Time Capsule
So, I was wandering aimlessly in SL Friday evening, when I received an IM from Jade Lily. Jade invited me to drop in and see the in-world version of the Yahoo Time Capsule. I was a bit flattered, actually, as I would not normally expect myself to be on the personal invitation list for such an event. Makes me feel like I'm at least in an eccentric orbit around the FIC. And I guess I was at perihelion (periFICtion?) Friday night. In any case, I appreciated the personal invite. Thanks Jade!


For those of you who haven't heard of the project before, Yahoo is compiling a digital archive of images and text to be opened 14 years hence, in 2020. The Electric Sheep Company created an in-world interface for the project, and encouraged SL users to come in and drop their images into the custom-made interface (the purple box at the base of the image display sphere).

You can see me in my "Papa Bear" avatar from Plywood on the right. (The "Jaws" pun in that second strip still cracks me up. I'm probably the only one. Oh well.) Yeah, it's just me, attention-whoring again. But, dangit, I like Papa Bear. He's fun. And, for what it's worth, Destroy Television seemed to like him, too. (Previous two links taken from Destroy TV's flickr stream.) I really need to come up with a "Papa Bear Body Slam" animation, just to make the point. Papa Bear only made a brief appearance before I tired of making a spectacle of myself and switched back to my normal, unassuming avatar.


I ended up sticking the inaugural comic in the time capsule. That's probably my sole notable contribution to SL, so far. I figure I can milk Plywood a little longer, at least until the Metaverse Messenger run is complete. Then I'll let it gracefully fade into obscurity. It'll be a nice little reminder when/if I see the comic come up again in 2020.

Besides, the image has the URL on the bottom. Maybe someone will do a Wayback Machine search in 2020 (assuming I'm not vain enough to keep paying for hosting for the next 14 years), and go "Oh, yeah. I vaguely remember that. Huh." before he adjusts his brain jack and dives back into the metaversal datastream. Probably the best monument I can hope for, considering that it's all built on the shifting sands of the internet.

Wow. I'm kind of in a mood today, aren't I?

The hologram display effect is kind of nifty. The display pulls random images from the contributed textures, and sends them to a slowly rotating spherical array of particle emitters. The emitters simply drop the image as a particle at the source, with the FOLLOW_SOURCE tag enabled. The net result is that the images orbit in their perfect spherical array and, due to the sprite-like behavior of particles, always face directly toward the viewer's camera. Very slick effect.


While I was there, we were all treated to an impromptu live concert by Mel Cheeky. She just parked herself on top of the time capsule and cut loose. I'm not much of a music critic, or even a music fan, but she was damned good. Go see her live. So sayeth Mori.


Following Ms. Cheeky's set, Cylindrian Rutabaga took the box and busted out a few numbers. Again, I was quite impressed. No, I'm damning by faint praise there. She kicked ass. Go see her in-world first chance you get. Mori doth command you.

So, I managed to peak around my script windows and go do something vaguely social, for a change. Not a bad way to spend a Friday night... At least until I find another project to occupy my time. I gotta be me.
Posted by Moriash Moreau at 8:54 PM