Despite us being relatively low key in the new release department in the month of February, it was quite a busy month. Starting with getting things established on Avatars United, we had a couple of our best-ever days in the shoppe, appeared in the Modavia Fashion Directory XIV, and even made our first appearance in the Second Life Destination Guide! I also spent quite a bit of time doing some software testing, ranging from projects I can’t talk about to Snowglobe 1.3 and then towards the end of the month with the SL Viewer. There were a few other bits and bobs in-world, but a lot of time was also spent with upgrades here in our RL studio. I’m happy to report that BlakOpal’s machine is running beautifully and exceeding all our expectations, plus my redesign of our wired and wireless networking, and backup strategy seems to both be running well and ready for the next steps.

In getting ready for those next steps, I think it’s time to pull a few things off the fire. Linden Lab will be retiring the Battery Street Irregulars (viewer testing group), and the time seems ideal to back away from a few other testing programs as well. There are a couple I’m very interested in, and will not only continue with but likely become more involved with them. And I’ll likely continue to fumble my way through the Viewer 2.0 Open Beta, wrapping my head around its features and functions. But involvement in too many projects starts to stretch me thin, and worse it seems to invite some people to treat me like a personal tech support department or target me as a person to sound off on when they feel the need to vent regarding something LL does or says (and believe me, there have been some doozies). I’m happy to participate in technical group chat conversations from time to time, but that’s about the extent of it. Except for Miss BlakOpal, of course, as I do happen to be her IT department :-)

That said, I’m very excited indeed about the next steps ahead. BlakOpal’s first machinima video on her new machine came out looking great, and I’m looking forward to seeing more videos from her soon. Additionally, we’re both bubbling with excitement over ideas for outfits and builds, and I’m looking forwards to some big improvements in computing/rendering power on our next system upgrade (once certain hardware is released and we’ve saved enough lindens). There will hopefully be a couple new shoppe locations in there as well. It’s going to be an exciting month - I’m excited.

Tags: SL, RL, Reachra, BSI, Viewer, Shoppe

The month of January seemed to fly right by. Feels like my last blog entry was only a day ago, not a month ago. I don’t really have any major announcements or revelations, so instead I’ll share with you a bit of a progress report.

At the shoppe, January started off with a bang. We had decided to participate in our first ever grid-hunt, and the Just For The Guys Hunt got started on the 3rd with a flood of people coming to visit. People seemed to enjoy themselves, and we both got plenty of compliments about our hunt item, so I consider the effort to be a success. While it’s not something I’d want to do too frequently, it is something I’d consider doing again at some point.

Shortly after the start of the hunt, it was time for Menswear Fashion Week. We had been getting excited about this event for the last couple months, and all the planning and preparation really paid off. The exhibition booth at the event sim looked great, people enjoyed themselves, and our feature runway show was a hit. Click here to see pictures taken by event photographer Tillie Ariantho.

I did a lot of back-end work on the shoppe as well. A few locations were remodeled, one was moved, and (sadly) a couple small satellite locations were closed. I’ve also updated some things on the back end, including some server improvements and new redelivery terminals, and continue to work on refining and updating vendors. We received countless notecards with a range of business offers and invitations to open locations all over the grid, as well as a number of requests for a diverse range of fundraisers. I’m not sure how ‘pay my tier’ has managed to become a legitimate fundraising category, compared with real charities and humanitarian efforts out there, they just seem selfish and greedy. After looking at different charitable options in SL, we decided to make our donations directly in RL in 2010. This way the money we give goes directly to that organization without overhead, without SL cashout fees, and without question. We’ve already made donations to Doctors Without Borders, and will continue to make contributions to them and other organizations throughout the year.

In the world of software testing, January was a very busy month. I installed and tested 9 different builds of things, learning a lot and having more fun than frustration, with the net result hopefully being that whatever gets released will be a better experience for everyone.

January also began with us starting to work on content for Blue Mars. It was an exciting step, since we’re already familiar with and use the professional 3D tools to create content. However, Avatar Reality’s developer program just didn’t make sense for us and by mid-month we halted development. I’m sure they’re swell guys and have no doubts they’ve invested plenty of time and effort into creating the virtual world, but with no compelling content of their own, an unfinished developer’s toolset, and no large installed user base, I can’t justify handing over 25% of our gross sales (plus land use and other fees). I’ll revisit the situation in the months to come, and hopefully either they’ll revise their program or the tools and user base will mature and expand significantly.

The planning phase continues for our second region, though I decided to slow things down a bit and not rush into anything. While other estate managers may make the job look easy, running a region and fostering a community (however small) takes considerable effort, and I want to try and take my time and make as few mistakes as possible. We’re probably looking at the second region happening sometime in Q2.

Our studio space continues to evolve and improve. BlakOpal’s new sewing machine is just waiting for her to dive in, and we’ve finally sorted out the mechanics of a vertical light table so she’ll be able to properly light and shoot fabrics. Next up is a new machine for her to have at home, which was ordered today and should arrive by the end of next month. Her workspace is shaping up really nicely, and now I find myself looking forward to upgrading a few things in my space as well.

While we missed this month’s spectacular Black & White Ball at Piermont Landing, we enjoyed the Eddie Izzard show tremendously. Both BlakOpal and I have been fans for years and seen most of his videos, this was the first time we’d seen his show live and he had us laughing so hard our sides hurt.

Musically, January was filled with elation as a few different friends released albums and singles and had some great achievements. While a small part of me wishes I were at all the shows and producing events or even performing, a much greater part is happy to be laying low and staying in. As I finish up a few other projects, I’m looking forward to spending some quality time in the studio, rewiring and reprogramming some racks, and making a little noise.

It’s been a great 2010 so far, I hope yours has too.

Tags: RL, SL, Shoppe

It’s that time of year again, when people look back at the calendar year that’s drawing to a close and then look forward to the new one that’s about to begin. While I’m not really one for default world holidays and traditions, I’m all for a good celebration and changes and improvements.

The time’s been flying by, it seems. A year ago, we had just opened our first satellite location (Winterfell), and were about to open our second flagship store (Caledon Oxbridge Village). Actually I believe that by New Year’s Eve the shoppe itself was done and stocked, but the region had not yet had its grand/official opening. It has been an amazing year. We’ve met some truly wonderful people, opened a number of locations (some were fleeting, while others established themselves quite nicely), participated in some remarkable shows and events, opened up our first full region, had incredible amounts of fun designing/building/creating, and received some incredibly flattering reviews and praise along the way. BlakOpal and I have also had our fair share of RL adventures that’s left us grinning from ear to ear. As with every year it’s filled with ups and downs, but I prefer to get over the bad stuff, move on, and stay focused on the positive.

And there is a lot to be positive about in 2010. In RL we’re improving and upgrading our studio space and planning some wonderful adventures (London!). I’ve got a bunch of exciting music projects sitting on the back burner (stuff that got pushed to the side because I was having so much fun in SL in 2009). In Second Life we’re overflowing with ideas and projects that we’re excited about, including the growth and expansion of Reachra. I’m also planning to revise and expand the web site a bit, adding more in the way of tips and tricks and tutorials. You’ll probably also see us in Avatar Reality’s Blue Mars in one form or another. We gave the platform quite a bit of time and consideration in 2009, and if all goes well we’ll have some specifics to talk about sometime in the first half of 2010. Don’t get me wrong, we have no intention of leaving Second Life anytime soon. I think there’s plenty of room for both platforms to be successful, and I think Linden Lab has some exciting stuff on the horizon.

Tags: 2010, SL, Blue Mars, Shoppe, Reachra

Even though folks haven’t seen a lot of me, I’ve been ridiculously busy in the days since my last update. Let’s see, where to begin.

First off, BlakOpal and I finally decided to make the move to high definition in the loft. I know, the rest of the US made that move some time ago, but seeing as we don’t really watch broadcast television or subscribe to cable, we weren’t hard-pressed to replace the equipment we had. It seems our patience paid off well, as we ended up with something bigger than we previously had, for less than we had been expecting to spend.

That upgrade in turn led to the next project, designing and building a new HD media server. This would let us keep our favorite films and documentaries just a few clicks away (and turn the DVD’s on the shelf into backups), as well as give us an additional place to back up work/art files. I know that starts to sound paranoid (seeing as we already have hourly wireless backups of each of our machines), but we’ve both suffered enough fatal crashes where crucial files were lost that the additional peace of mind is worth the price of admission.

There have also been some assorted OS updates and testing, and in the last couple weeks I’ve been spending quite a bit of time working on Snowglobe testing as well. Version 1.3 is coming along nicely, with a number of fixes and behind the scenes improvements as well as the addition of double click to teleport and panning the mini-map (both of which work great). There are some additional things planned, but nothing yet for me to start testing, let alone report on.

Construction at Reachra has been happening more slowly than I’d like, but on the few occasions where I’ve had the chance to spend time in SL that wasn’t devoted to testing or basic shopkeeping, something else has come up. I’ve managed to get caught up on putting new things in the shoppe and putting out the holiday freebies, and now that the media server project is finishing up I should have additional time for building. I’ve also got some things to get ready for - in addition to a fashion week event in January, we’ll be participating in our first ever hunt (more on that later). I’ve also had a few ideas for an update to the vendors I use in the stores, and want to get around to remodeling Caledon Oxbridge in the near future.

I’ll leave you with a clip from last week’s Muse concert. BlakOpal and I had a great time at the show, and can’t wait until they return to SF again in the spring. Cheers!

Tags: SL, RL, Music, Shoppe

Slowly but surely, things are taking shape. The builds are taking longer than I would like (ideally they’d be finished instantly, as soon as I think of them), but I’m really pleased with the results so far.

The plan - a short string of row shops, with apartment spaces up above. Drawing from a mix of Dublin’s Temple Bar district as well as the ‘urban’ area of many old towns and villages, I wanted things to be slightly off-kilter and have a little flavor. From the 18th century and continuing into the 20th century, these dual purpose buildings were extremely popular - retail/commercial space on the first floor, with residential space upstairs. In the days before modern transportation methods, it was an important and affordable way to cut down on commute time. While that’s not really an issue in Second Life, I wanted to create something that had the right kind of feel.

There aren’t any doors yet, and I’m still trying to sort out how I want to approach it. Generally speaking I’m opposed to having doors in public spaces in-world. During peak usage or laggy moments it seems people are always bumping into doors, missing a click, or otherwise having some silly issue - so I make it a design choice to keep public spaces as wide open as possible.

I’ve already had a number of inquiries regarding space rentals, and to answer that I can only say “not at this time.” First and foremost I want to think of the experience for visitors & explorers, and to that end I have been paying close attention to region performance over the last few weeks. I wouldn’t want busy times in our shoppe to take away from other residents’ experiences, or vice versa. It may well be that I don’t get around to having rental spaces until a second region comes online.

Many thanks to all those who’ve said kind words about the new space, and thank you to all who’ve visited and explored.


Working on the basic structures in the skies above.


Working on the second story


Stairwells and collision prims


Work continues at ground level


Reachra’s taking shape!


Sorting out signage


Bookshop window display


Outside looking in


BlakOpal and her curiosities

Tags: SL, Reachra, Building

After quite a bit of consideration, and with a slightly heavy heart, I recently undertook the project of removing the sewers from the New Babbage region.

Providing a bit of background, they were the city of New Babbage’s original sewer system. Last winter, when planning for the region and what I had hoped would be a secure future for the shoppe, the sewers were a key element. Since I wanted the tunnels to be at least partially navigable, it required that the surface level be raised to accommodate the larger tunnels. During different stages of the build there have been a number of other secondary tunnels and spaces to explore, including an enormous cavern connected to one of the warehouse buildings, complete with elaborate docks and half-gutted pirate ship (in the process of being re-fitted with steam-power). As word spread of plans for a city-wide sewer system in New Babbage, I envisioned the systems being connected, and thought of additional tunnels and retro-fitting that would create a vast network stretching through the city-state.

Alas, it was the future that never was. My suggestions and requests to connect the systems went without response, and it was soon clear to me where things were heading. The traffic measurement devices at the sewer entrances confirmed that as the new system was put into place, fewer people were exploring the old sewers.

I had given thought to a few different possibilities, including the idea of creating some sort of winter wonderland ice cavern. Such a build would have been a lot of fun to work on, but unfortunately would have either required significantly more resources than I had available or not fit well within the victorian steampunk theme.

With the sewers effectively redundant, the entire north side of the region needed to be re-thought. I was excited at the prospect of Babbage getting some elevation, but the clockwinder eventually decided that BlakOpal and I were the only ones getting any altitude. At least until the region to the north came online. Unfortunately that region has been pushed back a few times in the development of New Babbage, with the last comment I’d seen leaving me little hope that it was coming anytime soon. Having a great view and being on a hill is all fine and good, but being the only guy on a hill is a little weird, and definitely not my sort of thing.

The elevation and the sewers and tunnels also present some technical hurdles, not the least of which was that we had to use a forced landing point. Due to the nature of how SL teleportation works, if you don’t force folks to a specific landing point, you run the risk of folks arbitrarily winding up below ground, stuck between levels, or generally landing in places they didn’t want to land.

So as I began the winterization process last weekend, it became clear... Level it. Sounds simple, but execution is a bit trickier. Even though New Babbage is no longer the main store, it still has quite a bit of traffic from the folks who’ve got old landmarks. Terra-forming and moving thousands of prims is a challenge on even a good day (and as Murphy’s Law would dictate, yesterday was not a good day in SL), but becomes even trickier when folks keep dropping by.

So, slowly but surely, I made the move. Actually, hundreds of little moves. Every prim that wasn’t pulled completely was dropped by anywhere from 2 to 20 meters, and then all of the typical fidgeting and fussing to get things to look and feel the way they should. Miraculously, I was able to move the shoppe itself without disaster striking. Once the builds were moved, I began the process of re-winterizing and filling in some of the spaces. It’s still wide open in a few spots, I’ll likely use some fill for the short term. While it’s a shame to see some things go, I’m quite pleased with the results so far, and excited to see what will happen next.

The snapshot below was from a hilarious moment later in the evening. As I was finishing up some of the details and getting to work on the sidewalks, I heard a loud rumbling sound. Turning to see what was the cause of the commotion, I saw that the place was being visited by a 50 foot marshmallow man! He explored he new space and continued on his sugary way - I can only hope that any future visitors of gargantuan proportions are as friendly as he.

Tags: SL, New Babbage, Sewers, Shoppe, Marshmallow

The last few weeks have had me filled with anxiety - about getting the place built, about the opening, about the reception, about how the business might be affected. A million details, a million concerns, a million considerations. Fortunately, it appears we’ve reached the point where I can relax and breathe a sigh of relief.

Friday marked a turning point at the new Main Store. It was a minor measurement, but a major milestone. For the first time, traffic at Reachra surpassed the traffic at the old main store in New Babbage. That, combined with strong sales from the start and some truly wonderful compliments from friends and visitors, have sent me all the signals I needed - we did the right thing, and everything is going to be all right.

I have been making some progress on the island, with an additional building starting to take shape, and the gazebo in the picture above being placed this morning. I’ve also been toying with the foundations for some of the additional structures, and will hopefully start to get a few of those in place soon.

I’ve also made good progress on winter-izing our place in New Babbage. While the current state of the city-state leaves an awful lot to be desired, I intend to make the most of it. The picture below was snapped a few days ago, since then snowdrifts and additional texturing has been done. I still have a few more things I’d like to, and will hopefully get to that sometime this week.

Tags: SL, Shoppe, Reachra

Over the past six months or so, I’ve found myself thinking a lot about trade routes. As you can probably imagine, supplying a string of shoppes scattered across the grid is no small undertaking. It was during the many expeditions into the desert to establish the Eridu Society’s Airship Outpost that I started to study the maps and think about establishing ourselves in a place that catered to trade.

I began studying the maps and charts, searching for an island. Not just any island, but one that could serve as a port for ships of the air and sea. I pored through countless documents and found dozens, if not hundreds, of towns and villages that had great potential. So I packed my gear and decided to go exploring.



Each week seemed to bring new leads, and off I’d go to see if the town might suit my purpose. But each week I returned in disappointment. Incredible sea ports. Amazing ports of the sky. But never, it seemed, in the same place. I have to admit, I very nearly gave up on the idea. Naturally, it was at that low moment, as I was drowning my frustrations in drink, that I first heard about Reachra.

I was into my fourth or fifth round with the publican and two of his friends, and we were sharing stories of the places we’d been, and one of the gents started talking about a place he used to go. Airships and sailing ships, there was always work and good drink to be found. At first I thought he was spinning a yarn, then my friend behind the bar nodded in agreement. He’d lived there as a younger man, but moved on after the airships left.

Despite having had a bit to drink, I suddenly felt quite sober and excited. This place wasn’t on any map I was familiar with, yet it sounded like a dream. But why did the airships leave, I wondered. I didn’t wonder for very long, as my friends knew Reachra’s history well. It seems there was a bustling airship outpost, with a great mast made from the biggest and strongest of trees from the mainland. I cringed upon hearing it, for I knew how the story would end. Any builder worth his salt knows you don’t build an airship mast out of wood. Not these days, anyways. Sure, you could use a strong wood for a sightseeing balloon, but for ships of any consequence you need iron or steel. But a great ship or a great storm would snap a wooden mast, and that is exactly what happened.



Apparently, way back in the great storm of ’42 (one the locals still refer to as ’the storm of the century’), a pair of merchant vessels were tethered to the old wooden mast. The pilots had been waiting for a boat coming in with some cargo or another, and thought they’d be able to get out before the storm came in. They’d been wrong, disastrously so, and in one cold dark night both airships as well as the tower had been destroyed. Without an airship tower, the boats stopped coming, and the town was all but abandoned.

While it was a tragic tale, I don’t think I could have been more excited. The very next day I stocked up and set out for Reachra. With fair seas and the wind at my back, I made it in a few days’ time. Exercising great caution (the name Reachra translates in gaelic to ‘place of many shipwrecks’), I approached and attempted to make land.



The eastern shore is a rocky, craggy mess - I can see where the place got its name. But the western shores were gentle, and a sheltered cove to the North where a great pier had been built. An old, run-down warehouse stood in a terrible state on the western side of the island. Still, it looked to be of solid construction, and the building looked quite salvageable. In fact, the whole place seemed rather perfect for my needs. Sure, it would all need quite a bit of work, but that’s never frightened me off.



I conducted a bit of a site survey, then did my best to make a map and update my chart with the island’s location, and then sought out the owner of the place. As I’d suspected, the owner had died some years ago. The loss of the airship outpost had all but destroyed him financially, which is why no attempt had ever been made to rebuild. His wife and son had survived him, but they wanted nothing to do with the place. Indeed, his widow had been getting on in years, and her loving son had been providing her care. We met over tea and then several dinners, it seems both were quite amenable to selling me the place. My offer was accepted, and before I knew it construction had begun.

The hilltop was perfect for an airship tower, and I soon found that the one I’d recently designed could easily be adapted for this place. An iron and steel framework, covered in brasswork, providing both form and function for the task at hand. Getting up the hill was another matter, but soon the rickety wooden steps had been replaced with stonework. The docks were in better shape than I’d imagined, but still took quite a bit of effort to bring up to snuff.



The warehouse would be a perfect place to base centralized operations - I’d be able to dispatch goods to any of our shoppes from there by sea or by air, as well as use the place to bring in raw materials and assorted supplies. Of course it made sense to open a shoppe here as well, a grande showcase of our latest and greatest works.



While I had given some consideration to the idea of designing a completely new building, those thoughts quickly vanished. Our tried and true shoppe would suit the place perfectly, and besides I would have my hands quite full tending to all the other tasks at hand. In what seemed like no time at all the island was habitable and functional again, and ships have been coming by air and by sea. While there is still a lot of work left to do, I’m proud of what has been accomplished in so short a time. A new trade route, a new shoppe, a new place to call home.

Tags: In-Character, Background, SL, Shoppe, Reachra

After having read loads of clatter over the last several days on message boards, group chat, and in-world it seems an appropriate time to sum up our position with regard to BlakOpal Designs.

• We have no intention of leaving XStreet. We wish the best of luck to those merchants taking their business elsewhere, but feel that XStreet will continue to deliver the best shopping experience for our customers and our business. And that’s what really matters.
• We have no intention of tacking on surcharges to our prices, either in-world or on XStreet. Regardless of where our customers prefer to make their purchases, we are simply grateful for their business.

With that said, it’s back to work playing the role of the builder, designer, and shopkeeper. :-)

Tags: Shoppe, SL, XStreet, Site

Earlier in the day, Linden Lab announced some upcoming changes to the way XStreet manages freebies (click here to read the blog post). While checking Twitter, I quickly found myself in a tweet-storm of complaints, arguments, and cries of foul play before needing to rush off to the RL shops with BlakOpal. While out and about, I realized that the 140 character limitation of Twitter posts was going to make it more difficult, if not completely impossible, to express my thoughts on the move.

I’m all for it.

Prior to the policy change announcement, and even going back to before Linden Lab acquired XStreet back in mid-January, there has been a loud and growing complaint from both customers and merchants that freebies and cheapies were causing problems.

For customers (who are clearly more important here), years of no-holds-barred listings of freebies and cheapies has meant that XStreet has been swamped with junk listings. Cheap generic goods that fill up countless pages of listings, so that when you try to either browse a category or search for a general type of item (instead of a specific thing from a specific seller), the site becomes an exercise in futility. As someone who shops on XStreet - I agree wholeheartedly. If there’s a specific item or seller I’m looking for, then XStreet is a great tool for surfing and out-of-world shopping. I’m all for anything that can make XStreet a better experience for our customers.

On the merchant side, the complaint is that the freebie/cheapie listings are flooding the marketplace, and undercutting peoples’ businesses. In RL when an item becomes successful and people start making cheap knockoffs, there are still physical costs to contend with. In SL, cost is not an issue. As a result, no matter the item there seems to be dozens of under L$50 variations, often in several colors and styles. One item can then beget literally thousands of knockoff item listings. When you then factor in the amount of keyword spamming that gets done by some folks, it’s easy to see why it’s so tough to shop on XStreet.

That hurts XStreet in a couple ways. First, the freebie and cheapie market consumes a lot of server resources. All those listings/images, and serving up all those items (estimated conservatively to be well over a million transactions a day). Second, when the quality/premium content creators get lost in a sea of cheapies, XStreet loses too - since their primary source of revenue is commissions.

If you were to do an accounting breakdown of XStreet as a separate business unit of Linden Lab (which it basically is), and you were to separate the business into under L$100 and over L$100 business, you likely find that XStreet is losing its shirt on the sub L$100 market. There are a lot of back-end costs associated with hosting the site and serving up goods: handling transactions, credit card processing, hosting content (including images) - it all eats up server space and bandwidth, but none of it is free. As a frame of reference, I’ll point to Apple’s App Store for iPhone, which is currently heralded as the great success story in the world of e-commerce. In addition to the signup fee, Apple gets a 30% cut in exchange for hosting the store and shopping experience, delivering the content, and of course taking peoples’ money. XStreet, by comparison, charges only 5%. They could have announced plans to triple the rate and it would still be a great deal. No, I do not think they should triple the rates - I’m just saying that XStreet’s fees are extremely reasonable.

Changes to the listing fees/fee structure as it applies to freebies and cheapies, and then splitting out the freebies into their own category will effectively weed out a lot of listings. And after running unchecked for several years, the XStreet garden is in desperate need of weeding. Cleaning all that up will help designers and content creators, and I’m all for anything that can help designers and content creators be more successful.

If you’ve got slow-movers or non-movers, I encourage you to take a hard look at those items. Perhaps you could enhance or improve the item, to make it either a value at a higher price point, or more compelling purchase at the current price (so you’d sell enough to cover listing fees and then some). Alternatively, you could decide to pull the XStreet listing and only make it available at your shop in-world.

Will these changes cost BlakOpal and I money? Yes, it will. We offer a few free items on XStreet, as well as list some inexpensive items. In the next 30-60 days, we’ll need to decide which items we want to pay additional fees on, and which items might make more sense not to offer on XStreet (they would still be available in the main store). While I think of us as extremely fortunate and successful SL designers, we’re far from a top XStreet seller - so we’ll see and feel that pinch when it comes.

Thanks for indulging me on this long ramble of a post. But since the blog was posted I’ve seen quite a few knee-jerk responses and complaints, and felt it was worth taking the time to give it some thought and explain why I feel differently about it. If you want to talk further on it, please feel free to IM me up in-world.

Tags: SL, XStreet, Freebie, Cheapie

At the end of another long day. Today, however, I am very pleased to report that the doors to the new shoppe are actually open and the proverbial cat is out of the bag. A lot of the island is still unfinished, but I think that we have enough done that it’s safe to let people come and have a look.

Our goal is to create a space that is more than simply a main store on its own island. BlakOpal and I have been working intensely on the background and the art theme and build concepts over the last few weeks, with the goal that in addition to having a space to house our growing business we’ll have a fun and interesting place to explore.

The shoppe itself should look familiar - it’s an iconic build, and one of my favorite projects in Second Life. We didn’t want to just drop the building anywhere, so the challenge became to create an environment that the building would fit. Sounds simple, doesn’t it?

Early on, I began to center around the idea of a trading post. I’d just spend a couple months working on an airship outpost for Burning Life, and the idea of taking that further excited me. During the golden age of piracy, there were a number of island outposts where the law-abiding folks peacefully co-existed with those outside the law, and you’d get a mix of prim & proper and rough-around-the-edges types walking the streets. I wanted something like that, but not just another tropical island. In doing some research, I’d learned that there were port cities in the north that had exactly this sort of thing going on, with residents doing business with all sorts of privateers and questionable types.

North worked better for me. Nothing against the tropics, it just didn’t seem to fit the shoppe building as well. Not too far north, as neither of us are fans of winter weather. And it needed to be different - there are already a number of wonderful builds and communities in Second Life, we certainly didn’t want to duplicate one of the existing communities we love. New Babbage always struck me as being based on victorian London (though Mr. Tenk has suggested a coastal town in Poland in a post on the New Babbage Ning), where Caledon is more English countryside. And Steelhead wonderfully captures the pacific northwestern United States. Each done extremely well in their way.

Looking back, you’d think it was planned from the start, but it was actually a matter of all the pieces falling together at exactly the right time. Ireland. The timing couldn’t have been better, and the trip wound up serving as an opportunity for field research. And research led me to believe that while inspired by Dublin and by Ireland, it should be something slightly different. The coastal islands caught my attention - sort of like Ireland, but on a more manageable scale. As we were making our approach to Dublin, the plane circled near Lambay Island (see below), which I took as a sign.



On the other end of the spectrum from the brautiful island wilderness is the city of Dublin, and specifically the Temple Bar, Grafton Street, and surrounding areas. From that point, everything started to click and I went from scratching my head and thinking about things hypothetically and wondering if there’d be enough to fill a space and make it work to chomping at the bit and wondering if there will be enough space to do all the things I want to try and do.

The first couple buildings are in place - the shoppe and the giant warehouse across the street. The docks on the north shore are done, and I’ve gotten the shipping office building built (though the insides need a lot of work). The Airship Outpost sits atop the hill, though as of this writing the stairs leading up to it have yet to be built. But I think it’s enough to get things started, and so today the doors opened softly. Expect something grand in the near future. Come see BlakOpal.

Tags: SL, Shoppe, Main Store, Ireland, Building, Reachra

Hey look, the new version of Snowglobe is almost ready! As a beta tester, I’ve been working with various builds and incarnations of Snowglove 1.2 since late summer, and I’ve got to say I’m really excited about this thing coming out. All the safety and security of a Linden Lab viewer, plus a lot of the innovation from the vibrant SL developer community - it’s a great mix.

As of this writing, Snowglobe 1.2 RC3 is the latest release, and offers significantly faster network connections (in preferences on the network tab, you can now set the slider to 5000kbps - more than 3x faster than the max of 1500kbps in the SL viewer), automatic language translation in local chat (using Google translate, it’s far from perfect but a very nice start), greatly improved texture handling (in the Advanced menu, enable Rendering -> HTTP Get Textures to let Snowglobe take advantage and drastically improve the loading of things like the SL map), a Worn Items tab (in your inventory window, you can now click on the Worn Items tab to see just the stuff your avatar is currently wearing), and more.

Get Snowglobe here.

Tags: Snowglobe, Viewer, SL

After finishing things up with the fashion show and taking care of a long overdue remodel at the Jabberwocky Wonderland, I was finally caught up enough to spend some quality time working on the Eridu Society build for Burning Life. BlakOpal and I got a great parcel to work with and have some wonderful ideas for this year's event, but as you might guess there's a lot of work to do.

I've been working with some concept ideas of the building for weeks now, and have toyed with a number of ideas for a few elements of its design, but it was only this weekend that I've been able to pull it all together and get the main structure sorted out. It's still a bit premature to tell you all about our plans, but I can tease you a bit with a couple snapshots from this weekend's work sessions. More to come soon, and as the start of Burning Life approaches I hope to have a walk-thru video put together.

Tags: SL, Burning Life, Eridu Society

Whew, finally got that finished! I've been kind of busy lately, and while I've had the Final Cut Studio update since shortly after its release the discs were just sitting on the corner of the desk. But I was determined to try my hand at filming in SL with this event (previously, BlakOpal had done all the in-world filming), and so last week spent many hours on a clean install.

To record the video from SL, BlakOpal has been using iShowU HD Pro with great success. I found the app a little frustrating, but functional. I've been toying around lately with a program called ScreenFlow, which not only feels better to work with, but seems to have a better frame rate (the process of capturing and recording your screen adds some overhead, which in turn bogs down your SL performance a bit). While you can also do screen recording with Quicktime in Snow Leopard, I've found that to be really basic stuff, it's much more suited to creating a software demo or application tutorial than it is for virtual movie-making.

The Sunday event went really well, I managed to get some great shots along with lots and lots of bad footage (due to my own inexperience), and all-in-all I came away extremely excited for Tuesday. Both shows were special and had great outfits in them, but Tuesday was the main event as far as I was concerned.

Sadly, the show had some hiccups that were really heartbreaking as a designer. But a number of the outfits came together extremely well, and armed with what I'd learned on Sunday I managed to get a few really good shots. After giving myself a little time to get over what hadn't worked out about the show, I was in the right space to focus on the things that did go well. Incredible outfits. Better shots. Higher resolution (I was actually able to shoot in HD). Great music (I"ve been a fan of The Prodigy for years, and Future Funk Squad's not only an incredible producer but a friend as well).

The edit came together really quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I spent a fair amount of time contemplating playing around with some fancy effects and titling in Motion. I've been dying to get into using that program, but in the end opted against making the project over-complicated. As a rule of thumb, you want to get close to the edit (so that you know the material you're working with and can deliver a great cut), but not too close. I could see myself easily getting caught up in working out some clever effect or transition, only to find that months later I'm still not finished.

Fortunately I had the good sense to know when to leave well enough alone, and I'll save my experiments with Motion for another project. Meanwhile, you can check out the VLFW Sunday video here, and the Tuesday show highlights here.

Tags: SL, VLFW, Virtual London, Final Cut, iShowU, ScreenFlow, MPV

I can think of no more appropriate title. Really. It's been that kind of day. But I mean Holy Crap in a good way, if not the best possible way.

As I mentioned earlier, I was lamenting the loss of so many great photos from Miss Breezy's amazing event and the combination of stress and excitement regarding our runway show at the Virtual London Fashion Week event. Alright, well if I didn't mention the stress part it was an oversight. It's been a point of vast quantities of stress for me. Even though the event was being produced by a capable team, I was stressing about all the ridiculous things - whether the models got everything and they were able (or even cared) to make adjustments for fit, whether they would look good on the runway, whether the folks in attendance (in person or on the other end of the streaming video) would appreciate it, and of course the music.

While there are some great DJ's providing music for the event, and they offered to handle everything or even handle any special requests, I decided to take a stab at providing a soundtrack for each of the shows. I wasn't sure whether I'd be able to pull it off, as I hadn't been spending much time in the studio or playing lately (not since early July, really), but hearing it today I'm really pleased with the performance and the music seemed to set the perfect atmosphere for the show. Afterwards we received some very wonderful compliments and stayed a bit for drinks and hello's before I made my way back to the studio.

It was around that time that I found my lost pictures from last night's ball. Woohoo! Long story short, they'd been saved to another location on the network entirely, and hooray they're all there. I've scrubbed through them all and gotten the gallery put together, you can check them out here. And speaking of galleries, BlakOpal grabbed a few high quality snaps from today's runway show, you can check those out here. Where are my pictures? I didn't take any, as I was attempting to shoot video. I've got plenty of footage to edit, and will hopefully have something put together from that in the near future. Whew - it's been a long day!

Tags: SL, New Babbage, Piermont Landing, Engineer's Ball, VLFW, Virtual London

Last night was one of the best nights yet at Piermont Landing, with the Engineers Ball. Wonderful hot air balloons, impeccably dressed folks, wonderful conversations, and with the recently upgraded SL seemed to be performing quite well (sim crossings and teleports are greatly improved, and lag seemed way down). I was even able to snap a few dozen stunning pictures. Or so I thought.

Due to some form of technical glitch (read as: user error), I had apparently been saving my snapshots to the aether instead of to my local drive. D'oh! How very disappointing, as I was convinced I had gotten some real gems and was excited to be writing a post about having just uploaded them. Now I feel a bit like a fisherman telling people about the one that got away. Members of the New Babbage community can, of course, check out the New Babbage Ning to see many wonderful pics taken by others who were there (and quite honestly, have better skills than I do), and of course if you're interested in the greater New Babbage community, then I suggest you head on over there and join (membership is free).

Waking up with my morning medicinal, my thoughts now turn towards London. Rather, towards Virtual London and Fashion Week. The last week or so has been a whirlwind of preparation for BlakOpal and I - our work is in two runway shows this week (the first is today at 2PM SLT, the second is on Tuesday). Oddly enough, many others are working even harder. The event organizers have been putting months of preparation into the event, and the other designers have all really been outdoing themselves - each booth I've glanced at has been filled with wonderful things. Go check it out here.

Tags: SL, New Babbage, Piermont Landing, Ball, VLFW, Engineer's Ball

Looking at the picture above, I had initially thought to give this post the title "Burn Baby Burn" but then thought better of it. It's a go-to phrase that people who've been to the Burning Man Arts Festival tend to use, and after going to our campsite for this year's Burning Life in-world it just seemed like it fit. Then I remembered that a) this post will cover more than just me yammering on about Burning Life, and b) a friend of mine made a film about the festival called "Burn Baby Burn" so a slightly different title seemed more appropriate.

BlakOpal and I are both extremely excited about our theme camp being accepted for this year's Burning Life. We had one last year as well, it was our first real event in Second Life. It seemed strangely fitting for us, since we've both been to the RL event several times. It also helped us with our 'playa withdrawals' since we were taking the year off from Burning Man. While we were both 'fresh off the boat' new to SL, we still managed to build a fun space on the virtual playa and had a great time. This year we've learned quite a bit, and I've got a computer that can actually handle walking around without crashing once the event kicks off.

Last night was our first opportunity to visit the space. We're further back from the Esplanade this year, but I kind of like that idea. We've been tossing around ideas for the build for a few weeks, and soon enough we'll start playing with prims in the virtual dust. Stay tuned for more information on Eridu Society at Burning Life!

This morning I had a great meeting in Virtual London, in preparation for Fashion Week, which kicks off on Saturday. We've had the pleasure of participating in a few different fashion events and festivals, and while things can get a little hectic at times, it's a good kind of hectic. The organizers have created a really amazing space for the event and we're extremely excited to not only have a booth space but be participating in two different fashion shows. The first, to a broader audience, is on Sunday at 2PM SLT. The second, on a bit more of a 'theme' night (which seems appropriate considering some of our steampunk/pirate creations) is on Tuesday at 1:30PM SLT.

While we have the opportunity to request songs for the DJ's to play, I'm considering a slightly different direction. A couple friends of mine have recently sent advances of some of their upcoming releases, and I'm considering putting something together that showcases and teases some of that material, along with a few gems I've got in my collection. We'll see how that all plays out - with Virtual London Fashion Week kicking off on Saturday, there's an awful lot to do in a very short period of time.

I've also got some amazing pictures in my in-box. Yep, more photos for our photo contest! As soon as I get a chance, I'll go through them and update the Customer Gallery, and get some gift cards out to more people. Keep 'em coming!

Tags: SL, Burning Life, Burning Man, Virtual London, VLFW, Fashion Week, Music

While much has been said of the changes to the XStreet Forums (mostly prophecies of doom and mourning the death of a community), I've got to say that I'm pretty optimistic. In fairness, I was never a big fan of the PHP BB systems that have been all over the internet since June of 2000. While a few sites have done them well, they all have the feel of plugging in some standard package, and only a feeble attempt at implementing features or customizing the user interface. The SL Forums and old XStreet Forums were no exception, it's a shame to see a commercial operation using such a generic implementation.

The new layout seems nice and clean by comparison. Below the main SL header (and site-wide menus), you've got the forum indexes on the top left and helpful links below that, the welcome messages and general discussions right in the middle, and then notifications and top participants on the right. Personally I feel the top participants module should be a lower priority, but that's a minor complaint. It's ironic to note that many of the current top participants are some of the biggest critics of the changes - I guess it wasn't the death of the community they were predicting it to be ;-) If you scroll further down, you'll see most recent forum activity on the left, and a tag cloud on the right. I'm glad they kept recent activity from the old forums, and I'm extremely happy to see the tag cloud being added. The old forums had an almost completely useless search function, and if a tag cloud makes it any easier to find something you're interested in then I'm all for it.

Surfing the boards and making a few posts, I see a lot of potential. For now you can only put text in your auto-signature (that's due to change in the near future), which results in some unfortunate-looking signatures with lengthy URL link text just pasted in. Quick tip for forum members who want to link to a long/ugly URL (like a link to their merchandisse on XStreet)... use a URL shortening service like TinyURL! Readers/customers are more likely to copy/paste text into their browser window if it's short and painless. Creating/editing posts seems more friendly than on the old boards, you can add tags to your profile, and it looks like we'll soon get the chance to have our own blogs. And when you consider that all this is integrated within the main SL site, I think there's a lot of potential for community-building ahead. Not just customers reaching designers, but people from all walks (and flights) of SL connecting with each other. Sure, we can do that to a limited degree now through the use of random sites like LiveJournal, Ning, WordPress, Blogger, and the like... but this is something that's SL-specific, it's common to all SL residents, and you already have a member login (since it's the same thing you log into SL with). Then when you combine that with a more customized dashboard main page (where you can arrange modules the way you want them, and customize your view to your tasts), you've really got something interesting going on.

While part of me wants to see all these new features turned on and hurry up so we can all get to the next level, I'm glad LL is going in phased rollouts. Take a few big steps, then step back and see how everything's running, and make minor fixes and course corrections as necessary. Many thanks to Pink Linden, Collosus Linden, and all the other LL team members involved in teh XStreet upgrades.

Tags: SL, XStreet

The end of what seems like a long day, and there's a kitten sitting in a beer box. What's she trying to say?

It's been a long several days for me - filled with back end projects. While it's not as exciting as something like skydiving on the moon or going to parties with monkeys, I've been enjoying myself. Testing is underway on a few different projects, and while I can't discuss specifics, I can say that everything has been going well.

The vendor machines in the stores have been getting updatd as well. Hippo Technologies released an update to their vending system that, among other things, improves communications. While their vendors have performed well for us, I'm all for reducing lag and fewer delivery problems. I've wandered to most of our locations to update and test each vendor, and also spent some time in the studio working out a revision to one of my own customized vendors. Maybe soon I'll be ready to pull the trigger on the remodel of the main store in New Babbage.

Maybe she wants me to ship her somewhere? No, that's not it...

I've been working on the site quite a bit lately, too. I suppose it's the nature of the internet, a never-ending project with limitless possibilities and limitless to-do lists. Progess!

BlakOpal finished a new gown that she's been working on for the longest time, and I was able to get that one into the shoppe and on XStreet last night. It's a really fun piece, I love the flow of the garment. To show that part off a bit, she even shot a short video over in Steelhead Shanghai - you can check out the dress and the video here.

Maybe she's thirsty? Why that's silly - not only is her water dish full, but she doesn't even like that brand!

We've also been tinkering around with a bunch of ideas for Burning Life, and I believe our theme camp application has been sent in already. My fingers are crossed, can't wait until we hear back. Between that and a few other fun build ideas, I only wish I had more time and energy available for playing with prims.

The last couple days have been crazy with notecards. Maybe it's me, but it really seems like something happened in the last couple weeks, because I'm getting more notecard/offers than ever before. Some of them are great, but an increasing number are just not even remotely a good fit. Hopefully it will pass.

Oh wait, I get it. She wants ME to knock off for the day and get myself a drink! The cat's a genius!

Tags: Site, Shoppe, SL, RL, Kitten, Beer, Notecards, Burning Life

Following BlakOpal's lead in a post on her blog, I figured a post covering some of the software tools that I use is in order.

Let's start off with the hardware. The heart of it all is an Apple MacBook Pro. That plugs into and accesses an assortment of hardware - on the audio side I use an Akai APC40 and M-Audio Ozone controller, and run sound from the machine to an M-Audio FastTrack Pro and into a Pioneer DJM-3000 mixer, which in turn goes out to the Crown Amplifier and Bag End Speakers. Headphones are Sony. Storage-wise we have a number of external drives for storing archived projects, and use an Apple Time Capsule for combination wifi-access and wireless backup. That lets us get to the files on any of the drives or on any of the computers easily and wirelessly, as well as handles automated backups of both our computers. Input wise, we have a few different still and video cameras, an old (but still awesome) Wacom Intuos tablet (though BlakOpal uses it more than I do), an Apple Wireless Mouse (for when I need 3-button control), and a 3D Connexion Space Navigator that BlakOpal and I have been sharing (I keep wanting to use it more and more, it might be time to get a second one soon).

For audio software, I use Apple's Logic 9 Studio and Ableton Live 8 Suite, along with a handful of custom plugins, racks, and effects. Though I don't do any kind of SL DJ'ing, I use Rogue Amoeba's Nicecast when I need to stream/broadcast music.

In the world of video/graphics software, I use Adobe's Creative Suite 4. While the Production Premium edition has me covered for just about everything I'd ever need, primarily I spend my time with Adobe Photoshop CS4 Extended, along with a few custom plugins and fonts. I also use Apple's Final Cut Studio, and am very much looking forward to installing and working with the new version. I've got Apple's Aperture, but for SL purposes I've been using iPhoto '09 for managing my photo library.

In the miscellaneous applications department, I now use Realmac Software's RapidWeaver (along with an assortment of plugins) for site development, Apple iWork '09 for my word processing and spreadsheet needs, and TextEdit handles the job with simple text and those unfortunate moments where I need to write code manually. We also use the Mobile Me service, which does a great job of helping to keep everything synchronized and accessible from just about anyplace we'd need.

Tags: SL, Software

Monday seems like it was just moments ago. But here we are, at the week's end. Having gotten the more pressing matters of getting the flagship stores updated and tended to, I'm happily playing with some prims and working out some ideas for new structures.

I've had a couple interesting conversations this week regarding the notion of "steampunk music." While most RL friends I talked to agree the whole idea is ludicrous ("it's more of a visual art style... is there impressionist music too?"), SL friends have some specific ideas. While I wouldn't dispute that Abney Park and the like are steampunk bands, I think the moniker fits because steampunk is their visual style as well. Otherwise, people seemed to have flocked to a few misguided notions that circus/cabaret music is the official sound of steampunk. *shudders* No offense to Nick Cave and the like it's just not my cup of tea.

Personally I've enjoyed exploring different sounds and styles as I've explored the steamlands in Second Life. I've been meaning to do some experimenting and toying around with video for the last several weeks, perhaps I'll play around with a few different soundtracks and see how things come together in the cutting room. *Adds to the ever-growing to-do list*

Moving on, I have mixed feelings regarding all the posts and live streams coming out of this year's Burning Man arts festival. On one hand, everyone should be free to do what they want. Even if that means playing with web cams and removing yourself from the event to sort through and process and then post your pictures ahead of everyone else. But on the other hand, a big part of the event's appeal is its isolation. Going to a faraway place, disconnected from the rest of the world, and seeing what happens. I'm still very interested in returning to the playa in 2010, though with every live feed link I see that interest wanes just a little bit. I'm not exactly sure why, but we'll see how that plays out over the next eleven months.

In the nearer term, BlakOpal and I are excited about Burning Life. The event doesn't happen until October, but we've been tossing around ideas for a while and are about to start more serious planning. Beyond that, we're also looking at another Gothic Fashion Fair event, though juggling the SL events with our RL travel plans this fall will be a bit of a challenge. Should be fun :-)

Tags: SL, RL, Steampunk, Music, Burning Man, Burning Life

Perhaps it's sleep deprivation (less than 5 hours since 7am SLT on Friday), perhaps it's residual fun and excitement regarding Doctor Obolensky's Evil Party at the observatory... but a villainous laugh is often in order.

Lost in the mania of new site design, I very nearly altogether missed the opening of Steelhead Shanghai on Friday night. As it was I arrived late and didn't get a single photograph from the event. Still, good fun and such a beautiful space. Cheers to Lunar, Tensai, and all our new neighbors over there!

Saturday involved all kinds of RL fun with brunch and a farmer's market adventure, followed up by the Steampunk/Cyberpunk Festival's masquerade ball. Good fun, and I snapped a few pictures.

Instead of taking my time, excitement got the better part of my senses and I spent much of the last several days pulling together the new site. Most of Friday night and all of Saturday night were sacrificed.

Sunday has been a bit of a challenge. What with being out of steam (pun intended), running around helping friends with last minute emergencies before they head off into the desert, and sorting out a few technical issues, I had trouble keeping up at the Evil Party. But man, was it a great time - fun event, evil plots, creative dress by all in attendance, and wonderful tunes courtesy of the Evil Duke of Argylle (archduke?). While I did miss a few spots here and there, I did manage to snap a few great pics.

Tags: Site, SL, RL, Steelhead Shanghai, Steampunk Festival, Evil Party

Welcome to this space, and the BlakOpal Designs site, version 3.0. It seems fitting to start with a bit of history.

While this site has only been in the production stage for the last week or so, it's been in the pre-production stage in my head for the last six months or so. Coming from a designer's background and having made my first web site back in 1994, the idea of having a web site supporting our SL adventures seemed obvious. We had hosting space available, and so early in the new year I built the first version of the site.

It started as a bit of an experiment, using the idea of a site for our SL presence and putting Apple's iWeb '09 to use and get firsthand experience of what the application can do and its ease-of-use. FYI, it's a great application that's perfectly suited for personal web sites, blogs, and basic podcasting.

We were both surprised and deeply honored at the success of BlakOpal Designs in Second Life, and with the success of the shoppe it felt appropriate to take the next step with the site. In the spring the 2nd revision of the site was born, living on the newly minted www.blakopal.com domain name. It's a strange twist, since BlakOpal Designs is a RL entity - we've been creating wearable art in one form or another for more than three years - but it took something like SL to get us off our butts and register the domain.

It was early in the planning stages for the second revision that I started planning this version of the site. While iWeb is great, it does have its limitations. But as often happens in the world BlakOpal and I live in, we've been juggling a number of different projects. Testing this and that, experimenting with different ideas and designs, and talking through different possibilities. Several conversations with developers later, and after testing new versions and squaring away an assortment of plugins.... here we are.

My goal is a site that not only showcases our virtual products, but also helps us show what we can do and experience in Second Life. Something that might be enjoyable to both our wonderful customers, as well as our amazing RL friends who scratch their heads and wonder what it is BlakOpal and I are doing with so much of our spare time these days. All of the standard internet disclaimers apply, of course. Pardon the dust, new (and sometimes unexpected) things are happening all the time. While there are many things I still want to add or include on the site, you have to start somewhere. :-)

Tags: Site, Shoppe, SL, iWeb