When worlds collide

During my explorations of Second Life, I am finding myself drawn ever more frequently to the Independent State of Caledon, which is a growing group of sims that have a broadly Victorian/steampunk theme – the image above shows a view of Caledon SteamSkyCity from a nearby airship mooring pylon, with me in the foreground, dressed appropriately. I recently had Citizenship of Caledon conferred upon me by ‘The Guvnah’, which I am very pleased about, especially as I am not (yet) a Caledon resident; and my name is on the list to qualify for a parcel in one of the new sims.

I’ve mentioned steampunk before – see this Wikipedia entry which describes it as ‘a subgenre of fantasy and speculative fiction which came into prominence in the 1980s and early 1990s. The term denotes works set in an era or world where steam power is still widely used—usually the 19th century, and often set in Victorian era England—but with prominent elements of either science fiction or fantasy, such as fictional technological inventions like those found in the works of H. G. Wells, or real technological developments like the computer occurring at an earlier date. Other examples of steampunk contain alternate history-style presentations of “the path not taken” of such technology as dirigibles or analog computers…’ Mmmm, lovely.

I’ve enjoyed books in this genre for years, notably Keith Roberts’ amazing Pavane and its related Chalk Giants, and others. More recently I devoured Philip Pullman’s remarkable trilogy, His Dark Materials, which was quite marvellous and unputdownable. Pullman is another one of these writers who, like Alan Garner (The Owl Service, Red Shift, Thursbitch etc) is officially supposed to be a children’s writer, but whose work has something for people of all ages.

His Dark Materials is definitely in the genre: much of the action takes place in an alternate world with plenty of steampunk features, and especially in and around a slightly altered version of Oxford.

The books have been turned into a movie, The Golden Compass, due for release in early December. And from the trailer it looks as if it has been done extremely well (see the screen grab from the trailer above).

One of the things about people in heroine Lyra’s world is that their souls are external entities that take the form of a creature of the opposite sex to their human counterpart, referred to as a Dæmon, and on the movie website you can answer a questionnaire and see what your Dæmon is. You can then put a bit of code in your blog entry to allow your friends to check it out and see if they think it’s appropriate for you or not – and just as a child’s Dæmon can change its form but settles on a fixed form in adulthood, so you and your friends have 12 days to decide whether or not the Daemon suits you. Mine is a female tiger by the name of Marchestra.

Changing house

No, it’s not the name of another tedious reality show… but one of the joys of Second Life.

When I first bought land in SL, a nice hillside facing the rising sun, I put a little house up, based on an 18th century Cornish pump-house. That area eventually became surrounded by noisy casinos and commercial establishments, so I bought some land I noticed was available one day on an island near my friend Lily’s place.

Once there, I put up a house rather like a big version of what I had before. It was very economical on prims, which is nice (especially as I used up such a lot of them on the Nautilus floating up above) but a touch boxy and it also had a bunch of space I didn’t really use very much. So I decided to look for something a bit more interesting.

I suppose it’s something to do with having that enormous airship overhead, but I’ve been going through a kind of Victorian period in SL, and spending a lot of time hanging out in Caledon, which is really good fun – Victorian with some excellent steam-driven and early electrical tech – the genre known as steampunk. I picked up a few Victorian outfits such as the one shown here (click on the thumbnail for a better view) and, dare I say, several neo-Goth ones from another part of the world too.

Thus I decided to look around and see what offerings were available on the housing front. I was sorely tempted by an enormous castle with towers on all four corners and an astronomical dome and telescope on top, all driven by various aetheric machinery, but I decided against it – the neighbours might have objected (see below).

Eventually I went for a rather elegant mansion on two and a bit storeys, Britannia House (and, because of its name as much as anything, I put a flag on top), shown at the top of the page from the front (ocean side). It’s actually quite a lot smaller than my old place in terms of footprint, but it is rather cosy. There are two big rooms on the South end of the house (to the left as you look from the front), where I have a living room downstairs and bedroom upstairs, while at the other end are two long rooms: the lower one I have set up as a recording studio with surround speakers, and upstairs I call the ballroom, with a Musical Alchemy piano and most of my dance poseball collection.

A friend of mine came over and said she thought I would have had a rather more Goth-inspired place than this. Hmmm. It had more than crossed my mind. I thought the majority of Gothic places I had seen, however, were a bit too big, and a bit too dark. (I mean, I’m into magick but only the nice kind.) However… I had seen a very impressive Sorceror’s Tower – 6 stories high and just 21 prims (rather important at this point), got one and put it on the property round the back of the house.

Hmmm. Impressive, all right, with incredible views and astonishingly detailed. But I wasn’t sure. I decided to sleep on it and came back the next day. Looking at it again, it was too much. It was evidently also too much for the neighbours, who had already put up a storey-high wall of pseudo-foliage to stop them seeing my previous house. Now the wall was three storeys high and ugly as hell. The tower had to go. I de-rezzed it and wrote to the owner of my neighbours’ place and apologised, hoping she’d take down the wall. A little later her friend IM’d me to ask about the tower and I told her that it had gone. And next morning not just the extra storeys but all the wall of foliage next door had gone. And I now have a nice relationship with next door (next door the other way is already a friend).

I have a lot more room around the house now – the house itself occupies more prims but has a smaller footprint than the last one, mainly I presume because of the staircases – so I hunted all over the place for a big, impressive, ancient tree to put in the back yard where the tower had been. I’d seen the one I wanted and it came from Relic – based on a remarkable island modelled in extraordinary detail – and after a great deal of hunting around found, and bought, one. Here is a view of the rear of the house showing it.

It had taken me a couple of days to get it all fixed up – taking the contents of the old house back into inventory, deleting the house and erecting a new one, and then re-rezzing and repositioning the contents… but it’s very nice as you can see, and will do for the time being – unless that astronomer’s castle keeps sticking in my mind…

LOVERUSH VIDEO

Here is the new radio edit for Loverush.

I made this using a MACBOOK PRO and it costs me 10’s of thousands and years and years to make. SL thousands and SL years

another two fingers up to the coorporates of this world who think they rule the school.

Talk to Me

Second Life Voice has arrived!

Yesterday morning KFH Pooraka and I sat down at her picnic table for a chat. Only this time we actually talked in Real Life. It was amazing! I’m not sure how I feel about have actual voice chat with complete strangers but for friends it takes Second Life to a new level.

The Voice feature is only available right now in the First Look Viewer, so go to www.secondlife.com and at the bottom of the page is “download” where you will find the First Look Viewer. Not every SIM has voice yet either but Kirsty’s land has it and Magnatune has it. My private islands don’t yet but I’m sure they will convert the servers to it soon.

I’m looking forward to “talking” to all of you soon!

New video for Loverush

Hey there,

Pooraka here

Just to say the new video for LOVERUSH is now finished – the extended version. I used SECOND LIFE to make the video and my Macbook pro. Thanks to all the extras who took part, especially Sir Herman Bingyi, and Janford Flax and Loverush Penell. special thanks to extra camera man Nimrod wayne.

You can see the video by going into world and typing ‘London Trance Club in search.

ty

KFH x