Google+ Adventures of a Southern Gentleman: February 2008

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Cool Second Life Machinima and Videos

After Yxes passed on a link to a very nicely done Second Life Machinima today through Twitter, I thought that it'd be good to do a blog post highlighting some of my favorites that I've come across.

First, here is the link to the one that prompted this podcast, while I'm not sure I agree with the politics of this Paulo Casaca, the video is pretty cool looking. Unfortunately, I only have the link to the file so clicking on the link will bring it up in a player.

http://folha.eu/paulocasacafinal.wmv




This next video is a fantastic example of the building possibilities in Second Life.

The making of Suzanne Vega's Second Life Guitar






If you plan on having a picnic, watch out....

Ants in Second Life






I figured, since we saw the making of the guitar, might as well see it being used as well...

The Infinite Mind & Suzanne Vega "The Queen & The Soldier"





Now this is a cool use of sculpties....

Sculpty Earth demo with Dynamic Weather






This is just plain cool stuff......there is just so much potential with Second Life, it's just amazing.

Second Life as a Platform for Augmented Reality





I'm sure everyone's seen this one already, but it's really cool.

Watch the World(s) (Creation of Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night in Second Life)






Here's one on Architecture in Second Life






Pretty cool music video....

Windmills of your Mind







And last but not least, a video of Stuart Warf blowing something up. Can't have a blog post on this subject without Stuart blowing something up, now can we?

Podmafia Club Funeral








And though it would be a blog post all by itself, I want to at least mention the great video tutorials that Torley Linden has done. They are both helpful and entertaining, you can find them at the link below.

http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Video_Tutorials





These are just a few examples, just go and do a search on Google Video
for Second Life and you'll get videos galore (on both YouTube and Google Video), many of them very interesting and entertaining.

Sunday, February 17, 2008

Random Adventures

Don't have a specific topic for this blog post, I'm kinda down on Second Life and life in general, not very motivated to do anything in SL which doesn't make for decent blog posts.

But, I don't want to just let the blog die a quiet death so soon after starting it so I thought I'd at least share a few links to places I've found in the past during my sojourn in Second Life.

So here it goes......

The Blarney Stone Irish Bar - In the Dublin sim, a great little Irish bar with stuff going on all the time. And check out the entire Dublin sim, which is a reproduction of the city of Dublin in Ireland, it's a pretty nice build.

Solomon Sea - a nice little beach area, with waves and fireworks, I've seen folks windsurfing and sailing here and there are places to just sit and relax.

Dinosaurs Park - Kind of a Jurassic Park type place.

Lonely Yak Texas Roadhouse - a quaint little place run by Rocky and Jane, a place for yak lovers to get together and talk yak's. Good music and dancing too.

Kilby's Military Outfitters - Great place to buy nice dress military uniforms and accessories

Virtual Starry Night - Vincent's Second Life - Exhibition of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings

Odyssey Exhibit - Kind of an interactive, modern art exhibit with exhibits you can interact with in unique ways. Appears to be in the middle of a change of exhibits at the moment, though the DNA sequencer that is there now is neat. I would recommend saving this link and revisiting it in a couple weeks once they get everything set up.

SL Historical Museum - A museum covering the history of Second Life, if you want to see what it was like when it all started and how it's progressed over the years, this is a fantastic place to visit.

Silk Waters Mountain - An oriental themed village, either Japanese or Chinese but I'm not sure which. Just a cute, restful little spot. Themed residential area, I believe, very nicely done.

Bits and Bobs Main Store - If you need dance balls or other animations, this is one of the best places to get them. The majority of the really good couples dance balls out there are from this place.

Renaissance Island - Managed by the Alliance Library System, it's set in Tudor/Elizabethan, England and is according to the covenant "it is an immersive, learning, living history sim populated by aficionados of the period, educators, and students. Many of the citizens speak the dialect of the day and are attired in period clothing."

New Paris - As the name implies, a sim in the theme of Paris, France.

ULURU - In the Billabong sim and next door to The Pond sim, this is the famous Australian red rock. Wander around this and all the neighboring sims to see many of the famous Aussie sites. There are quite a few sims here (all prefixed with Pond) so plan on spending some time getting to see all the stuff.

International Spaceflight Museum - If you love NASA and the history of space flight, rockets, and such then you just gotta visit this place. Spanning several sims, they have reproductions of *every* rocket that was ever built, I think. It's a really cool place to visit and an incredible build. And while you're there, bring up the map and zoom out a little, there are a whole bunch of science related sims all clustered together here.

Bringing up the map and zooming out, scrolling around, is something I always recommend doing everywhere you go, because you can find the most fantastic places this way that you'd otherwise not find.

Nearby the Space Museum there is a series of sims called Second Earth, not sure what they're intended to be used for but I have a suspicion. Inside a big blue ball, I found this http://slurl.com/secondlife/Second%20Earth%201/110/132/129 which appears to be a sculptie map of the earth, or a partial one. Very neat. I suspect that someday there'll be a sculptie representation of the entire planet in SL.

Broadway Live Island - Broadway, Times Square

Chi - An oriental garden/meditation place, with volcano.

The Great Second Life Railway - I picked it up at the Slate Station there's a kiosk there with information on the railway but I'm not sure if it's even actively maintained any longer. I found the trolley derailed off the side, but when I sat on it after a few clicks it started chugging along. The transitions between sims in some areas is a bit rough, but it's pretty cool. There are several stations along the way and you can pick up the trolley anywhere along the way, assuming it's running and not crashed, so wait a bit and if you don't see it come along just follow the tracks a bit and you may find it derailed, but you can get it going again by sitting on it and clicking.

Ok, for short post with no subject, this turned into a bit of an adventure as I revisited old links in my Landmarks folder and shared them here with you. I hope you found something interesting here, maybe next week I can pick up where I left off and revisit some of the other links I've accumulated over my time in Second Life.