.comment-link {margin-left:.6em;}
Moriash Moreau: My Second Life
Friday, February 22, 2008
 
If...
...Then you, sir or madam, are an idiot and I have no interest in speaking with you. Move along.

Just something I had sitting in my drafts folder, and was too timid to post until now. I'll likely be adding to this as the spirit moves me. Turning off comments here. If you don't agree, well, you're wrong. So sayeth Mori.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 12:28 PM links to this post
Saturday, February 09, 2008
 
Back?
You know, I just had one of the best evenings (and, well, early mornings) I've had in SL in a very long time. What'd I do? Not much. A whole lot of yammering about nothing, and a fair but of scripting guidance for an SL newcomer. I'm going to have to keep this in mind: SL isn't about the technology, or the scripting, or the money. It's about, and has always been about, the people. I can't say I'm 100% back, yet. But for the first time in months I look forward to logging in again.

I've taken some steps to, hopefully, broaden my own personal community in SL. It's a pretty exclusive group, and even required me to submit an application and CV, so we'll see how that works out. In the meantime, well, I'll have to see about catching up with folks I've been neglecting. We'll see if my newfound optimism about SL holds up long enough for the follow through.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 2:33 AM - 2 comments links to this post
Monday, January 28, 2008
 
Torrid
If you can understand why I thought the following photograph was amusing enough to take, and post, then you're definitely not an SL newbie anymore.



Some of you will no doubt look at that picture with a smirk of recognition before shaking your head and moving on. For the rest of you, I'll explain. One evening, I was strolling through the local temple of consumerism, trying desperately to steel myself against a murderous rampage. Crowded shopping malls have that effect on me. As I was passing a gaggle of violently screaming Yuppie larvae, visually gauging the impact resistance of young skulls and idly considering which of my recent purchases would be most effective as an improvised blunt instrument, the above storefront caught my eye. Naturally, after three-plus years wandering SL, I immediately thought of our own celebrated fashionista Torrid Midnight. I say "our," like I have anything to do with
her. I think I conversed with her for all of three lines of text at the skate park on AOL Island, during a stress test many moons ago. But I do feel a sort of local-girl-makes-good possessiveness about her, as I do for all of SL's success stories.

Anyway, the odd shock of cross-world recognition was sufficient to distract me from my plans to bludgeon obnoxiously shrieking children to death with a bag full of iPhone accessories. (They use high quality shopping bags at the Apple store. I imagine they would be quite resistant to tears and other impact damage.) So, in an indirect, twisty sort of way, I owe Ms. Midnight (or at least her SL market presence) for keeping me out of prison... Always assuming the courts could find a jury of my peers willing to convict me for the crime. Given the decibels and frequencies of the noise emitted by said ankle-biters, anyone I would truly consider a peer would rule it completely justified, and shake my hand on the way out of the courtroom.

I could be wrong, but I would be surprised if anyone in the history of Second Life has ever made any significant number of plus-sized garments, the specialty of Hot Topic's Torrid chain of women's wear stores, much less built a brand around them. I suppose considerable skill would be required to create appropriately scaled textures designed to drape flatteringly across avatars of above-average girth, without stretching to the point of distortion as typically sized clothing would. Modifications would likely be required for prim-based apparel, as well. SL clothing is only one-size-fits-all to a point.

Still, I don't see sufficient demand to make the effort. The vast majority of overweight avatars are designed for shock value, not daily wear, and I expect residents donning such shapes would have little interest in spending money on specialty clothing. Frankly, as one of the RL "differently massive" (as the Political Correctness crowd never put it, or "inertially superior" as I like to think of it), I have very little sympathy for those who would willingly choose to be obese if they could so easily choose to be otherwise.

Well, that's about as much interest as I have in this topic, so I'm letting it go. I'd say it's obvious, if this is all I can find to blog about, but I'm still on hiatus.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 12:16 PM - 1 comments links to this post
Thursday, January 17, 2008
 
My Tiny Life
No, I'm not back yet. Just ran across a quick bit of news over at Boing Boing, and thought it was worth sharing. Julian Dibbell's My Tiny Life is now available in PDF format as a free download from Lulu.com. Basically, it's the story of one man's brief visit (he was only there three months, a major bone of contention for some of his detractors) to the venerable old online world of LambdaMOO. And, despite the text-only environment, you'll see more than a little in common with MOO's conceptual offspring, free-form online worlds like Second Life. The technology may have changed, but the culture is more or less the same. Well worth a read.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 9:00 AM - 0 comments links to this post
Tuesday, January 01, 2008
 
Shiny #3

Hey, look, another one. Happy rez-day to me. Oh, and happy New Year to everyone else.

Folks, I think I'm going on hiatus until I find some way to feel like I'm part of SL, or at least find some way to enjoy it again. Don't hold your breath.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 12:01 AM - 1 comments links to this post