SLoop - THREE HUNDRED SIXTY FIVE AND ONE NIGHTS

So…I’ve made it!!!

July 7th, 2007, I followed a crazy impulse and logged in to Second Life. I have already told you this: many times I wanted to log off for good.

But SL, like Scheherazade from One Thousand and one Nights, kept me from taking that decision. Every night, when I logged in swearing it was the last… SL kept involving me into this world, telling me yet another story… and I knew I had to come back for more. I just needed to know how those stories ended, but before I knew it, I was lured into the next one.

The origins of The One Thousand and One tales is remote and mysterious. It’s a multitude of stories, passed on by tradition, both oral and written. From ancient Persia, India and Arabia, but also from older cultures that date back to the Xth Century. In the XIXth Century, it became part of the Western culture as well. Translated thousands of times, along with the Bible, it’s one of the books that has been more widely known in history than anything else.

Perhaps the older form of relationship developed by mankind, once they had to join in groups to protect each other, was to sit around the fire in the safety of a cave, and tell simple stories about how they hunted, about what they discovered, about how they were dealing with enemy tribes, about how they were dealing with the world.

And that is very much how a sensible person feels when first strolling around Orientation Island Public. It’s a new unknown world, we have to learn to deal with. To survive.
Those stories were making those human beings more human.
Those stories are the origin of civilization.
I believe stories are what remind us of our humanity.

And that’s what I feel we are doing here. We are here to find our friends, our partners, our groups, and gather around a virtual fire and make a story together.
The stronger the story, the stronger the magic. And, as all good stories do, it makes us more conscious, enriches our language, it allows us to live adventures that for many reasons we can’t afford in RL. It brings joy. It makes us be better persons.


So, all the times I felt like the barbarian King Sahrigar and wanted to delete my virtual existence, SL, like Scheherazade, told me yet another story. Helped me become as human as a virtual self, as I am human in the real world.

I hope I can make it through the next 365 nights. And I hope all the people I have grown to love will still be here. We all know Scheherazade kept her head on in the end.

Well its news to me:

I came Across this and although there is some strong language it is just absolutely brilliant, both informative and amusing for all not just the newbies its aimed at. Please go ahead and click PLAY and see if this looks familiar to anyone :)

Have fun!

9 questions for ... Morpheus Linden

This time we've interviewed someone from the Linden family. Linden Lab has sent us one of the best people they have, Morpheus Linden. He leads a team, called Studio Lux, that works on the back-end billing integration. For example, he and his crew have worked on the infamous but necessary technical part of the introduction of VAT to Europe's Second Life residents.

Please note that some of the usual 9 questions seemed a bit inapropriate for an employee of Linden Lab, so we had to change them a bit for this occasion. Thank you Morpheus, for our pleasant conversation and answering these questions so openly and honestly. And thanks Dee Linden for setting it up. I owe you at least a virtual glass of fine champagne. :)

That said, let's get to the 9 Questions and Answers ...

Question 1: Why did you choose THAT name for your avatar? Do you still have a picture of your newbie days?

Morpheus: Morpheus comes from the name of the Greek God of Sleep. I'm fascinated by sleep, and dream in particular and the implications they have on epistemology. Dream is very much like an alternate reality. In that reality, how do we know what's true or real? Given that uncertainty, how can we then make assumptions about knowing reality in this life?

I'm also a big fan of Neil Gaiman's 'Sandman' series of graphic novels. I feel like they are an excellent example of the dangers of categorical behavior. To a casual observer, "it's just a comic book" but in fact, there's a tremendous amount of depth, interplay and thought there such that I would categorize as literature in a way that most novels published today are not. I feel the same way about Second Life and the way it might seem like "it's just a game" to a casual observer, but the depth, complexity and potential here dwarf the category "game."

There's a quote from a Nineteenth century French poet, Gérard de Nerval that goes, "Dream is a second life." So, when it came time to choose a Linden name, Morpheus, god of sleep, was the obvious choice for me.

Of course the bad-ass from the Matrix didn't hurt the decision either. :)

Question 2: How long were you in SL before you felt you could function and work your way in SL? Did you go through some kind of training at LL in this aspect?

Morpheus: I've been involved in virtual worlds in some way or another for a long time. In 1991, I was one of the founders and administrators of an "LP" MUD. My graduate computer science work was within the Virtual Reality group, and I went into the games industry shortly after graduate school. So, while the particulars of the interface were (and sometimes still are) challenging, the fundamentals of a virtual existence are fairly well ingrained.

There are a couple of ways that the Lab trains incoming Lindens, but I didn't get anything more than an initial shopping trip with Jeska Linden upon joining. I remember when someone first pointed out how to create a landmark in order to return somewhere. I was astonished, because up until that point, I'd pretty much gotten around in-world without those pesky menus. To me, having to go "out" to a menu broke the proverbial "fourth wall." I was surprised that something so fundamental was outside of the immersive interface.

It was over a year later that I finally attended Char Linden's "bootcamp" for new Lindens. I picked up a few tricks from her like turning off the online friend notification. What a blessing that turned out to be. As a Linden, one accumulates a lot of "friends." (Preferences > General > Uncheck: Show Online Friend Notifications)

So, how long? It was probably a couple of weeks before I felt like at least a comfortable tourist. I don't know that I yet feel like a native though almost two years later.

Question 3: Did you know about SL or did you even have an account before you started working for Linden Lab?

Morpheus: I was peripherially aware of Second Life from shortly after it launched, but didn't pay close attention to it until I was job hunting in spring of '06. At that point, a friend-of-a-friend had blogged about her new job at Linden Lab and how they were still hiring (We still are! See this link). I decided to check it out more thoroughly. As a virtual world with strengths like user created content where users retain the intellectual property rights, I thought that Linden Lab might be a good match for my skills and interests. At the time, they were celebrating their 100,000th resident. Of course, now we have grown by two orders of magnitude and have a concurrency over half of what was then the total number of accounts!

So, I spent some time in-world in preparation for (and during) my interview process, but I was not a "proper" resident before becoming a Linden.

Question 4: Where do you hang out most (in-world)? What is special about that place?

Morpheus: I wish I had a better answer for this than I do. A large percentage of the time that I spend in-world is meeting with other Lindens. My team is split between multiple locations and so all of our meetings are in-world. The same is true for the other teams and working groups I'm in. Acknowledging the distributed nature of our organization, Linden Lab HQ is actually comprised of 4 connected islands in-world. So that's where I spend almost all of my in-world time.

Question 5: Can you still go into SL just for leisure, or is it all work? What kind of leisure do you like best in SL?

Morpheus: I can and do spend time in-world for leisure both as myself and as an alt. Not nearly enough, of course. The world changes around me so quickly, I rarely manage to get my bearings before I'm lost again, but that's actually a great thing. I think the strength of Second Life is in its residents, so when I'm in world, I'm either just chatting with people, or exploring. Sometimes, I like to just pull up the world map, pick somewhere, TP there and wander around. Sometimes I'll just go to the top classified ad from the search page and start there. Otherwise, I'll just find my way to a club and hang out for a little while, and hope they have a good dance ball b/c I've still not really loaded my AV with animations.

Question 6: How do you feel the original concept of 'your world, your imagination' works in today's SL?

Morpheus: I think it's still strong. After all, what Second Life is today is due to the creativity of the Second Life residents. We try to keep Second Life as open, available and accessible as we can. All of our work is about enabling the residents and trying to do so in a way that allows us to remain a viable business entity.

Question 7: How do you see your future within SL and Linden Lab?

Morpheus: Alas, I'm famously poor at predicting the future, so I'll keep this one brief: "Long, engaging and challenging!".

Question 8: There's a rumor that Lindens try out all the new poseballs when access is restricted for Lindens. Is it true? And if not, what do Lindens do when they are alone in SL?

Morpheus: LOL, I love that! It cracks me up because in one sense, it seems perfectly reasonable, but little could be farther from the truth. In my experience, if the world is "Lindens Only" then it's because one of two things is happening. Either
A) we're in the early part of bringing up revisions to the server architecture in which case we're doing what's called a "Smoke Test" in QA parlance; A test which tries to cover a broad range of activities, but does not probe with much depth.
or
B) something has gone horribly wrong with some piece of back-end infrastructure, and we're only willing to risk corruption on our own accounts while we're troubleshooting.

That said, I simply love this Haiku from Jeska one "release day" back when we would regularly be down for 6-ish hours every other week as we pushed out a new server release (link here):
Internal testing
Sit on your pose balls, laughing
Eating your ice cream

Question 9: What oneliner or thought would you like to share with our readers, that reflects how you see SL?

Morpheus: It's a great time for Second Life. We've made some amazing changes since I got here: Flexi prims, sculpties, voice, a usable search. We open sourced the client. We've got windlight just out and Havoc 4 and Mono on the way. And yet we still have an amazing set of challenges in front of us in the realms of stability, usability and openness.

So my one liner for how I see SL? "May you live (your second life) in interesting times!"

9 Questions to ... HexxKitten Soleil

... asked by Pelton Darkstone

Pelton: First I want to thank you for letting me ask you these 9 questions! I'll just start right away!

1. Why did you choose THAT name for your avatar? And can you enclose a Newbee pic of yourself?

I got this name for a VERY old reason. It's my name on the net, I use it everywhere ! It was also a nickname I picked up at school. Well that is, the HexxKitten bit... The Soleil came because I am very very pale in RL so to anyone who knows me smile at the irony...

I dont think I have a noobie pic to be honest, I probably have something old though... I felt like a total noob for ages. Felt like I stood out as one too.

It took me FOREVER it seemed to find the right skin for me - I had a few scary disasters. I liked that skin until my RL partner informed me I looked like Pete Burns. I thought I liked that skin until then ... lol.

2. How long were you in SL before you felt you could function and enjoy SL to its full (at least the basics)?

A couple of months - thats when I suddenly twigged that prims were not really that scary and they would behave if you yelled at the screen loud enough ;)

3. What was the most embarassing moment in SL to date?

Wardrobe malfunctions are usually the worst I have had. I wore an entire prim outfit that didn't rez when I arrived, and it left me naked for ages... I now make sure I wear something under those. Or clicking the wrong button and taking off or putting on your entire inventory...

4. Do you have a picture or screenshot of the first place you hung out in SL?

The first place I hung out is gone now :(
I used to be a lot at club 101... it used to be a cool club. The owners sold it and the name changed. So did the whole vibe... I never really went back to it.

Pelton: I guess that happens a lot in SL... high tiers and all...?

Oh no, this one went because of owner dramas :( It was a real shame... It was a great place. But nowadays I am usually either working or I hang out at Candy Rose.

5. 70% or more of your time in SL is used for ...?

Mostly I work... I'm working on new stuff, taking the pics of them, packaging them, sticking them in store and then listing them on SLX/OnRez. The latter is waaaay tedious but worth it.

6. Whats the best item you ever built? Did you sell it? And do you have a picture of it?

I made a cooking station (fire) and candle stand that I am VERY proud of...
I am a medieval reenactor in RL and my group (Wars of the Roses) have these items... to recreate historical scenes. I don't tend to go medieval in SL though.

Pelton: Why not? There's lots of Castles around here (in SL)!?

It's not super accurate and the geek in me spends all night spotting the 'errors'...

7. Are you happy with your avatar, or is there something you still want to change but havent done, or is impossible?


I LOVE how my avatar looks now... although I tend to change my hair when I'm bored with it.

8. What was the most you ever paid for an item/object in SL? And what was it?

Most I ever paid for one item ... crikey, thats a tough one!
I have a horse, I probably paid the most for that!

Pelton: I have a filming HUD that was very expensive... 5000L$!

I do have my photostudio, that was about 5000 too!

9. If you could sum up your SL in one sentence what would it be? Or if there is a oneliner you want to share with our readers what would it be? Maybe 'Hexx the Kitten'?

LOL... but, no! Probably just that my avie looks as it does thanks to 'extensive pixel surgery'...

I was once complimented by a guy and I replied with 'it's all thanks to my pixel surgeon'! So that would be my onliner I recon.

Pelton: Okay... thank you very very much for the interview and answering the 9 questions. I'm sure the readers will love to read about you sharing these experiences.

Interview with Paisley Beebe, Second Life's Jazz Diva

By Nazz Lane

One of Second Life's greatest pleasures is in attending a live concert. SL has become the home for a number of talented singers and musicians and their presence and impact on our Second Lives continues to grow.
I recently had the chance to catch up with SL's premier Jazz Diva, Paisley Beebe.
In between her many appearances in SL, her weekly "Tonight Live With Paisley Beebe" show and a real life in which she hosts weekly live radio shows plus professional appearances, we met at her office on Sailor Cove.

NL: Can you tell me what brought you into SL?
PB: A magazine article here in Australia, I'm not a gamer but I am a gadget and computer addict. I use my computer and the web to market my music and have marketed it very successfully. I have a RL web site, www.leoniesmith.com and a My Space site. If you were to Google "Leonie Smith", Nazz, you would see thousands of entries.
NL: Looking back to your first experiences in SL, how has being in SL affected you?
PB: Oh, I am definitely addicted, LOL. From the start, it horrified my husband terribly, the amount of time I spent on it just building a house and buying land. I totally got into it. I tried buying small blocks and building houses on them and selling them, but it was soooo much hard work and not much return. I did all of that for about two months before I even sang in SL. Also my voice, it's changed since I've been here on SL, singing as often as I have done has helped me grow my repertoire and there is a constant challenge to improve. SL has helped me by putting myself on the spot several times a week. I'm hoping that eventually I might tour overseas through connections made through SL. I'm hoping to be asked to come to next year's SLCC, if it is still going to happen.
NL: So you started to perform in March of this year then?
PB: It was about then, yes. I actually thought that I would never make money here as a singer, so I thought I'd better get another skill, building and designing. But that never happened.
NL: Who in SL would you most like to meet that you haven't met and why?
PB: OOOH, good question. Probably Phillip Linden. He's the hardest to get to meet and, probably, so I could see what he is really like and maybe suggest a makeover for that look that he has :). I wanted to get him on our Christmas show dressed as Santa giving out presents. But someone said that he probably wouldn't do it because his look is his brand and he wouldn't compromise it.
NL: What was your most memorable moment in SL?
PB: OOOH, there have been sooo many. One of my first was doing my first public gig where I was properly booked and in getting 14K in tips, with soooo many people there, it was incredible. I felt like Norah Jones winning the Grammy. It was overwhelming to have so much attention. I thought that's how it was always going to be :). In Australia, the jazz scene is very small and I often just get bookings as background music. So, to have people actually listen to us and pay attention was amazing on that level first up.
NL: Do you have a favorite venue in SL?
PB: My favorite places to play in SL are the Sunset Jazz Club and Sailors Cove. I would play those places for free if I could afford it and will when I can, it's just sheer enjoyment to play both venues. The Lift is my other regular venue, it is just starting. Lots of jazz clubs start up and don't last. You have to have a dedicated group to sustain them and that takes a long time to get such loyalty. Its quite complex, you do have to have a suitable venue somewhere where people feel good. If they can't move in there due to lag, they don't mind that. The Sunset has places you can hide if you want, lots of nice little spots to sit if you don't want to be bothered. It has atmosphere in spades.
NL: In an article that appeared in Jazz Corner, you'd mentioned about SL: "Finally, we are able to play live and be appreciated by people the world over who actually listen and enjoy the music", does that sentiment still hold true?
PB: Absolutely! One of my main aims at the moment is to get to more Europeans. Due to the time zone differences, it's very hard without me singing at 4 AM. So I have put all my gigs back to 5 PM and 4 PM SLT in order to get the Europeans still up at 11 PM their local time. But I feel that there is a huge jazz fan base out there on SL who don't even know about jazz or live music in SL due to most music being played in U.S. time. It's changing with a few good European musicians but it's still very small.
NL: You were also quoted as saying in that same article: "perhaps some real life success may come of this but I'm not counting on it", is that still how you feel? Or has it led to RL successes?
PB: Not yet, but my MP3 sales have tripled and CD sales, but that's not much, maybe $80 USD a quarter, still miniscule. But, you know, that's good for an Aussie jazz artist. There are only one or two artists here in Australia who actually make any money out of sales. Most make their money out of concerts and corporate shows. The rest do CDs as a labor of love.
NL: Your first album is titled "Sweet Jazz." What inspired the name?
PB: My singer coach, Kerrie Biddel, said I had a sweet sounding voice and, as it was my first album, I wanted people to know that it was jazz so I had to put "jazz" in the title somehow :), and jazz is ....sweet....
NL: Your second album is called "Never the Less", what was the inspiration for that?
PB: The second album name is the punch line to a joke that my guitarist accompanist told me on one of our tours. He is nearly 73 and loves telling jokes and still loves to play. By the way, my accompanist, George Golla, is Australia's answer to Les Paul, a bonafide legend here in Australia and has played with Sarah Vaughan, Dizzy Gillespie and many, many legends. He is the guitarist's guitarist! He and I are quite close, we tour every year to Tasmania. He is incredible, really, a great mentor to me. But we don't get to play much together; hopefully, that will change now… Well, the one upside of there not being much work in Australia is that I do get to play with the best musicians in Australia and that's not hype, it's the truth, and I bring them in here. Ray Aldridge, one of my regular accompanists is, without a doubt, the best jazz accompanist in Australia. He is also legendary here. But they just don't get the work they deserve so they like to play and the audiences here in SL are often, more than not, bigger than our RL audiences and they buy the CDs!!! …. and listen … and we love to play music ... bottom line.
NL: What are your plans for future releases?
PB: I'm about to launch a "Live in SL" album, they are live recordings from SL. This will be available on digital download only. I'm working with another SL musician on it. I just have to get through the paper work…*sigh*...I hate paperwork.
NL: What do you see as the future for your music and performances and the music scene in SL?
PB: Personally, it would be fun to jam with another jazz artist. Well, you see that's what is great about jazz, we can all play so many of the same songs and we are used to listening to each other and improvising. As long as each player knows their own stuff, it can be the best fun in the world. If it were easy to jam in SL already, I would do it. But I haven't seriously looked at the technicalities of doing it in SL 'cause it's not easy and doesn't allow for improvising easily. You can do it like VLB but it takes a lot of rehearsal which is not my idea of jazz…
The other thing is that the Lindens have no interest in supporting live music and why should they? They just have to keep this all afloat. They like the live music scene so don't get me wrong, but it's not their job to promote us. It's like fashion or anything else here. It's our job to figure it out. That's up to us as a music community to build it…and it's really hard getting the live music scene here cohesive…there are so many different opinions.

Buzz at Woodhaven Park

As reported by Dashwood Dayafter


Alias Art World is still new, but don't let that fool you. This group of galleries is hip, hot, and full of talent. Owner Dixie Barbosa is proof of that. The artist was the center of the buzz yesterday as his first exhibit opened (Prize Islands Art Exhibit at Woodhaven Park)
As you wander between the rows of photography you can't help but feel the emotion that he has managed to capture. This collection of rl photos were all shot while Mr. Barbosa was traveling between 2005 and 2007.
As you can tell from a few of his pieces, there is almost no additional work done to his photos. What you see is what you get, whether it is a scene of a older woman peeking out of her house in the middle of the day or a live band performing on stage, Mr.Barbosa has given you his personal eye view as real and raw as the moment it happened.

Mr. Barbosa is from Holland and does freelance work of his photography in rl.
You can find his gallery in sl in Alias it is shop number 7
and the Woodhaven Park exhibit is running for till the end of the month plus of course you can see it daily here as he also works as a reporter and photographer for SL-Newspaper.com!

Death Tube fun

You all know the crazy stunts of Jackass. From riding shopping carts down a hill to slamming nails through fingers and whatnot. Well, you can do stupid stunts in Second Life as well. How about a Tube of Death? Rolling down a hill in a tube?

Been there, done that ... (not myself though, hehe)



Movie title: "Second Life Death Tube"
Artist: see YouTube.com (link below)
Duration: 35 seconds (no sound unfortunately)
Link: YouTube.com

Fun in the Sun ...

Another great machinima on YouTube.com: Fun in the Sun !!!

Is a ticket to Bora Bora too expensive? Do you get sunburn easily? Or do you have a phobia for big waves? Live your dreams in Second Life !!



Title: "Fun in the Sun"
By: JBM Productions
Duration: about 3 and a half minutes
Link: YouTube.com

Second Suicide ...

Some people just make the most beautiful machinima (Second Life movies). Like the following one. It's actually a sad one, but luckily it's not that easy to commit suicide in SL. Please watch it, it's truly a beautiful video.



Title: "Death of an avatar"
Artist: Surfwidow Beaumont
Duration: almost 3 minutes
Link: YouTube.com