New avatar: Norman Schwitzkopf

People who came to visit me at Glidden the last couple of days were a bit puzzled to see me standing in the middle of a huge number of weapons. Don't worry, I haven't joined the NRA and I'm still your treehugging and peaceloving Tooter.
I was making Norman Schwitzkopf (or 'The Negotiator' as Dingle Doigts calls him); an avatar made up entirely of guns, revolvers, pistols, grenades and rpg's.
This conflict manager will quickly settle any arguement.

Get ready to spread democracy across the grid and yours at my shop in Oculea for L$ 250

New avatar: Prvoky

Prvoky is a Paramecium Aurelia. It's transparant, and it has flexy hairs and mouths all over. How sexy is that heh?
The box comes with two versions; one has a brain that reacts to chat. Well some of it. Not much really.
Because I have only extremely well educated and intelligent buyers, I'm sure you all noticed that the skin of Prvoky is actually an inverted picture of space taken by the hubble telescope.

Oh yeah, before I forget: that thing inside at the bottom is it's rectum, not a penis.

Available at my shop in Oculea for L$ 250

Content theft! Plagiarism!

Remember the hobo fish tank I made february last year?


Banksy did the same thing in real life last october at his Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill show in NYC:


How about that heh? Well it was a full perm freebie...

New freebies

There. I've been back for a couple of weeks and started building again. There's a new avatar coming up and I've finished some things I had started on earlier last year:

RX3000 racecar

When I was a kid I had a toy car that looked something like this. As usual it's really really fast, just like the DX-4 muscle car. Oh okay, I've already gotten complaints about this. I confess: they're both really slow. Here's why.

The Queen of Calleta


The Hobo group now has an entire island, thanks to the Big O(rhalla Zander) and Rezzable. The idea was to make everything on the island free ánd full perms. I'm not sure if that still is the case, but I made this little boat full perms anyway. You need transportation to the island, right?
Also holds a couple of cases of Kumi Kumi (beverage,). In case you get thirsty on your way over.

Bakfiets

Almost forgot, but I also made a bakfiets. We use those over here in the Netherlands to move stuff. I made it for the SLLU to put posters a.s. on, so it's not driveable. Just to put out and put stuff in. It's not in a freebie box yet, but will be soon.



As usual, the freebies are available at my shops.

New avatar: Onyomanya Copeseek

Made a shopping addict avatar; two skinny legs under a pile of bags and packages shedding money and credit cards. My favorite scripteuse Paladin Pinion did the script, based on Arduenn's drop script that I used for the driveable dumpster.
It has all the famous brands; Fartier™, Lag™, Yves Sans Lag™, Bling™, and of course Torley Linden™'s brassiere brand Melons™.
I gave a copy to Torley (which he apparently appreciated :) and I just noticed he wears it in one of his awesome tutorial video's. Yay!

Available for L$ 250 at my shops.

Justice Commons art show

(Yeah yeah, so I am almost over a month too late posting this. I had things to do. Important things. Really.)

The Global Kids digital media initiative (sponsored by the MacArthur foundation). opened the International Justice Center in Second Life. As part of the opening ceremonies (which also featured RL streams of Luis Moreno-Ocampo and Kofi Annan a.o.) there was to be an art show themed around justice, curated by Bettina Tizzy and In Kenzo. I was honored to be asked to join great builders Pavig Lok, Tuna Oddfellow, AM Radio, Juria Yoshikawa, Dancoyote Antonelli, Filthy Fluno, Elros Tuominen, Chance Abattoir, Adam Ramona, Josina Burgess, Velazquez Bonetto and Junivers Stockholm in the art show.

I made an inside out jail, with the free world inside. With privacy laws being trashed in the name of security all over, the world is looking more and more like one big jail, right?
It has a bunch of cctv's moving about (I used puppeteer to do that) and a script (custom made by the wonderful Paladin Pinion) that does a full 'scan' of your avatar when you get close to the sculpture. The inside has a wallpaper of a garden and a door that says 'universal penitentiary'.

The sculptures are still there, so go have a look at the Justice Commons sim. It's a great exhibition and worth the visit.

There's been a lot of blog coverage of the show, some youtube here and youtube there, and there's the large post on Bettina's npirl blog. If you find more, please leave a link in the comments will you?

New freebie: Hobo Vardo

A long time ago I promised Reggier Rimbaud to build her a new vardo (or gypsy wagon). Because she's a fun person and because it would be a fun build. I finally got around to building it and I like the way it turned out.
It has way too many textures for such a small build (comme d'habitude) and it takes ages to rez them all but it does have a lot of details to look at. My favorites are the canned lettuce and the picture of a young Pavig Lok. But there's also beans. a picture of Rimbaud (the poet, not Reggier) canned sock, culinary books on roadkill, beans, gastritis, a bean plant, a dental plaque, lots of rats, beans, money, a (new! improved!) filthy bed, beans, a gun, flags, and much more.
So somehow a beans theme also slipped into the build, and I have no idea why. Maybe I was hungry? Flatulent? Probably both.
I added a whopping 15 poses which are fun to find. But you can also use the spoiler notecard.

Reggier threw me a party* when the vardo was done: 'Tooter Claxton appreciation day', lol. That was really fun until Orhalla came with the bad news about Patty1 getting injured in Iraq. You probably read about that by now here or here or here. So I'm a slow blogger. Patty1 is back inworld, laughing out loud still hurts, but I saw she had a party last night, so that must be getting better too. Good!

The vardo is available at my shop. It's free to take.

Some more pictures:

* In the invitation Reggier mentioned I got a job at the LDPW, Linden Department of Public Works, which I don't. At least not yet anyway. Blue Linden im-ed me with an invite to apply, that's all. Which I did. But then he invited everyone didn't he? Haha.

SLLU Building

Across the tracks from my shop in Oculea is the infohub of the SLLU group which I am a member of. The Second Life Left Unity group 'seeks creative, non violent means to foster revolutionary social dialogue via the virtual world platform of Second Life'. In practice this means organizing, hosting and participating in demonstrations, exhibitions, discussions and other lefty events. Yay! (more here).

I made a new building for the hub. A nine story tower block that rises high into the Oculea sky. The building is made to give free space to 'non governmental organisations', left and protest groups et cetera. If you know of such a group -in real or second life- that can use space in the building, contact me or someone else of the SLLU group.

At first I wanted to make the entire thing temp rezzed, so I could be primhogging like a... well... mad cow! I made fifteen different cubicles with which I could add new floors in no time. Which I did of course, higher and higher, until the building was over 400 prims big. But when I had it all set up in the temp rezzers and tried rezzing it I found big chunks were vanishing randomly.
Damn. Back to the drawing board.

Aley Arai to the rescue! She patiently explained to me how temp rezzers work. If I remember right -correct me if I am wrong, please- it makes the prims rez like any 'real' prim, but they get taken away and rerezzed very quickly so the prim counter of the land can't keep up with it. This works fine for small low prim structures (like my hobo ruin) but the primmy monster I had built took too long to rerez and that was why I was seeing parts of the building disappear from time to time.
As I have said before, Aley also showed me some nifty tricks with megaprims that I used to rebuild the SLLU tower block. Always great to get advice from the best builders in SL, thanks Aley!

I have now rebuilt it. It's as high as it was, 9 floors, and only slightly less complex in it's construction than the first version. It's still modular, so I can add more floors quickly when needed. And I managed to stay under 200 prims. Not bad.

The ground floor will be used for exhibitions and other temporary activities, the other floors for the groups, and the top floor for meetings and fun.

Help us fill it!

Dumpster

Found some extra time on the backside of my to do list (I like that side) and made a quick freebie; a driveable dumpster. Arduenn Schwartzman was so kind to script it so it throws out garbage bags while you drive.

Available at the usual freebie outlets . Oh and I put a bunch of freebies on Slexchange.com too!

Filling my neighbour's front lawn

Across the tracks from my main store there's a piece of land owned by one Milk Shu. As far as I can tell Milk hasn't been online for over a year now. I've IMed him (or her), sent notecards, but to no avail. His profile is very minimal; no groups, no picks, no interests, nothing. The only thing in there is a single 't' in his about box. T for Tooter maybe, who knows.
Anyway, he has left his land open to build for everyone, and people have been leaving ugly plywood textured prims there. As you can see on the left in the picture above. So I put in the last 6 prims that were available and wrote him a note that I would cover his land with a build if he didn't respond. It's been a month, and today I built a 6 prim bank there, using some megaprim tricks I learned from Aley Arai.
Harods bank is closed, btw. They moved to Tristan da Cunha. But there's still a huge pile of money in the tower:

Maze: win an avatar

I made a maze on Cookie island. Follow the right path to the exit and write down the letters you passed to make a sentence. Write that on a notecard and send it to me and you get a free avatar. There are several sentences, but only one is the right one, so you may have to try again.
The maze itself has 4 x 15 cubes that temp rez when you get within 10 meters, so you'll see it appear it front of you, and disappear behind you.

at Thinkerers Cookie

Fish!

I was playing around a bit with (sort of) random rotation, and whaddayaknow, next moment I had built a freebie fishtank for the hobo's. With captain Orhalla on the package.
That was the easy part.
Then I wanted to make it full perms. Damn, that's difficult. I had to send it to Pavig three times to check before I got it right (thanks Pavig!). Turns out you have to set each-and-every prim to full perms, as well as the objects in them ánd all the scripts!
Everything full perm by default! To the barricades! Storm Linden Labs!
I bet Ruth looks better with a full perm too.

You can get it at my shops with freebies shortly. For now it's in Pavig's docks at Calleta.
Go get a copy. Just click it and you'll get one.
Click it 30 times and you get thirty; you're all set to make modern art.

New avatar: Zechckenyaii the Muscleman

I started building a bodybuilder long ago, but i made a fresh start yesterday. Zechckenyaii developed these muscles lifting books of Kant and Hegel (which he still does when he types), and he looks very good using the standard /muscle gesture. He has a tattoo of course.

I used Eloh Eliot's texture as a base for the face. That skin is available as a full perms freebie, which apparently is a big thing in the world of fashionistas. Pretty common for us hobos though:)

Available at my shops for L$ 250

DX4 grand turismo car

Made a european muscle car yesterday. It has that quality design that was around in the early eighties, when everything was big and square and ugly. This one has a mix of east german and french car design, and it has been left out in the yard for quite a while. But don't worry, I cleaned the windows a little so you can see where you're going.
Available at my shops, for L$ 50.

That's the new swim suit I made btw.

new vehicle: John Beere tractor

Damn, it's been a while since i made a vehicle. There's that crappy scooter and motorcycle and the very, very crappy airplane at my shops, but I sort of gave up on vehicles a long time ago. I can make them look kinda good, but I can't script, so they fly and ride like the driver is having a fit. Ah, but not this tractor; I borrowed Arcadia Asylum's script from her yellow cab that you see all over second life, and now it's a nice, smooth, slow ride.
Modelled -sort of- after a 1960's John Deere tractor. I saw on Flickr that fellow hobo and dutchman Rask has already raced it on the Mercedes test track.

Available for L$ 150 at one of my shops.

New avatar: spider

I made this spider a while back with tiny prims, life sized. But now I have scaled it, added a bodycrusher and attached the legs to the limbs and now you can wear it as an avatar too.
The legs were a bitch to align. And it looks ridiculous when you sit down or fly. But hey...

You can buy one for L$ 150 at one of my shops.

Hobo squat

Zimmy had built a (sorry Zimmy) rather boring and huge structure on a little piece of land he owns, right next to the Calleta Hobo Railroad infohub. This infohub is a wonderful and attractive place built by SL's best dressed man Orhalla Zander which has grown into a meeting place for builders, artists, hippies, banana phone fetishists, rastafarians, newbies, punks, cowboys a.s.o. This Hobo group has a couple of things in common; they goof around and build a lot, help eachother and don't care too much for money.
I offered Zimmy to make a new structure that would fit the scenery a little better and built this favela / ruin. It has three floors, and a lot of little niches, boxes and huts for the hobo's to crawl into.


The outer textures are made from pictures I took of demolition sites in my hometown, the inside walls are from photos of a bombed building in Lebanon.
And again, this one is also free to copy; just click on it. Just be sure to have the edit window open when you rez it, as it consists of three unlinked floors. It was too big to link.


top floor


second floor


Ground floor.

Visit the Calleta Hobo Railroad infohub.

Calleta on flickr

New avatar: Ludovico

I suck at making sculpties. The only thing i can do in Blender is what a three year old does with clay. But I finally found a way to put those amorpic blobs to use.
I needed an avatar for the halloween parties (got a lot of invites and managed to only do short visits to the NPIRL, Hobo and Ville Spatiale ones) and I wanted to do something Clockwork Orangy. In the key scene of the book, Alex gets a 'ludovico' treatment, and so does this avatar. The head has a lot of tiny (or 'torchered' as Arcadia calls them) prims that were a pain in the ass to align, it's got a touch of steampunk, sculpties... the works.
I made one leg (and both arms) invisible with invisiprims and joined the visible leg to the other one, so he hops around in his straitjacket when he walks. Too bad Arcadia isn't around anymore, I'm sure she would have given me a fun name of an asylum to put on the straitjacket. The record player (playing Ludwig Von of course) on the back is the one i made for De Fuckups' build, slightly altered. In the contraption above that has a rotating orange. Corny, I know. I couldn't resist. Orange in the title doesn't even refer to fruit, but to the Indonesian word for man; orang.

Available for L$ 250 at one of my shops.

Yona Friedman's Ville Spatiale

I got an invitation to build a shop in the SL version of Ville Spatiale. Ville Spatiale (google) is an architectural/social/urban planning experiment by Yona Friedman that he made in the seventies. It has never been done in real life (although it has influenced a lot of people later) but german art curator Helfe Ihnen has built it in SL.
I made my shop there in 4 hours, and i like the result.

It leans towards the customer and the arms that have the avatars in them are scripted to point towards him or her too.

This is what the back looks like:

And if you're wondering how everything became this white, here's how: All hard work. Hehe.

(mop, bucket and trashbags are free to take at these freebie outlets: Stain Groningen, Zimmy's Freebie Underground (F.U.) and the SLLU freebie shop.)

ad farm

I decided to go into adfarming too. I want my name on bright ugly signs all over the metaverse! Yay!
Nah. Just kidding. I did build this little adfarm. Free to take and modify at Oculea, Zimmy's Freebie Underground (F.U.) and the SLLU freebie shop.