close enough to start a war

Artist Jan Voorman is patching the holes in the world--one Lego block at a time. He's calling this freeform art installation in and around Berlin's damaged walls "Dispatchwork". Fascinating concept.

And Julianna Santacruz Herrera, an artist working in Paris, is patching the potholes with yarn. Keen.

And someone's paired LED lamps with crystallized sugar to make power-efficient, muted light sources. Wonder what would happen if someone dyed the sugar bath? Think of all the candy colors you could get for your lights!

[05:31 PM] Lalinda Lovell: emilly did you hear about the elfclan/LL thing?
[05:32 PM] Emilly Orr: Uh-oh. No, what happened?
[05:33 PM] Lalinda Lovell: they said they were leaving sl on twitter, the ceo of LL saw it and offered them a 700 USD discount
[05:33 PM] Emilly Orr: Dang.
[05:34 PM] Emilly Orr: Now, Elf Clan or Ill Clan?
[05:35 PM] Lalinda Lovell: elf clan, they have 2000 members
[05:35 PM] Lalinda Lovell: they were leaving to go to inworldz, said they couldnt afford tier, and they got 2 free months of sim use now
[05:35 PM] Emilly Orr: Because Ill Clan did all their recent machinima promos.
[05:36 PM] Emilly Orr: Ah-ha. Key thunder, lightning, and the ratscrabble scratch of desperation.

For more information on the story, in the Elf Clan's own words, see their posting on the situation. It truly sounds as if they are taking this action not out of self-aggrandizing or drama, but because their members want them here. The upper management is swallowing a huge loss every month--and that's not okay, but that's tolerable (barely) because that's how roleplay sims go. But even knowing that, the current grid instability, the rash of invasive programming, the even larger rash of merchant and group closures all over the grid...all these things point inescapably to the fact that Second Life doesn't seem all that stable, once you're past the "refreshing and fun" intro experience.

And I do tend to agree with them...if Linden Labs don't change their policies, and reconfigure away from pure profit, and back to more customer service...they're going to lose more merchants, more estate owners, more sims, more of the society that draws people in...and we'll be left with a bunch of Residents who won't stay because there's nothing to do anymore.

Okay, enough sturm und drang, more Minecraft!

(from the Minecrafting album)

Aren't they cute? A happy dancing trio of slimes in front of a glowing lava pool. They wanted to get out of their little enclosure so badly...

(from the Minecrafting album)

And they went just mental when Fawkes and Hank got close! Sadly, this is the wrong image, and the right image was deleted in error. Oops.)

(from the Minecrafting album)

And I crept close enough to get footage of the big one...um...jiggling?

(from the Minecrafting album)

Back to the wildgrass mod...The reconfiguration didn't...exactly...work out.

(from the Minecrafting album)

Let me just say this. If you ever decide to run the wildgrass mod, and you enable the wildgrass mod provisions in the Painterly pack...for the love of all things, don't select wildflowers as your wild grass!

It's...not pretty.