My rude brother

I have always wanted a nagbot at my shops. The idea was to have a bot talk to the customers, just like those annoying 'greeter bots' you see at other stores. Only difference would be that my nagbot would not leave it at a simple 'hello' but just go on and on talking. Then I met Paladin Pinion a couple of weeks ago, an excellent scripter. I asked her to make the script for me, and she finished it in no time!
So now I'm writing conversations for my brother (the one that is in my stand) to have with my customers. And that's a lot of fun to do. Very simple too; I just write the lines in a note and add pauses. He starts talking when someone is within 10 m. of the stand. Here's one of the conversations: (the numbers are seconds paused between reading the lines, 'agent' says the first name of the avatar that is closest to my brother)

sigh...
20 I'm so bored.
15 I sit here all day and no one buys anything.
20 I'm sooooo bored.
15 But I can't leave.
17 My brother Tooter will hit me when I leave the stand.
15 Yeah he hits me a lot.
20 To the outside world he may seem like a mild mannered clown
10 but he's cruel and mean.
18 And when I don't sell enough avatars, he makes me sleep outside in the rain.
20 I don''t like sleeping in the rain. I get sick.
18 But he makes me work even when I'm sick.
15 One time when i was so sick I couldn't get up
10 and he used a tazer on me. To get me up.
15 See? he says, You're awake. Now go and work!
10 That's what he says
15 He makes me eat aluminum foil too
12 when I don't sell over 10 avatars a day
20 I haven't sold any avatars yet today
10 I'm scared
15 Would you buy an avatar please, [agent]?
10 The day is almost over and I'm scared.
15 Please help me [agent]!
20 Please buy an avatar!
10 I beg you [agent]!
10 please?
15 Please [agent]?
120

I expect sales to shoot up in the coming weeks, haha. There's another one where he complains about the smell of the customer's old avatar, one about mixing leeks and sprouts and many more to come...

P.S. I found another use for the script: There was a Bright clothes contest (that i couldn't go to) at the Emerald club tonight. I sent one of the contestants a prim named 'Jenny's bright clothes' with the script in it. It talked on and on about quantum physics and string theory. Haha. She won the contest!

More press, yay.

The elegant miss Bettina Tizzy honored me with an article on the Not Possible in Real Life blog. Bettina's NPIRL is one of the best groups I'm a member of; we get to see all the great builds in Second Life before they're shown to the public. That results in fun field trips with fun people, most of whom are exellent builders and content creators.

There's a picture of my hippie extinguishers (mistaken for fire extinguishers) on Second Arts. The Burning Life festival is kicking off this weekend but I doubt if I'll attend. I'm a bit fed up with the BL group to be honest. A bunch of hippies calling themselves anarchists arguing over who gets to be the leader. And about every other minor detail. Doesn't get more pathetic than that does it?

Judging by the amount of question marks on the following pages, the Japanese are very puzzled by my work. Here's one, and another, and an older one (I can tell by the pictures). Of course I tried translating them with altavista's babelfish, it helps a bit but it's still confusing:

About my factory: The doubtful building which is the town end, is countrified. It is the building of the atmosphere which matches to the movie of that hand. Here I was thinking had built an avatar factory, but no it's the doubtful building of the atmosphere! Movie? Hand? wtf? But no worries because Also quality of the clothes and the small article is very very. Good to know. Slightly more disturbing was That Lemon buys, when we assume, the Voodoo doll calling but I was glad to learn that Lemon was the name of the girl blogging. Phew.

Synthia Picassole avatar

Oh yes, another new avatar. A naked woman even! And completely PG because she is nude For The Sake Of Art!
I have wanted to make this one for a long time but I never did because I thought it would be a lot of work. But it wasn't that bad. Hardly took any texturing and the only thing that took some time was placing the invisiprims. So here she is, another quick and dirty build (or slap dash as Pavig Lok calls it, elegantly sloppy says Bettina Tizzy, haha) after all.

Synthia is mostly transparant, so you can watch her from many different angles.

The av is available in all my shops, for a measly 250 L$ (approx. 0,63 euro), as usual.
The above mentioned Homeless Howard avatar is a freebie (and full perms); available at my main store, at the Avatar Factory in Calleta, at Slexchange and that other online shop that used to be Slboutique... errr... oh yeah! Shop on Rez!

New avatar: Herr Doktor Gehirnschneider

Yesterday I finally found some time to make a new avatar. As you can see he turned out looking like Marty Feldman a lot. Strange.
With a look like that he'll win any staring contest in SL, I'm sure.
I named him Herr doktor Gehirnschneider, which is German for braincutter. I don't know; somehow German seemed appropriate.
He carries around some equipment on his belt and I made him a typer (for those who don't know: a typer is something that appear when you type -chat- in Second Life) of a surgical knife and a brain with a flexi spinal cord hanging out.
I used the beard of my Homeless Howard avatar for his hair. Turned out kinda primmy, but with the lag today I doubt if anyone will notice.
The rubber boots were a pain in the ass to make, and to be honest i'm not really satisfied with the way they turned out. Fashion design is not my thing obviously. Not even when it's supposed to look cheap.

The card pinned on his chest looks like this:
That SL Centre for Amateur Neurosurgery might just appear somewhere in SL one day :) When I have enough money to buy more land.

This morning I took some pictures of Zimmy, Th3oth3rmo and me in my factory in Calleta.

The av is available in all my shops, for a measly 250 L$ (approx. 0,63 euro), as usual.
The above mentioned Homeless Howard avatar is a freebie (and full perms); available at my main store, at the Avatar Factory in Calleta, at Slexchange and that other online shop that used to be Slboutique... errr... oh yeah! Shop on Rez!

Exploited warplanes

I had a look at 'Exploited' the new SLLU (Second Life Left Unity) exhibition on slave / child labour, last night. The movie on the roof shows in every ugly detail how children and poor people from third -and second- world countries are being used to provide us with cheaper products. The exhibition downstairs has photos and posters (most of which I had seen before) dealing with the same issue. All in all a good exhibition, and of course a great initiative, but I think it misses a link to everyday products. Then again; there is a garden where you (SLLU members or everyone? Don't know) can build your own addition to the exhibit. If I find time I will.


Afterwards I browsed around the neighbourhood a little and found a small airstrip nearby with very well made planes from WW2. Browsing around some more I stumbled upon two frenchmen; one was Antib Milo, the maker of the planes, and the other was Krispy Alexandre, who owns the sim both the airstrip and the exhibition are on. (I like it when people offer space to builders to make good stuff in SL.) Them being french and me being dutch we talked cheese of course. About the daily trouble that comes with eating Roquefort as breakfast for example.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/isla%20montevideo/198/220/21/
The Exploited exhibition is a bit to the south.


ltr: Antib Milo and Krisp Alexandre.

Hair implants

I moved some of my hair to the top of my head. Really makes me look 10 years younger I think. The sign on top is an ad for other bald people:

Tootermat

In between crashes I found time to build a camera, which i'll be needing for my paparatzi avatar. That will be an extra version of the rat avatar. Nikon and Nikkormat owners of the seventies will recognise some of the features. You can get a free copy of the camera at the salon, it's on the counter of the hippoburger stand. Free to copy modify and give away.

Temporary swimming pool

The Neumoegen (a typo of the dutch city Nijmegen maybe?) sim north of my shop crashes a lot. Not as much as Calleta of course, but still. Everytime it crashes it leaves a giant swimming pool for me:


I'm going skinny dipping!

Yes ladies, that's hair. And a 'Very punk' tattoo. And two bags of moneys on my hips to help me float. What are you waiting for? Propose already!

Ooh goodie, compliments!

I am as vain as I am pretty, so sometimes I take a couple of minutes on a sunday afternoon to google myself. I found the Second Life Merchant Times wrote a whole new article on my new store 10 days ago. "A shop as good-looking as its products" he writes, and he's not being cynical I think.

I also found an interview with Pavig Lok in the Second Life Insider, where he mentions me as one of his favorite content creators. Whoa. There's my name in one paragraph together with such SL celebrities as Mis Ordinal, Fade Dana and the wonderful Arcadia Asylum (best builder in SL, imo)! Besides that, I'm a big fan of Pavig's work (there's Greenies, of course, and all his freebies and goggles, fleas and so on, oh and I really like the docks near the Hobo info hub) and I'm so honored I'm almost falling off my chair.


Pavig's docks

Burning Man

Got tp'd over to the Burning Man hippie festival tonight. I have seen pictures of the real thing (comes very close to SL from what I saw) but I didn't know there was a Second Life version too.
Things were kind of hectic as everyone was hunting for land to build on, but Zimmy had already claimed some land and asked me to build on it.
A fire extinguisher seemed appropriate. And about the same size as the Man...



A quick and dirty build, but I like it nevertheless. Apparently there was a theme (I had no idea) to the festival - global warming- and it sort of goes with that too. Well whaddayaknow? I was going for the burning hippie theme myself.