It’s funny sometimes how things turn out. After my visit to the Tiny Universe Convention I felt inspired to make myself an avatar. I blindly assumed that you could just wear a transparent texture as a skin and you would just disappear. But oh no, nothings ever that simple is it?

Turned out that the rather spindly robot that I was making had limbs that were far too thin - you need limbs thick enough to enclose the normal avatar limbs, and mine just didn’t make the grade. So rather than alter the avatar, I instead decided to create a giant robot sculpture out of it. And was rather glad that I did, as it ended up as art with a moral, hence the title “The Young Scientist - Curiousity Without Responsibility” (don’t stand too close to the focus of the magnifying glass or you’ll find out why).

This may well turn out to be the start of a series of giant robot sculptures.

And just in case you were wondering, the cute little Scootboy avatar was bought at the Tiny Universe. It makes the giant robot look a lot bigger than it actually is.

The robot in my skybox….

Unexpectedly good night time shot

Mama - da bigger robot burnded me!

Oh but I hate computers - I’d just written a really nice piece about tinies and tiny avatars and WordPress just deleted it. Cue much swearing and cursing. So here’s the cute tiny pics from The Tiny Universe Convention without any commentary because I’m in a really bad mood and just can’t be bothered to retype it all.

Tiny Anubis
 

Tiny Doggy

Tiny Pirate

Tiny Steampunk Avatar

Tiny Robot

Tiny spaceman

Tiny Eagle

Tiny Warrior

Tiny ScootBoy

Tiny Flying Avatar

 

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Dust/97/146/90

The blog hit 100,000 pageviews yesterday. I don’t know why an arbitrary number like that should bring me pleasure but it does. Which is strange because 75,357 pageviews didn’t bring me any noticable change in my consciousness at all.

And the pleasure becomes rarer as time goes on, because I suspect that the next arbitrary number that will bring me pleasure will be 1,000,000.

Curse those damned logarithmic progressions!

Nasa’s Phoenix lander has arrived safely on Mars. Great jubilation at mission control. Congratulations to all concerned. Now we wait for the Greenies to arrive to play football with it.

Watch the landing footage (recorded) and catch the latest news and pics as they arrive on Nasa TV……
http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/

A new build by AM Radio is Husk - a vast desertscape with AM’s usual qualities of serenity and loneliness in a landscape  - it helps that he’s got a whole sim with practically nothing in it at ground level.

It also helps that he can put a large amount of prims into a single object - any one of which would fill up most peoples prim allocation. It looks good though and evokes a  surreal nostalgia for times past in the American midwest - something that seems to be a recurring theme with him.

See it at……
http://slurl.com/secondlife/NMC%20Arts%20Lab/41/137/707

The amusingly named Marquee Desade bought one of my Buddist Stupa inspired creations and installed on her island - an interesting place full of hidden places and details.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Marquesas/215/43/51/

Here’s a few pictures - click through for bigger pics……

Watch out for the spider that lives in the boiler….

There’s no atmosphere on the moon, so Earthrise from the moon is a lot clearer than moonrise from the Earth. See it happen in real time in these two hi-res videos taken from the Kaguya Lunar orbiter. Beautiful stuff.

» Full Earth Rise from Japan’s Kaguya lunar orbiter
» Full Earth Set from Japan’s Kaguya lunar orbiter

Via The Planetary Society Blog

Nothing to do with Second Life, but I couldn’t resist this one.

What if aliens did land on Earth, but not at the White House. What if they landed on a Glasgow housing estate? And what if our reactions to them were not based on science and diplomacy, but on the science fiction films and TV series that we’d seen?

This is the premise of the short science fiction story “The Gadgey” by Alan Campbell…..

‘The alien had climbed free of the spaceship and was staggering through the crater. Bolstered by Gordie’s agreement about the mongling, Rab said, “Whit will we dae wi’ it, Gordie? Dae ye hink we can keep it, like in E.T.? Dae ye hink it’ll make oor bikes fly?”
Gordie snorted. “That film’s for bairns,” he said. “Aliens dinnae make bikes fly. They come doon and blow stuff up and eat folk. Remember Independence Day? That’s the modern handbook fer invasions. Ye cannae go by E.T. any more. Not if ye hope tae survive.” ‘

Read this wonderfully atmospheric short at Strange Horizons……
http://www.strangehorizons.com/2008/20080505/gadgey-f.shtml

Just a few more pics from the NPIRL Garden Of Earthly Delights Exhibition.
Click through for bigger pics…..

Free T-Shirt for everybody who sells their soul to the Devil at my NPIRL Garden Of Earthly Delights build.
SLURL to my version of Heaven, then take the teleport down to Hell and make your pact with Beelzebub himself…..
http://slurl.com/secondlife/Rezzable%20Create/101/127/586/