Zombies

Feeding Frenzy
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

Halloween nears. The dead begin to rise. Scripts come back from the great abyss known as the Trash and haunt us mere mortals.

I was minding my own business, flying through the mysterious land known as 1.5.6. Suddenly, a swarm of green boxes descended on me and started ravenously biting and clawing me. I pulled out my shotgun and started blasting them, but they soon overpowered me. My knees gave under the intense pressure and I collapsed to the ground.

They covered me and I was barely able to breathe. I blacked out and awoke at my home, unsure of how I had got there.

Island Sandbox

Island Sandbox
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

Linden Lab has anwsered our prayrs once again. After a few forum threads last night, Linden Lab has gifted us with an Island Sandbox! It is named Island Sandbox and is to the south of Luna, near the welcome area and city sims.

The nice thing about the island sandbox is that it is one of the few places in game where I can set a draw distance to 512 and not mega lag. In the photo, I also have far clip disabled so that you can see the avatars. The nice thing about an island sandbox is that it elimitates the chance of a stray object or prim from escaping into the main grid.

I can imagine that I'll be using this sandbox a lot, mainly because I can teleport here, and not fly. It feeds my laziness.

The Pitts

Pitt Classroom Interior
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

Earlier this week, Linden Lab announced the Second Life on Campus program. It encourages the use of SL in the classroom and at universities. University of Pittsburgh is one of the first schools to participate in the program. English students, with the in game last name of Pitt, are learning about online worlds for the semester.

The students have been in game for almost a week and have already created a classroom for themselves. It is located in a pleasant snow sim with nice expanses of empty land on all sides. From the exterior, it looks like a orange cube with a sloped glass roof and solid glass on one wall. Inside, there are a few big tables and numerous chairs. Beachballs are in one corner.

Its great to see new players getting into the game so fast. I encouage everyone to welcome the Pitts into SL.

Dang Upload Limits!!!

Dang it! The end of the month nears and I am at 95% of my Flickr uploads. Until I get a flickr pro account, that means no photos for a few days. Maybe if someone were to gift me with a pro account (hint hint) I could post some photos of their builds and neat places. Oh well. Or I could just wait for a few days.

Town Hall

Last night was great. I got to sit in on the latest Town Hall with Philip Linden (aka Philip Rosedale), the Second Life CEO and founder. The town hall is an event where the Lindens anwser questions from the players. Philip started the event with an announcement. First off, he announced that Linden Lab has received 8 Million dollars from a venture capital firm. And that we are getting new sims today. In fact, we got a ton of new void sims and 2 new sandboxes.

The really fun part about the event was seeing Philip in person. Well, not really in person, but that's not the point. It was a blast getting to see the actual happenings and not a retransmition. 30 other players attended, most of whom I know, which was a real surprise. Naturally, I took tons of photos, 30 to be exact. Towards the end of the event, people started putting hats and various other objects on Philip. I got a few great pics of that. Unfortunately, I missed the end of the event and any mind-blowing fireworks extravaganzas that may have accompanied that. Still, it was great. I've uploaded some of my favorite photos to Flickr. Go and check 'em out.

Photos on Flickr.

Graffiti

Arrows
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

I just couldn't resist the urge to spray this on the building. When I did, though, it was fine. Actually, I was encouraged by Oz Spade. His community Graffiti Project lets resident tag his building. I sprayed this and a giant 8 on his building today. Anyone can leave a tag, just go to Sistiana 133,248.

Its a really great build. Try it out.

Silhouette

Silhouette
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

Playing with the debug menu can yeild fun results. So can light prims.

My First Avatar

My First Avatar
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

I found this photo of my first avatar. I made this on my second day in game. I joined on Christmas and had lots of time to play the following day. The pants (iPants) were my second clothing item created in game. The first was a t-shirt that said macintosh or something along those lines. The aspect ratio of the picture was somehow messed up. My avatar has some such a long way since then. My jaw is one of the most noticible differences. And I am much taller.

Bullettime

Bullettime
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

This was an old photo that I located in iPhoto today. I was trying to recreate that famous bullettime shot from the Matrix in SL. I fired my Colt .45 pistol (by Hiro Pendragon) and ran into posistion. Then I triggered the animation (by Ulrika Zugzwang) and hoped that the perfect shot would come. The main issue was that from my perpestive, I couldn't see the bullets until they were right on me. Therefore, it was very hard to get into a good location in time.

If someone else would buy a gun or borrow mine, I could probably come up with a nice shot for that. Either that, or a static model of the bullet. I'll probably end up creating a series of static models and do a film of the camera panning around the shot while I dodge bullets.

Oktoberfest in Neualtenburg

There is an Oktoberfest party in progress in Neualtenburg. Go check it out while it lasts. I have posted some photos here on Flickr. So come, join the fun, have too much beer!

Monopoly

While exploring Second Life today, I came across a larger-than-life Monopoly board. It had a board on the ground and tiles on the surrounding walls. In the center of the build towers a humongous Monopoly Rich Guy (forgetting the name). On some of the tiles are embedded vendors selling avatars. I'm going to post some photos soon. In the meantime, you can visit it at Ganymede 66, 47.

Pictures can be viewed here
and here
and here.

Memories of Tartarus SL

I was organizing my extensive collection of SL snapshots in Apple iPhoto when I came across a selection of pictures from the Tartarus build. Tartarus was an ambitious build that was destined to change Second Life. It was a cyberpunk, neo-Tokyo inspired city and combat game. It featured a really detailed, gritty city and amazing modeling. The project was led by Ryen Jade, founder of Fallen-Faith Weapons, an in game weapons manufacturer.

Lots of details about the project were in its group forum. It has information on the mid project name-change and the status of the project at various phases.

I had some great times in Tartarus. It 'twas a great place to sit and script or to explore in my spare time. I ended up spending a number of hours there. It was even featured on New World Notes. But due to real life money problems, Tartarus is no more. I can only visit it in my fond memories and some last photos that I took. I posted a selection of the snapshots on flickr and they can be viewed here.

Chicken-Hat

Chicken-Hat
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

Need I explain more?

Grass Head

Grass Head
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

Fellow webloger Torley Wong left a comment on my last post.

"Skullguns? HAHA... that sounds VERY much like Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age to me. Beware!! :)"

Well, players are not limited to just guns in their skulls. This one has a fine plant coming out of his head. If there is really enought dirt up there for the plant to survive, somebody needs to do a better job of washing their hair.

In my days in SL, I too have had many a box and clothing container mounted to my head. What would be really fun is to have a party where everyone dresses as a male or female new player and dances with a cube on their head. Not to make fun of new players, oh no. Rather, to remeber what it was like. The initial magic of your first motorcycle ride or rezzed prim. Ah, that was great.

Attack of the White Shirt Clones

Attack of the White Shirt Clones
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

The clones are attacking! They have been witnessed en mass at the welcome area. Some sported guns coming out of their skulls. Their skulls! Fear the clones! Run while you still can!

New Forums

The off-topic forum is back! The 3 word thread was deleted :( The off-topic forum is back!

The Forums are Down

The Forums are Down
Originally uploaded by Goshua Lament.

I was browsing the forums. I clicked to read a thread, and to my horror, got this message.

"The Second Life Forums are currently closed for software upgrade today (Monday, October 4) and are scheduled to reopen at approximately noon PDT."

Now I have to wait a whole 3 hours before I can use them. I'll just have to pass the time in Photoshop.

In reality, the forum update isn't such a bad thing. There was a thread detailing the changes, but of course, I can't access it at the moment. The rumor is that Linden Lab is bringing back the off-topic forum.

Hopefully, Linden Lab also cleans up the group forum list and actually makes it readable. Or alphabetized.

Its only 3 minutes until the forums are scheduled to reopen. Woot.

EDIT 12:05 PM: I caught a glimpse of the new forum design. The time has been updated for ONE MORE HOUR. They open at 1 PM. How could they get me excited about the new forums, then crush my hopes. /cry