A treasure map (if you consider free images treasure …)

Good heavens, it’s been a month since I’ve posted?

My fervent apologies. And yet, I’m still not ready to post anything serious.  Bloggers, have you ever done a post just to remind yourself of a resource or story?  Yeah, that’s what this is.  Because I don’t trust my bookmarks file …

Basically, this story promises 12 Best Places to Get Free Images For Your Site … and there they are! Not at a point where I can peruse the resources, but I do look forward to it in the near future …

Have it your way?

Because I am flippant and irreverent, I must start off this post by admitting my serious, though platonic, girl-crush on Miss Emilly Orr. As it happens, I interact more with her blog than the av herself, but the same qualities shine through: thoughtful, fierce, articulate, funny, bold, curious.  Miss Orr, you are cooler than a thousand My Evil Ponies.

I started with a paean to Miss Orr because this blog post is in response to a post on her blog, to which I was about to clog up with the comment below.  However, I came to my senses and posted it here. But it was a near, near thing.

The first part of the post addresses a comment from a Second Life blog made by Ari Blackthorne.  Miss Orr quoted at length, but I prefer giving a briefer excerpt:

Since my first coming into SL I have owned… (counts fingers and contemplates) … 5 private regions (sims) – not all at once of course. But I have owned them. I have done what you are doing now – the land sales/rentals. I have created a role play sim (still going strong fortunately) and so on and so on.

 

However, I clearly understand my “place” in it. That being that I am paying Linden Lab to give me specific and complete control of part of their system. That’s it. Nothing more. I do not now nor ever expect a “return” on my “investment” because not only is it not promised, Linden Lab doesn’t even so much as imply such a thing is possible. In other words, what I do and how I do it using the tools and services available I do on my own at my own behest and risk, knowing full well anything can change for the better or worse at the drop of a hat.

 

So, again with respect, I take the words of anyone who proclaims they have spent money and are thus “losing” money with a serious grain of salt and tongue-in-cheek. Second Life is not billed as any kind of money-making enterprise or investment venue. If you spend money on a movie ticket at the cinema, do you realistically expect to get any kind of return on that money, save for the screening itself?

This leaves me torn.  I respond to rightness and wrongness in this sentiment.

The rightness:

Life is hard, business is rough.  A guaranteed profit is the lure of hucksters fishing for the desperate and gullible.  Sometimes … heck, oftentimes, smarts and capital and the sweat of the brow is just not enough to succeed. That’s the real world, and fortunately or unfortunately, the same is true of the virtual world. Many people can and do succeed.  Many don’t.  And while a high likelihood of success is a fantastic indicator … it’s only an indicator — not a sure thing, not a guarantee.  

Virtual businesses may operate on different scales and have very different rules from real-world ones, but we’re not talking Bizarro Land.  And if you’re operating within someone else’s servers, under their rules AND they have their own goals for what success of their operation entails, which may not mesh with or acknowledge your goals … you are assuming some measure of risk. 

So, yeah … right on, Mr. Blackthorne.  But … the wrongness:

I don’t have it in front of me, but Benjamin Duranske’s book details the dissonance between LL hawking the potential for significant economic opportunity in their marketing materials versus their ToS provisions.  But there are also the issue of people are already in the system and previously thriving.  When things go sideways, is it more rational to stay & hope they go right again, or cut bait and flee? Only it’s not so rational a decision and people may stay & hope/fight/wait it out due to emotional attachments, sheer irrational hope, or a lack of information. [The typist took an entire semester of law & behaviorialism, bless her twisted brain, so I could go into extreme gory detail, but you know ... let's not.  For your sake & mine & even hers.]

There’s also the issue of whether everything in the ToS is company policy or CYA to please lawyers and fend off users threatening to sue. Literally changing your rules at the drop of a hat tends to strike most customers as arbitrary, capricious and a no-starter for serious “investment”. Coca-Cola, Harvard and Warner Bros. wouldn’t put up with it, and why should individual users?  Most everyone expects a certain level of consistency and logic, and SL would fail even as an entertainment if it did not attempt to operate with both qualities when providing its services.

The truth of the matter probably lies between the hype of marketing materials and the risk-avoidance language of the ToS … the set of reasonable expectations between the service provider and the users/customers. Reasonable expectations are built upon clear communication – not only notice and disclosure, but feedback, conversation, a willingness to understand and synthesize what each side is communicating, and clear, non-contradictory messaging throughout the corporate chain. And this is what I think LL falls down on the majority of the time.

*sigh* I fear I’m going to end up a one-trick pony but really … effective communication would help, while ineffective communication leads to frustration and anger and impotency and blame-storming.

A touch of poesy

I — well, the typist — was struck by a bit of dark whimsy due to two events:

1) The trip to DC was wonderful … until the breathing problems started.  Luckily, both inhaler and allergy meds were on-hand so no need for frantic trips to an ER or pharmacy but still … breathed better on the plane than on the ground in DC for the last 2 days, and isn’t THAT saying something?

2) The Consulate’s weekly Poetry Slam had the theme of surgery, medicine and the body.

So, I wrote this. Why a poem? *shrug* Just because it appealed to me.  Blank verse, of course (or is it free verse?).

Signs of the onset of acute bronchial asthma

 

The quick way is

that you simply, suddenly 

cannot draw breath.

 

Your ears fill

with the sound of rasping breaths.

Adrenaline floods your bloodstream

along with panic.

 

And you wonder if 

you’ll ever be able to fill your lungs again.

 

The slow way,

for those with allergies

or otherwise have their asthma

usually under control.

 

You notice a muscle

along your collarbone

stretched taut, almost to tearing

but you haven’t done any heavy lifting.

 

After a while,

you realize how tired you’ve become.

Why are you winded

after just a few blocks?

Perhaps it’s lack of sleep.

(And you haven’t been sleeping well, have you?)

 

Then you hear the rasping of your own breath.

Why didn’t you put the pieces together before now?

How is it you don’t know your body after all this time.

 

Stay calm, do not panic.

Do not think of Robert Donat in his prime,

sent to an early grave by asthma.

Fight for breath, but not too hard.

 

Yes, you wonder if

you’ll ever be able to fill your lungs again.

 

If you are very good,

and if you take your medications,

you will draw breath …

until the next attack.

 

When you’re able to breathe again, give thanks …

- Magdalena Kamenev 2009

The Mason Campaign

The banning of Darien Mason from Second Life is probably old news by now, but there are new and continuing developments.

Serra Anansi has opened a ticket asking for LL to vacate its decision (as it were), and is encouraging others to do the same.  Gabrielle Riel has done something similar.  She also notes that those only Basic accounts may have their tickets ignored.  There may well be other background efforts going on.  Let’s hope this bears fruit … the grid is a rather more monochromatic without Doctor Mason.

Dancing and duchal duds

June 21, 2009

3pm – 4:30 pm SLT

SL’s 3rd Grand Tour comes to Edison.  See poster for details and please spread the word:

 

Duchess Closet Dance and Sale to benefit RFL - 6.16.09, 3-4:30 pm SLT

Tango without me

If you’re in-world Saturday afternoon, around 1-3 pm SLT, you really should go to this:

 

Tango concert with live music in Caledon Penzance!

Dark clouds, a lining

This afternoon, I’ve been thinking about theater (or, theatre, because I like certain British spellings).

When she was young and broke and carless in a city chockful of autos, the typist would travel from her marginalized neighborhood into the glittery, shiny part of downtown to watch live, free Shakespeare. The company putting on these spectacles would change locale each year, but the settings would always be outdoors … whether in a miraculous arboreal parcel next to an underground mall, or a sunken space with various fountains set on a hill studded with high-rises, somehow they made Shakespeare visible, audible and alive in what many consider a soulless city. Being carless and broke, it was the most accessible theater for the typist. It was well-done, edifying and fun.

I think of theater, and that outdoor Shakespeare, set among the corporate spires, because the thought struck me that roleplay in SL may be analogized to theater, especially improv theater.  People develop and advance plotlines, create characters, wear certain costumes … some may even go as far as to make special builds (or considerably tailor existing ones) in which the roleplay occurs.  Not to give any shake to SLShakespeare … they do wonderful, intricate work in bringing the experience of RL theater into SL. But all roleplay can be a form of theater, even when the quality is haphazard, or the roleplay is only for a very select audience, or even if the potential audience rejects the RP outright … it is theater and art and a means of expression.

What put me on the path of such thoughts?  I wish it were happier news, but it appears that one of the most prominent roleplayers (dramatists?) within the steampunk lands is SL has apparently been banished from the grid by Linden Lab: Doctor Darien James Mason.  He does not go into the gory details of what has caused this, but the wording of his post sounds final, as far as his activities on Second Life are concerned.  Happily, defiantly, he insists that Dr. Mason is not dead and his stories will continue from other venues. For those of us who are his friends, acquaintances and audience, it is something of a relief that Darien will be accessible in other forums. And yet, for myself, there is anger and confusion … much of the latter. Friends of mine have left the grid, one returned (that I know of) in a different guise, the others … remain gone, as far as I know. There are deaths, and recommitments to RL and the need to excise a part of life that had become too fraught with drama and angst and conflict.  But how does one process an exile?  Should there be public mourning? Quiet protests? Should one hope against hope for a reprieve from the Powers That Are (because it is truly THEIR world, we just live in it)?

Darien has said “I have spent my virtual life fighting my inner demons. On 9 June, 2009, the demons won.”  The point of much art is the fight of inner demons, the imperative to tell a story in one’s own way.  I do not know the nature of Darien’s (or his typist’s) inner demon, but he made his fight into an art form. And while doing so, he made friends and contributed to SL in numerous ways (I still remember the Sukkot commemoration at Caledon Penzance last years).  Thank you, Darien, for being a host, a builder, a roleplayer, a friend and an artist.

What is the silver lining in this?  Well, my typist is going to meet his typist this Saturday while in DC. We’re meeting @ 1 pm at the Royal Mile Pub in Wheaton, MD.  My typist tends to natter on a bit and has yet to win any beauty contests, but any and all safe, non-stalkery comers in the are welcome to join us.

Going to DC!

The typist is traveling to the nation’s capitol! Advice on what to do, who to see, etc., etc., etc?

Maker Faire Photos!

Just click on the Flickr widget to the right to see photos from Maker Faire 2009.

Radio Riel, 2nd Anniversary!

Join us for the Tertiary Phase Starting June 1, 2009 on RadioRiel.org

Miss Orr has all the details here … come celebrate with us.  Starting as early as midnight tonight.