Not Possible IRL unveils new structure and leadership

In fifteen months, the Not Possible IRL group has expanded from a good idea to a working group, then a blog that reflects our best findings and analysis, then an in-world news source via the Impossible IRL group (now one year old and 1,000 members, many of them leading artists, builders and scripters), as well as many Flickr groups featuring the best photographers in virtual worlds, a Youtube group, and a following on Koinup.

Since those early days to now, the grid has grown and the sheer volume of things to review and share has more than quadrupled.

New NPIRL structure and leadership

My role, moving foward
NPIRL/ImpIRL has become far too large a task for one person, and the windows for intelligent growth should not be missed. I need breathing room so that I can focus on deeper strategic work for our groups and some of my own, personal goals. I also don't want to lose the excitement and wonder I feel when I see the incredible work you are all doing.

I will continue to manage the ship, serving the groups as the primary catalyst for working issues and opportunities. I will also blog.

It gives me much pleasure to share with you that NPIRL is reorganizing to meet our expanded needs. Effective today, Monday, October 13, two women I very much admire are joining me at the helm of Not Possible IRL/Impossible IRL:


In-world notices to be issued by Miki Gymnast



Last spring and for one month, Miki Gymnast was responsible for in-world notices and she did a fantastic job in her own singular style. Miki knows quality when she sees it. She is perceptive, knowledgeable and has a discerning eye. She is also extremely organized, diplomatic, fair-minded and has the ability to say "no," all essential qualities for the task she is taking on. Beginning today, selections for, and the issuance of all in-world notices to both groups concerning builds, events, and tools will be her responsibility.

Miki's in-world creations are usually generated via intricate scripting work and inspired by mathematics, featuring mostly colorful panes of glass in complex, undulating and soaring structures, including the recent Klein bottle.


Alpha Auer (aka Elif Ayiter) to join the masthead on this blog



A Turkish artist and designer and creator of the sumptuous and singular Syncretia, Alpha Auer is already a blogger in her own right, and has written several imaginative and fascinating reviews for the NPIRL blog. In Real Life, Alpha teaches design and design history, and also conducts research specializing in the development and implementation of hybrid educational methodologies between art & design and computer science. She has presented creative as well as research output at conferences including Siggraph, Consciousness Reframed, Creativity and Cognition, ICALT and Computational Aesthetics (Eurographics) . She is currently studying for a doctoral degree at the Planetary Collegium, CAiiA hub, at the University of Plymouth with Roy Ascott and describes herself as "a totally irreverent, mischievous, politically incorrect, frivolous, fashion victim avatar in Second Life®."

How to communicate with NPIRL for in-world notices and blogging

* All in-world tips, leads, landmarks, notes and objects should be dropped off at the NPIRL mailbox: teleport directly from here.
* All emails - unless responding directly to Bettina Tizzy, Alpha Auer and Miki Gymnast - should be sent to sendtonpirl@gmail.com
* Previews should be arranged via notecard or email.
* Please PLEASE refrain from IMing the team directly regarding builds.

Many thanks to all of you, and very special thanks to Alpha and Miki,
Bettina

More on how traffic numbers are determined, this time from Miki Gymnast

Yesterday, I touched on the Second Life® Wiki's explanation for how traffic numbers are determined - one point per minute a single avatar is present on a parcel - and a few hours later I received an interesting email from Master Scripter Miki Gymnast on the topic.

She wrote: "Two parameters seem to be relevant to the Linden Lab traffic number: First, it counts the minutes, but only for people who are present longer than a minute on the land. Additionally, the number of people who are present also influences the traffic score. So, if 2 people produce 500 minutes, it is a little bit less than when 10 people produce 500 minutes. All heights of the parcel where visitors have been are included in the number, from 0-750 meters."

This begs the question... Are avatars above 1,000m counted? "It seems avis above circa 760 meters are not counted," said Miki. "This is also the (regular) maximum building height, so perhaps this corresponds."

Some time ago, Miki created UP, an entirely web-based parcel and sim management system that includes a tool for scanning land heights, and counts all visitor minutes plus the number of avatars which generated them. "It is always very close (+/- 50) to the Linden Lab visitor count (and this many hours before the land shows the number)," Miki added. She also provided the following graphs:


Number of visitors; click to see large


Vistor minutes; click to see large

A demo version of UP is available by teleporting directly from here.

And while we are on the topic of the Second Life Wiki, something very promising is going on over at Linden Lab these days. They appear to be stepping up the communication process with the Residents. Case in point: a just released, super-well executed and fun (yes, fun!) tutorial on how to deal with griefers, file an abuse report or a DMCA. I have depended on Torley's videos throughout my own Second Life, but I can only wish that this one had been available a long time ago. Still, I see this as genuine, sterling progress.

AM Radio and Miki Gymnast collaborate - Two distinct art languages converse

Today, the Alexandar Gallery marked the opening of The Refuge and the Expansion - a new show spanning two sims - featuring several works we are familiar with and some new things (and great freebies, I might add) by AM Radio (teleport directly from here), and yet a third sim which brings together AM Radio and Miki Gymnast's art in a project that embodies two disciplines and provides us with poetic opposites.


This photograph by AM Radio

We relate to AM and Miki's work in such different ways. His painterly and hyper-real and immersive situations as can be seen at The Far Away, The Quiet and Husk, are so much more than recreations of objects we know and recognize. Rather, he invites us to look through his eyes and gives us emotional and cultural reference points. Chocked full of hidden metaphors, his fields and landscapes invite us to walk through memories, which are not necessarily his own. He is a visual narrator. If you follow his Flickr stream, you will see an actual story unfold that integrates all of his work.

In contrast, Miki is best known for her sharp eye with respect to geometric shapes that spill out of the traditional frame and are often quite Not Possible IRL. Her installations are generated via intricate scripting work and inspired by mathematics, featuring mostly colorful panes of glass in complex, undulating and soaring structures.

The result of their collaboration: a smokey-colored Klein Bottle sits in a tilled field, surrounded by mega prim walls that define the lighting and mood of the scene, (teleport directly from here).




"From a purely academic standpoint, art is a communication and all communication is grounded in some vocabulary," said AM. "I believe that the best abstract art is shown in a context."

What was your interest in placing abstract art here?
AM Radio: It is a contrast, and as a realist I think people tend to write me off somewhat. 'Oh well, AM won't be interested in this or that,' and I don't get an invite or an LM, when in fact, I am very intersted in abstract work. After seven years of art school, I understand the concepts, theory and talent that goes into the work.

"For example, here we have a tilled field and a sky and a horizon... it implies things like gravity and space as we experience them in Real Life," said AM. "When you put something like what Miki does in this space, it literally shows you - as a dialog - all of the rules its breaking. It forces you to think about what the piece is really doing. Like an abstract work seen in Real Life, the context is our personal experiences, the baggage we bring everywhere we go. When you present such a work in a vacuum, the dialog is more muted and guess work... like two people speaking foreign languages, attempting to speak with simple signs."


AM Radio's walls do speak

You've been extra particular about the light qualities here... the walls disinvite play with Windlight...
AM Radio: There are a few points there. First, mega prims are indispensible. The second, we need to be able to share Windlight settings and thirdly, look at the result if both are allowed.

If I understand you correctly, you are giving us a Windlight preset in-world by creating these walls.
AM Radio: I wish I could share this as a windlight setting, but I cannot. For now, the compromise is a megaprim.


Miki Gymnast

"I want to see this in Real Life," said Miki, "a farm in the mid-west, with such a sphere."

A Master Scripter in addition to being an artist, she explained that the Klein Bottle is a sphere with no outside and no inside. The Klein, in fact, is a one-sided surface - like the Möbius band - but is even more complex since it is closed and has no border and neither an enclosed interior nor exterior. While it is possible in Real Life, it is costly and complicated to produce.


Alexandar Vargas... a patron of the arts

The expansive three sim exhibit was made possible thanks to the generosity of Alexandar Vargas, the owner of the Alexandar Gallery. While several of his sims are dedicated to a permanent display of sculptures in a garden setting, he is taking a more active role in hosting very large installations, such as Madcow Cosmos' recent Tarot deck. I met with him yesterday at The Refuge and the Expansion to learn more.


Alexandar Vargas and AM Radio

What is your opinion of this show?
Alexandar Vargas: I have never seen such talents as AM and Miki. AM is probably the one artist here in Second Life® that has really touched me with his work. The fields he has here take me back home, since I grew up in northern Tennessee and drove through the midwest a lot... lived in Nebraska for a while, too.

You have been an empowering force to artists. How did this happen and when did you get started?
Alexandar Vargas: Probably in January. I received Light Waves' Ballerina as a gift, and began collecting art since then. I decided to place it on Welsh Bay. I think that (virtual) art is as impressive as Real Life art.

Back in January, Alexandar had two sims which he used as his home, but then he began to voraciously acquire art...
Alexandar Vargas: Once I ran out of prims, I moved off my home estate and then took over my brother's sim. He and I both own the Cove... it was the first sim we purchased.

Was it hard to find great art? Or was it hard to choose between the immense selection?
Alexandar Vargas: It was neither difficult to find, nor difficult to choose it. It was more of an issue of having room for it.

And then you got a third sim?
Alexandar Vargas: Yes, each time I ran out of room, I got a new sim. When other artists approached me and I saw art I wasn't aware of... that floored me, to be honest.

How many sims do you have now?
Alexandar Vargas: God... um, six I think, that I use for art. I really enjoy it. Lots of times, I just walk through the sims when I can't sleep. It is important to let others know about virtual art. It is just as valuable and beautiful as art in Real Life, and it is a shame when some don't think so.

NPIRL fashion: What the heck is it?

I just launched a new Flickr group for Not Possible in Real Life (NPIRL) fashion: NPIRL Fashion - Not Possible in Real Life, and I'm realizing that describing this genre is not so easy, so I made a little video.



It's about fashion that clothes the avatar's body and...
* Defies the laws of gravity and physics in general
* Exposes the avatar's body to extreme heat or cold or exploding particles or sharp things
* Features rotating textures, electrified elements that a human could not withstand
* Multitasks and that, in addition to clothing the avatar, can do strange and wonderful things
* Includes elements (such as clouds or snakes or sunshine, for instance) that could never be used in Real Life


Video locations
Cologne Cathedral
artoo Magneto's AnyMotion sim
Designer Dingson's Concept Build
Chouchou island

Miki Gymnast's bittersweet farewell to Rezzable Creators Gallery

Any minute now, Rezzable Creators Gallery will disappear, along with a few other Rezzable Productions sims. Our own Miki Gymnast, who invariably knocks everyone's socks off with her spontaneous and often mathematically inspired creations, took a previous build and reprogrammed it in under two hours to come up with an exciting and temporal 14,000 prim space, as captured in this moving video by Dizzy Banjo.


Music by Dizzy Banjo

"It's a type of breather surface, optimized for Second Life®, performance; parts calculated on the web, parts calculated in Second Life," explained Miki, referring to the enormous yet delicate raspberry-colored tower.

Beneath that tower and in the teleport arrival area, visitors' names and text-chatted words appear in swirling, colorful ribbons that span the base of the sim. Rezzable, CNN, and NPIRL's blog headlines also whirl around guests. "It takes the blog titles from the Internet, transfers them to Second Life, and shows them in big letters," said Miki.

It's not easy saying goodbye to great content. The Rezzable Creators Gallery once housed works for sale by Light Waves.

Who you gonna call?

During the month preceding the opening of the Garden of NPIRL Delights, my Second Life® took over and there was little time or energy left for my Real Life. While I'll still be blogging several stories that I've been working on for some time, to restore some balance, I am taking a break from Second Life until June 17th to wiggle my toes in the sand, nurture my wonderful clients, and say hello to family and friends.

Until then, I'm entrusting all your incredible information on new builds and Machinima that would not be possible in Real Life, as well as innovative tools for content creation, and previously unknown builders/artists, to Master Scripter and artist, Miki Gymnast, who will cull from these to share the best in-world with the members of the Not Possible IRL and Impossible IRL groups.


Miki Gymnast looks everywhere and talks with everyone to find us cool content

Miki, thank you, and see you on June 17th!

Five Tips: How to visit the Garden of NPIRL Delights

The most frequent comment I hear from visitors to the Garden of NPIRL Delights is that they are "overwhelmed." I understand this. Four sims filled with the works of over 110 content creators - many of them quite complex - can have that effect. I worked alongside the artists for weeks, and I am still discovering new things. The good news is that there are several fantastic tools to make this easier for you.

If I were to take you by the hand and show you the Garden myself, here is how I would do it:

1) Arrival and Preparation: Take the HUD and Info
Teleport to the Garden from here. Beatrix Newt created a tranquil path at the entrance to the Garden with signage that invites you to "take" the HUD and info offered there. Please do!



2) Take the Tour
Just to your right as you exit the pathway, you will see the Tour area. Hop on the gorgeous Fleur de Lys-shaped vehicle, especially created for the Garden by famed vehicle maker (and founder/owner of the Ivory Tower of Prims), Lumiere Noir. The Fleur de Lys was scripted by Darek Deluca, the creator of XIDD Particles and Gadgets and the fabulous Particle Theatre, as well as a four layer installation at 3000m above the Garden that spans all four sims.



And off you go!



The ride is surprisingly smooth and pleasant, especially considering that you are crossing four sims.



You'll fly over many installations you might not have known about, otherwise.



There are many wonders in the sky. Having seen them, you will be able to plan your visits with a better idea of what is in store for you.



3) Wear the HUD
They said it couldn't be done. Really! Many expert coders warned me that we were going down the path of disaster, but Master Scripter Miki Gymnast pulled it off.

Look in your inventory for a folder called "Garden of NPIRL Delights Info" and inside it for the NPIRL Garden Tour HUD. "Wear" it. It will look like this but only fill a tiny spot on the lower left-hand corner of your screen.



"Touch" it with your mouse, and it will pull up a Second Life® teleport map. Choose "teleport," and you will find yourself at one of the installations at the Garden. And get this... the HUD will remember where you have been and take you to new places each time. Once you are wearing the HUD, you will be able to teleport to all these places directly from any spot on the grid, too.



4) Nifty Landmark-Ready Notecards
Loved the work of a particular artist and want to go back? Easy! Thanks to my SL brother, Corporate Jay, and in the same folder where you Garden HUD resides, you have four notecards, one for each sim. Open them... and voila!


Click to see large

Obviously, the notecards don't have to be stretched so large on your screen, but thought you might like to see their content.

5) Walk down the green glowy paths
That King of Glow, Spiral Walcher, spent many hours arranging his official Garden path throughout the four sims to ensure that you had ready access to every single installation on the ground.


Here we are, in the wee hours of the morning, welcoming our first guests to the Garden. That green glowy path will lead you to many adventures and surprises.

Along the paths, you will find local teleporters to the sky builds, too.

As you can see, many people contributed countless hours of their time, and industrial quantities of their knowledge and good ideas to make your visit to the Garden a happy one. I can't even begin to thank each one of them enough.

The Garden of NPIRL Delights is blossoming

There were about 40 content creators signed up nine days ago when Rezzable Productions made the four sims available for our joint effort - the Garden of NPIRL Delights - and the Not Possible IRL group's first-ever build festival.

That number has mushroomed. We had more than 40 people at a noon Town Hall meeting yesterday - our first - and today I think we stand at over 110 participating creators.


Click to see large

Not all builds are in place and there is so much work left to do, but people are collaborating with each other at a furious rate. Just today, every installation got a prim bonus to blend their work with that of their neighbors.


Click to see large

The "bonus and blend" idea came from a person who has contributed so much to this effort that even if she never does another thing, she's left a deep mark of goodness that none of us will forget: LittleToe Bartlett.


Beatrix Newt, Lauren Weyland, Pavig Lok, and the chillin' fridge is LittleToe Bartlett

It was Lag-tastic!

It stands to reason that a call for Not Possible in Real Life builds would generate a lot of scripty creations, and about four days ago, the lag got so bad, that one of the sims was disappearing off the map a few times a day. Sim crossings were laughable.

Pavig Lok studied the situation and alerted us to a few trouble spots. Miki Gymnast came in, fresh from knee surgery in Real Life, and worked with dozens of builders to optimize their scripts. I was worried that participants would throw up their hands or freak out and leave, but a funny thing happened... people started to really cooperate and collaborate, seasoned builders with newer ones, expert coders with other expert coders... and suddenly, you can breathe on all four sims. The lag is gone.


Click to see large

There have been all sorts of heroes and heroines along the way. I still don't know how Beatrix Newt can take on so many responsibilities (site allocation, terraforming, parcelling, tour supervision, and much more) and still appear calm and in control.

And Lauren Weyland... will you ever forgive me? She needed bio input from every participant, so I helpfully issued a notice providing the wrong email address and promptly logged off to a busy Real Life schedule. Ouch. Sorry folks!

Ah well... these stories and hundreds more will only matter to those who are living them, very intensely, on four very special sims these days. I've had very little sleep, and I know I'm not alone in this, but when I look at the Garden and how it is blossoming, I wouldn't have it any other way.

The Garden of NPIRL Delights will open its doors on May 16th.

Yoa Ogee's "high tech life forms" for peace... and smiles

Within three days of rezzing (1/26/2007), a Canada-based German named Yoa Ogee made his first avatar. Today, his avatars are already wildly popular with the NPIRL crowd; I myself purchased at least 15 of them within minutes of being alerted to their existence by artist and scripter Miki Gymnast.

Bettina Tizzy: So, it was avatars from the start, was it?

Yoa Ogee: I started to build avatars because I wanted to be an alien and have tentacles.


Yoa Ogee - Three days old and already "in the pink"

Bettina Tizzy: Pink tentacles, even! Your inspiration?

Yoa Ogee: ... my favourite colour, yes, my inspiration, like all of my avatars.

Bettina Tizzy: And then... this went so well, that ... you just kept making avatars? Never wanted to make houses or other things?

Yoa Ogee: I have so much to do with avatar ideas... I (also) have a list with ideas for houses and stuff like that ^^

Bettina Tizzy: Many of your avatars are sculptural. You are the first that I know of to do this. What were you thinking that led you to make avatars that didn't look like living things?

Yoa Ogee: They are alive. What humans declare as abstract, I declare as high tech life forms.


This was Yoa's first "art" avatar. The colors on the bands cycle continuously

Bettina Tizzy: The scripting for the "Tricky" avatar is very complex. I have shown it to scripters and they were impressed.

Yoa Ogee: I don't script. I use freebies or purchased scripts and combine them with animations and lots of ideas to create new effects. Animations are made by me.


"Tricky" displays a continuous series of geometric gymnastics on its shiny pedestal

Bettina Tizzy: What is the name of the tiny avatar that is 7mm tall?

Yoa Ogee: Shichi - the name of the number 7 in Japanese.


Shichi is 7mm tall and is shown here next to a standard box prim

Bettina Tizzy: Where does the rest of the body go... and why is it necessary to use invisiprims or whatever it is that you do?

Yoa Ogee: Often, I use invisible prims, but sometimes a good animation can cause the same effect. It was challenging to learn all about animations and now I love it! Some of my avatars are not that good for dancing, but some of them are better for dancing than human bodies :) Invisible prims are useful because it is not possible to shrink the standard avatar that much.

Bettina Tizzy: Someone mentioned that smaller avatars are accomplished by folding the avatar body underground. Is this true?

Yoa Ogee: Yes, I do that, too, with animations, and this way I can shrink it down to 40-50cm.

Bettina Tizzy: Thank you for that explanation. I was just very curious.

Yoa Ogee: Curiosity is one of my favourite feelings.



The lower photograph is a close up of a few details on the head of the tree avatar.



Bettina Tizzy: I see that 100% of the proceeds from your sales goes to the World's Greatest Smile.

Yoa Ogee: They do, because peace is what I have been most interested in all my life. It is an international peace project dedicated to friendly communication, and is supported by 14 Nobel Laureates, as well as many other people from 131 countries. The goal is to motivate people to communicate in a more friendly and effective way and to give them the resources to do so. We develop games for children, too, to teach them teamwork in a playful way.



Bettina Tizzy: Now you make avatars that look like art. Do you find any inspiration in the work of artists in Second Life?

Yoa Ogee: Not really. I'm mainly interested in astrobiology, and that's the basis of my creations. It is about life on other planets and wherever life can be in the universe.



Bettina Tizzy: Do you take a scientific approach, or a science fiction approach to this, or both? Extraterrestrials that look like art... this does not sound so unfriendly.

Yoa Ogee: The scientific approach. I have always been interested in astrobiology, because I tried to find a way to think about humankind in other ways.


Yoa's "Gold Leaf" avatar undulates gently as you move

Bettina Tizzy: You also make avatars that have all kinds of details.

Yoa Ogee: I love details! I love especially the hidden details, those which you have to discover. This avatar is full of them, too, including a hidden treasure chest.



Yoa Ogee: I need bubbles^^ (At this point, gentle bubbles began to rise around the fish)

Bettina Tizzy: I see your fish has a mic, too. It sings?

Yoa Ogee: I have to talk to humans, and sometimes I am a karaoke fish (under the shower).

Bettina Tizzy: ...that plays chess.

Yoa Ogee: Yes, the starfishes on the ground play much better than me.



Bettina Tizzy: Your prices are very low. Are you more interested in distribution than in making money?

Yoa Ogee: Our avatars should enhance tolerance and should be available for everybody. I know as an alien: humans are a very cute and friendly species... sometimes they just forgot it.



Yoa and his Real Life fiance, Yeti Bing, have a busy store, which you can teleport to directly from here.

Happy Holidays to you - Now, deck the halls with boughs of holly!

You guys having fun yet? Happy Holidays everyone!!!

Seems that Miki Gymnast has been at it again! Now she's gone and created this gorgeous, GIANT, space-age Christmas tree. Miki always views her creations at Mars Rezzable as sandbox fun, but we invariably latch onto them, and like them too much. :P

Meanwhile, that cute little Greenie, Verde Raymaker, is inviting one and all to take part in the fun and make ornaments to decorate it, presents to place under it, and snowmen to surround it. The theme is "Peace and Love." Furthermore, he promises $25,000L in prizes for his fave pieces.



First thing you gotta do is get yourself over there to check out the tree:

+ Set light to midnite
+ Teleport directly from here
+ Put your music on!
+ Rez
+ Put on your skates or surfboard and weeeeeeeeee down the tree

Next, make your contributions and send them to Beatrix Newt.

Technical details:
Max for any item is 50 prims! Objects for the tree should be about the size of an avatar. No scripts or particles, except for simple animating scripts please!! Set the object to "sell contents for 10L". Object should be tagged to Mars group. Contents should be set "no trans, copy, and mod is up to you, but mod is more fun!"

A few morsels of art - four installations and the body electric

Here are four quick stops worth making to see what's new in the way of interactive art on the grid. Interestingly, all working from the basic sphere...

Wikisonic
Keystone Bouchard, founder of the RL Architects in SL group and a force behind some of the most interesting and thoughtful activities surrounding architecture in-world, recently completed a musical instrument of sorts with the scripting assistance of Dirty McLean. Stand in the middle and touch the balls in each column you wish to activate to induce a musical note. Touch several in a same column and you will hear several notes from it. Keystone invited Theory Shaw and me to play with it while he made this demo vid.



Keystone has since added another full circle of columns to enhance the sound. Thank you, Amalthea Blanc, for turning us onto this guy.
Teleport directly from here to Wikisonic, at his Gallery of Reflexive Architecture.



"Force Sun to Midnight"
Daruma Picnic wowed us with his A Cappella installation not too long ago. Now he is more playful, and he tells us, "Keystone (Bouchard) encouraged me to play with his scripts and develop new prim movement work. These scripts put a "capital I" on the word Interactive." Walk through the elements to activate sound and movement. It usually takes a couple of minutes for the sound to play in real time. Click on smaller floating elements to change color. The music is inspired by a Ravi Shankar Peace Mantra. His music files were generated with Garage Band and further edited with Audacity.

NPIRLers, the landmark I gave you in-world was borked. Please use this SLURL: Force Sun to Midnight Once there, look for the a TP ball and off you go.



The Aurora Room
Juria Yoshikawa recently set up his own sim, the Garden of Memespelunk, featuring several pieces we had hoped - but never expected - to see again, as well as a few new items, including this very immersive Aurora Room that chatters and makes noises.

Teleport from here to the: Aurora Room



The Lotus
Mark my words... DB Bailey - another RL architect - is going to amaze us all. This jewel box of a build encloses a meditation room (touch the inner bloom). DB has only been around since February, and he is really coming into his own. Douglas Story spotted him first and we are grateful.

See it here: DB Bailey's Lotus Once teleported, cross the ramp.



Miki Gymnast's Body Electric (that's my name for it anyway)

I was wearing Miki Gymnast's sensational 1,400 scripted prim outfit when I dropped in to check out DB's Lotus. Here are just a couple of the color sets it turned into. Sadly, Miki won't be putting these on the market. They are so highly customized that she doesn't have time to work with each customer. I hardly ever gawk at my avatar, but on this occasion, I (practically) only had eyes for me. :P

Mars Rezzable: Miki Gymnast's temporary sandbox and our playground

RightasRain Rimbaud of Rezzable Productions had been telling me that Miki Gymnast was doing “some interesting things” over at Mars Rezzable, but he would add each time that he wasn’t quite sure what they were.

Seems that Miki spent six hours on the Mars simulator last Saturday fiddling with 5,000 prims to create these… well, I don’t know what they are either… but they sure are fun to look at. Oh… and one more hour making the particles.

Oh… and then she used another 9,000 prims to make the sim graphics, so that when you look at Mars Rezzable on the map, you get this:

Actually, I’m just joshing you. I do know what they are, ‘cause Miki informed me. These are Borromean rings. According to Wikipedia: In mathematics, the Borromean rings consist of three topological circles which are linked and form a Brunnian link, i.e., removing any ring results in two unlinked rings.

She says they are a sign of strength. I'd say they are a sign that Rezzable is adding a shining star to its constellation of great builders.

I’m here to tell you that Miki Gymnast is as delightful as her build. The NPIRLers had a preview of this morsel of a sim yesterday and while it is my own wish that it stay put for a while, Miki informed me tonite that “before I delete the things in a few days, it will be accessible to everyone. It’s not an 'official' Rezzable sim… not a real concept, only a temporarily sandbox.”
Feedback from the group was unusually positive. All kinds of people - with very different tastes - wrote back to say how much they had liked it. Miki also spent some time with another NPIRLer who apparently helped her work out a simpler process for the sim graphics. “I had used a very very complicated system to bring data in. Lots of coding. He gave me a hint on how to make it much easier. I (had been) going to the bakery via Australia first."

Don't care for that color?

You have only to wait a minute or less, and every color will have changed.

Miki says that she isn’t “really good at building or scripting, but I am able to combine things, and it's fun to explore combinations.” She is German, and explains that “we like programming. (It is) close to our mentality: if yes > do this. If not > do the other thing." She’s a student and has been simultaneously working at an architectural firm for three years, making photorealistic renderings and programming plug ins for cad applications.

She added… “you see the bubble on my shoulder? It is my debugger. Also I can (alter) all the settings here (with it). I can reset, delete, change colours and particle counts flying around us… everything on the sim with it.”

Miki's first rez day is November 18, and I for one am looking forward to seeing everything this girl is going to do in the months and years to come.
Slurl: Mars 01Areas Rezzable