Warm Winter Nights

I have been giving classes in Academia Portucalis since 2007 and, teaching not being a RL activity, I took it as challenge when invited.

My stage fright was not easy to overcome, but blushing on this side of the screen and using written text made it easier and step by step the fright was gone and I am already able to speak in front of an audience without mumbling.

I have been teaching there mostly common Second Life things, like avatar make overs, land and group management, general Q&A sessions. The last mini-course I gave there was about windlight and photography.

And now comes the true reason for this post. I was really overwhelmed with the results obtained. Not only the students kept making clever questions, but did in fact pay a lot of attention to the classes. When asked to do some pictures as homework the results were really amazing. Never knew that teaching could be so rewarding and I am really proud of them.

There is an exhibit of their first works going on in Owl’s Bay Art Gallery which you can see until the end of May. Please drop by any time and check their works (teleport in front of landing point).

Could not end this post without thanking Marga Ferrer and M2Life Paravane for the great work they are doing at the Academia and for making the Portuguese community a bit richer in knowledge within this Second Life of ours.

Leave you a couple of pictures from the classes and the exhibition.

Taken by Marga Ferrer during the class

… to all my friends who were at the studio last night and to all those who sent e-mails, plurks and IMs wishing me good luck.

It was fun and Paisley is a wonderful host as well as all the team members in SLCN-TV.

For all of you who couldn’t be there, please follow this link and watch the interviews, which were really interesting and hear TJ singing. Promise it will be worth it.

Ibrahim sent me the pictures bellow. Thank you my friend!

It has been almost a month since I posted here, but I have been really busy in RL and in SL between Hunts and preparing my first exhibition I haven’t had much time left for writing.

Now the hunts have calmed down, so inventory sorting is the next step *sigh

Anyhow, the pictures for the exhibition are now ready and I leave you here the invitation to drop by at the Opening.

This exhibition is born from a challenge made to me by rm Sirbu, after she saw some of my pictures in Flickr and Koinup. I was a bit reluctant at first. In my 2+ years of SL I haven’t been much on Mainland except for some shopping or to get material for blogging, and the idea I had of Mainland was probably the same as yours: lots of clutter and chaos.

I ended up taking the challenge and decided not to go to the recently rezzed sims like the Nautilus but, instead, explore the old Continent and glad I did it.

Starting walking down Route 8 I found gorgeous places along the way, which easily match any private island and I will try to show you some of those places in this exhibition.

The creativity of Second Life residents doesn’t stop to amaze me and I hope that, like me, you will go down the Linden Roads and let yourself be marvelled by lots of lovely spots that emerge at each curve of the way.

rm (Xaraz) and Timo (TD Realty) were kind enough to find me a place for the exhibition and thus the “Mainland Gallery” was born.

Leave you here the taxi and hope to see you there next Tuesday, Feb 24th at 02:00 PM PDT

Like I posted here, Koinup launched the Avatar Art Contest in late October. The contest closed on December 3rd and the results were published on saturday.

I rarely check my feeds during the weekends, but on sunday I decided to check Koinup for any new comments on my stream there and I was surprised by a nice comment of Eves Rodenberg, congratulating me for having won.

“What? Me? One of my pictures? Naaa! She must be confused.”

I clicked the blog link and to my complete amazement one of my photos had been selected. I wasn’t expecting it, due to the absolutely stunning pictures that were submitted (you can see them here) and I still feel I didn’t deserve it.

Anyway thank you so much Bettina for having voted for my pic and congratulations to the wonderful people that are my inspiration to do more and better, both with the works they do and the nice comments they leave on my stream.

Like I have been posting, we are launching a short story contest every month at Owl’s Bay with the same theme as the Island for that month.

Last one was Once upon a time in a Fairy Tale – although one of my friends claimed it should be Furry tails hehe.  Anyway, leave you here the video for the cerimony, produced by BlueAngel Lungu, and hope that on next contest you can be one of the lucky winners. I will inform the new theme shortly, so that you can call the muses in time.

Better than any photo a movie gives us place to dream.

Carla made this beautiful machinima to introduce Owl’s Bay. Enjoy the travel and feel free to stop by and take a look for yourself.

Koinup is like they state a social network based on user-generated contents. It’s for users who want to share their works with other users. It allows its members to upload their creations and it encourages them to review or comment on other members’ creations. From a general point of view Koinup is similar to other social networks. But it is also unique, because it focuses only on contents created in virtual and synthetic environments as games/mmorpg/3dworld.

I joined the network some time ago and not only have discovered really tallented people, but also made some friends. There is also a showcase with the best places in SL to explore, sellected by the users.

Now they launched a new contest Called Avatar Art Contest. The challenge is to make you avatar look like a painting and you can read the rules here

You can submit your entries from 23rd of October until 3rd of December, so join the community and show to all of us the tallented photographer and photoshoper you are.

Too bad I had already posted the one bellow… I think it could be a good candidate *sigh

Like I mentioned here, we had a Short Stories contest in Owl’s. Here are the winners:

1st prize (L$ 1,000+publication) – Poulana Tokyoska with “As horas inventadas” (The Invented Hours)

2nd prizes (publication) – Aggio Piaggio with “China – The Dream”

- Fokas Greenwood with “Cinderella Xing”

- Ted Greenwood with “Good Bye Bai Quien”

The delivery of the awards will be made at Owl’s Bay Bookshop on Saturday, October 25th at 02:00PM SLT / 10:00 PM GMT, followed by a party and Best in Chinese Wear contest.

Hope to see you all there and leave you here the covers of the books (click on the pic for larger view).

Owl’s Bay is the new Open Space SIM I rented with some friends (and what a bargain guys!) and is soon to be officially opened.

Among the several events, which will be held during 4 weeks, we are launching a Short Stories Contest. Here are the Rules

1. All residents older than 3 months in SL may present a maximum of 3 works and just one story of each author will be selected.

1. The stories should some how be connected to the theme “Once Upon a time in China”, once this is the theme for this month’s event.

1. Stories can be submitted in Portuguese and/or English.

1. The stories have to be non-published originals and may not exceed 2 A4 pages. A maximum of 6 photos can be added (1 being for the front cover). If you decide to present a comics story, the maximum number of pages will be 6 with a maximum of 6 pictures per page and an extra for the cover.

Note: All the photos have to be taken by the author or it/he/she should supply to the organization a written authorization by the photographer.

1. All works must be sent until October 5^th to owlsbay@gmail.com in .doc and .jpg files.

1. The winner chosen by the jury will receive a L$ 1,000 cash prize and the book will be published and set for sale in Owl’s Bay Bookshop and other places that join the initiative.

The next two best stories will also be published and set for sale under the above terms.

Note: Owl’s Bay will retain a 20% percentage of every book sale.

1. The winners will be announced on the “Once Upon a Time in China” closing party and the books launched at the same time (date shortly to be announced).

For further information please leave your question here in comments or send e-mail to owlsbay@gmail.com.

Are you still there? Come on! Get your feather, pen or keyboard and start writing. We are waiting for your master pieces.

Have fun and may the Muses be with you!

Some time ago I came across the Not Possible in RL blog and was immediately hooked by the places they blogged about. When I read this post, I decided to go to Templum ex Obscurum and see the new creation of Baron Grayson. I already had seen some of his work in Intempesta Nox sim on my earlier days in SL and he is IMHO one of the greatest artists in SL.

One of the last things I do before going to bed is to check Flickr for the latest photos published. Yesterday I had a surprise waiting for me. One of my pictures was chosen to be published in their blog (thank you guys!). Don’t know if I deserve it, cause I’m don’t understand a thing about post processing and I just try to take nice pics inworld with the resources available.

Anyway, I leave you here the picture and you can see some more on this set in my FLickr