Phoenix Industries is having its first open house at its platforms in Villeneuve, showcasing upcoming console builds for Second Life. Among the builds featured are the Plasma (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Villeneuve/71/160/2083), Energy (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Villeneuve/71/164/2017), and Cosmic (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Villeneuve/79/166/1979) consoles by Syaoran Nootan, the Dark Wanderer (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Villeneuve/66/193/2005) by Koschei Yuhara, and the Library (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Villeneuve/108/200/2002) and Zero Console (http://slurl.com/secondlife/Villeneuve/93/191/1978) by me, Archangel Mortenwold*.
Scripting is proceeding on already-submitted builds. The Phoenix Industries system will have role-play features, voice controls, built-in random landing system for the flight controls, cloaking and crash effects, and more.
Phoenix Industries will begin beta testing its new system this Saturday, June 25th. To that end, they are seeking people to run their consoles through the paces. Interested parties should get in contact with Nonamei Scribe and Koschei Yuhara.
Anyway, feel free to drop by any time today and check out what Phoenix Industries has on offer. I'll be online most of today to help answer questions. Any other questions, please feel free to join the product support group in-world at http://world.secondlife.com/group/3da541bc-97f2-9527-0e5c-47b83a8055b0.
*: For obvious reasons, my builds will be heavily inspected to make sure they're on the level. For further details, please see previous postings.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Clearing Up Some Things
Okay, ordinarily I wouldn't stoop to getting into yet another cross-region battle, but someone has been throwing around false accusations along with some legitimate ones, leaving out crucial facts that need to be included.
1.) Last year I was driven out of Who Island by people I once thought were friends but who turned out not to be. They tried to steal one of the groups I own out from under me and cut me out of running my own company. Then, during last year's Sci-Fi Convention, while I was in the process of removing their items from my vendors, they filed an abuse report against me and sent out notices accusing me of selling pirated scripts. In fact, I was complying with their demand to remove their items from my vendors. In addition, it was reported to me that they fully intended to sell my builds in their vendors even though they no longer had my permission. I had to comment in a blog entry that permission to use my builds had been revoked. After that, Who Island continued to spread lies about me. Witnesses, however, can attest to the truth.
2.) It is true that I used prims from what turned out to be a pirated Dalek build. I admitted it and sent out notices explaining what was done, and that I acted alone in having done so. I also took the liberty of paying the builder of the Dalek, HBK Schwartzman, 4,000L$ in compensation for Archangel Network Daleks that had been sold up to the time I pulled them from my vendors. Here is the screencap showing the transaction:
Odd thing, leaving out this fact. But hey, why worry about facts when one is on a tear? Don't get me wrong; I am making absolutely no excuses for what I did. It was stupid, I got caught, and I ended up nearly losing a lot of good friends because of it. And I did actually lose some friends over this, as was natural given the nature of the misdeed in question. That's my fault and I deserve whatever consequences I had and have coming to me. But to falsely accuse others of being in on this, and to continue spreading such deceptions, is just as wrong and it is destructive to the entirety of the SL Whovian community. The fact is that I did this by myself, and did it without the knowledge or consent of anyone else Others have been generous enough to let me keep the flat I rent and remain on their staff as a DJ, which only shows that they are willing to forgive mistakes for people adult enough to admit them and accept responsibility. Had I not done so, I am certain I would now be homeless in SL and without any friends whatsoever.
Bottom line: It is dishonest to leave out crucial facts when ranting and raving, and it is dishonest to falsely accuse others of things they never did just because some people want to use my misdeed as an excuse to heighten the intensity of an inter-sim war nobody cares about (except the ones waging it). I've admitted to what I did and done what I could to make amends. People who were not involved in it needn't have their good names sullied just because they chose to forgive me.
And that's all I'm gonna say about this. People can make up their own minds about who to believe.
1.) Last year I was driven out of Who Island by people I once thought were friends but who turned out not to be. They tried to steal one of the groups I own out from under me and cut me out of running my own company. Then, during last year's Sci-Fi Convention, while I was in the process of removing their items from my vendors, they filed an abuse report against me and sent out notices accusing me of selling pirated scripts. In fact, I was complying with their demand to remove their items from my vendors. In addition, it was reported to me that they fully intended to sell my builds in their vendors even though they no longer had my permission. I had to comment in a blog entry that permission to use my builds had been revoked. After that, Who Island continued to spread lies about me. Witnesses, however, can attest to the truth.
2.) It is true that I used prims from what turned out to be a pirated Dalek build. I admitted it and sent out notices explaining what was done, and that I acted alone in having done so. I also took the liberty of paying the builder of the Dalek, HBK Schwartzman, 4,000L$ in compensation for Archangel Network Daleks that had been sold up to the time I pulled them from my vendors. Here is the screencap showing the transaction:
Odd thing, leaving out this fact. But hey, why worry about facts when one is on a tear? Don't get me wrong; I am making absolutely no excuses for what I did. It was stupid, I got caught, and I ended up nearly losing a lot of good friends because of it. And I did actually lose some friends over this, as was natural given the nature of the misdeed in question. That's my fault and I deserve whatever consequences I had and have coming to me. But to falsely accuse others of being in on this, and to continue spreading such deceptions, is just as wrong and it is destructive to the entirety of the SL Whovian community. The fact is that I did this by myself, and did it without the knowledge or consent of anyone else Others have been generous enough to let me keep the flat I rent and remain on their staff as a DJ, which only shows that they are willing to forgive mistakes for people adult enough to admit them and accept responsibility. Had I not done so, I am certain I would now be homeless in SL and without any friends whatsoever.
Bottom line: It is dishonest to leave out crucial facts when ranting and raving, and it is dishonest to falsely accuse others of things they never did just because some people want to use my misdeed as an excuse to heighten the intensity of an inter-sim war nobody cares about (except the ones waging it). I've admitted to what I did and done what I could to make amends. People who were not involved in it needn't have their good names sullied just because they chose to forgive me.
And that's all I'm gonna say about this. People can make up their own minds about who to believe.
Tuesday, June 7, 2011
Moffat's Screwing with Us
After watching the Series 6 mid-season cliffhanger, "A Good Man Goes to War", I can safely assert that head producer and writer Stephen Moffat is just screwing with our heads. If you have not yet seen this past weekend's episode of Doctor Who, now's the time to navigate away from this page, for the following synopsis contains spoilers.
Having spent the previous six episodes giving us the creepy eye-patch woman poking her face through holes in walls before a bewildered Amy Pond (played by current series regular Karen Gillan), we finally get a name and something of a look into who she is: Korvarian, a woman on a mission to take down the Doctor, and she's using his closest friends in order to do it. Specifically, she's using Amy's newborn baby as a weapon against him. The last of the Time Lords gathers an army of allies and enemies who owe him for various reasons, we get a big battle, a false resolution, the turning of the tide, and the twist ending. River Song's identity is finally revealed, and we are once again left with more questions than answers.
Am I the only one who feels insulted by Moffat's insanely annoying tendency to establish a set of rules or a story continuity only to throw it out in the very next episode, or by the end of the season? That's what's happening again in Series 6. In Series 5, we saw the Doctor and his new companion get into mischief, only to have everything rebooted by the end of the season as though it never happened. And it looks like Moffat is building up to a similar ending for Series 6 once it resumes in the Fall.
Back to River Song and the revelation of who she really is. I'm disappointed in Moffat's decision to say the least. It was obvious coming from him, and a cheap trick that's been abused in the past on other television shows. So why do it? I'm convinced it's because Moffat hasn't got an original idea in his body. This is to be expected considering that television and film have worn out pretty much every conceivable story element imaginable, but still, could he not have done better? Then there's Moffat's irritating ability to pull one-off enemies out of his arse (to use the British spelling), enemies he uses for one or two episodes and then discards without an explanation as to who they are, what their purpose is beyond taking down the Doctor, or why. We saw this in episodes 1 and 2 of Series 6, with the bulbous-headed gray aliens calling themselves The Silence — are they what caused the TARDIS to blow up at the end of Series 5, or do they simply work for the entity responsible? Did they somehow influence the Doctor's oldest enemies to unite in order to capture him? Why do they want to bring about whatever it is they're trying to bring about? And why did they use the time capsule we saw in the Series 5 episode "The Lodger"? Moffat never really explains, and I get the feeling he doesn't care enough about the audience to do that.
That's a real shame, because there are parts of Moffat's tenure in charge of Doctor Who I really enjoy. Matt Smith does a splendid job of filling the role of the Doctor, and considering the gigantic shoes he had to fill when David Tennant left the show at the end of 2009, that truly is a feat worthy of praise. He brings a level of enthusiasm, arrogance, self-assuredness, and clownishness borrowed from such actors as Patrick Troughton, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy, with a healthy dose of darkness thrown in for good measure, to round out the 11th incarnation of the venerable Time Lord. And while some fans dis the character of Amy Pond and actress Karen Gillan, I happen to think she's improving as she grows into the role of the Doctor's latest companion. Fellow companion Arthur Darvill, playing Rory Williams, Amy's husband, brings a great deal of talent to the table. And as a stand-alone episode, "The Doctor's Wife" from this season really was a good one.
But all that is wasted with Moffat as head writer and producer. I was willing to give him a chance because he was part of the Who team under previous head honcho Russell T. Davies, but as we await the second half of Series 6 this Fall, I am less than enthusiastic as to what he has in store for us. Given that I've been a fan of Doctor Who since I was a kid, that does not bode well for me. I'll watch it because I hate leaving off in the middle of a story arc, but someone has to step in and take the reigns away from Moffat going into next year.
Having spent the previous six episodes giving us the creepy eye-patch woman poking her face through holes in walls before a bewildered Amy Pond (played by current series regular Karen Gillan), we finally get a name and something of a look into who she is: Korvarian, a woman on a mission to take down the Doctor, and she's using his closest friends in order to do it. Specifically, she's using Amy's newborn baby as a weapon against him. The last of the Time Lords gathers an army of allies and enemies who owe him for various reasons, we get a big battle, a false resolution, the turning of the tide, and the twist ending. River Song's identity is finally revealed, and we are once again left with more questions than answers.
Am I the only one who feels insulted by Moffat's insanely annoying tendency to establish a set of rules or a story continuity only to throw it out in the very next episode, or by the end of the season? That's what's happening again in Series 6. In Series 5, we saw the Doctor and his new companion get into mischief, only to have everything rebooted by the end of the season as though it never happened. And it looks like Moffat is building up to a similar ending for Series 6 once it resumes in the Fall.
Back to River Song and the revelation of who she really is. I'm disappointed in Moffat's decision to say the least. It was obvious coming from him, and a cheap trick that's been abused in the past on other television shows. So why do it? I'm convinced it's because Moffat hasn't got an original idea in his body. This is to be expected considering that television and film have worn out pretty much every conceivable story element imaginable, but still, could he not have done better? Then there's Moffat's irritating ability to pull one-off enemies out of his arse (to use the British spelling), enemies he uses for one or two episodes and then discards without an explanation as to who they are, what their purpose is beyond taking down the Doctor, or why. We saw this in episodes 1 and 2 of Series 6, with the bulbous-headed gray aliens calling themselves The Silence — are they what caused the TARDIS to blow up at the end of Series 5, or do they simply work for the entity responsible? Did they somehow influence the Doctor's oldest enemies to unite in order to capture him? Why do they want to bring about whatever it is they're trying to bring about? And why did they use the time capsule we saw in the Series 5 episode "The Lodger"? Moffat never really explains, and I get the feeling he doesn't care enough about the audience to do that.
That's a real shame, because there are parts of Moffat's tenure in charge of Doctor Who I really enjoy. Matt Smith does a splendid job of filling the role of the Doctor, and considering the gigantic shoes he had to fill when David Tennant left the show at the end of 2009, that truly is a feat worthy of praise. He brings a level of enthusiasm, arrogance, self-assuredness, and clownishness borrowed from such actors as Patrick Troughton, Colin Baker, and Sylvester McCoy, with a healthy dose of darkness thrown in for good measure, to round out the 11th incarnation of the venerable Time Lord. And while some fans dis the character of Amy Pond and actress Karen Gillan, I happen to think she's improving as she grows into the role of the Doctor's latest companion. Fellow companion Arthur Darvill, playing Rory Williams, Amy's husband, brings a great deal of talent to the table. And as a stand-alone episode, "The Doctor's Wife" from this season really was a good one.
But all that is wasted with Moffat as head writer and producer. I was willing to give him a chance because he was part of the Who team under previous head honcho Russell T. Davies, but as we await the second half of Series 6 this Fall, I am less than enthusiastic as to what he has in store for us. Given that I've been a fan of Doctor Who since I was a kid, that does not bode well for me. I'll watch it because I hate leaving off in the middle of a story arc, but someone has to step in and take the reigns away from Moffat going into next year.
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