August 2013 – Ciaran Laval

August 30, 2013

Blackened Mirror Season 2 To Feature Babylon 5 Star

Above you can view the first trailer for The Blackened Mirror Season 2, which is filmed in Second Life. The word on the street, and I’m not making this up, is that Season 2 will feature a star from the science fiction series Babylon 5. Those of you who pay attention may already know who it is, but for now my lips are firmly sealed!

For those who are unaware of what The Blackened Mirror is, it’s a machinima based drama filmed in Second Life, with a noir setting. Season 1 can be viewed on Treet TV. The first season, featured people who have real world experience of stage and film and the second season will too, but there’s also the opportunity for Second Life residents to get involved as extras.

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August 30, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 10 – Robin Sojourner

The Drax Files Episode 10 features Robin Sojourner, even I’ve heard of Robin Sojourner, I mean since my very early days in Second Life back in 2007. There’s a reason for this, Robin Sojourner is Robin Wood, the T-Shirt lady, who? you may think, but for those of us who have been here a while, that T-Shirt tutorial and template have been an absolutely awesome introduction to creating content in Second Life.

So when Drax tipped me off earlier in the week as to who this week’s Drax files was about, I was rather excited and the end result of the episode is one that leaves me with a warm fuzzy feeling. The inerview is superb, Robin talks of how much the Second Life world has changed, how mesh has made so many things look different but one of the best points in the video is when Robin talks about how people who have no idea that they are creative come in to Second Life and find out that they can make things, and that is such a wonderful concept and one that I can agree is true. I am, to say the least, artistically challenged and whereas my creations in Second Life are hardly going to win awards, the fact of the matter is that my creations exist in this virtual world and it’s a wonderfully empowering feeling.

I certainly agree with Robin when she mentions that we are taught that creativtiy is reserved for the creative types and that they are special, but it’s just not true. I’m not trying to undermine the creative types in Second Life, there are some wonderfully creative people, but what Second Life allows is for those of us who don’t think we are creative, to create, and although being at the top of the game does take extra skills and extra imagination, the very fact that so many of us in Second Life can create to a degree, is what makes it such a wonderful platform.

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August 16, 2013August 16, 2013

The Drax Files Episode 9 – Elie Spot

I’m not a fashionista, I’m not even a fashionista’s son, so when I saw that The Drax Files episode 9 – Elie Spot was about fashion I thought “We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town, beep-beep” However a quick visit to youTube got that out of my system and I watched the video of Drax’s interview (which I’ll embed at the end).

Now as I said, I’m not a fashionista, so I have never heard of Celoe and Mon Tissu! I have however heard of the Mayfair sim, so that was a plus point. When I was a lad Mayfair was a place in London, a spot on the monopoly board and a top shelf magazine, the internet has taken all the fun out of it for boys and top shelf magazines but I digress, this has nowt to do with The Drax files! What does have something to do with The Drax Files is the interview which is top drawer.

First of all let’s get stereoytpes out of the way, Elie spot is not the media stereotypical Second Life user, for a start she’s a girl, secondly she’s a young girl, thirdly she’s a pretty girl, fourthly she is a girl who has been a busy girl outside of Second Life and finally she has a social life. Take that media!

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August 9, 2013August 9, 2013

New Failed Teleport Message?

I keep meaning to uninstall the Second Life Beta viewer, not because I don’t like it, I’m a fan of beta viewers, but because every fecking second login it seems to think I need an update. This happened before, it’s when it gets installed to the so called wrong folder.

Anyway, that’s not what I’m here to talk about, I’m here to talk about a spiffy new failed teleport message that may lead to confusion. I tried to teleport this evening and saw this:

An Image Should Be Here — Failed Teleport

I ignored this message and teleported somewhere else, but it’s good to see a failed teleport message with more information, but the bigger issue was that the message appeared so very quickly, whereas before I’d see the bar sliding along slowly and know what was coming.

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August 7, 2013

An Interview With Strawberry Singh Part 3 – The Return Of The Singh

I’m sat opposite Strawberry Singh still, which is quite impressive as she’s already revealed she has made deals with the devil and at times looks like she’s going to call up an army of demons. However she had made me a couple of nice cups of tea, so I think she may be softening, or maybe she’s poisoning me … hmmmmm. I return to the interview and decide it’s time to go for the hard questions, who is Berry’s favourite supplier of poses? She dodges this well, extremely well:

“Oooohhhh, you’re gonna get me in trouble. 😛 I love sooooo many posers, it’s hard to choose just one. I am a bit biased when I say Diesel Works as I work for him but if you look at my blog, I have been using his poses since 2009 and loved them since then. I also love Exposeur, she makes awesome couples poses. I loved Adorkable Poses for her adorable props (not sure if she’s in SL anymore though) Long Awkward Pose was and always will be my forever favorite. She’s no longer in SL but I still till this day use her poses. Some other posers that I love are Di’s Opera, oOo Studio, Del May, Lost Angel, and so many others that I can’t really remember off the top of my head.”

Now for the big question, what inspires her, after a short pause Berry replies:

“Ahhhh so many things: love, family, friends, nature (these are mostly in RL). In SL I get inspired for pictures just by some of the content that creators make. Some people are so incredibly talented and you just want to dive right into their work and get lost in it.”

I move on to art, which confuses Berry somewhat as she denies being an artist “I just see myself as a blogger/photographer that likes to ramble on her blog.” she tells me, but I persevere, does she enjoy the art of other Second Life users?

“Absolutely, I love it and get inspired by it often. In my earlier years of SL I used to go to a lot of the art galleries and showings they used to have. There was a much smaller sl flickr community back then so everyone knew everyone else and we’d all show up at all the galleries together. Now I can’t really keep track of what’s going, which is a shame. So now I just enjoy people’s work on flickr whenever I get the chance.”

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