Twinity

It was homesickness, probably; I really only wanted to go and see Tower Bridge. The virtual world Twinity is famous for its precise reconstructions of  London, Berlin and so forth, and for the longest time I've been thinking it would be nice to walk the bridge. So in I went. And yes, yes, I know it's still in Beta.

Obviously. It's pretty,  their version of St Paul's. Pretty, but not immersive. It's very clean, too clean.

They pay you to go through the Twinizen  Tutorial (shouldn't that be Twitizen? Oh, right, no. No.) You learn how to walk, run, see, speak to others, and shop, and you end up with a whopping 450 globals, enough to buy some more black hair (there's a hair color option in Appearance but I couldn't make it work), a dress and a couple of pairs of shoes. None of it would pass muster in the freebie store of an Open Sim grid, let alone in Second Life. You can't fault them for choosing different keyboard shortcuts, but it's all very

Lost

Sad news in Craft
Owing to a serious error during maintenance, the Craft Database has been damaged. The Grid will be restored to its status as of 23 December 2010. This means anyone who joined Craft after that date needs to sign up again. All inventories will revert to 23 December. Payments for whose who are renting land in Craft are suspended. Sims are being reviewed on a case by case basis, and wherever possible, the most recent version will be restored.
sigh my beloved chess clock; I didn't even remember to take a photo of it before it went. Everyone's shouting about backup in that stable-door-shutting way.
I lost a lot. But not the friends of Craft.

Immaterial Girl

Blogging doesn't pay, apart from the dubious honour of being plagiarized of course; but shopping for pixels was never  high on my To Do list. Isn't it better to be inquisitive than acquisitive? 

If you consult the blogosphere  about the state of shopping in open and closed worlds, it's often a mix of joyful finds and rging rants about quality, rights, and self-affirmation through the almighty dollar; and just as many equally boring blogs about freedom, la revolucion, and so on. Good grief.

Shopping! But not on Craft, not today. Craft has a rocking freebie shop, but what else is out there... the hypergate beckons.

When it comes to manufactured goods, and simple shopping experience, then nobody beats Second Life; InWorldz is getting a lot of brand-name stores, but why pay real money to re-purchase all my favourite stuff, just so I can re-meet all the people who used to be in SL?

meeting the movers and shakers of downtown Inworldz

Among the closed, money-oriented worlds, Spoton is surely the worst for shopping. Part of the magic of retail therapy is the chance to soak up the atmosphere of the store,  otherwise you're just an Amazombie. In Spoton, sadly, they kill the immersive element by forcing you to buy through a website similar to SL's Marketplace; same principal, you have to buy their currency (at a price) and then they also take 5% of the purchase price of every item, this on top of the $4 monthly fee for the right to build and the $30-40 you pay for a sim and 15k prims. Spoton is a place to go when you want to build, try out new things, and be quiet. Very quiet. But not where you'll make a mint.

The website SpotOn Synergy, which features a Double Dutch Delivery system, allowing content providers to make their goods available on different grids, at different prices, is not very user friendly and has very little on offer, and frankly none of it, including my stuff,  is going to win awards for style or quality.  

Tessa Harrington the grid owner promises, "they're going to get more very soon" - better goods, more people, regular interesting events, it's always all going to happen 'soon'. Since there's virtually no-one in SpotOn and its fragmented, childproofed mini-worlds, not having much to buy doesn't seem a big deal. Pioneers are rarely consumers.

What about the rest of Open Sim? This is Freebie Heaven, Klarabella Karamell's hipster marketplace. Simple furniture, fireplaces, textures, buildings and plants are available here, along with a number of sculpty farm animals. No, I don't want to know why you need a sculpty goat. In German and English she invites OS creators to donate their original work, and while this is far from being steampunk quality, it's a resource for people who just want a chair to sit on. For fun (and to see if I can really bring things through the hypergate) I bought this sculpty cat.

Then it was off to Wild Shopping on the German Grid - wild as in Wild West, not erotica, the sauciest shop was Lady Fashion, featuring the latest accessories for the mid Victorian floozy.

Ouch.  By the way, if you're going to grid hop, it's wise to wear trousers or a skirt, prim skirts don't always make the trip. On sim Wild Shopping you're going to need OS$ to purchase your ankle boots and corset, although there was  a free buffalo skull. Who could say no to that. Show of hands.

Oberon Onmura admires the new decor

Back in Craft, and YAY the cat came too, there he is, on the couch. I kind of like my wind chime cat better, but then he's never been through a hypergate. When he's done, with his nifty scripts and all, he'll be available in the freebie art shop on Arts Park, in Craft.  No charge.

Hyper and Hamster

This is Jeff Kelley of Newworld Grid.

He is the rocking inventor of the first Multiple Avatar Hypergate, and that's a big deal for reasons that should be obvious (*whistles and pretends she knows*).

OK, I kind of know - we all get to travel together! I call shotgun! 

The HGAC  which stands for the Hypergrid Adventurer's Club met today. There was the usual 30 minutes of mad chat in which all the educators and devs tell their latest news - a sort of technical/verbal version of PiRat's Art Kahos, too much happening at once, I never know what the heck is going on. Pathfinder Lester puts a chatlog on his blog, so look for enlightenment there.

Talking Towers

When it comes to my stupidity, let's face it, the cat has been out the bag for so long that it can't even remember if it was paper or plastic. Thank goodness you don't have to be smart to know smart when you see it. More than that. Imagine having a problem with a building project and being able to ask, not just a clever builder friend, but Lumiere Noir, founder of Second Life's Ivory Tower of Primitives, and have him come right over and take a look!

You'd like to know what he fixed for me. No.
Let's just say that our conversation ended with the words:
Lumiere Noir: You've got to know all you can about the tools available to you :-)

Well, I think we all know that's never going to happen.
Craft Grid now has its own updated, wooden version of the Ivory Tower of Primitives, on sim Sophia, which will soon be filled with streamlined information on primpinching of every kind. And there's more - Lumiere has started a Prim Wiki at http://ivorytoweronline.com/primwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page .
Lumiere Noir: The wiki is a lot of fun to work with. I hope that by putting it on the web, people will be able to get instant translations. For now the wiki is closed because the last time I tried this it got spambotted out of existence, but the blog and forums part is open to all (I think!) - I just set it up a couple of days ago.

Paidos Woodall, the first speaker in Craft, with Tao Quan and Thirza Ember

Yet another source of buildery goodness. Also in the news, Craft has Voice! Today was the first test of the system. Not everyone's a fan of voice, both in SL and other worlds, in fact moderately grumpy sources inform that it's properly termed as 'Voip' and not that sophisticated, technically speaking. 

But I don't care. I was the first person ever to giggle audibly in Craft, and they can't take that away from me.

Stepping Out

Tao Quan described Craft Grid as a baby the other day, and it's apt - there are lots of exciting firsts are going on, sweet small steps forward that probably seem no big deal in a place like SL or InWorldz, but for the Crafty Ones are a delight. As you can read in an earlier post, we got the Craft version of the Radionne, Vaudrouille Zepp's  trans-grid talking device (woot before even InWorldz got it, soror says!) and we also got grid-wide Voice - how neat, to be standing on Oberon Onmura's sim Elena talking to Tao who was ten sims away on Hydra. Very exciting newness  also for the ArtsParks sims, the arrival of artist-in-residence Maya Paris who has taken over the installation sim Locus Amoenus. Can't wait to see what she makes of it!



Then yesterday evening we had the first public performance of Alien Bolero, by Velazquez Bonetto, Josina Burgess, and Junivers Stockholm of CARP, in front of a dozen residents. Once the prims had finished dancing to Junivers' music, it was our turn to step out in the shadowy, lag-free theater, accompanied by Josina's colourful particles and dancing circles.