second life | xirdalium

ngon

Posted on Wednesday, 12th October 2011 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 24, 2011

It’s been some time since I regularly paid visits to ↑Second Life (SL). This is mainly because two of my best friends—master designers, creative geniusses, and overall great guys acid Zentih and ↑Detect Surface—seemed to have left SL for good. Not only did I hang around with them two a lot, but they showed and taught me what SL really can be, and gave me a home there [all the ↑entries on my SL-adventures still haven’t been moved over form the ↑old xirdalium]. But first the ↑City of Abaddon vanished, then The Underground, too [Detect’s Sims]. I was … Continue reading →

life and live

Posted on Thursday, 16th April 2009 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 5, 2012

In a way ‘↑Second Life‘ (SL) is the online analogon to a social club of sorts—“↑Quake Live“ (QL) in turn emulates a boxing gym, or any other sports club centred around a competitive pastime. In the end both of course are social institutions, but differ in terms of qualities, differ in culture. … Continue reading →

anthropology coming of age

Posted on Tuesday, 17th June 2008 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 3, 2012

welcome to the 21st century Since quite a time ↵I was eagerly awaiting ‘↑Coming of age in Second Life: An anthropologist explores the virtually human‘ by ↑Tom Boellstorff—it just arrived with yesterday’s snail-mail, so I had not yet the chance to read Tom’s book from front to back cover. Until now I only read chapter 1 ‘Subject and scope,’ plus a dozen or so random paragraphs from throughout the book. Hence I am not yet qualified to deliver a review, instead I will jot down just some thoughts. Although ‘↑Second Life‘ (SL) is not the focus of my own … Continue reading →

penthouse

Posted on Tuesday, 8th April 2008 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 3, 2012

manuscript-day one of 100 Are you really sure that a floor can’t also be a ceiling? —M. C. Escher The skies outside the floor to ceiling glass panes resemble all but white noise on television. Nothing of a dead channel here, they are as brilliant as two high-end TFT flatscreens can render. Screens which are quite alive—so much so that they can switch from absolute black hole darkness to blazing supernova white, and the other way round, in less than two milliseconds. Hence the nocturnal nonsky appears as a star-speckled perfect black. The crisp vista of the metropolis skyline … Continue reading →

ethnographia: tom boellstorff

Posted on Tuesday, 11th September 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 5, 2012

↑Tom Boellstorff is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine and Editor-in-Chief of “↑American Anthropologist“. Somewhat belated I first heard of him when in 2006 his article “↑A Ludicrous Discipline? Ethnography and Game Studies“ appeared in the newly founded journal “Games and Culture” [1(1):29-35]. Beyond his issues Indonesia, gender and queer studies, Tom does research on persistent state worlds, and even has an office in “↑Second Life“ (SL): (SLurl:) ↑Ethnographia. Among other things there you can get a notecard on what ethnography is all about, and another one with a great list of literature on research … Continue reading →

beauty and the beast

Posted on Monday, 18th June 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalJanuary 9, 2014

It’s been quite some time that we hung out together in “↑Second Life“ (SL) for longer, so it was high time to do it again. Accordingly last weekend Miss Audrey Hepburn and me went to (SLurl:) ↑Sphynx, a classy ballroom with a bar and a restaurant. The latter feature of the place was our incentive to go there, as you actually can sit down at laid out tables and watch your avatar eat—at the sight of this I, for approximately the third time this day, nearly spat a good portion of coffee over my keyboard. Halfway through dinner Audrey wondered … Continue reading →

coolness

Posted on Wednesday, 16th May 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 2, 2012

cyberpunked second living Believe it or not, Ladies and Gentlemen, I am getting cooler day by day—in “↑Second Life“ (SL) that is. Remember when I said that graphics-wise SL is ↵insultory to my hardware? Well, concerning the absolute majority of avatars I have met so far, and concerning almost all the architecture I have seen so far, this still stands uncorrected. I am running SL on the absolute highest settings here on my machine, but when you compare the looks to e.g. “↵Max Payne 2“ (MP2), a game released in 2003, SL obviously is inferior. Plus, there is no … Continue reading →

television

Posted on Tuesday, 17th April 2007 by zephyrin_xirdalOctober 5, 2012

Frankly, I do not really know the reasons. But since four months the visits on my weblog here are steadily increasing. The average number of unique visitors for this month today is 2300 (bots and access with special http-status [me] not counted). Plus, people more and more are downloading ↵my Q3A-config. I would understand downloading the configs of Thresh, fatal1ty, cooller, and the like—but the config of a miserable player like me? Maybe the increase of popularity has to do with the airing of the short 6min feature about “↑Second Life“ (SL) I took part in on 29 March 2007? … Continue reading →

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Blog by Zephyrin Xirdal (since 2001)

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