I went to the Phoenicia Center for Contemporary Art (Egremont/116/63/34). One of the shows is photography by Phil Borges. He’s done portraits of people from endangered cultures, mostly Asian and African. It’s a powerful exhibit.
Creative Commons anniversary party
Tonight the Creative Commons folks threw a fourth anniversary party. I went briefly to check it out. It’s the first time I’ve really been in a large group. They seemed to be having technical difficulties with their video feed, but there was nice music streaming. I people watched for a bit:
And I think I looked stylish in my free Winter Festival T-shirt:
Changing land ownership
I’ve continued to wheel-and-deal with land ownership, which has been so far a generally positive experience. I had a very nice visit with a representative of Anshe Chung, and I found out directly how she’s made her millions–the L$ I was offered for the property was very low. By waiting it out (and subdividing the property) I’ve been able to get pretty good selling prices. Interestingly, most of the land I’ve sold has gone straight back onto the market, so I’m still selling a bit low.
I’ve sold the Geoje land (after deleting the house and landscaping!) and most of the Lota mountainside. The remaining land in Lota I’ve just split into two 512 m2 parcels, since those seem to move much faster.
And what have I done with the capital? I’ve plunked it down on some hillside and waterfront in Pockwock. The price per m2 was higher than anything else I’ve bought, but I think this will be a keeper. I had two nice conversations with neighbors when I was just looking at properties, and it gave me a really good feeling about the sim.
Building and landscaping
I’ve been busily landscaping and building a nice lot in Geoje. The house is a free version of Frank Lloyd Wright-inspired architecture.
I’ve acquired “splashable water” and “splashable waterfall” objects, scripts, and sounds, so I’ve put them to good use as well.
Earthsea Developers
I’ve just set up the group “Earthsea Developers” to have a good way of holding assets as a way of working toward buying a sim. (Hey, a guy can dream big, can’t he?)
Now I just need to get someone else to become a member, so the group doesn’t get deleted.
d’oh!
I realized while reading Second Life: The Official Guide this morning that I can stretch one dimension of a texture to fit the factor-of-two square for uploading, and then take care of it in the object texture tiling controls. (Although the stretching/compressing effects of either The Gimp or SL may end up having a negative effect on the final image.)
And I really need to find out how large a surface in SL a 512pix will adequately cover.
(The book, by the way, is pretty good. It skims over a few things, but it provides a comprehensive overview so far. I’m just starting the chapter on LSL.)
Wallpaper
Here I am with my first attempt at making Arts and Crafts wallpaper.
It’s William Morris’s willow bough. The repeat isn’t square (or 1:2), so I couldn’t just resize it and let SL tile it. I used The Gimp to make a 1024x1024pix TGA file, which I applied to a large panel.