Paths through virtuality

So a bag-zillion years ago I weblogged (probably more than once) about an interconnected random adventure in SL, where a friend and I landed in some cool place after skydiving, looked up the picks of the creator of some neat object there, went to their store or something, and so on through various hours worth of fun randomness.

It’s been too long since I went nude skydiving :) but I still have these kinda small adventures all the time, I just don’t weblogify about them as much, because I don’t weblogify about anything as much, because I am lazy person.

But here’s one!

As extremely long-time readers will know, one of my very early living places in SL was a little shack on the PIER sim (which I found in turn from making friends with a bartender at The Elbow Room, which stretches the story back just about to my first months in SL I think), and when that sim shut down I started renting a room in Extropia.

Eventually the Extropians redesigned the sim and didn’t have those little rental rooms available anymore, but I stayed in the Extropians group because it was interesting, and after awhile I started to notice cross-posting in the Extropians group from the Dakini Land / Western Geisha / Companion’s Guild group, see for instance this probably-related video.

I visited the Dakini Land sim somewhere in there, but as I recall I was heavily RL-distracted at the time, and couldn’t really figure out what it was. Then I got a notice about (I think it was) some graduation ceremonies that were going on there, and there was going to be dancing and music and poetry-reading and stuff, so I went, and it was a good time, and the people were very friendly and interesting.

(I eventually did figure out a little of what was going on, which led me to start watching old episodes of “Firefly” on Netflix, where I was by coincidence already watching old episodes of Buffy; everything connects!)

Probably the performance that struck me most at that ceremony was a live on-voice reading of original poetry by Karima Hoisan. I took her picture and gave her a copy (as I am constantly doing, which is one reason my friends list is so absurdly large), and she looked at my profile and saw a Pick there from New Toulouse, which I had added to replace a Burn2 pick when Burn2 ended, and having connections with New Toulouse herself, she IMd, me and we talked, and continued talking now and then thereafter.

Eventually she and frequent collaborator Natascha Randt were working on this machinima about scripting, and I happened to have a script that fit into it nicely, with the result that some of my LSL code ended up in a machinima, which was extremely cool. (Note that it’s not a dry and geeky machinima, either; you must watch it if you haven’t, it is amazing.)

And then later on, looking around at random things on the web as I constantly do, I came across Karima’s machinima series “The Two”, and realized that I had randomly watched an episode from the middle of it somewhere many months before, but not had enough focus to figure out its context or anything.

Ms. Hoisan wisely suggested that if I wanted the full effect I should first read / listen to / experience her “Colored Dreams” pieces first, and then “The Two” in order.

So I did that, and now at the end of this particular branch of the chain of causality (rather than, say, the one that includes having a lovely tea ceremony on a satellite), I am highly recommending to you my readers that you experience both in that order also:

The Colored Dreams (page one page older to start at the start of Part One)

and

The Two (Also page back one to start at the start)

Don’t expect to consume them all in one sitting :) I found that I wanted to stop for hours or days in between just to sort of let it all sink in. It’s hard to describe or characterize; might be called fantasy or even SF, or a series or dreams, or meditations on the human condition and the nature of power and love and trust, or lots of other things. But really, like all good art, it tends to slip away from any words that you try to tie it up in.

And if you’d like to hear the artist live :) she will be doing another reading this very tomorrow, and I recommend that also, and so we tie the story up to the present day.

So! That’s my path through virtual space for today. Now I will go and find some more. Or maybe I will take a nap…

I think I’m all better… :)

Badly-composed photographic evidence (click through to flickr for other sizes and some more words):


Much thanks to v good friend and talented artist Sabrinaa Nightfire for the TP to the impromptu party marking the end of Glyph Graves’ lovely installation in the IBM Exhibition space, and to lovely ambisexual Martian Deebrane String and DJ Formatting Heliosense for hosting the (first?) Wednesday night party on Extropia Odyssey. Beautiful and fascinating people, great discussions, rockin’ music…

It’s good to be back!

Goodbye, Hello

As one of SL’s biggest me-related blogs, I thought I’d post some more random pictures of the Big Move, now that the story has a (temporary) ending. Click through to flickr for a few more words on each.

That’s the Shack at the instant that I first set it as my home location back in July 2007 (courtesy of the screen_home.bmp file).

That’s the Shack on the sim’s last day, everything of mine moved out except for the giant flower on the roof, the empty vendor stalls looking all emosad in the background.

An interior shot of emptiness. If you look closely you’ll see a single rose in a vase on the windowsill. Sob!

And here, in the happy ending, is my new screen_home.bmp, showing me in my new home location, my little myPod in the airy upbeat shininess of Extropia. I’ve been renting it for some time, but now it is officially Home. Hurrah!

(And don’t ask me why I haven’t just set my home location to the biggest chunk of land that I actually own and control and where I spend lots of time: the Park in Hughes Rise. Just too obvious, maybe, haha.)

Solstice in Extropia

Extropia threw a fantastic twelve hour long marathon Solstice party yesterday. I went over somewhat late, expecting to find maybe a couple of people still around, coming and going. In fact the joint was jumpin’, and full of fascinating people, and apparently had been since the very start. I took a whole mess of pictures (I was apparently in the mood), but have downloaded only a few of them for flickring. Here they are (click through to flickr for a few words about each):

And Happy Solstice to All! Ppl keep sending me cards and presents and stuff inworld; I really ought to make something and spam it out to my friends. Maybe a nice little card, and a special Solstice version of the sun-time clock, or something…

Happy Birthday Extropia Party!

So Michele mentioned the other day (I don’t know, some previous day in the not-too-distant past) that there was going to be a birthday party for Extropia that night, and for a wonder I remembered and actually went inworld for it (a good excuse for NaNoWriMo procrastination), and I IMd Rebel about it because she was on and I hadn’t talked to her in ages, and she brought Snowflake, who I hadn’t talked to in even more ages, and it was great and I took some pictures. I didn’t get any pictures of the Founders of the Feast due to a bit of cloudiness an’ lag, but here’s some that I did get:

Dolly Michele -- rowr!

Deebrane an' Zada

Rebel an' Snowflake

Ravin'!

Peer is tickled!

Typical nice friendly SL party; highbrow discussion, lots of silly jokes, and an anthropomorphic pink bunny strapped to a tickle-torture machine. A good time was had by all. :)