These are a bit late, but i figured i'd post them here while I update the K&O Blog....


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Thanks for coming, everyone! It was AWESOME! :D

Bleh.  Flock doesn't seem to post to LJ Communities properly, electing instead to post duplicates to one's own account :/

All are welcome to attend the Grand Opening of my new (and first evar!!) sim, Sylvan!


The island will be host to a number of things, but for now just the
ground level, which will be an immense outdoor area, as well as the new
main location for my tree store, Organica!


Festivities will begin at 9AM and run until 4PM, Saturday August 2,
2008, and will include DJ sets as well as a live performance by
singer/songwriter Wendy Curtiss! (This to be updated as I get more info)


There will be a number of freebies available throughout the sim, as
well as custom catches exclusive to the Sylvan sim through our 7Seas
fishing spot!


This event is very casual, outdoors, and you may even want to bring
along swimming gear to best take advantage of what this sim has to
offer! It will also continually be added to, so if you can't make it,
feel free to drop by any time you can just to explore and hang out.


Feel free to give me a shout if you have any questions; I really hope you can make it!

Heh. So the adfarm issue sorta resolved itself after I sent the neighbor a concerned IM. The land's still for sale, but at least it's now in the hands of someone who has no intention of selling it to land cutters.

That same day I discovered the following, not far from my own land, after camming around and seeing something interesting in the distance.



Spanning five sims, holding more than a few runways, race tracks, a marina, aircraft carrier, and more, this place is *huuuuuuuge*.  (I teleported in at Sanchez, but the build spans Sanchez, Trevelyan, Montlaur, Zorin, Arguilleries.)

And the astonishing thing to me was this place is on the mainland.


I'd known a tight racetrack had been in the works in this general direction, but had not known that the build was so large and extensive.  The overall build is really well done too.


So, while I was going to post about how the mainland had gone to hell in a handbasket, I was actually really pleasantly surprised.  Surprised to the point where I've decided to record these finds on my own in a flickr group focused on photos about good things about the mainland - things that make the mainland relevant and worthy of preservation, above and beyond ad farms, etc.

I'm sure there are more awesome places out there on the mainland... what have you folks come across lately?

I am sitting here on my own land watching a neighbor, who holds 8358sqm of land in this sim, split anything that doesn't fit a 512 or 1024 in to a 16sqm piece of land.

The fact that he's done this before to a smaller parcel, splitting it completely down to 16sqm pieces and plunking down spinny signs does NOT bode well.

I IMed him and he says that he is doing the splitting so he can make 512s and 1024s, but even so, he's still splitting his land in to easily farmable corners, rather than as part of larger land

I wish i could come up with alternatives to this.  I'm not in a position to take on additional tier even if i wanted to buy more land in this sim.  In fact, I don't really want to buy more land in this sim at all - I'm just sick and tired of neighbors throwing land value down the toilet for a quick buck. I am quite sure I will be unable to get rid of my land for any reasonable amount when the time comes.

This is quite frustrating.  It seems one just can't win - either you stay and put up with a bad neighborhood, or you try to leave but can't get rid of your land for a good price because golly gee, 25% of the sim is ads.

So something that consistently seems to come up is the issue of pricing and how the customer will sometimes react to a given price for a specific product.  Often, fairness will come in to play, as well as overall worth and to some degree, the vaunted impulse buy.

In a recent thread on the SLU forums, someone asked why so many tree makers charge so much for no-copy articles. 

The answer? Pure and simple - it makes the difference between a 4 sim business that pays for house & home and a 1/4 region hobby that struggles to make tier depending on how stable SL decides to be that month.

That extra expense buys prims, space, visibility and reputation, which in turn spurs greater sales and related good tidings to the successful entrepeneur. This works and has worked for many such content creators, to the point where, for many, these elevated prices are deemed reasonable, acceptable, and fair.

Those who have visited my store will know that my own pricing doesn't really reflect that common view... and yeah, it's true - I am that person who is running businesses to pay for 1/4 region tier.  But it doesn't mean I think other folks' pricing is unfair though.  Ultimately, it's pretty smart - produce a good product and demand what it takes to keep the business going and growing.  I should learn from that...heh.

I mean, if i'd priced based on the market standard and still could have gotten the same number of sales, I'd be well on my way to paying for a full sim right now, rather than sitting around waiting for the best opportunity to pick up an Openspace.  I'd have room to work and room to show/sell my products. etc etc etc.

Ultimately, those who stay in business have done *something* right, whether a few folks feel the product is expensive or not.  All we as customers ought to do is vote with our feet.  Can i blame folks for charging what they do?  No, not at all. Folks should and will pay for what they feel is worth it.  This will always be the case. People who price high will either do well based on the quality of their product and reputation behind it, or go out of business. 

Some recent time on my hands has spurred me in to looking in to LJ a bit more for my SL side of things.  While I do have a blog on my site, I've been thinking about getting back to expressing my opinions in a place where I'm comfortable doing so.  I'm hoping it will help me not dwell on the things that I shouldn't dwell on...  or at least let me express them better and sort through them in a more analytical way, rather than letting it get all tangled in my brain, threatening to choke other stuff off.

In any case, I have gone poking around in the S2 themes and have picked something fairly generic for now.  Most people wouldn't be checking my main LJ page anyway, except for me, unless they're not LJ members.

Catching up...
After a RL move that uprooted and tossed me halfway across Canada, I'm finally settling in again, except now in Toronto.  Moving has meant some job hunting, but the free time has also opened me up again to metaverse development on a part/full-time basis.

As a matter of fact, I've been picked up again through AWS to work on some NOAA-related stuff, and I'm taking the opportunity to challenge myself from both a time and quality perspective.  The project will also allow me to collaborate with a friend I've known for some time, but have never really worked with before.  His reputation precedes him to a certain degree, so it's certainly intimidating...  but exciting as well.  The research leading up to the project as well as the project itself have been fun so far - It'll be interesting seeing how the whole thing unfolds.

Since my last post, I opened an Organica location in Lohengrin, next to Stormy McCallister's Another Man's Treasure Zen collection.  Both it and the main store are doing pretty good, though I've been feeling prim and space pressure for some time now. I'm not particularly ready to jump to the next tier level right now, so other solutions are being mulled over at the moment.

Kitheres has also opened a small satellite store located in Skin City. This is Ina Centaur's homage to Frank Miller's Sin City, and is host to a great number of skin and shape designers. Skin City is also appearing this year in SL5B's celebrations, exhibiting a number of designers throughout the event.

This journal is intended to be a semi-informal record of my thoughts and feelings on things I do in SL, whether related to work or personal matters.

I say semi-informal because I intend to speak my mind freely and reference things that I do, but in no way should my statements here be considered representative of feelings or opinions felt by anyone but myself. At the same time, from a personal perspective, I am speaking mostly to express my thoughts on matters and not to single anyone specific out by name.

As such, it should be expected that I will talk about things that i want to talk about, and talk about personal situations that i want to talk about. Feelings may be uplifted or feelings may be hurt. I can only call them as I see them, and will try to be as objective as possible.

If what I write offends you or you're looking for a place to keep an eye on my product updates, perhaps you should not read this journal. However, if you think you know me well enough or you don't mind having someone to follow and interact with based on the above conditions, then please do feel free to discuss with me anything you see here.

Interesting discussion concerning an article on 'corporations pulling out of SL'.

http://forums.secondlife.com/showthread.php?t=197816

Have only really had time to skim the initial article and replies, but it really strikes me that, while many of the existing criticisms are true, concerning many companies coming to SL and not understanding what people want, a lot of people in SL also don't understand the possibilities that are in store for non-domestic entities within SL.

Many people prefer to not see advertisements. I'll admit to being one of them.

And yet I work for a company that helps corporate entities test the waters or to jump right in. And it really seems like this wide range of adaptability of SL in to a corporation's workings really has to do with what idea corporations have of SL in the first place, and just what understanding they have of existing trends.

I'm not going to go in to anything specific, but I've seen time and time again where some companies will come in to promote a specific product alongside existing ones made by SL content creators... yet do nothing further to engage their potential customer base.

On the other hand, there are some other entities, such as IBM (mentioned in the thread), the NOAA (a subsidiary of the US Department of Commerce), and the American Cancer Foundation's Relay for Life are using the resources SL provides as a means for education, experimentation and fundraising.

IBM has both private and public sims for training. The NOAA has an educational sim that educates the public about what it does. The Relay for Life campaign has raised $85000+USD this year to date towards research for cancer. Can we honestly say these entities have not brought about some good from the non-domestic side of SL?

I think it comes down to how SL is sold to these companies. Surely, money is a big part of what goes on in SL, but realistically the cost of a sim and tier payments is a drop in the bucket for these companies and many who get in just to advertise their products at the same level as content creators will really not get returns in over-abundance.

I don't think the stream of companies coming in to SL to advertise will ever go away (they don't in RL - logic dictates there will always be companies that will try (and companies around who will make that happen))... but a big part of piquing the audience's interest as far as promoted products, services or ideals... is engaging them. Encouraging interaction.

And as someone working in the industry and seeing some of that happen, I feel the general tone of the article and the thread rather inaccurate and representative of the 'nothing is ever OK' sentiment the majority of Residents take on whenever the words 'LL' or 'Corporations' come in the mix.


I'm writing this on my lunch hour a little light-headed from a long drive and possibly not structuring this post right... but I'd just like to conclude by saying SL is a pretty much free ranging capitalist society. And like any other capitalist society, companies may introduce themselves, rise, or fall. It's their money... they can do what they want with it, whether you support them or not. And if you dislike seeing their sims on the map... then simply don't go to check them out. But in doing so (by that assumption) you are necessarily turning your eye away from other entities that *are* making a difference. And in that, i think it is your loss.

Spent much of Saturday and a bit of Sunday working on layouts for The Salvaged Times issue 2. Still have some small details to work out, but the general substance of the issue is there. Hoping to release either tonight or tomorrow.

Sunday morning and early afternoon was spent preparing the new site in Drax for Wendy Curtiss' performance as well as Todd's set at 7PM. Abel and Rogan have moved their vendors over to storespaces there, and one of Abel's friends Isabelle also took up shop. Things are shaping up in the storespaces - we've got some pretty quirky and interesting products, so hopefully I can play on this a bit when it comes to advertising the location and the sorts of stuff we sell.

Both Wendy's and Todd's sets went well, though perhaps on the slow side trafficwise. Still, both were very enjoyable and I'm glad things transferred over without too much of a glitch.

The old Plush Alpha site has been demolished, with a door in its place to forward people to the new location. Still need to contact Mobsix about moving the Relay for Life kiosk. Feeling sort of depressed - Tiphares was there for just about a year. There's a bit of emptiness where a major part of my SL life was.

Need to do more research as to people who might be up to selling items at the mall, follow up on some IMs about my own products selling at other locations as well.

Sort of concerned that I am still so tight on groups. Coupled with work stuff, I really don't have all that much room to move, as far as groups are concerned. I have been cutting down on necessary groups a lot lately, but I keep on having to add more, depending on my work and personal needs.

Have been thinking about creating an alt to handle all my personal sales. I will have to see just how well this will work - am concerned that this may open up possibilities for exploits, since the permissions will have to be reset, i think.

Anyhow.. I've been reading posts about how the current names haven't been rotated for months... and thinking maybe i ought to hold off for now. Many of the last names are waaaaay overused already. It would be nice to have a distinctive name to handle this.

...put up an adfarm :/

(additional graphic forthcoming)

God. Why do I even try anymore? How long will it be until the entirety of the mainland is just one giant continuously revolving adfarm?

Granted, these are just about a half sim away from my land... but really. When close to a quarter of a sim's resources go to these ridiculous excuses for adspace, when can the *true* landowners speak up as to abuse of sim resources?

Adfarms in *any* state - be it 'for sale' signs or revolving ads reaching hundreds of metres into the sky... are a severe detriment to land value, and really contributing to the deterioration of anything once could once consider 'community' in SL.

What can be done, really?

Wastelands:

To those who inquired - Yes, my lot in the Wastelands has been sold. Thanks for your inquiries.

Articles for The Salvaged Times (a Wastelands newspaper) have been streaming in for the last few days or so, so given the opportunity tonight and tomorrow, I will begin editing and layouts for Issue 2. Hopefully we'll be able to have a draft for the weekend, possibly a release for Sunday or Monday.


Drax build/Griefers:

I've been working on a build out in Drax that will eventually house 8-10 vendors (on a rental basis). The area is around 3000+sqm, roadside. Have been thinking about moving Tiphares there, due to rent coming due in two months at Plush Alpha, as well as the wish to better coordinate the mall vendors and the club/lounge/gallery.

All of this... is up in the air though, as my land and my neighbors' land has been routinely griefed by a number of individuals in the last week or so. This was primarily in reaction to my putting up prims on my land to cover up a neighboring advertisement (which is well within my rights to do). The owner of the advertisment (whose land in the sim comes to a grand total of 48sqm) IMed me mid afternoon last Sunday to complain about it, and subsequently escalated things so that his ads now far overstep his property line in to my land. He further threatened to install automatic landmark and notecard givers, plus an automated shouter if the walls were not removed - which I refused to do.

So a day later, after filing abuse reports and securing my land against his username, I teleported back in to the area to find that a member of his advertisement/nightclub group had rezzed 3 giant prims - two on my land specifically, and one on my neighbor MadMax Huet's land. I subsequently filed ARs on those and got in contact with my neighbor, who himself owns a club 700m up, and didn't know what had gone on at ground level until I told him. The third prim was removed promptly, in any case, but the next morning the same griefer came back to try again, harassing my neighbor with cages and rezzing more giant prims on adjacent land.

When I spoke with my neighbor later, he mentioned what the guy did, along with the fact that the guy accused me of hating gays - wtf? I have lots of gay and straight friends, both in SL *and* RL. The only reasons why I began walling up my land against their ads first was because I didn't have sufficient land elsewhere to block up anything else and their ads cause eyes to bleed (All of the ads in this sim do, quite frankly. I have been buying up inexpensive 16sqm lots to avoid their land devaluing for this reason). Am sick and tired of people pulling the race card... or the gay/lesbian card... or *any* card based on the fact that they may or may not be a minority. I am part of a minority too... you don't see me pulling the 'asian' card... or the straight card, do you? (As an aside, the ironic thing is their classified says 'ABSOLUTELY NO GIRLS ALLOWED'... so you can see how hypocritical the pulling of this 'she hates gays' thing is)

It does make me grumbly that the griefers are targetting not only me, but my neighbors though, in an effort to 1) bother them enough to blame me 2) get me aggrevated (which to a certain extent I am, but in response, I am taking steps to be a bit more diligent about controlling what they can and can't do around my premises).

All of this I could probably do away with - those specific pieces of land are marked for sale. So despite the fact that I appear to be banned from *gasp* 48sqm (!) of land, I could feasibly purchase those pieces of land out from under them and do away with them completely. But I won't - not that I can't... but 1) I'm not up to paying another $10000L and 2) It's the principle of the matter. They are not only marking up the land significantly ($208L/sqm wtf?!), but they are griefing the neighborhood in order to ransom that land too!

So...anyway. Have banned both griefers from premises, turned on auto-return. Contacted owners of adjacent land to have them turn on either auto-return or no build. Hopefully this will control the situation as much as possible.


Busy... But the good kind of busy.

Also, given my increased workload at my day job as well as incoming work through AWS, I will need to cut back on my recreational time in SL. This probably means casual nights at Tiphares instead of a hosted event every time a DJ runs something, with the exception of live performances (Weekends, most likely).

That said, I have accepted a weekly DJ gig at Umbra Penumbra, scheduled for Monday nights at 8SLT. They mostly go for the alternative or alt/rock sortsa stuff, so that's what I'll be aiming for... but I may end up getting a few out of the ordinary tracks in :P

Have been thinking about selling my lot in the Wastelands.

With my new RL job, my contract job with AWS, Tiphares and my own stuff, things have been hectic. I hardly really drop in anymore except to hang around with friends, and even that lately has been a rare occurrence since we've become more busy with more work show up in our laps.

I am already paying for the other Press lot. And with the lack of funding i get from the Loft lot, the returns just aren't there.

I'll admit i first bought the lot with no intentions of selling my work from it. And I still feel the Wastelands is not the best location to sell what I do. I signed on with the intentions of really spending a heck of a lot of time in there... which i did, for a while.

But I've moved on. Made the contacts I needed. Built a home elsewhere. Build what I need elsewhere.

And really haven't found the Wastelands to be hospitable (insofar as it could be hospitable, really), in that there are so many conflicting opinions about how things should be, how they should be run, who should be running them. Many people really don't treat the Devs fairly, don't treat each other fairly, to the point of being incredibly bigotted against certain groups - and not just in the RP sense either.

I still feel the Salvaged Times to be of interest to help out on - it's nudged the denizens of the Wastelands to do things for themselves... so i will keep paying for the second lot... and I will probably still drop in on the Wastelands as much as I have lately. But to maintain a supposed personal land there when I consider my personal land home elsewhere... is something I'm edging towards not doing anymore.

Been a while since I last blogged... for my RL stuff too, let alone SL.

But i've been trying to be more expressive about my experiences... so...hehe we'll see :P

Since my last posting... hmm.

- Back then, I was 'bartending' at the Elbow Room - which I'm not anymore.

- Back then I was making skins for scifi stuff - which I'm still doing. Have expanded outside of my parcel at Plush Alpha and have a few vendors at various sci-fi related malls. Am also building a new storespace in Drax, and working to fill it with material.

- I acquired my first land in the Wastelands back in.... i believe it was February.

The Wastelands are a collection of sims (soon to be opening a third) dedicated towards the themed construction of a post-apocalyptic desert environment. Think MadMax, Fallout, Judge Dredd, Tank Girl... that sort of thing. Though I have to say it is also the post-apocalyptic desert of Battle Angel - outside of Tiphares ;)

There is a Salvage game available in the sim, which is directly connected to the combat system through a HUD, and this often encourages some roleplay between players as far as how they interact with eachother - whether they do well or whether they have to roleplay their way out of combat situations... that sort of thing.

It's not strictly a roleplay sim, but a vague backstory has been developed, and there *is* a roleplay group there that operates on a very loose basis. The level of roleplay there really varies depending on interest at the time, i think. It was also at one point heavily dependant on the perceived need for a GM... which I don't believe is necessary in this case.

Since settling in, I've built a small storespace, collaborated with Sandusky Kayvon on a build, and we are now collaborating on the Post Apocalyptic Press, which produces 'The Salvaged Times' - a newspaper written about events in the Wastelands.

- Aside from that, I've made changes to Tiphares - lofted it up in the sky, have been running events there a few times a week. Some DJed sessions, some live performances.

- Have begun work in world for a design company, which provides me with the opportunity to apply my knowledge in SL to a work environment. (fun!)

Hmm. That's all that comes to mind at the moment :P I'm sure I'll have more to talk about eventually.

I posted this in the new products area on the SL forums, and figure I might as well post it here as well, FYI...



This hand-painted skin was completed a couple of nights ago, and with a bit of testing, is now available for purchase.

This, along with a Wraith Queen skin is now available at Plush Alpha (30, 233, 251). Please try on the demos at your convenience!


Xposted to second_lifers

The land next door has been placed as 'up for grabs'. 2016sqm... that land would essentially double my space....

I'm tempted to buy it up simply for the additional prim count... but there is absolutely no way I would be able to use that amount of land and afford it.

I've been thinking about doing custom skins and clothing and looking in to some land from which to sell it, but I think it's way too early at this point to actually be purchasing the land...

The skins themselves will take a while to put together, and I can't honestly say I'm satisfied with the shirts I've put together yet. That doesn't leave me with a whole lot of merchandise to move. That, plus I simply don't know if the sales would make it worth my time.

But.....oooooh boy do i wish i had more prims to work with...

As part of SL's 2006 Burning Life festival, I dropped by "Glasschord" by Selaras Partridge in the Burning Life (Bodhuine) sim tonight. ( Burning Life (Modhuine), 231, 26, 28 )

The exhibit mixes the feeling of glass and and perhaps a candy store, right out in the middle of the hot SL sun, spinning visual fantasies for all who pass by to take it in. The concept is simple, but the visual complexities are many.

If you're an SL resident, I highly recommend checking it out, along with all of the other exhibits in the 12 Burning Life sims.

xposting to florence_chan and aki_shichiroji.