Rising Tide: Alizarin Goldflake

Digital artist Martha Jane Bradford thinks big. As Alizarin Goldflake in Second Life, she's collaborated with big noises like the Caerleon Art group, and big events like Burning Life. In the LL booth at the Shanghai World Expo last year, seventy squillion people from forty-two different planets got a chance to admire her work via the machinima Acquarella: the fable, by Chantal Harvey and friends.
Acquarella is an original story by Alizarin. Inspired by her love of all things aquatic, it's a tale of apocalyptic upheaval and change inspired by (among other things) the Fukushima disaster. Acquarella got its first outing in Second Life, which is still the default grid when it comes to virtual art meeting the virtual art-loving public. But, while Alizarin keeps a consitent foothold there, she's expanded the concept on Nexus Central, part of Jeri Rahja's  arty archipelago on the InWorldz grid.

Alizarin Goldflake: The sim tells a fable in 4 quadrants. All of it happened because White Lebed couldn't understand why

Linda Kellie's FreeLife

This is Linda Kellie, previously known as Ayla Holt in SL and Inworldz, where she spent over 5 years making stuff - clothes, furniture, skins, buildings, sculpties, and more. She's gradually putting all her goodies on her website, to be exported, modified, re-used any way you want, as she explains in her personal note. 
It's an extraordinary move, and so far there's over 250MB of material available, all set out in nicely categorized sections. 
Yes, that's right - FREE, FULL PERM/MOD/TRANS.
 On your computer. Good for any grid.
Linda Kellie: Not all of my stuff is on my webpage yet, a lot's here on OSGrid, and I am still adding to it, I haven't been here long! Making things has made virtual worlds more fun for me. I loved both SL and InWorldz, I just worked really hard in SL, and then played hard in IW. I quit for awhile, and decided I needed to do something with all my inventory, backed up on my hard drive. A friend told me about the OpenSimCreations.com site - it was amazing to me that someone would give away files for export to any grid. I didn't know I could even back up to xml. I think you just have to get to a point where you don't care about people stealing your ideas and stuff. I love having my stuff with no rules and giving people the freedom they need. I hope Vanish doesn't think I stole his idea. I kinda did, I guess! But it just made sense to put it on a website that I wasn't using anyway, and he has made a few positive comments.

What could be better? If you like to make stuff, but

Tech Savvy

Welcome to Biolandia, a scientific sim for schoolkids, where in a few days it's going to be Party Time! *digs out crazy co-ed costume* ...but more on that later.

Biolandia is on Craft Grid, and it was built by middle-school teacher, Michelle Tech, who uses her skills to inspire young students to learn the basics of science - chemistry, math, and biology. Michelle won a

Brave New Grid

O wonder!

How many goodly creatures are there here!

The Tempest Shakespeare

If you're tired of SL prices and poseurs, and looking for somewhere new to hang your hat, here's a thought, what about New World Grid? Never heard of it?
Well, they are trying to put that right by having a fab  Open Day on Saturday 1 October.
Of course, the grid's already open, so be smart, go get an avie now, this is the URI: opensim://grid.newworldgrid.com:8002/   

Vadrouille Zepp

I gots my avie, and on rezzing at sim Welcome - look who was there already!  Vadrouille Zepp, famous creator of the multi-grid communicator, the Radionne. He has a new version, the 0.5.5.9G - upgrade, people!

But back to the point of this post. New World Grid, better known by the acronym NWG, is non profit and offers cheapish, reliable land, good services, lots of nice educational builds; plus it's on European time, all factors that appealed to Graham Mills, aka Peter Miller, a professor at the University of Liverpool.

Gianto office on NWG

 Graham and I were both there when the HGAC visited Aime Socrates' fun sim Physics one wet weekend, just as the Education discount in SL was coming to an end. The giant lab is a fun place to play, and makes you think about the Greenies, sigh, and all those other Rezzable goodies.

An Appearance of Vanish

Your five bars showing how much signal there is, they're called tacche in Italian and I don't got them, even now, when I have put the whole desk, not just the laptop, out on the balcony, much to the bemusement of the two men weeding the old lady's dahlia's next door. 
But just because I'm struggling on 3 bars, and can't be there, doesn't mean you shouldn't be in OpenSim today, at 3pm CET (that's 6am SLT) where Vanish Seriath will be gviving a RL presentation of Virtual Worlds to the AUGE - that's German for eye but also the Apple Users Group Europe.

Vanish will be talking about the uses of virtual worlds for business and pleasure, the virtues of open worlds in particular, and explaining a little about hypergridding too, so anyone who wants to pop in and say Hi (or Hy-per) will be welcome!
If presenting in Frankfurt at the Annual AUGE weren't enough excitement for this week, Vanish has created a new place to put your views and questions about OpenSim, it's called The Architects of Sleep. It shares passwords and usernames with his OpenSim Creations site (sign up today!!), where of course you can up- and download free items: clothes, houses, OARs, all sorts - for use on any grid you like.
Don't miss Vanish at 3pm CET this afternoon! Dang, those are big dahlias.

Jokay Unconferential

Yeah. It's a stretch. Today's HGAC meeting on Pathlandia was less about exploring and more about setting up for Jokaydia's Unconference, on from May 29 to June 26.

So what's this festival of unconferenciness all about?
Jokay Wollongong: The events can all be seen on our conference calendar.  We hope by letting the community generate the topics and activities, it will be more interesting than a scheduled conference, even if it makes for some chaos sometimes. It also always leads to interesting discussions. One of the challenges for this group is to get the different groups together a little more.We seem to have two almost separate communities sometimes; the daytime Aus people kinda miss you guys...

Pathfinder Lester: I love it when other folks put things on Google Calendars, because I can then easily add them to my own calendar. It makes it easy for me to figure out timezone stuff, since GCal just converts everything to my own local time zone.

Diversity in Craft today!

Today, at the Museo del Metaverso in Craft, you can see the very best of Virtual Diversity,  the recent photo competition at Koinup. Photos include images of Botgirl, soror and other famous SL names, but also some that may be new to you; beautiful images reflecting the vast variety of mood and makeup in virtual worlds. Luce Laval, Oberon Onmura and Nicola Reinerman have collaborated to create a lively, airy gallery in which to enjoy the photos. The pictures come in the main from Second Life, but other more exotic grids are also represented, including people and places in MMORPG, Frenzoo, and IMVU. Roxelo Babenco of the Museo del Metaverso was one of the judges in the competition. I asked her what the word 'diversity' means to her personally.
Roxelo Babenco:  Pierluigi Casolari of Koinup came up with the name. The competition has been about the diversity of avatars in different worlds, and the way different environments spawn diverse concepts of self. I know it's a charged word, particularly in the USA, but for me personally, diversity enriches us. Language, culture, background, the cross pollination all adds up to a richer experience. I've always loved to explore new things, even before I found Second Life and other virtual worlds, but here, I've discovered so much more.