The saddest moment
Eric and me have been partners for a long time, 9 months exactly. Some time ago i wrote about us in this post. We both still feel the same, but we discovered that we had some problems as couple due to an incident.
We disolved our partnership and we are working to keep a good friendship, we are still the best friends.
Thanks to all our friends for being beside us in this hard moment for both.
The end of Caffeine
Caffeine Gardens 1, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.
Last February (the photo is from that time) i decided to open an art gallery. I was discovering SLphotography, discovering another way of expression and creation. Discovering Flickr. The theme of the gallery was Nude SLphotography. Some wonderful people like Kriss Lehmann, Dakota Buck and Vint Falken helped me rezzing some of their works in the gallery, later Rob Fairymeadow and Paolo Bade joined us. I still remember the opening party 
really funny, i was so happy and excited that was even difficult to say something coherent, lol…
When i built the gallery i wanted it to be a “public space”. That was the reason to build a café. A place not only to enjoy photography, a place to stay with friends. About the artworks there i just can say WOW! All were beautiful, erotic and classy (being porn is easy, being erotic is art most of the times).
Some time later the gallery has moved, and the friends were still there, supporting with donations, buying artworks, saying kind words about the gallery.
Then i realized the “defects”, the place was small (yes, i had enough tier, 
), the works were too near to enjoy them properly, the sim where it was didn’t gave me freedom to do some things because the covenant (edit terrain, etc…) so i decided to close Caffeine Nude Art Gallery, the group of the gallery and sell the plot.
When i told that to the members of the group the awesome friends of the Caffeine Group asked me if i was ok. Ok, i have to confess i was feeling sad, even there are a new project for an art gallery in mind was like closing the door to an old friend, but at the same time i’m opening a new door.
A new project is coming, a bigger art gallery, opened to more styles, but keeping the SLerotism as a main theme, the offices of the future Playavatar Magazine, a photo studio. All will be in Ursa Major, the sim of Eric and me. I’ll give you more details soon.
From here i want to say thanks to all the people that supported the Caffeine Gallery, as artist, donator, friend, art collector ( big kiss, Phoenix), visitor, coffee addict… I <3 you all.
Raulville
Here you are some images of Raulville, is my second machinima and had some changes in my computer lately, so almost is my first one.
Since last SL client version is almost impossible to make movies directly from SL without crashing. I asked Lindens and they say they will take off the movie option from the client, so we will need a external software to do it. So in this case i’m using this new external movie recorder and, moreover, a new version of my movie editor (iMovie ’08) so i’m a bit lost and i know you will understand the mistakes, the lag in image is because Second Life, so blame Lindens in this case.
About Raulville, it is a “set” for SLphotography (you have seen some photos in Flickr) and for machinima. Urban style, dirty streets… Maybe the best way to understand Raulville is singing the anthem composeb by Silverdrake *Thanks, Sil 
*:
oh, the streets are filthy in RAULVILLE!
the lights are dim in RAULVILLE!
the toilets are backed up
the streetwalkers are smacked up
the artists are cracked up
in RAUUUUUUUULVILLE!
come on, dance with me! *starts chorus line kicking*
But the nights are full of Mys-ter-y
in RAULVILLE!
The cats all have a His-tor-y
in RAULVILLE!
the drinks are all double,
the tomcats are trouble,
the boys are all handsome and GAAAAAYYYY!
in RAULVILLE!!!
(CC) Some rights reserved by Silverdrake
About the name… don’t think i’m so egocentric, was an idea of Eric, my SLpartner, and i think is funny (and, yes, a bit egocentric ).
Some buildings are freebies i found in Calleta (a mad place to go, soon in Places to Visit in Second Life) the rest is built by me.
Sure you will find here, in Flickr or in Koinup more images and movies of Raulville.
The roach motel
The roofs of Raulville, originally uploaded by Raul Crimson.
This big sign is over one of the buildings in Raulville, a set i’m building for machinima and SLphotography in Ursa Major, Eric and me’s island.
I found it in Calleta as a freebie, and once i saw it i wasn’t able to stop laughing for a while. It’s SO TRUE!!!!!! and so sad.
I mean, Second Life is not a free service, all of us we pay (some of us a lot of money) to Linden Lab (directly or buying stuff to some people is paying to Linden Lab), and the service they are giving lately is everyday worse in some senses.
I’m not so old in Second Life (almost one year) but things changed a lot from my rezzdate. Well, lag was always there, i understand when we are 40 residents in one sim and the place is laggy, the problem now is you can have lag in empty sims, even not really full of scripts.
Even they try to add new features, the main ones (teleports, Friends List, textures, building tools, …) are having problems, sometimes BIG problems. Voice is ok (i confess i don’t use it too much), but again will be better if they fix old features before create new ones. Curiously, every time they add a feature this have some conflict with an old feature and the full grid has problems.
I understand we are everyday more residents, one year ago the average number of residents online in pick hours was 10000-15000, now is more than 50000, and of course i understand that this is causing some problems, but Linden Lab said the grid is scalable, well, it seems it’s no so scalable.
A lot of contents creators for SL are asking to LL for a new Havoc version for physics, they added voice instead. A lot of people was on the Project Open Letter, LL organized a Town Hall, a lot of promises but most of them are still that, promises.
In my opinion the problem is not only the bugs and the issues, i’m sure they are working to have a better grid everyday (anyway i think they can do it better). For me the biggest problem is the lack of communication. They are doing things, but they don’t explain what they are doing in the right way. All the fixed issues are hidden behind new issues or behind what we can call “community scandals” (Nipplegate, ageplay scandal, etc…). Almost a year ago we had Town Hall almost every week, now just sometimes, in special circumstances, the last one i remember was for the Project Open Letter, a lot of time ago. The bad service of Lindens to the rest of residents is not only something for “No payment info” people, as Estate Owner or Manager you can ask what you want to Concierge Service and their answers use to be: “Open a support ticket”, “Post the problem in the JIRA” or “Look in the Wiki”.
There is no communication between Linden Lab and the residents, and some Liasons spend her time being worried about a nipple and not improving the relationship between Lindens and residents.
Anshe Chung and the 10 L$ fever
Anshe Chung at the Non-profit Commons launch event, originally uploaded by rikomatic.
The last days i was reading a about this, in SLnewspapers and in SLblogs.
The first notice i had was through The Avastar (maybe is not the most serious news source, but can be fun), later in this Vint Falken’s post and in this Storm Thunders’s post.
First the facts and the words:
On September 6th ACS (Anshe Chung’s company) flooded SLexchange (a company partially owned by Chung) with cheap furniture for 10L$/item.
In the SLexchange forums was clear that Anshe plans to lauch a full collection of quality products at this price.
Her full reply at the protests in SLexchange forums was:
All our artists work in a new fully air-conditioned studio in a class A office building and environment according to German workplace standards. They receive clearly above market compensation and full benefits and insurance package. Some of them already afforded to purchase their own apartment. At ACS we have regulated working hours and file regular tax reports contributing to the general society and social systems of the country we are located in.
In IMVU the average margin of content creators for items they sell is about 10-15 L$, while in Second Life content prices are still at almost the same levels as 3 years ago when the population was only a fraction of what it is now. We think this is one reason why IMVU is growing much faster than Second Life now. Therefore we decided to make Second Life more competitive and more accessible to players by providing high quality products at prices that allow Second Life to remain competitive in the long run. Our plan for the end of this year is to have between 50 and 100 internal designers and scripters working on 10 LINDENS, plus a network of local partners we are currently training here. We plan to create a full range catalog of decent SL content.
I think this is definitely good news for the content creator community of SL, much the same way ACS entering the IMVU content market helped the content creator community as a whole to grow their business. In IMVU, the increased internal competition and improved quality of the product catalog greatly accelerated growth of the platform and market as whole. Many content creators reacted by strengthening their brand’s focus and focusing on more complex / high end products, actually increasing their sales in the long run. I hope we can recreate part of this success in Second Life in the coming months and all benefit from economic growth again, after the stagnation of the economy here in August. (From Vint Falken’s post)
Well… now my thoughts:
Anshe Chung tries to compare IMVU with Second Life, both are so different that you can’t just compare them. She has the right platforms to can sell the products at the prices she wants, she has more than 600 servers, she has at least two Welcome Areas (Linden Lab let some private owners to have Welcome Areas, as Chung, Azure Islands, …), she has SLexchange. Maybe we can call “dumping” what she is trying to do, but…
But i think is no so important as some can be afraid of. This 10L$ objects will be like freebies. There are really good quality freebies, i use some of them in my home, but nobody has all freebies clothes, or all freebies furniture. We all want ourselves and our homes to be special different, unique. Most of the residents (me included) are not worry to pay for an object if we like them (of course, within a reasonable price).
But, maybe, what really scares me in this story is something deeper than the 10L$ products. Something is changing in Second Life. Do you remember “a virtual world owned and created by his residents”? After seeing the Linden Lab’s Second Life Grid project and this ACS action i see that they will have to change the slogan to: “a virtual world owned and created by the corporations”.
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