I'm posting some of the backlog of photos on my phone to the site tonight, as I sit here at Lakeview's Fixx coffeehouse waiting for a literary show to start. Here: It's been snowing like crazy in Chicago over the last couple of weeks -- here's just one random shot from one recent random storm.
I'm posting some of the backlog of photos on my phone to the site tonight, as I sit here at Lakeview's Fixx coffeehouse waiting for a literary show to start. Here: A shot from the Magnificent Mile at night, during a recent visit to the LEGO superstore in the district.
I'm posting some of the backlog of photos on my phone to the site tonight, as I sit here at Lakeview's Fixx coffeehouse waiting for a literary show to start. Here: The northeast edge of Wrigley Field, main entrance to the back bleachers, showing off the recent additions that now create an overhang above the sidewalk.
All right, I'm finally making it out of my house for an evening, to attend a literary event at Fixx coffeehouse in the Lakeview neighborhood hosted by Amy Güth, whose novel "Three Fallen Women" I reviewed at the CCLaP site last December. Anyway, I'm having a chai tea and killing time before the show starts, so I'm going to see if I can't get some of the backlog of photos on my phone finally posted while I'm sitting here. More in a bit.
The extremely short recap, for those who need it...
I've been a citizen of virtual community Second Life (SL) for, what, coming up on two years now, believe it or not; in fact, for awhile I used to do a blog about SL called In The Grid, which at its height was the 13th most popular blog about Second Life on the planet. And as part of running that blog, I ended up becoming a paid member of SL; this allowed me for the first time to own land in the Grid, about the only difference between free members and paid ones. And thus for about a year now have I owned what's known as a "beginners" plot of 512 square meters, which is the maximum amount of land you're allowed to own before Linden Lab (owners of SL) starts charging you a monthly "property tax" to cover the amount of bandwidth on that server your property uses up, relative to the other landowners on that "sim." It's a pretty fair and democratic way to do it, because landowners end up paying an exact percentage of that server's operating costs based on how much land they own, a fee that remains stable from month to month and can be calculated in advance; adding another 512 square meters, for example, to the 512 you already own (for a total of 1,024 m2) costs you only $5 a month, while owning an entire server's worth of land (64,000 m2) will cost you $200 a month in property tax. Anyway, so I've just owned the basic 512 m2 this entire time, so that I'd never have to worry about covering that month's property tax, a piece of land that I used as the blog's in-world headquarters back when "In The Grid" was running, and that I had been planning since then to use as a virtual photography gallery for my arts center CCLaP.
I no longer do the blog, because of the client software being too powerful for my home computer now, plus all my time being taken up these days trying to maintain (and God forbid grow) CCLaP; one of the things, though, that I've been spending a lot of time recently thinking about trying to get going again, is an idea for a prefabricated housing company in SL I've had for a long time called "Fabb," combining the sleekness of '50s and '60s Modernism with the space-age physics-defying stuff you can do within a virtual world. It's been months and months, after all, since I've actually worked on the idea, and I still get emails from strangers in SL on a weekly basis, asking if I ever finished my first house and if it's for sale (no and no). If I could just fucking sit down and actually get four or five houses finished and ready to sell, I keep thinking, get a nice retail spot opened up in the Grid, a number of model homes actually installed on plots around the mainland, and a nice website to promote it all including a fair amount of cool little machinima videos and shit, I could literally count on this as a regular revenue stream throughout 2008 and beyond; certainly not something to live off of, but definitely several hundred dollars a month at the least, and hopefully enough to actually cover my RL rent here in Chicago each month. That'd be great, to tell you the truth; that'd be fantastic, to tell you the truth, if I could actually cover my rent each month doing nothing but building and selling virtual homes for a virtual world.
Besides the stuff I already own, I basically need two things for the above to happen; more land within the Grid, so to open up my retail store, and a better computer so that I can finally have a normal SL experience, which since I already have a monitor at home I could realistically take care of through a souped-up used Windows computer for a couple of hundred dollars, like you find all the time here in a place like Chicago. And believe it or not, in just the last couple of days, two of my next-door neighbors have ended up getting sick of their 512 m2 plots that are right next to mine, and putting them up for sale. And I had enough money saved up in SL to afford them both...so I bought them both! Yeehaw! Oh no! I suddenly now own 1,536 square meters of land within the Grid, even though it's almost impossible for me to have a normal daily experience there right now! Eek, what have I done?
Oh, but I couldn't in good conscience pass up the opportunity, could I? Not after being in "Linden's Vineyard" (as I call it) for over a year now, an amazingly stable upper-class residential area of the South Continent, and having become resigned a long time ago to the idea that I would have to leave the neighborhood once I expanded, in that I never thought any of my neighbors would end up selling in such a convenient (and inexpensive) way. So I went ahead and bought the land, and now basically have a strong burden on myself; a burden now to get Fabb up and running as fast as possible, so that it can be making at least $8 a month on its own, thus covering what my monthly property tax now is and thus justifying the land purchase in the first place. But to do that, I need a new/used Windows gaming computer; and to get that, I need a couple of hundred extra dollars; and to get that, I need a temp job again and quick; and to get that I need an updated resume, visits again to all my old agencies, more testimonials at my LinkedIn account, etc. And that's what I'm working on these days, which is pretty much the explanation behind any days I don't get entries done at CCLaP. So hopefully that will all become fruitful soon, and I'll have my souped-up used Windows computer soon, and I can get to work on Fabb on a serious basis soon. Sigh.
Here's how things are looking to the left of my old property boundaries these days; I added the yellow lines in Photoshop afterwards, to give you an idea of where the new property lines of my estate now are. As you can see, it's basically a 512 m2 plot I picked up on either side of my original plot, doubling my real estate on either side and tripling the entire size of the plot altogether.
One of the cool things with the new west parcel, as you can see, is that it finally gives me direct access to the mainland for the first time; these pictures above show the tasteful neighbors I have all around me, now finally accessible for me from a simple bridge off my main building (or eventually, once I finally build it all).
And then here's a shot from the new parcel looking north, towards the mouth of Linden's Vineyard, shown both under daylight settings and nighttime.
And now here's some shots from the east side of the new parcel; the same story as the west side, basically, except this time with the parcel's orientation being perpendicular to my original parcel. All in all, a pretty nice mid-sized parcel indeed, one that now gives me a combined prim total of 351, well enough for a Fabb retail store, CCLaP virtual center, and related underwater landscaping/hangout lounge. Ugh, I've got some work ahead of me this spring.
And then finally, here's the view from what's now the extreme east edge of my property; nothing but clear water all the way to the ocean, that is, something that will make sailing much easier for me once I finally get this new computer that can handle all the rendering. Sailing is one of my favorite activities within Second Life, to tell you the truth; I can't wait to finally get me a souped-up gamer computer and be able to get back into the habit again, especially now that I'll be able to build a legitimate tie-off pier to my water-based complex. More later, as always!
I read up today on something kind of fascinating; of a "standard" of sorts for the building-block system LEGO, which instead of focused on pieces revolves around having hallways and connecting doors at the same places on each standard 48 by 48 peg "floor" piece LEGO sells. That way, people can build whatever they want and use whatever pieces they want; but nonetheless, anytime a LEGO builder convention is held, people can bring their own modules for a fictional moonbase setup and connect them all together flawlesly into a giant spectacle at the center of the get-together.
Anyway, I'll mention a lot more details at the CCLaP website next week; but for now, it's gotten me thinking about just how much a "minimum" amount of LEGO equipment would be in order to be able to build seriously cool modules for the Moonbase standard; you know, to have for example a total of four floor pieces, and enough tiles and windows and antennas and the like to build at least a moderately complex structure across all four at once, adding of course the standardized accessways in and out that the Moonbase standard requires. That way, then I could just ask people for LEGO crap for birthdays and Christmases, for all those friends and family members who never know what to get me, and just keep adding and adding to the total library of specialized pieces I have. That's the coolest thing, after all, about doing such hobbyist building/playing using LEGOs versus, say, model equipment, is that you can constantly be disassembling them and creating new modules with the same basic pieces; the way you keep the modules "permanent," then, is to take lots of photos, and maybe even recreate them virtually in one of the LEGO CAD/CAM programs that now exist, at which point of course you can even hook them up with other virtual modules for a whole virtual community. Anyway, just curious how much a minimal setup would cost, simply for curiosity's sake, so am going down to the LEGO superstore in the Magnificent Mile to check prices out for myself. My prediction: Astonishingly expensive, if past memory serves me correctly.
Just strapped on all my winter shit for a walk to the grocery store, fired up my iPod and realized I'm still in the middle of one of the cool long-form electronica podcasts I subscribe to, which I was listening to last night specifically because they remind me so much of the small amount of time I've now gotten to spend in Europe, which I deliberately wanted to be reminded of last night because I was on my way to a literary event and needed to be in a good mood, and being reminded of my time in Europe always puts me in a good mood. So huzzah, another evening of running errands in Chicago and feeling like I'm in Europe!
Do you know what I mean, by the way, by these long-form electronica podcasts? They're fucking genius, the kind of thing I would've literally killed to have had access to in the '80s, when I was a young weekly-going club kid myself; they are long uninterrupted MP3 files, an hour in length or two hours or whatever, featuring dozens of tracks beat-mixed together in a "live" style, by a DJ just like they would at a club on a Saturday night. I remember my friends and I in 1988 feeling privileged to procure a hissy third-generation cassette copy of our favorite DJ in action; we would've literally peed in our pants to have access to the kinds of polished podcasts like I do these days.
So, the release party for the litmag RAGAD turned out to be a lot of fun; turns out there were a number of CCLaP readers there as well who I'd never met, and it's always an enjoyable thing to meet yet more readers. Plus, Chicago author Ben Tanzer was there as well, who I've featured a couple of times at CCLaP; and in fact he's gotten all inspired recently to start a podcast too, and ended up doing an episode after tonight's show, a roundtable discussion on the arts featuring yours truly among a number of others. So all in all, a pretty fun night indeed; and now I'm heading home and for a night finally sheltered from the insane weather going on outside.
Pictured: Me in full serial-killer mode, clothing-wise, because of it currently being zero freaking degrees outside (-18 C), and with a -20 wind chill (-30 C).
Greetings from Uptown Lounge at Lawrence and Broadway, halfway to the RAGAD litmag release party at Lawrence and Western that I'm attending tonight, where I'm stopping for a drink and to warm up because I'm so cold I'm about to seriously fucking die, due to the current temperature outside being exactly zero (or -18 C). I transfered one of those hour-long electronica-music podcasts I subscribe to to my iPod earlier, and am listening to it as I make my way over to Lincoln Square; they always make me feel like I did the two times I've been to Europe, and in fact has inspired me to pretend tonight that I am in fact in an entirely different country altogether. After all, I've realized over the years that the reason I like traveling so much is that I'm on my best behavior; I'm taking nothing for granted, finding a sense of first-time gee-whiz awe in everything I'm coming across, and instead of being pissed off by the stupid and mean can barely tell when people are being so in the first place. I'm meeting a whole pile of CCLaP readers at this literary event tonight for the first time, and want to put my best side forward; I figure it wouldn't hurt to pretend that I'm actually attending this event tonight in London or Dublin or Frankfurt or whatever, amazed that I'm even out by myself and attending an event in the city in the first place (as I felt almost daily the two times I've been to Germany), instead of frustrated and angry that I'm out in a -20 wind chill (-30 C). More obscure experimental Eurotronica music, please!
Hey, sorry I haven't updated my VOX account here in awhile; the fact is that I haven't had much to report, between my slow-as-snails lifestyle these days and the extra-shitty weather. Anyway, here's what I'm doing on yet another exciting rockstar Saturday night; first plowing through a bunch of indie-rock podcasts that have piled up in my iTunes in the last week, then bundling up and traveling through the 0-freaking-degree (-18 C) weather, first walking up to Lawrence and then a bus ride to Lincoln/Western, to attend the latest release party for literary magazine RAGAD, and to do an episode about it for the CCLaP Podcast. And speaking of which, I better get ready. See you!
