Search Results for: The Watch

Puns for the educated

1. A thief broke into the local police station and stole all the toilets and urinals, leaving no clues. A spokesperson was quoted as saying, “We have absolutely nothing to go on.”

2. Evidence has been found that William Tell and his family were avid bowlers. Unfortunately, all the Swiss league records were destroyed in a fire… and so we’ll never know for whom the Tells bowled.

3. A man rushed into a busy doctor’s office and shouted, “Doctor! I think I’m shrinking!” The doctor calmly responded, “Now, settle down. You’ll just have to be a little patient.”

4. A marine biologist developed a race of genetically engineered dolphins that could live forever if they were fed a steady diet of seagulls. One day, his supply of the birds ran out so he had to go out and trap some more. On the way back, he spied two lions asleep on the road. Afraid to wake them, he gingerly stepped over them. Immediately, he was arrested and charged with transporting gulls across sedate lions for immortal porpoises.

5. Back in the 1800’s the Tate’s Watch Company of Massachusetts wanted to produce other products, and since they already made the cases for watches, they used them to produce compasses. The new compasses were so bad that people often ended up in Canada or Mexico rather than California. This, of course, is the origin of the expression: “He who has a Tate’s is lost!”

6. King Ozymandias of Assyria was running low on cash after years of war with the Hittites. His last great possession was the Star of the Euphrates, the most valuable diamond in the ancient world. Desperate, he went to Croesus, the pawnbroker, to ask for a loan. Croesus said, “I’ll give you 100,000 dinars for it.” “But I paid a million dinars for it,” the King protested. “Don’t you know who I am? I am the king!” Croesus replied, “When you wish to pawn a Star, makes no difference who you are.”

7. An Indian chief was feeling very sick, so he summoned the medicine man. After a brief examination, the medicine man took out a long, thin strip of elk rawhide and gave it to the chief, telling him to bite off, chew, and swallow one inch of the leather every day. After a month, the medicine man returned to see how the chief was feeling. The chief shrugged and said, “The thong is ended, but the malady lingers on.”

8. A famous Viking explorer returned home from a voyage and found his name missing from the town register. His wife insisted on complaining to the local civic official who apologised profusely saying, “I must have taken Leif off my census.”

9. There were three Indian squaws. One slept on a deer skin, one slept on an elk skin, and the third slept on a hippopotamus skin. All three became pregnant. The first two each had a baby boy. The one who slept on the hippopotamus skin had twin boys. This just goes to prove that… the squaw of the hippopotamus is equal to the sons of the squaws of the other two hides.

10. A sceptical anthropologist was cataloguing South American folk remedies with the assistance of a tribal Brujo who indicated that the leaves of a particular fern were a sure cure for any case of constipation. When the anthropologist expressed his doubts, the Brujo looked him in the eye and said, “Let me tell you, with fronds like these, you don’t need enemas.”

Weekend Whimsy

I don’t often comment on each week’s machinima roundup but I’m struck this week on the outright quality of each of the pieces below.

In the more than 2 years (140 weeks and counting), we’ve been featuring machinima each weekend, there’s always something funny, inspirational or just plain wacky to watch.

Over that time, like you’d expect with any artform, it’s continued to mature and the three pieces below certainly show that. As always, if you have your own machinima that you’d like featured, drop us a line. Enjoy!

1. It’s a wonderful Second Life: Breathe 2

2. mAdvertising

3. Second Life – Falling In And Out @ Element The 7th

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

1. Paisley Beebe interviews the University of Western Australia’s Jayjay Zifanwe in her latest episode of Tonight Live. You can watch it here.

2. If you have a Nokia Smartphone and want some tasty virtual worlds wallpapers, you might like to check this out.

3. The Second Life economy for the first quarter of 2010 hit an all-time high. In case you missed it, Tateru Nino has her perspective on the announcement.

4. Space-based MMO EVE Online is running a competition to increase it’s female player cohort. Apparently only 5% of players are female currently.

5. Kzero recently updated their virtual worlds by sector reports for the first quarter of 2010 – check out an example here.

6. If you’d like to get some in-depth visuals of Blue Mars, it’s worth browsing their Flickr stream.

7. We’re still keen to reprise our V2 series of profiles on couples or friends who have met in a virtual world. Here’s a previous example – why not throw your hat in the ring?

GnomeAir: one of Second Life’s funniest (casual) observers

Like a lot of people I love a machinima that provides laughs, and in recent months one of the highlights in that regard has been the work done by GnomeAir. His weekly updates on forays in Second Life pack a lot of experiences into each one, and there’s no shortage of cutting commentary on a range of Second Life aspects.

I fired off some question to the somewhat elusive GnomeAir to find out a little more about his approach:

Lowell: How long have you been involved in Second Life?

GnomeAir: Just started a month ago. I had watched friends play some, so I did know a few things before I started.

Lowell: What about SL inspired you to make machinima?

GnomeAir: I’ve been fooling around making YouTube movies for awhile. I’ve deleted a bunch because they came out scary. It seems to be a current thing. A fun way to express yourself. Something like 15 hours of YouTubes are uploaded every minute? Something like that. I just had an idea one day to make a Second Life account and film it. No idea what would come out of that idea or what I would film or say.

Lowell: Has the reaction to your work surprised you, and if so, why?

GnomeAir: I’ll just delete the comments that tell me I suck!

Lowell: Can you shed some light on how you go about making one of your episodes?

GnomeAir: The first ones I just entered game and played and filmed what I did. Nothing much really happens in those! Then later after I had played a few weeks a bunch of stuff would have happened to me so I just condensed it all down to highlights or lowlights or however you want to see it. Some videos I went on opinionated rants like the one about guys playing girls. So they were all different. Some came out better than others.

As far as the technical stuff, well theres two basic ways I can do them. Record the audio in advance and then film it, or film it first and then record audio. I use Pro Tools to do the audio. Its amazing program for making music or doing anything you want with sound on your computer.

I think for these Second Life episodes, filming it first works best. Put together a basic film sequence and story in Windows Movie Maker, after capturing the video with some other program. Then, turn on voice recorder (Pro Tools for me) and ad lib into mic as you watch the movie film playing back. Then you edit the audio taking out boring bits and pauses etc and load the sound into Movie Maker and tweak the film a little bit to match the audio. Ive done it other way around, make audio first based on what I did in game and then make the film part and it’s not as spontaneous, the comments etc, reactions to what is happening in video.

For example in video #6, there is a long sequence where I’m just talking about SL girlfriend and nothing is happening in video. That is a result of making the audio first and so I think the movie suffers. You are looking at dead screen and just having the sound tell the story. One thing about making machinima is you do learn movie making. You see what works and what doesn’t. For example, I’ve learned to go instantly from far away shots to close up and not to use zoom! But then, I’ve only started to think about these things recently. Most of the video is pretty messed up in these, but dont really matter with what I did.

Lowell: Do you have a longer term plan with your work or is it just a bit of fun.?

GnomeAir: Nothing long term planned just winging it. I have some other projects coming up soon like Comic Con, so I will be busy with those. I will say using Second Life to make machinima is unlimited. You can make the sets and the characters – no limits there.

UPDATE (25th July 2010) – GnomeAir has pulled all his videos from YouTube. An incredible shame – GnomeAIr if you’d like to contact us, we’d love to host them or somehow archive what was some great satire.

You can view all GnomeAir’s work here, or see the Second Life pieces below:

Episode 1:

Episode 2

Episode 3

Episode 4

Episode 5

Episode 6

Episode 7

Episode 8

Alice has a dollar. A virtual economic failure

Alice and Bob are participants in an economy. Alice has a dollar.

Alice gives the dollar to Bob. In Second Life terms, that’s a user-to-user transaction.

Bob gives the dollar back to Alice. That’s another user-to-user transaction.

Repeat this sequence four more times. Is Alice and Bob’s economy now worth ten dollars? Or is it still worth one dollar?

Well, that depends.

Linden Lab will tell you that’s ten dollars. In reality, though, it depends on why Alice and Bob keep handing that dollar back and forth.

You see economic activity isn’t the movement of money. Economic activity is the trade in goods and services, not money. Money is just one of the tools that are used to value goods and services.

If Alice and Bob are just passing money to each-other without an exchange of goods and services, the economic activity – by definition – is zero, whether there’s one dollar or a thousand dollars, and whether it’s just Alice and Bob, or hundreds or thousands of other people involved.

The movement of money is one method by which we can see economic activity happening, but doesn’t constitute economic activity itself, just as we can determine the approximate size and movement of ducks on a pond by watching the ripples – but the ripples aren’t the ducks.

In any economy money moves between people, between accounts and between businesses for many reasons that do not constitute economic activity. Also, the exchange of goods and services for no money at all still constitutes economic activity of a non-zero value.

Alice and Bob might be exchanging goods or services, in which case there’s economic activity accompanying that dollar in their inefficient little economy. If so, then yes, Alice and Bob’s economy is worth ten dollars. If not, then their economy isn’t worth ten dollars, or even one dollar. It’s zero, because no economic activity accompanies the exchange.

Economics understands this, and when measuring the economies of nations, considerable effort is spent to separate out the movements of money which are not accompanying economic activity from those which are.

Granted, for any economy much larger than Alice and Bob’s it requires a lot of estimation and educated guesswork to get even remotely close to the truth, but the practices are well-established (even though they undergo continuous improvement).

For virtual environments, though, centuries of economic thought and learning are discarded, and the focus is incorrectly placed solely on the movements of money. Small wonder that the operators of many virtual environments really seem to have no idea which direction their economies are actually heading in.

UWA Art: March winners and a three-year continuation

The University of Western Australia continues its 3D Art and Design Challenge, announcing the March winners. All those details are replicated in full below thanks to the indefatigable Jayjay Zifanwe and the UWA in SL blog.

What’s even more impressive is the announcement that the UWA have agreed to fund the monthly competition for a further three years, to the tune of a million Linden dollars per year for art and half a million for machinima. That equates to around US$6000 per year on top of maintaining the UWA presence, which is certainly a demonstration of confidence by the University. It also extends the life of the competition to August 2013, ensuring exposure of a lot of artists over that time.

Onto the March winners:

Fuschia & Flivelwitz snatch IMAGINE, Breen machine chugs on: March Winners of UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge

For the very first time, a collaborative work has taken the top IMAGINE Arts prize for the March round of the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge. The enchanting and enveloping HEATH, created by Fuschia Nightfire & Flivelwitz Alsop held off a very strong field of 55 works from artists all across SL in taking the $L5,000 first prize. Meanwhile in the FLAGSHIP building design challenge, no one seems capable of supooing Nyx Breen who has now won 4 of the 7 to FLASHIP prizes as this yearlong competition has crossed into month 8!

First time entrant, Flivelwitz and veteran Fuschia were thrilled and stunned to have taken the top gong. “Well i suspected we had won something! but not this”, said Fuschia, while Flivelwitz when asked to comment said “It is exciting to be the first to win in a collaboration at the UWA”.

The top 3 in fact were very close, and for the first time ever, a joint 2nd prize was awarded to Julez Odigaunt & Kolor Fall for their incredible works, JULIA’S WILTING HEART SHRINE & OCEANS OF LIGHT.

“Its such an honor that UWA appreciated Julia’s Wilting Heart Shrine. It is a very personal piece and I am glad it was well received. I would like to thank Ulrich Lionheart, the author of the poem. His words are so powerful and full of emotion – purely expressing what I was feeling at the time – it inspired me to create a shrine that allowed me to expose the mindset I was in at the time. It was quite healing” said Julez.

With Nyx’s back to back to back win in March to go with his October win taking his tally to 4, seems it will take some doing to dislodge Nyx who has declared that he will have one FLAGSHIP build submitted each month for the rest of the competition. It is going to take some doing to stop Nyx from having more than half of the entries that will come under consideration for the Grand Prize!

Following the announcements yesterday at the traditional winners announcement party at the UWA SIM, Nyx said, ” I would like to state that outside of developing some wonderful friendships in Second Life, that nothing has been as enjoyable as participating in an event that has truly global and groundbreaking results as the UWA Flagship Challenge. UWA has taken a small art show and made it a must see destination in the Cyber world and an event that if missed in Second Life, then one doesn’t understand the true potential of what was envisioned as the purpose of Second Life… creativity shared across a medium that brings us all closer.Great Job UWA, JJ & Quad and all that help make this possible.”

The best non-scripted entry was BLOOM GLOW by Gumby Roffo, another vetran of the UWA 3D Art & Design Challenge, while Sharni Azalee’s FOREST OF DREAMS was voted top for the PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD!

The Artist Book Prize, being awarded for the final time, went to Miranda Mhia work, STANDING ROOM ONLY. UWA would like to thank Juanita Deharo, Victor Vezina and Juko Temple for making this award possible.

Other winners include Sundog Branner, Ichiko Miles, Gleman Jun, Betty Tureand and Nish Mip. Full list below.

Some other exciting things were also mentioned during the awards ceremony. First of all, UWA played host both in SL & RL to the Big Kahuna himself M Linden, who for the very first time in any universe was displaying his wonderful artworks. These can still be seen at a permanent exhibition within at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery which is on one of the 5 UWA SIMS.

This space has been listed as an SL destination for the Arts, which is the 2nd location within the UWA SIMS designated as an SL destination for the Arts, the other one being UWA’s Art & Design Challenge platform.

You can hear M Linden’s speech and watch some of the wonderful machinima created for the event on the UWA in Second Life Blog.

The next wonderful thing, is because of all the good news and publicity surrounding the machinima, the art & design competition and M’s show, UWA have been given funding for the Arts & Machinima for a further 3 years following then end of this current cycle in August 2010. The funding have received will allow UWA to provide L$1,000,000 per year for Art Challenges and L$500,000 for Machinima.

Also mentioned was the work of Lili Field, an Australian RL architect who has recreated UWA’s School of Business Building. A replica created based on the original buidling plans of an incredible award winning build at UWA .

IMAGINE CHALLENGE – 3D ART

Imagine Challenge 1st Prize: ($L5,000 + Custom T-Shirt)
HEATH by Flivelwitz Alsop & Fuschia Nightfire
Imagine Challenge 2nd Prize: ($L1,250) JOINT
OCEANS OF LIGHT by Kolor Fall/Patrick Faith
JULIA’S WILTING HEART SHRINE by Julez Odigaunt
Best Non-Scripted Entry: ($L1,250 + Custom T-Shirt)
BLOOM GLOW by Sledge Roffo

Casey WA Cultural Prize 1st Prize (L$4,000)

TBA

FLAGSHIP CHALLENGE – BUILDING DESIGN
Flagship Challenge 1st Prize : ($L5,000)
AxS GALLERY by Nyx Breen (4th time winner)

Honourable Mention Prize for ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES (L$500)
PRIMATAR’S LOVE: THE EVOLUTION by Gleman Jun

THE ANTON MESMER Honourable Mention Prize (L$500)
KINETIC-ART ELLIPTIC THREADS by Sundog Branner

Honourable Mention Prize for ARTISTRY (L$500):
HERA’S LYRE by Ichiko Miles

Honourable Mention Prize for TEXTURE & ATMOSPHERE (L$500):
BUTTERFLY HOUSE by Nish Mip – submitted for the FLAGSHIP Challenge

ARTIST BOOK PRIZE – 1st Prize (L$2,000):
STANDING ROOM ONLY – Miranda Mhia

ARTIST BOOK PRIZE – Honourable Mention (L$500):

WOMEN ARE AFRICAS HOPE – Betty Tureand

PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD (L$500):

FOREST OF DREAMS by Sharni Azalee

Keiko Takamura’s Dreams of Rock Stardom

Keiko Takamura (2006 MTV video profile here) is a musician who performs in Second Life, one of the burgeoning community who do.

I’ve followed her progress over the years and I certainly admire her desire to succeed, which when combined with her songwriting and performance abilities, put her in a good position to do so.

She’s of course not alone in that regard, there are plenty of talented Second Life musicians hoping to make an impact more widely, and we’ve covered a small number of them over the past four years.

Which is why I was interested in a message Keiko sent out in the past week, via Twitter and her blog, to her fans, friends and fellow musicians:

My dear musician friends,

My band (The Shebangs) and I have been rocking out in meatspace for a good while now, and we’re ready to record. The studio I have my eye on has engineers who have worked with names like Elvis Costello, Teagan and Sara, CAKE, The Decemberists, Modest Mouse, etc… but it’s PROHIBITIVELY expensive.

That’s why I’m planning a HELP KEIKO FINALLY RECORD tour from 4/18-4/23.

I’m asking you, my musician friends, to donate an hour (or even half-hour) of your time to help me raise donations for this project. Why should you bother? Well, I know you have heard the whole song-and-dance of “exposure”, but I have a 1,000+ Twitter following, 500 people in my SL group, and if this thing is successful they’ll probably write this up on New World Notes (I live next to Hamlet Au IRL!). Also, my True Life episode on MTV just re-aired, and a slew of new SL residents just joined and are waiting to see what “virtual live concerts” are.

Also, you’ll be helping me out a lot. 🙂 My dream of being a rockstar feels like it’s inching closer, and a polished, professional, radio-ready recording of my music will put me that much closer.

If you’re interested, please EMAIL ME – TakamuraKeiko at gmail
and tell me which day/time you want to play (time is totally up to you), and send me your music website/Myspace. I’ll get back to you about a venue.

Thank you so much for being wonderful friends and awesome musicians,

Keiko

After reading the message, I contacted Keiko via email to ask a few questions, which are replicated in full below:

TMJ: How’s the response to date been to your call for musicians to donate time to raise money for your recording dream?

KT: It’s been mostly good! Within the day I posted my idea for a “Help Keiko Record Tour”, I got most of the week booked up with both good friends and musicians I’ve never heard/met before.

TMJ: Have you had any negative reaction to your call for people to donate time to raise money for you personally?

KT: Yes, but just one person.

TMJ: More specifically, have you had any negative feedback from fellow SL musicians, who may hold the same ambitions but haven’t asked the community to raise the funds for them?

KT: Yes.

TMJ: You mention the likelihood of coverage in New World Notes due to living close by Hamlet Au -was Hamlet aware you were going to make that statement?

KT: No, but he knows now! 🙂

TMJ: If the funds are raised successfully to allow you to record, and the results earns profit for you, do you propose to enter a profit-sharing or pay-back arrangement for those who helped out with the benefit?

KT: Short answer: Yes! Long answer: I’ve been a live musician in SL since 2006, and I’ve played for COUNTLESS benefits from Relay for Life, Toys For Tots, Make a Wish Foundation, etc. I’ve also donated my time for the benefit of other musicians who needed help. Some needed help because they had serious medical bills. Others needed help because they needed tour money. In any case, I was there. And now I’m asking for help. If any musician is willing to donate an hour of their time in order for me to make a 5-song EP, I would be more than happy to help them out in return in the future. And more immediately, I hope to give their music some good publicity in any way I can.

TMJ: What safeguards will you have in place to demonstrate the amount of money raised and how it is spent by you?

KT: I don’t have anything automatic set up, but if anyone wants to email me personally and ask, they are welcome to. Also, I intend to make each donation of $5 or more a “presale” for a digital copy. Meaning, if you chip in $5 (or l1400 and give me a notecard with your email address) I’ll send a digital copy of the EP when it’s done!

Let me clear some other things up, just in case:

My “tour” is going to be from the 17th to the 24th – 8 days. I’m going to play a show in SL every single day, on top of my RL work and RL band practices. I am setting up schedules with several musicians. I am coordinating with venues. I am creating promotional graphics/notecards. I am reaching out to others who have blogs, podcasts, large Twitter followings, etc. to make the “exposure” part of this deal worthwhile for the musicians who are kind enough to donate their time. It’s not like I’m going to sit back and collect tips while the musicians work and I do nothing. I’m going to work hard, play hard, every single day of that tour — and if my friends want to be a part of this and make it into an awesome event, that’s even better! I really, truly appreciate all the support I’ve gotten from my musician friends who are willing to help me out. It’s because of them that the live music community is as strong as it is today. I have absolutely no intention of making this a one-sided deal, solely for myself. I know it’s a lot to ask.

==========
Over to you: is Keiko being creative, entrepreneurial, mercenary or all of the above? There’s certainly plenty of uncharted territory in regard to creative projects in virtual worlds, and undertakings like Keiko’s are certainly exploring some of that territory.

(Picture courtesy of Keiko Takamura’s 2008 Sugar Pill video)

Virtual worlds and business: 2010 overview

A little over a year ago we created a short discussion paper on the potential impact of virtual worlds on business. Since that time literally hundreds of people have downloaded the paper, so we thought it was worth updating it.

It remains a fairly succinct overview of the opportunities presented by virtual environments in the enterprise, as well as identifying some of the misconceptions around. The updated version now contains some discussion on trends for the coming 12-months (partly based on our 2010 predictions post) as well as a wrap-up of the major platforms to watch.

You can download Virtual Worlds and business: 2010 overview for free by going to this page.

As always, if there’s omissions or alterations needed, please don’t hesitate to let us know.

Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love screening on SBS

Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love is a documentary originally screened in early 2008 on the BBC. It’s worth remembering that context, as regular Second Life residents may find watching a little frustrating otherwise.

The documentary follows people who’ve met in Second Life, and the ramifications that has had on their real world relationships. I’ve seen about half of the total content of the documentary and overall I’d say it’s worth a watch, but it’s not as engaging as say the local Alter Ego.

The more discerning Second Life resident will be dismayed at how there’s yet another tawdry and narrowly focused portrayal of life in-world. For me, it was a two-sided experience: annoyance at some of the portrayals but also an acceptance that as a documentary it certainly captured the emotions of the people involved.

Virtual Adultery and Cyberspace Love screens tonight on SBS at 10pm AEDT.

Merged realities – events and issues for virtual worlds

Sexy Avatar from Koinup1. Linden Lab have started providing more illustrations of the potential uses of the new Shared Media functionality that was rolled out this week with Viewer 2. More of our thoughts on Viewer 2 in coming days, but one small pocket of resistance appears to be coming from SL musicians, as the new search functionality as it currently stands is impacting the ease with which people can find live music events. Grace McDunnough has a good sum-up on the issue here.

2. Want to help fund entrepreneurs in developing companies while scoring something for yourself? Why not buy an Avatar Dog t-shirt or download our discussion paper on policy agenda-setting and virtual worlds!

3. The response to the Second Lie column has been forceful: people love his sense of humour. If you have a question about pretty much anything Second Life, why not ask Second Lie to shine a light into the darkness for you? Every column generates money for the SL Relay for Life too.

4. Picture and machinima hub, Koinup, have announced they are offering mobile phone wallpapers via Nokia’s Ovi Store.

5. Back in 2008 we mentioned a University of Sydney student was completing research on journalism and Second Life. That research is now available here. It appears to be a very readable and balanced piece of scholarship. The abstract:

This thesis analyses the interaction of journalism and governance in the virtual world Second Life. It examines the structure, practices and influence of journalism in Second Life and explores the nature and communicative aspects of governance in this virtual world. As virtual worlds attract growing numbers of subscribers and social interaction increasingly moves towards the online environment, it is crucial to understand the practices and conventions which structure human interaction in these spaces.

To explore these concerns, a close critical analysis of Second Life was conducted, based upon academic literature, interviews and a content analysis. Eight interviews with significant journalists in Second Life were conducted and a content analysis of thirteen publications was undertaken. Yochai Benkler’s theory of social production provides a theoretical base which frames the nature of Second Life as participatory, collaborative and networked, and defines the relationship between media and governance using the concept of a networked public sphere.

Practices of journalism in Second Life display a combination of traditional, professional, gatewatching and participatory, networked, gatekeeping characteristics, and it perform numerous roles in mediating communication. Second Life publications facilitate active and abundant conversation between residents, facilitating a networked public sphere. Linden Lab uses a variety of strategies to communicate governance discourses to users. Despite the similarity between normative and Second Life journalism, it has a negligible influence over the structure and direction of governance.
The disconnect between journalism and governance in Second Life raises questions about individual freedom and collaborative production in virtual worlds, challenging existing understandings of online interactions.

Previous Posts