortakoy.  Come over and fight!

Kat has been filming matches and putting them on The Spaceport’s YouTube channel.  Although there’s no commentary it’s interesting to see the gameplay. Have a look at The Spaceport website.

I’m on holiday as I type this (today is a Sunday so I’m resting up – this is me resting up and not wasting my holiday as Mrs Burro would have you believe) and since the start of my holiday I’ve passed the idle moments (hours!) in airports and hotels and the like by reading Darien Mason’s blog from the start. I’m up to Dec 08 from April 07 and as most monthhs are around 20 posts I can tell you that’s a hell of a lot of reading (although not as much as Osprey’s blog which I also read from the start over several weeks couple of years back). But not only is it a lot of reading, it’s a lot of GREAT reading! Frau Lowey warned me, when I told her of my intention to read all of Darien’s blog, that it would twist my brain more than string theroy. She was right!

The basic premise of his blog is his character’s struggle with an ancient curse involving a demon from Hell called Bloodwing. But saying that is like saying the basic premise of spaceflight is about shooting people at the moon, or the basic premise of cricket is hiting a ball, or the basic premise of politics is about looking after number 1 – none of these examples do their subject justice and I fear I can not do Darien’s works justice either. He runs with several storylines at once, he crosses blogs and sims and realities several times over without breaking a sweat, he throws more brilliant concepts in to one post than some people have in an entire blog. And then there is time travel. If anything is designed to make you cry at the pain in your noodle, it’s reading about a doll split by time into an infinite army of herself and returning one by one to a new vision of Hell to be enslved by a clone of Darien’s father (who is himself a clone several times over and a clone of his father too boot!)

Seriously, you will not grasp everything at first – some tales seem to rise from nowhere and others sink without a trace, but the answers are out there, eithger crossed over into other people’s blogs or, more often than not, lurking between the lines just waiting to be found by only the boldest of readers. What are you still reading this drivel for – go NOW and read his works from the start. And then email the bugger with questions because if he wants to make our brains ache, we should return the favour and demand explanations!

p.s. I should point out that Darien has now gone from SL but that hasn’t stopped the Mason Mythos living on and traveling to us from other worlds – you can’t keep a good writer from writing, you know

Doc and I decided ages ago that we’d do a robot series, and about two years ago I made the frame for it.  Doc had all kinds of exciting ideas for special robots-only effects, and we just wanted to bring the Fantasy series and Horror series up to a certain point before we did anything much for the Robot series.

Lately I’ve been making some images.  I have about seventeen so far, and have a few raw shots still to work on, but I would like more robot models.  The finished images remain “possibles” until actually made into a card, which is not a fast process – since balancing and variety in the effects need to be carefully considered and tested.

Here are a few from my pool of “possibles.”

It took forever, but finally I managed to clamber up from the deep pit of computer problems and re-enter the sparklingly daylit world of Second Life.   I am busy exaggerating my term of exile so that it can be recounted to maximum effect: “My computer was borked FOR ELEVEN YEARS…” *crowd gasps and draws away in horror* “…AND THREE MONTHS!”   *three women faint*

…not in a Combat Cards fight but due to computer problems.  I’ve been trapped outside Second Life – first when my puter broke last Friday and I had to wait to get it into the shop, then Monday – Thursday when it was gone, and now it’s back. Fixed it is not, however, but I hope a new video card will do the trick (whenever that will be).

/me stabs the stupid 8800 GTX.

I’ve not been online much of late – it hassles gave way to family illness and I’ve not had much time to comee in-world. But I did manage to geet in for a bit to see Os & Enjah and Os cheered me right up with a great trip to a robot museum sim so we could have a go on Madcow Cosmos’ brilliant Robot Avatar Making Thingie!

It’s dead simple – use the controls to choose the type of head, body, limbs, etc. you want & just press the button to make it. Poof! It appears in your inventory ready to wear!

You can then move to the paintshop pad and alter the colour & texture of your new body.

As you can see from above, I’m a fan of symmetry where as Os is far braver than me

Here we both are, looking splendid!

Even in robot form, I’m mind weepingly handsome

Edit: SLURL is http://slurl.com/secondlife/Kubrick/89/173/23

I made it with three minutes to spare and everywhere was full so it was, to put it mildly, hard work moving and seeing but that didn’t dampen the atmosphere any and the parade through Nova Albion was a huge laugh! This pic was taken at the border on Luna where the parade ended up – we were noisy, big and setting fireworks off with a vengeance

I went round on good old Frank because my dear old float was borked by lag…

Other people had more luck with even magallen showing up… sort of

You can see all the photos on the Nova Albion flickr group here, and don’t miss Osprey’s fab video here.

Now – same time next year?

Osprey has posted an info packed forum update here. Go and follow her links and get all the latest plans for the Nova Albion 5th Anniversary Parade on Sunday 22nd March at 12noon SL time.

Timetable:
Prep on Friday 20th at 7pm and Sat 21st at 10am.
Parade on Sunday 22nd at 12noon with ceremony and photos afterwards.

Don’t forget to enter Osprey’s photo competiton as well – all the info & rules are here.

Follow the updates on the forum and twitter.

Ooooo I am so late with this! I’ve taken my eye right off the ball and not told you, my loyal reader, about the great news that not only is Nova Albion city five years old on Monday 23rd March, but there is to be another parade! For those of you who missed the parade last year, you can catch up here. But the best way to experience the fun of the parade is to be in it!

You can get a free float base to build your float on underneath the arch in Grignano – you’ll also find posters and flags there. The parade starts at 12noon and this is the route.

Check the forums for more details and follow updates on twitter @NovaAlbion

I have Osprey and Young to thank for these beauties:

A printer takes a life, and a voice, of its own

and

A man creates a world for his love

I would love to be around long enough to see the sort of technology that the second portrays – it actually made me want to attempt to build a city in SL, something nothing but Cowell has ever managed to do (given how hard I find building and how little time I’d have to do it).

p.s. I’m only posting links because embedded videos cause my phone browser to crash – and I’d rather like to use my own phone to see my own blog, ta very much Come on Adobe, pull yer collective thumbs out of your collective arses and sort mobile flash out you turnips.

Osprey, being The Debil, has organised a squat party in the comments section of her absent friend’s blog. I urge you with all my urging might (to the point I’ve strained something and will need help going to the toilet as I doubt I’ll be in position to lift heavy loads) to come over to here and join the party. Bring food, drink and wild animals as you see fit. Dim-but pretty Raoul is there and will no doubt be fooled into having sex with a trifle at some point. Again.

US shop – Sporkadelic shop-o-mania with Os.
UK shop – Be waited on hand and foot by Doc.

And – real-life cards can be acquired inside Second Life, too.

For 3500l you get both a real life set AND a set of virtual cards: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Europa/101/138/56

Press Release

Of interest to editors and journalists covering: games, technology,
business and culture

Virtual Strategy Card Game Moves From Second Life To Real Life

This week Second Life residents Doc Boffin and Osprey Therian released
a real life edition of their original strategy card game Combat Cards,
a game that previously existed only in the virtual world of Second
Life. In doing so, Combat Cards became the first original game build
in Second Life to become a real life physical game.

Real life card games based on virtual worlds like World Of Warcraft
and Eve Online have existed before, however these games have been
created or licensed by the companies who create and operate the
virtual worlds. Because the virtual items in Second Life are owned by
the the people who create them, Boffin and Therian were able to build
a card game within Second Life featuring avatars and locations in
Second Life and then release that game in the real world: the
community created virtual world now has a novel community created
strategy card game.

Combat Cards has been in development since early 2006 when Boffin and
Therian met in Second Life. Not only did the virtual world provide a
fertile environment for the pair to rapidly prototype, test, iterate
and develop the game with help from a community of enthusiastic fellow
residents, the profits from the sales of the virtual game in Second
Life completely covered all of the production costs of the real life
edition. Situated on both sides of the Atlantic, Boffin and Therian
have never met in real life.