The new blog

Here it is!

I’ve recently been inspired by my wonderful husband to update my blog and I decided to go for it. Not everyone has a productivity, blogger, video making guru in their home but if they do they can’t help but to be swept into the passion and here I am.

I am really excited about the new format and the better layout.  Being naive and really optimistic I didn’t think it would be too tough, Torley makes it seem effortless, so off I went to pick out a cool new theme.

It wasn’t quite so simple, I also am leaving my blog provider Typepad, and while I had good service and never had a problem, for continuity sake and household conformity I went with WordPress moving forward. Back to browsing all the awesome wordpress themes, Smashing Magazine has some good lists compilations.

Something I learned from Torley was to not just pick one but to rather immerse myself into as many possibly WordPress Themes as I could. This way you get a good feel for what is standard fare, and what is good, and what is a sucky, WordPress theme. Torley also recently updated his blog and he has the coolest and I couldn’t copy his, well…..I bet he would of let me but I wanted something different so I kept diving in for hours looking at the themes and looking at examples of sites with the themes that interested me.

I think it was day 2 when I decided on a theme and we installed it. One thing I learned is important is to pick a theme that has easy customization, or “easier” or whatever that really means. The theme I picked was Revolution, oh, it’s snazzy for sure but when you first install it, it takes a bit to customize it to make it your own style. Of course I could of just transfered, applied, and kept on truckin but I definately wanted to add the Ravenelle touch to it, and logically how hard can it be to do that? hahaahhah ok so four days later I am grateful to my past experience with XML, HTML and background with making web pages during my career, although it has been over five years since I really touched much of that.

I kept at it fulltime for the past few days and here is the first version of my updated blog, I consider it to be a work in progress and ready for sharing with the world.

I look forward to growing from here. Sharing, exploring, creating and documenting it here for you to read.

Recipe for Second Life Event Seating

Who here has ever had to set up for event seating in Second Life?

Lots of us have had to do it and there are some practical reasons to do this but I’m bored…event seating as we typically know if it boring and I’ll say it..yes I will say it..it’s lame.  I do confess that during my time as a professional developer in Second Life I built seating like this, and it nearly killed me, and while I did attempt to make interesting seating I am afraid my old bench seats are as boring as the next guys.

First here is the recipe for typical:

1.) Make some benches

2.) Put sit mats down

3.) Make the camera face toward the stage

4.)Evenly space out the seats forward, back and side to side

5.) Make the sit pose one of the standard 6 available copy enabled  sits from Second Life animators (yes we also need more copy/trans enabled sits for SL builder, but due to the large number of jerk faces who resell the anims as stand alone when the animator clearly asks you don’t do this..SL animators find this market less lucrative, thus those freaking resellers drive down the market compulsion for an animator to do such products)

6.) Have someone come through to make sure you have perfectly lined up the seats and that they work as intended (problem being the intended is terribly boring)

Beautiful Presentation area built by me, but in hindsight it’s rather boring although stunning..

Here is the new cool recipe for event seating:

1.) Tear out any benches and get some couches, clouds, mushrooms, cats with a tray to sit on, thrones, just a pose ball no actual “chair” (kind of free in the air type of thing)

2.) Don’t line them up, instead cluster them, turn them, flip it upside down

3.) Use original poses/animations/make them dance, scratch their knee, stick their tongues out…get creative

4.) Have optional places to be at the event where the resident can use their own animations. Many of us in SL have over rides that we’ve spent a lot of time putting together and also don’t trust you to do a cool enough job of seating us in the most awesome way. This is okay, it’s okay to give up that control to the individual. Second Life is a good place to express individuality and creativity, provide a simple outlet for it, be considerate.

5.) You should still make sure you use a force camera view to the stage upon sit.

6.) USE CLICK ACTIONS (if you do not know what this is please see this video)

7.) Have someone come through and check your seats, make sure your sits do work as intended and no one is sticking half butt deep into their chair or their leg is going through the back of the next guy.

BUT BUT, we are a serious new media business, school, leading edge…insert whatever but you aren’t cool if you line up a bunch of benches and force people to sit like drones and it’s definitely not leading edge of serious in world Second Life design.  Serious doesn’t have to mean boring and you don’t need your audience all animated to pick their nose..although that would be pretty funny, but I don’t advocate that (but if you do , do that I want to see, please send a TP)

Oh, I am feeling much better now, sometimes a blog post comes and I have to let it out, this was one of those. I thank you for your time and I thank you for your consideration in trying my new recipe for good event seating.

If you have a super awesome, event venue with interesting seating, I would REALLY love to see it. I will celebrate your awesome and point everyone to your example.

Example of somewhat creative underwater classroom/lecture seating area built by me.

“But but BUT WAIT, clearly you don’t understand about events Ravenelle” said the Butt Guy. “this can’t work for our need, we have special boring persons needs and are afraid to try something new or be different from the others”

But Guy, I do understand, and let me assure you  I’ve set up and had events set up for dozens of events in Second Life. I’ve been a resident for going on six years and attended many types of events from snore fests to rockin live music.

Make the attendees feel comfortable, make them feel part of the event. People love to take pictures and shots of avatars lined up in a row makes you look stiff and traditionally uninteresting. In world photography goes outside of Second Life and all those shots of your event are also your advertising.

Just being in Second Life isn’t enough you need something special and this is a simple recipe for some special, add a dash to your next event that you would traditionally line up people on benches for and see how it goes.

If you need help I’m only an IM a way and I’ll come over and take a look at what you have going on, or help you brainstorm ideas if I have time.  I’ve done and led more professional builds in Second Life than any other resident and I am fully qualified in the fun, creative department as well.

I want to see you succeed even if it’s just for selfish reasons that I don’t want to come to your event and sit on a bench, knees together, back straight.

The Beauty of GLOW

I once blogged about how I saw no good coming from glow, I was surely mistaken and the fantastic artists of Second Life continually make me eat my words. I am happy to admit that while there is potential for abuse of glow, I surely love it and i am grateful we have glow in Second Life now. It further extends our palette of tools for building, the use of light and shadow are extremely important elements to building in Second Life. I am certain there are misuses of glow just like any build option but I’d never want to give it up now that we have it.

Build by Spiral Walcher

Build by Spiral Walcher at

Kings Rezzable

Build by Spiral Walcher now showing at Kings Rezzable

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