Dolmere Talamasca - Second Life "resident"

Hey there readers. Yesterday's celebration went off pretty well all things considered. All the music accompanying the game content was wonderful and so very appreciated.

There were a few minor annoyances on the implementation side which hopefully did not bleed over for the audience to see. The most noticable problem was a snafu with our stream setup which caused Jeff Tully to start his set late after some dead air. Luckily Jeff did get to play some tunes for us and hopefully got some good tips for his time, although he only performed about half a set. Capos Calderwood started a little late to make room for Jeff and then Capos' SL client did one of those lovely live crashes where it looks like you're still connected.

I took some screen shots before the event started which I'll share here. Once the actual show started I was way too busy trying to keep things moving along to take any more though. If you took some or know of someone who did please pass them along in-world or post the URL here in comments.

Sundays are normally pretty taxing with my hosting duties, but last night was a real drain indeed. I was quite pleased with the whole night which makes it all worth it.

Here is a view of the new stage floor. Mera's idea for the build pads was to lay it out like a blueprint. That fits in with the game premise so nicely, fitting and functional. It's brighter and easier to read now compared to the old set.

Here is a view of the new controller board. I can't thank Mera Pixel enough for the hard work she put in to making this new build. It's beautiful and perfect, just like Mera. She even went so far as to convert most of the contestant seats into single prim paint cans (a texture trick to make the lid on top look like a second prim). A few other seats are also single prim paint cans, but look like they are upside down and they have an extra prim for their paint lid set off to the side.

The new audience stands are easier to access and sit on now. The only problem is an SL related one - you must walk all the way into Isabel to sit down. The region crossing is a bit easier now but you still get the message that you cannot sit down because the seat is in a different region than you message pretty often - you just need to then step forward a bit and try again. However, you can now walk up the ramp from Isabel and bank a sharp left to sit thought first crossing into Wingo and suffering the border crossing heebie jeebedies like you did before.
(All hail the New York giants - oy vay everybody.).

A while back I had gone to see Jaycatt and Frogg perform a show at the RoC I do believe - it was one of those "nude night" event thingies. Jaycatt and Frogg went with their usual avatars but undressed by removing their shirts! Woot! Up on stage after their set was "lofthesedazimgonnacutuin2ltlpc Rust". It's the longest first name I've seen for any resident. He may be the only person I've seen, certainly the only one I remember, where his name tag in-world is split onto two lines of text. Because his name starts with "loft" folks sometimes refer to him as "lofty" or some such, which on the surface seems to make sense. However, if you look closer his name is actually a reference to a Pink Floyd song. The title of the song is "One of These Days" and it was the first track from the Meddle album.

"Meddle also included the atmospheric "One of These Days" [...], a concert favourite featuring Nick Mason's menacing one-line vocal ("One of these days, I'm going to cut you into little pieces"), distorted and bluesy slide guitar, and a melody that at one point segues into a throbbing synthetic pulse quoting the theme tune of the cult classic science fiction television show Doctor Who."

On Sunday prior to the big celebration I joined Sumar to watch Jaycatt play a live set at the RoC club. When I got there Jaycatt was playing a rare cover song that he sings on. I cannot recall the song now of course... poo. Mr. Rust was in the crowd enjoying the show along with the rest of us. I mentioned that I had not seen OneOf perform recently and would love to catch another set. He offered to jump into an impromptu set at the RoC after Jaycatt - which was an awesome idea. However, I had to pop out to catch what I could of the first FFRC meeting in a while. By the time I returned the crowd was gone. What I missed was that Mr. Rust was beaten to the streaming feed and did not get a chance to play. Well, we can't have that! Once I heard he was willing to play and unable to find a stream I offered to have him come over and play a pre-show set for the Shelter!

Luckily, he agreed to come play. Luckily for several reasons. Thanks to Mr. Rust and Mera Pixel we were able to get some streaming feed issues worked out before the big show (OK, OK - issues which came back - but at least we had identified the issue earlier)

Mr. Rust played from about 3PM or so right up until Mel's set and the game started at 4:30PM SLT. Here is a pic of Mr. Rust entertaining the gathering and growing crowd at the Shelter.

Another shot of Lofty, One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces, Rust.

The Building Shelter game consists of four 15 minute build/vote rounds. Since Reina and Coal were being added as hosts capable of running the game we decided to each host a round. I took the first one followed by Coal, followed by Reina, and finally Mera. Each of us chose our own theme to have contestants build. Coal and Reina were added as alternates in case Mera or I cannot host a regularly scheduled game and need someone to help keep things on track. They all did a wonderful job of hosting as I expected - these are quality people and wonderful friends to have.

On another note, I had logged into SL early in the day. I was excited about the big event. I was overjoyed with the idea that five musicians had agreed to bring their own personal live music experience to my game show audience. Dare I say my friends agreed to play for my friends? To pass the time I decided to create a halloween costume for myself. I've had the idea all month but did not have the compulsion to see it through until yesterday morning.

Here you can see me enjoying the music stream. That's right - I'm a human! I'm so very human, please accept me into your clique and meetings, fellow human types. My prim baby is a human as well, see?

Of course being a human is difficult. Prim baby and I have to look at the world through these little cardboard holes I cutout with a plastic scissors.

One common question all day was "whose face is that on the mask?" The story I concocted is that they are the first two victims to fall prey to me once I became an undead. I ripped their faces off and stored them in a freezer until I could find a good display such as these cardboard masks. A google images search may have also been involved.

I had about a dozen other faces, including a dalmatian, ready to upload but I decided against overloading the mask with textures. I briefly considered taking snapshots of the basic avatar faces as well. However, a single victim's face for me and one for prim baby works perfectly fine.