The stuff of nightmares - Higashiosaka

3:30pm Update: I've just met Jigoku Landman, the sole creator of Higashiosaka, and a Japanese designer who developed the sim for the IT and metaverse development company Regional Information and Communication Technology Laboratory, Inc.

Jigoku means hell in Japanese, and it is widely depicted in paintings that are hung in traditional Buddhist temples. Some of these paintings are national treasures.

He told me that he hasn't had nightmares while creating Higashiosaka, but that his parents would tell him stories about Jigoku when he'd been bad as a child. o.O

~*~

Again, Naxos Loon, NPIRL's consummate sleuth in Second Life®, has found us an extraordinary hell... Higashiosaka. Bosch has nothing on this one, and yes, it is the stuff of nightmares. Created by Jigoku Landman (rez 3/20/08).



Music - Composed by Tillman Sillescu, BMI

Teleport directly from here.

The Survivors' Camp by Stella Costello

The American Cancer Society Relay For Life® began in May 1985 when a colorectal surgeon ran around a track in Tacoma, Washington, for 24 hours, raising $27,000 to support the American Cancer Society. Today, Relay For Life is held in more than 4,600 communities in the United States and in 23 countries across the globe... and has raised more than $1.5 billion to help the Society accelerate the progress against cancer by saving lives, helping those touched by cancer, and empowering people to fight back against this disease.

Relay For Life has come back to Second Life® for a fourth consecutive year. In 2007 the effort raised more than $118,000 US and attracted more than 1,700 participants to its unique virtual walkathon event. More than 80 teams have come together to create an experience with the goal of raising $125,000 US.

A walkathon relay has just begun and will run from July 19th at 10am SLT through July 20th at 11am SLT. The track, spanning 35 sims, will take you past wildly imaginative and informative builds that have been created specifically for this effort.

Approximately 150 Survivors and Caregivers of Second Life had the honor of walking the opening lap. Later, they will congregate at different spots throughout the installation, including the Survivors' Camp created especially for this event by gifted sculptor, artist and builder Stella Costello.




Teleport directly from here

The mirror

One thing you must see this weekend at the Second Life® Relay for Life (RFL) event is the mirror by Talia Jiang.



Head over to Robin Hood's Castle and follow the pink strip to find it (teleport directly from here).

More than 80 teams have come together to create an experience with the goal of raising $125,000 US.

A walkathon relay has just begun that will run from July 19th at 10am SLT through July 20th at 11am SLT. The track, spanning 35 sims, will take you past wildly imaginative and informative builds that have been created specifically for this effort.

Rapunzel's Wig Shoppe

Creating things that have a short life span but are fun, fun, fun is what Peachy Sassoon does. Peachy and her friend Xerxes Sismondi have been completely rebuilding the Drama Libre club every single week... every single prim... since early October of 2006.

Peachy loved the German fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm about Rapunzel ever since she was a little girl, so she thought she'd give it her own spin for the Second Life® Relay for Life (RFL) event. More than 80 teams have come together to create an experience with the goal of raising $125,000 US.

A walkathon relay has just gotten underway that will run from July 19th at 10am SLT through July 20th at 11am SLT. The track, spanning 35 sims, will take you past wildly imaginative and informative builds that have been created specifically for this effort.


That's me climbing Rapunzel's hair

Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair, so that I may climb the golden stair...


The Brothers Grimm might have enjoyed Peachy's imaginings

Teleport directly from here.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry at Relay for Life

There is so much to see and do this weekend at the Second Life® Relay for Life (RFL) event. More than 80 teams have come together to create a unique experience for participants with the goal of raising $125,000 US.

A walkathon relay is about to get underway in a few minutes and will run from July 19th at 10am SLT through July 20th at 11am SLT. The track, spanning 96 acres, will take you past wildly imaginative and informative builds that have been created specifically for this effort.

While most everything here will poof by Monday, the Hogwarts School realized by the Liquid Heat team, is one installation that will go up for auction to benefit the American Cancer Society and help to fund Cancer research.

Have a great weekend, and remember your sun block!




The tricky staircases really do change positions!




Look for the three-headed dog, Hagrid's hut, and watch the portraits morph.

Teleport directly from here.

#9

This is Eshi Otawara's 9th sim-wide creation in as many days... The Flower Tower (teleport directly from here).



Many thanks to Dirk Talamasca for making the sim available to Eshi.

Zero Point is... toast

October 6, 2008 update: Sabine has been hard at work rebuilding Zero Point. Her permanent store is now open for business (teleport directly from here).

Sabine Stonebender has terrible news. This is Zero Point today...


You can read about Zero Point as it once was here

"I have a bit of bad news. Zero Point was destroyed this morning by a billing error bug that returned it all rather randomly. I will be able to rebuild but the old stuff is pretty much vapor," she said.

Early Thursday morning, Sabine had a huge return happen. She explained, "When I showed up, it was all gone. Not even one linden tree was left. Apparently there's a billing bug, and Zero's (Zero Medici is Sabine's sponsor) account was accidently set to "Purge" which liquidated his land, autoreturned all objects, and stuck it on the auction block."

"He's managed to get the land on the way back to his ownership, but I have to wait for him to set it all back up to group, etc.," she added.

Were things linked?
Sabine Stonebender: I have some backups of floor 1 and 2, but I think 3, the Dotz and the store are a total loss. I'm thinking a total rebuild is in order.

And Vomit Comet?
Sabine Stonebender: Toast. I might be able to salvage sections, but the floor is in fragments.

The throne?
Sabine Stonebender: The throne is okies; it was linked.

What will you do?
Sabine Stonebender: Zero Point will be back, but not the same.

How are you?
Sabine Stonebender: Kinda pissed, kinda numb, but at least I found out the 'why.' I'm pretty much facing about three months of rebuild. Biggest downside is that my store is gone, which is one of my sole sources of income.


I will be posting the slurl for Sabine's temporary store as soon as I have it.

New sculpture at Black Swan packs a wallop - You aren't going to want to miss this one

There is something new and so important at Rezzable Productions' Black Swan sim that most everyone in Second Life® will want to see it, and yes, I am aware that Rezzable is charging a $199L admission fee. All the same, I suspect that you will forget your objections and pony up.

The last time Seifert Surface (aka Henry Segerman ) and his younger brother Art Laxness (aka Will Segerman) collaborated together on a project in Second Life, they created an animated series of bots that spell out YMCA with their "arms." That was back in November, 2005.

Seifert - an Austin-based postdoctoral mathematician and lecturer - just got back from Brighton, UK where he was visiting his brother Art, a fine art sculptor and prop designer for theatre and film. Together, they collaborated to create a kinetic, story telling sculpture in Second Life that cycles every hour. I'll get back to you with more on the technical aspects of this sculpture soon, but for now, here is a taste.



Credits:
* Concept and storyline: Seifert Surface and Art Laxness
* Sculpties: Art Laxness
* Scripting: Seifert Surface
* Video: Bettina Tizzy
* Music - Awaiting the Attack: composed by David Flavin, ASCAP and Roland Rudzitis, ASCAP

Teleport directly to Black Swan from here.

Introducing Eln Alter

AM Radio wrote... "Look up Eln Alter. Check out the house there. Wild." Of course, I did.

Every now and then, a fresh and strikingly original creator hits our radar, so rich with possibilities! Such was the case of Bryn Oh and four Yip, and they certainly haven't disappointed. Notably, Eln rezzed on 11/1/2007. Such work and concepts are unexpected from someone so new to the grid.


Eln, wearing one of her avatars

Her little house serves as a shop. I'm particularly fond of the stilts that it sits on.





Inside, more whimsical items, many of them for sale.



On the ground beneath the house, Eln has also created a "museum," though she hasn't yet decided what it is about. Her vases there are indicative of an intriguing tangent I hope she'll continue to evolve.



Teleport to Eln's shop from here.
Teleport to Eln's Museum from here.

The Museum of the Globe - 2D gets 3D

Last year, Hidenori Watanave, a Japanese architect in Real Life with an active Second Life®, sat on a jury for something called the Digital Design Competition 2007, and the Grand Prix winner - with a 2D submission - was Museum of the Globe, by Atelier Ten Architects, a Japanese metaverse developer and web services company, not to be confused with the prestigious global environmental design firm Atelier Ten .



In June, TeaCup, the Japanese free blogging service division of the publicly traded Internet services and web hosting company GMO, provided technical assistance in collaboration with Atelier Ten to take the 2D design and realize it in 3D. The actual construction was realized by Ichiro Furse of Atelier Ten Architects.





Hideroni will be presenting this at the International Electronic Langauge Festival FILE 2008 in Sao Paulo, and at SIGGRAPH2008 in Los Angeles, in August.

I asked Hyperformalist DanCoyote Antonelli (aka DC Spensley) for his opinion of the sim-wide installation.

DanCoyote Antonelli: This is pure Hyperformalism. It is messy in a unique way, but it keeps its overall shape well. It is in between my cubic and cylindrical arrays and Seifert Surface's spore. It is not dirty enough data for me in total, but I think it is a wonderous thing, in some ways related to the shatter sphere.


Seifert Surface's "Spore" - photo by Bjorlyn Loon

How do you mean "dirty enough?"
Dancoyote Antonelli: I mean the data is perturbed in a way attributable to the artist's hand. There is such a thing to me as "too far removed from the work..." - too distant, and the piece slips out of my range of interest and becomes a photograph of some data and not art. Some imperfection must make it a human work I think. I love the little trees below, too. They reflect well in the water.

Teleport directly from here

Finally, a full web browser for Second Life that works

My technical expertise is puny at best, so I'm pleased to share this excellent news with you via the words of guest blogger Pavig Lok. While this Aussie is most often described as the lead creator of Greenies Home Rezzable (teleport directly from here), and a SecondLife Hobo, Pavig is also the artist who gave us quite an education on Intellectual Property via the Intellectual Property Garden. Pavig is a veteran of virtual world technologies and artificial intelligence.


By Pavig Lok

We've been waiting for a long time for web integration in Second Life. Sure, the applications are limited, and you can use an external browser, but hanging out with some folk and all viewing and chatting about something in world is really what Second Life® is all about. I've been working on something along these lines myself, but today I was happy to read in Virtual World News that a true browser had arrived in Second Life.

Up until now our options have been fairly limited. Back in March, the Lindens introduced web parcel media, which allows anyone with land rights to show web pages just like QuickTime movies were previously. Unfortunately, these pages are static, unscrollable, uninteractable lumps. (They can be animated or refreshed by JavaScript, but few folk notice because so few pages implement this, and there's no real way to trigger it through interactivity.) So accessing the web in Second Life has been a dreary affair.

Finally, someone has given us a full web browser in Second Life which, despite its limitations, is actually usable. Corro Moseley of Daden Limited has come up with a browser that listens to chat and can navigate to whatever page you say. On its own that's just a media controller really, which you could code in about five lines if you were a scripter. You can't scroll either, as that's something the Lindens won't let us do. This browser however, has something I've never seen before - it follows links! You can bookmark pages, Google stuff, and popout whatever you're looking at to an external browser. With this functionality it's actually fairly comfortable to use.



Link following, though, is the real magic. The browser filters pages you request through a proxy server which trawls through the page and extracts the links embedded in it. When you request a link, it searches through this data and tries to create a match given what it knows of the page. All you need to do is say part of the name of the link and voilas, browsing! (If any techies doubt this is magical, I only have to mention that the proxy is written in Perl, the "Swiss army chainsaw" of Unix programming :P).

Unfortunately, the Daden browser can't read text embedded in pictures - so if a website is poorly designed and not accessible to screen reading applications then searching for the link will fail. Many websites, unfortunately, suffer from this problem, but if you think it is an annoyance for us, it is a deal breaker for the blind, who must rely on screen reading software to browse the web at all. So if you tinker with this browser and find that it loses its link-following ability on certain sites, spare a thought for the visually impaired who deal with this every day, and waggle your fists defiantly at the website creators.

The Daden Navigator can be played with (and purchased for L$2,400, which is reasonable considering they run a backend server) by teleporting directly from here. The components are copyable so you can install it at multiple locations. You will need to either be a land owner, or on group land be allowed to deed objects to group to get it to function.

PS. If the name Daden rings a bell, it may be because they were behind the Google maps build blogged about earlier on NPIRL.