Insomnia – Parable about Wine and Un(Sleeping)

Wine of this year’s vintage (2009) of course is not at disposal on north hemisphere. Bunches of grape have already the small green little berries and time of their maturation will not be until end of August and than in September and November. However, wines of year 2008 are rearing their heads. One says: “It will be wine of century!” But I think that there I no time to some rating yet. Young wines are beautiful, often very fruity and very pleasant to drink. They show their potential later and with age gain richness of tastes and smells, and also they develop in the whole color range.

Young – new – club is similar to young wine. It arises as wine, but no from one grape variety, rather it is a cuvée of one or many varieties. It needs also sensitive work in vineyard and in cellar like wine. It is result of ideas, deals and compromises. It is about that, where the club will be, how it will look, what kind of inside equipment will be there or what music will be played there. It is result of maturation of all these things. And like young wine comes to the market at definite maturity according to winemaker decision, the new club introduces its own also in public.

I have tasted one new wine several days ago, concretely on Monday July 27, 2009. Its name was Insomnia. And similar as wine degustation, I have also tasted and savored this wine.

Color: Insomnia is in general in dark black on the walls and columns that loom up to ceiling to achieve some opening, where free sky can be seen. Otherwise, the club revels by all colors of light effects and of textures variability of dance floor.

Smell: It is quite hard to consider. Maybe it was pleasant presence of kind people, which I almost know personally, but also presence of others that I know only from Second Life.

Taste: That was certainly fantastic atmosphere. All people had a good time, danced or talked to somebody. Further, there was super DJ, which played great mix of interesting songs. It tells about wine that it is either short or long. This means that you feel some wine taste still short or long time on back tongue part and on palate after downing of wine sip. In the case of Insomnia, it was long and pleasant persistence. It held long tome still long tome after that, when I left the club. Actually, it was several days.

Finally, I would like to lift wine goblet and wish Insomnia: Na zdraví! Na zdravie! За здоровье! Cheers! A ta santé! Zum Wohl!

P.S. Wine sleeps and at the same time, it does not sleep, i.e. it matures to beauty. Insomnia also sleeps and does not sleep. It sleep, when nobody is there, and does not sleep, when it is full of people avid for dance. Let its mature also to beauty.

SLurl: Insomnia

Long Way – Point Three - Meeting

It is curious. The first thing that I have recalled if I said the name of today’s contribution, was something others. Just it was thing or situation from other days or time – Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Voyager in Star Trek or some excellent Czech sci-fi movie Ikarie XB 1. However, today I would like to write about the meetings in Second Life.

Actually, what does it mean the word “meeting”? It means not only somebody to meet, the real avatar, but also to take a part in some meeting, events, party and the like. But you can also notice the meeting with some place in SL or with some objects like plants, animals, buildings and others. On my long way, I experienced all these meetings and many of them deep impressed in my mind.

The meeting with one particular avatar already happened in my beginnings and it was insofar essential that I will write about that next time. However, there were another meetings with very interesting folks not only from our Czech and Slovak community. The parties are everlasting and I visited many of them and I still visit. Maybe it is in the people from ancient days, when our ancestors always joined each others to make some groups or assemblages, whether to look for a food, to defend against the enemies or only to enjoy.

The meetings with some objects were many too. I cannot remember some that much impressed me. It is not so simple. There were many of them. Sometimes it is some fantastic building or big ship like, for example, SS Galaxy. I love architecture and I enjoy visiting the churches or cathedrals both in RL and SL. There was one here in SL too. However, I have forgotten its name and it disappeared in time and space. It had beautiful architecture and I felt the never-ending silent and fear in SL as well.

The meetings with places are also big adventures in this world. Recently, I have checked my landmark directory to look for the oldest saved landmark. Lo and behold, it was jut one that should be labeled as the meeting with the fascinating place. Even I have my first SL picture just from this place. Yes, you are supposing right, I am talking about The Lost Gardens of Apollo.

You can simple hide yourselves in heights of towers of these gardens before the whole world and meditate with lonely rose in the sky. In spite of it the meetings are important and also pleasant. Like these ones that I have tried to fix in pictures as one eternal and never-ending moment of meeting.

Meeting I - IDIA Laboratories
Meeting II - Rouge Forest
Meeting III - TOYAKO
Meeting IV - The Lost Gardens of Apollo

Long Way – Point Two – Discovering

„Hīc sunt leonēs (There are lions here).“

Human being is a creature that has an innate feature form nature to explore, to discover or to scan everything. Firstly it is the nearest surroundings, later the radius increases and some complications can come.

Let us visualize us ourselves as a point on an area and all, what we explored, as other points a place that are place in certain distance from us. If we take all these points, then they create the area of a circle and a circular line is a border. The smaller our physical and psychical abilities will be the smaller circle radius will be; and we will be able to span all inside the circle. Certainly, you know, how far you came as children.

However, with age, the radius increases and in the same time the circle border increases too. BUT AN ATTENTION, IT IS A BIG JUMP!! If the radius increases by a unit, then the circle area increases about 3.1 times, but the border increases about 6.3 times!!

The area of Second life is huge - about 4000 sims. I think that nobody has power to visit all SL sims. Furthermore, some of these sims are private. You can land there, but you have only 10 second to fly away. This starting situation does form SL absolutely unique space to discover and to explore. Where elsewhere you can travel and discover beautiful and magical places with the minimal resources. And this all from place, from where you just connected SL.

After my birth, I also discovered and I discover till now. In my private opinion, it is one of the most beautiful things you can do in SL. Simultaneously you are in contact wit other avatars that visit given place. Sometimes, however, it is an accident. On the other hand, you come back to these places later again and you discover something other, what you did not see before.

My LM directory in my inventory is full of the places that should be to visit. Sometimes I landed, made several pictures and then flew away again. It was only for such feeling to see something, to discover something or to visit something.

There were the places on the old maps, where it was written: “Hīc sunt leonēs.” I do not know why lions. Maybe therefore, that they are considered to kings of animals. Were they unknown animals in those days? Who knows? My map is full of these places. And what about you?

Long Way – Point One – The First Small Steps

So, I was born. But actually, it was only a curiosity that brought me into Second Life. I already played some PC games a long tome, if my cousin showed me the computer called ZX Spectrum. Till now, I have remembered that all data had to be saved in this computer using a cassette tape recorder or using its big brother – a circular tape recorder. And the chess program Colossus was the best.

However some time before my birth in SL, my friend offered me totally something other. He was big fun of WoW (World of Warcraft). So but, it is “Massively Multiplayer
Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG)”, anyway it is still the game. However, I did not want it and it also did not interest me. Actually, some news that it will be created some Czechoslovak city in some Second Life; just it was the last and the most important impulse for me to enter SL.

Childhood, and first of all the carefree childhood, is that, what it is hard fixed in our memory. That is only the fragments of things that happened. I think that the first steps in SL are not simple for each was. It is necessary to go around the introductory sim. One can learn several things there. Not so much, but enough. Mainly, how one should manage your avatar. It was simple, because I tried hard and I have no problem with English. And then, hooray let us go into the world and to seek related souls.

So, I really found them. Not only, they advised me, how it is with clothes, how I can change my shape, but also how to received lindens. I would like to notice that at this time nobody would employ me, I had zero experiences. So, there was no talking about some work. I think that RobCZ Voom was the first, who explained me a camping and a system Ern2Life. There, I was earned the first lindens and rose to the Platinum position. Unfortunately, they later banned my account. I did not search why they did it, because I did not interest in that anymore. I was already elsewhere.

And it has happened that I have stayed in SL in spite of some problems and failures. However, time is close to over, because my train is reaching the target station and I have only last line on my paper page.

“Next station Second Life! Get out!”

(Written on 13.07.2009, during my journey home in the passenger train between Brno and Blansko, Czech Republic)

Long Way - Point Zero - Birth

Everybody of us was born. Of course, we as human beings cannot remember that ourselves. There are a pain, a crying and then in the next moment a light. We are referred to our mother for long time, mainly physically and physiologically, because she gives food us and she worries about us in the first stage of our life. Yin has a win over Yang. Father is pushed away, but not so much and all is changed in the future.

Birth in Second Life is totally something other. It is not a result of an accident, which is in RL always. One does not know, which sperm gets the right place and in which moment. Simply clearly said, after some accomplishment or filling out of something, respectively, you become an inhabitant or someone, who enters (is born in) Second Life.

However, the differences from RL are obvious. We are not born or were not born, respectively, naked, nobody of us. We have all fully functional attributes as human. We can move, we can write and we can also speak as well. There is no nudity, because we have received some clothes and some shape to start.

Nevertheless, it is “tabula rasa”.

Birthday

Hi all!

Everybody has birthday and celebrates it or on the other hand does not. I have the second birthday tomorrow (11.07.). Yes of course, I am speaking about my Second Life birthday. So, one is not wise to fact that his/her wandering in Second Life plains is long time. Moreover, a lot of things happened both in Second Life one’s own, when revolutionary changes passed here, and at the same time my avatar came to age and achieved a lot. At least, I think it.

In the next days or weeks, I would like to write several short articles about this adventure, about my long way in Second Life with pictures of that time and present too. We will see how a muse and an inspiration kiss me. Just inspiration I am drawing from a book that I am reading now.

Tom Boellstorff: “Coming of Age of Second Life. An Anthropologist Explores of Virtual Human“

Yours sincerely,

Coral Ducatillon

SL Photography

In the last month, I felt through photography of different places in Second Life. My pictures are not so much quality due to my hardware, but I am trying hard. I have found some article about photographer Ladislav Kamarád (*1963) in Economic newspaper on Friday (03.07.2009). Several his pictures were placed there. He makes pictures of scenery through the whole world and his pictures totally fascinated me. I caught myself, that many of them remind me the sceneries in Second Life, but it can be only my idea. Judge alone. I linked two pics, which I liked most of all. More you can find on the web here and I recommend to open the in higher resolution.

"Dark Planet" - Moeraki Boulders, New Zealand
A Dead Tree in the Dam Nove Mlyny – Palava, South Moravia, Czech Republic

(Source: www.horolezec.cz)

Atelier Alizarin

Yesterday, it has happened something to me by my way home in train. The vehicle train dived into the first tunnel. Btw. We have seven on the road and one of them is about one kilometer long. So, it was dark at once and I remembered that I found some Second Life place, which caught my attention. So, we are looking there now through my writing and my pictures.

The region is called Huntsman. There are four localities to explore. XXX Heaven Route X is a place for relaxation and romantic. PP Design is a shop with low-prims furniture. Kraavda Zeevi's first land is a presentation of Miami Modern Real Estate. For me, the last locality is the most interesting.

Dark and light, these both are the main attributes of this mysterious place. Atelier Alizarin is an example of absolute fantastic invention. It is place of light and dark, place of upper- and underworld and place with the most fantastic 3D creations. Let drift yourself by moving objects or only listen silently.

The place is well arranged and you use teleports in the building. Highly recommended.

SLurl: Huntsman

Barcelona, my love

I already traveled a lot of in my life. It was mostly through Europe. I love France. And, I worked also in Germany for long time. There are several cities there, where I could live. I like Dresden, München or Bamberg. However, if I discovered Spanish Barcelona, so it was love at the first sight. The city with one of the biggest concentration of young people in Europe is absolutely beautiful. It is city of Christopher Columbus, heart of Catalunya (Catalonia), where people speak other language then Spanish. It is city with Mediterranean mentality and way of life. The main boulevard – Las Ramblas – passes through the heart of Barcelona all the way to the see. And if breeze blows, then its sensual touch spreads into the hot city where it lives also after the sunset. So, what more can man wish? The street is full of people; the music sounds and people dance the wild flamenco. Simply as it can be said Latin, it is “genius loci”.

Also Second Life has its own Barcelona. It is beautiful Barcelona with the long boulevard, Barcelona with the dark recesses, sacred Barcelona. I am walking about this Barcelona and absorbing moments and meetings. My pictures are the impressions of these moments. The sun is burning and illuminating the building facades and roofs. The shadows of the light are covering also the cathedral walls and I am paying homage to the city in silent prayer.

Unfortunately, time is ephemeral. And also Barcelona is becoming the witness of past in Second Life and is fading in the light shadows and time mists. I wish to cry and to laugh together. I take maybe only one piece of tapas and cup of excellent coffee in bistro and memory does not go out.

My Barcelona!

SLurls: Barcelona del Pi, Barcelona del Oeste

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It was written in the Paradise yard of St. Ursula in Brno on Thursday 30.06.2009. I drunk glass of Moravian rosé wine and ate a slice of bread with greave paste.