Not a morning person

Most days i get up, spring from my bed, and welcome the world with a grrrr. I have always somewhat envied those who spring from their bed and can smile and welcome the fresh day. Even though i live in paradise and have the best job i can imagine - it seems i am just not a morning person.
To make up for it... i work til very late at night... well actually early morning - 3-4am is the norm, and try to skip much of the morning (i never do succeed - arising usually 5 hrs later).

Some days something will happen to change my mood... yesterday my first IM of the day was a person accusing me of being a texture thief :(
 I do not know why i bothered to waste my time attempting to prove i wasn't. It was obvious the person did not know, had not done their homework, and was full of less than complimentary accusations and lies. Even trying to get him/her to tell me the name of the tree they were looking at (accusing me of stealing) was 20 lines of back n forth..and of course they were hiding behind an alt. 30 mins later i had asked the person to do the right thing and report their suspicions to the people who they claimed owned the texture (they were completely wrong) and then muted so he/she could not ruin my day completely

Then there is this morning... My first emails of the day inform me someone has posted a review of my buddha statue... so being a dutiful creator, i venture onto the wild world wide web to check it out and read this...

"I love this sculpture! It was in Nemmers whenI moved there and was the reason I bought my lot there. When the owner of the statue left, I bought one myself and made a park for it. Many visitors come and is is a major attraction at Nemmers .. I really believe it inspired other residents of the neighborhood to make their places beautiful too. You can rez this very large if you like, and very easy on the prim count!"

and a 5 star rating too!

So now i am sitting in their very pretty and relaxing park at Nemmers, admiring Butterpaw's beautiful  handiwork and drinking my first coffee of the day (a necessity to ease my mornings).

In moments like this I know with certainty i have the best job in the world :)

To go see Butterpaw's Garden click here

The Tempest finishes it's run

:( Sadly the A.R.T's production of the Tempest has finished it's run. I had to increase the sim limit to fit all the audience in.. and IMHO it was our best performance yet - although some of the others were very close. Our audience seemed very enthused at the end, and again many donated large tips.

I have mixed feelings about the demise... a lot of hardwork over almost 3 months went into 6 performances, however we have all the sets and practiced actors and can always perform it again :)

Sad to see it go... and yet glad to move on to other things.

MadameThespian posted some images from the show - great pics!

A.R.T. The Tempest Second Life by MadameThespian Underhill Screen shots from Avatar Repertory Theater's production of "The Tempest" in Second Life. View Album

Remember the building blocks of childhood?

Check this amazing new way to see and manipulate information...it's a bit boring for 30 secs...then wow. They're calling em Siftables

Shakespeare in Second Life

One of the many projects i am involved in is the Avatar Repertory Theatre… basically a company of actors/performers/enthusiasts pushing the boundaries of performances in Second Life. Our latest production is Shakespeare’s The Tempest.

ART presents Shakespeare's The Tempest

Now i know what you’re thinking…it’s either amateur dramatics ewwwwww…or (very rarely) Shakespeare yayyyy. To be honest, if you had said to me “you’re gonna be doing amateur dramatics in a year” i woulda laughed you outta the room. Long story how i got involved but essentially i started by creating a couple of props for a couple of plays ( a car and some seating)..and it escalated from there. Now i find myself doing Shakespeare

Well not ‘doing’, so much as set and props design, effects, lighting and doing a lot of click to trigger effects during the performance. Also some ticketing, marketing, etc etc.

The set of The Tempest performances

Now i know i should be concentrating on raising my income in SL, however its a chance to take time out from the purely commercial, give something back to SL, and meet some really great/cool people. We number among our troupe, professional actors, an ex-opera singer, writers, producers, professors, musicians, DJs, a senior Linden (in his alt disguise), and lil ol me

Trinculo	Caliban	Arial in one of her costumes	Antonio
Alonso	Prospero	Stephano	Miranda
	Ferdinand	Gonzalo

Did i mention we decided to do it in Steampunk theme?
Or that we have a Dragon and a Furry as well? In an off-the-cuff moment i described it as “pre-apocolyptic post-victorian furry steampunk” a quote which has been used since on all press releases and a few blogs :/

I’m not that into Shakespeare (although i recognise the role he has played in our literary history) however, watching this play over and over for a couple of months now (rehearsals and this weeks performances) has been extremely interesting. I have learnt many things, including that a good actors performance can really transcend the wordiness and obscure terms that are Shakespeare, and really make the story come alive. And we have some terrific actors…
(in alphabetical order): Ada Radius, Dolgoruky Umarov, Em Jannings, Joff Fassnacht, JubJub Forder, Kayden Oconnell, MadameThespian Underhill, Mickie Nickolaidis, Persephone Phoenix, Prospero Frobozz, Rowan Shamroy, Sodovan Torok, Suzy Yue, and Thundergas Menges.

The Figurehead on the ship

And then there’s the technical aspects that fascinate me.
We bring actors and audience together from all over the world, we put then in one place, we do a live performance complete with special effects (usually reserved for post production on movies ) and we cope with the vagaries of technology like..actors computers crashing.. suddenly slow internet connections..voice dropping out… the challenges of set design with limited textures and objects to lower risk of the dreaded ‘lag’… audience doing the unexpected (like triggering doors on the set or suddenly flying right between actors) and many more aspects too numerous to mention.

The Tempest Ship - We break and sink it in the opening scene

A lot of work, a lot of testing, a lot of time, and a lot of thought go into making it work…but we do… and judging from the audience comments - we do it very well.

Warning: Marketing blurb ahead!

The Tempest, is a story of love, deceit and redemption… come witness this classic tale brought to life - Steampunk Shakespeare like you have never seen before!!!
If you are interested in attending the last performances ..contact JubJub Forder, or Ada Radius inside SecondLife

Follow up to the DMCA - a reply from the Lindens

Yesterday i sent a reply to the lindens regarding their comment on the DMCA which contained the following…

…my DMCA contained the specific name and location co-ordinates and i also supplied screenshot via AR the same Hour.These are the lines in my DMCA faxed to you…
—————-
The allegedly infringing work/s I am referring to has/have the following
details (name followed by co-ordinates )

Js Buddha - Rusty    at Utopia Islands North (81, 222, 21)

The AV mentioned was removed (i presume for other reasons) and the buddha statue sat there for 4 days for sale… and after filing another AR as well and getting no response…  i asked the owners of the rented plot to remove it to prevent it continuing to be sold.

 today they replied..

“In addition to identifying the allegedly infringing material, your DMCA notification must also identify the material that you own.
Please submit an updated DMCA notification that includes a region name, coordinates, image, or other information sufficient to locate the material that you own.”

Its now obvious they don’t bother reading the emails or DMCA’s  they receive.
I had Ared the item - clearly indicating the stolen content (its part of the AR popup to click and ID the object).
I had identified the name of the object, region and co-ordinates in the faxed DMCA
I had again AR’ed the object 4 days later
I had again identified the object in my reply email (see text above) 
AND i had told them the object had been removed!!!

Dunno what’s going on in Linden land..perhaps they employ people that cannot read english 

Yet another DMCA

Got IM’ed a few days ago by a couple of guys letting me know that my rusty buddha had been copybotted and was displayed on one of their renters land. How did they know to IM me? They had bought the same buddha a few weeks earlier and the renters version did not have me as the creator.

Judge for yourself - do you think they copied from mine?

It was the most obvious copy i have ever seen, more fool me for thinking that such an obvious item would not be copied

So… i follow the Lindens DMCA process… filed an Abuse Report and then faxed off my DMCA claim to them within the hour with details of the thiefs names, position and name of item etc.
Day One: nothing done
Day Two: nothing done
Day Three: nothing done, but i look up the names and they are no longer in the database.
Day Four: nothing done - buddha still there …BUT..the guys who told me originally of the theft, IM me again saying the thief has returned under a new alt..and asked them to return anything on the land to him cheeky bs’td. So i filed another Abuse Report indicating the banned person had reappeared under a new alt = Matthias Dexler (not that it will acoomplish anything).

So now it’s SIX days later, and the Lindens Email me this…

“After having reviewed your notification, Linden Lab was unable to act on your notification because: You did not provide information reasonably sufficient to identify the copyrighted work(s) that you claim to have been infringed. Specifically, you did not provide a region name, coordinates, images, or other information sufficient to locate the material that you claim to be infringed upon.”

Ok, so i provide name of thief, thiefs alt, region, co-ordinates, name of object and its not enough! WTF???
I go back to the land..buddha gone…i IM the land owners (the guys who told me) they had removed it yesterday to re-rent the land to someone else and ’cause they didn’t like the buddha being stolen and for sale. Why didn’t we do that in that first place i hear you ask? Cause to get rid of thieves in Second Life… you must provide evidence.

The DIGITAL MILLENNIUM COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1998 states that “Upon receiving proper notification of claimed infringement, the provider must expeditiously take down or block access to the material.”

6 days is expeditiously? since when?

And i have one more point to make…. i asked for the following…

“I wish all instances of the infringing sculpt maps, textures and the Buddha statue be removed from the sim named above and from Badkill Heron’s, Mattis Sparta’s, suppe Burnstein’s, and Erich23 Kaestner’s inventories”….

basically ’cause while those people still have the buddha..they can still sell my stolen property. The Lindens don’t do that..they simply remove the displayed item..leaving the thief to just rezz it again if they choose..and then i have to track it and file again.

BUT i believe the Lindens violate the DMCA act by not removing it from inventories..it clearly says “..block access..” and they fail to do that. People have pointed this out to them before..but it will take someone suing them to force them into it I suspect…but when someone sues, and eventually they will..it will open a huge can of worms for them..and may result in the whole system being sued out of existence. There is so much copyright theft in there its just not funny..just no-one has seriously forced the issue thus far. Personally if i was the Lindens i would cover my ass anyway i could.

Oh and the names of the AVs?… Matti Sparta owner, Badkill Heron creator (thief) have both been banned (but not due to my DMCA) and now he has returned as Matthias Dexler.

Keep Matthias Dexler off your land..he has copybot and will use it.

First Post :)

tis my first blog ever…funny you’d think with 8 yrs as pro website designer and being a full time virtual content creator (in Second Life) i would have done this sooner.