Herald in Aglarond Sims.

This is a character note of mine from 2008. Running across it is like finding an old photograph, "oh, what I was then". Oddly poetic, wholly self-absorbed and sketchy as a character history, this is probably terrible reading. Skip it at will.

I am called Arth. Some few know my older name of Aean.

I am created and always angel since before time began. As such, I give the message wherever it must be heard. I have walked many worlds. I have flown heavens of every shade. I have been captive in hell. I have sat in hell's throne and worn its crown. I have made stars. I have mended a broken heart. I have died. I have learned some of music, and mathematics, and magic. I have learned some of compassion. I have loved. That, of all these powers, is greatest: I love.

I am appointed High Judge of the Dead. As such, I have been chosen to guide many mortals in the after-life. I have welcomed the newly dead in heaven or hell or elsewhere. I have led the council of three immortals. I have been judged by immortals. I have guided souls to find rest, to find reflection, and to find new life. I have cast to the future and found every mood there. I have wept. I have laughed. That, of all these powers, is greatest: I laugh.

I am the First Speaker of Elatha, goddess of honor and might. As such, the "Clerics of Elatha", a cleric healer free group that anyone can join, follow my leadership and wisdom. I have healed. I have revived the fallen and the dead. I have can coaxed the truth from unwilling tongues. I have dispelled magic and evil and chaos. I have taught little fae and great dragons. I have learned. That, of all these powers, is greatest: I learn.

But of all, all these powers, this is greatest of all: I am.

Thanks for reading.

Anam Cara means Soul Friend

In the Celtic tradition, there is a beautiful understanding of love and friendship. One of the fascinating ideas here is the idea of soul love; “Anam Cara” may sound like some new French perfume, but it actually refers to the Celtic spiritual belief of souls connecting and bonding.

In Celtic Spiritual tradition, it is believed that the soul radiates all about the physical body what some refer to as an aura. When you connect with another person and become completely open and trusting with that individual, your two souls begin to flow together.

Should such a deep bond be formed, it is said you have found your “Anam Cara” or soul friend.

Your “Anam Cara” always accepts you as you truly are, holding you in beauty and light. In order to appreciate this relationship, you must first recognize your own inner light and beauty.

This is not always easy to do. The Celts believed that forming an “Anam Cara” friendship would help you to awaken your awareness of your own nature and experience the joys of others.

The “Anam Cara” was originally someone to whom you confessed, revealing the hidden intimacies of your life. With the “Anam Cara”, you could share your innermost self, your mind and your heart. This friendship was an act of recognition and belonging. When you had an “Anam Cara”, your friendship cut across all convention, morality and category. You were joined in an ancient and eternal way with the “friend of your soul”. The Celtic understanding did not set limitations of space or time on the soul. There is no cage for the soul. The soul is a divine light that flows into you and into your Other.

This art of belonging awakened and fostered a deep and special companionship. When you love, you open your life to an Other. All your barriers are down. Your protective distances collapse. This person is given absolute permission to come into the deepest temple of your spirit. Your presence and life can become their ground. It takes great courage to let someone so close. Where a friendship recognizes itself as a gift, it will remain open to its own ground of blessing….. When you are blessed with an “Anam Cara”, the Irish believe, you have arrived at that most sacred place: home. This bond between friends is indissoluble: “This, I say, is what is broken by no chances, what no interval of time or space can sever or destroy, and what even death itself cannot part”.

~ from “Anam Cara…Wisdom from the Celtic World“, by John O’Donohue

Heralding New Groups

Using Second Life groups can make property management a nightmare or a dream.

Getting a group is fairly easy, per the SL wiki. All you really need is $100L and an open group slot. You can make as many groups as you like - all you need is open slots and cash.

The hardest permanent step is choosing a name. To do a first rate job at this, brainstorm a lot of group names. Appealing and useful names for large groups, like store groups and club members will want simplicity, emotion, positioning, maybe some humor or slang in them. You want to pick a group name and role titles that your members will want to keep a long time. Last, and most important, ask friends and acquaintances which names they like or not.

Group names are unique, like web addresses. After you have a handful of good candidates, search SL Groups to see if your top choices are already used. You can't buy a group name that already exists, but you can make one that is off by as little as one symbol: if "Heralds" is taken, "*Heralds*", " Heralds" (with a leading space), "heralds" and "HERALDS!" might still be available.

When you have a top choice name, try to buy it for $100L thru your groups menu. (Typo experts, triple check your spelling before you click "apply".) You will find out if your name is not available now. Hidden groups can't be found in search. If that happens, choose another name, (take your time on this if you want) and try again.

When you are successful, you are the new owner of a group of one. Now, quick, invite another avatar to join (wiki here) to six your group, because a group that has one or no members for two days gets deleted. Invite them as members. You can always upgrade them later when you refine your group.

And you want to keep this new group, right?

Yours, Arth.

P.S.
Buying and renting land is a little harder. The hardest part is finding a good deal on a property you like. Count on spending some time on this, and there are lots of sites, blogs and advice on this out there. Not being a property owner, I'm not the best to herald this.

Making your group work for you land is even harder. This I can herald soon.

Burning Life Application

Anyone can claim a "camp site" at Second Life's Burning Life '09, regardless of what sort of account you have. "Radical Inclusion" is (after all) one of those 10 Principles of RL's Burning Man Festival. This land is a gift to the community, so does not cost you anything or increase your Tier.

Among the options obtaining a sit, 52 "Theme Camps" will encourage interaction or host events designed to involve other people. To be accepted for one of these reserved spots, just write a compelling description of what your camp will be, include links to any other things you've built, and describe what sort of activity you will provide for your neighbors to enjoy.

Here's my entry on the application form:

Name: Arth Karas
Group: White Magic

Camp Name: Visible Man

Description: What is a desert without skeletons?

Last year we won a large plot in the general drawing. Using "entirely local materials", we constructed a display comparing DaVinci's Virtruvian Man with the SL avatar.



We placed a very large prim "avatar" skeleton in the sand the sim, with "canvases" on the ground covered with these images and other anatomical drawings. A few large invisibility prims helped demonstrate how attachments relate to the avatar physiology. During the festival, we held a few improptu demonstrations on avatar construction emphasizing skeletal structure and templates. We gave away hundreds of advanced pose stands, template sets and avatars and the original "joint kit avatar".




Comments ranged from "WOW" and "AWESOME" to unsolicited chat paragraphs complimenting the quality of the build, experience and freebies.

We'd like to do it again!

This year, we want to reinstall the above, AND complete and give away a freebie "skeleton avatar" in several sizes and shapes.

Love, Arth

Heralding Aulë (the) Finesmith

I have the alt Aule Finesmith now. This solved three problems for me:

Problem one: when one account gets so busy and in demand that Second Life becomes more like a second job, it's time to make a new account just for having fun. I'd spent so much time that I wasn't even posting to this blog for months.

Problem two: in the Builders of Arda sims, where I role play the J.R.R.Tolkien character Aulë the Smith, there are many sims where I need land rights or group rights to play my role effectively. The owners and organizers are more than happy to grant me those right, but I need open groups because of
http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Limits

Groups:
* Max. # of groups you can belong to - 25
o Roles within groups are sort of like sub-groups. In many cases, you can use them instead of creating new groups.
* Min. # of members in a group - 2
o A group with only 1 person for 48 hours will be disbanded (cancelled). Unless the group owns land.
* Max. # of roles allowed in a group - 10 (including "Owners" and "Everyone", which can't be deleted)

Problem three: when your name is "Arth Karas", but the other players are supposed to remember to call you "Aulë" regularly and with some respect, you want to make it easy for them. Notecards, IM and floating text over the avatars heads are fine, but matching the role to the avatar name is even better.

Opportunity: When I saw new players using the last name "Finesmith", I located where I could register it using the SL name search website, and made Aulë right away. The name was too perfect to overlook.

Since I make most of my own clothes, skins and attachments now, it's been easy to make Aule a mirror of Arth as Aulë. Many players hardly notice the change right away, except as Aule befriends them.


I'll gradually wean Arth out of Arda, so he can continue operating in the rest of Second Life while Aulë has fun being a Tolkien fan in the Arda sims and forums.

Exchange Herald Resolved

The reply to my query arrived February 1:

================================================

We have solved your issue
Solution:

Hello Arth Karas,

Thank you for contacting us with your query.

There are billing and trading limits that apply to all accounts based on the billing age.

The billing age starts from when you added a valid payment method and made your first purchase. This could be a membership fee or a small purchase of L$ on the Second Life LindeX (this does not include third party exchanges).

Your limits will increase as your billing age grows. You can see what your billing age is by going on the website: http://secondlife.com/currency/describe-limits.php
Your limit will be highlighted in blue in the Monthly Resident Limits table.
To know your exact age, please refer to your Account Statements, still on the Second Life website and you will see when your first transaction was made.

The limits are in place for fraud and security purposes and a tier review cannot be submitted until your billing age reaches 30 days.

If you have any further queries, then please do not hesitate to contact me.

Regards,

Aurelie OT
Linden Lab Support

==================================

I still choose not to buy a premium membership at all, but that $10 US$ purchase would satisfy the Labs purchase requirement to sell L$ for US$.

What I will probably do is this:

1) wait till my Linden balance is large enough to warrant extraction. Besides, conditions and polcies might change to something more favorable for me int eh meantime.

2) Buy 6475 L$ for 25.30 US$ (the minimum), including $0.30 US$ transaction fee and the current exchange rate.

3) Wait 30 days for my ability to sell to kick in.

4) Sell 6475 L$ for 23.21 US$, including a fee of 3.5% and the current sell rate of 269 L/US . I'll take my other L out, too, that this time.

5) Transfer the US$ now on my Linden account to PayPal. Fee, each time this is done: $1.00. Fewer large transactions is cheaper than many small ones.

Total cost to activate Linden Dollar extraction: $3.09, or less then half a month of premium Second Life.

Exchange Herald , too

I"m considering using Virwox as a Linden cashing service. It has some history, and is transparent.

Customer Support
If you have any questions, problems, suggestions, bug reports or feature requests regarding our service, please contact our Customer Support by email to: support nospam@virwos.at @ virwox.com.

Company Information
VirWoX is a service designed, developed, and operated by Virtual World Services GmbH. The following company information is provided in accordance with the E-commerce Directive of the European Union:
Registered Name: Virtual World Services GmbH
Registered Address: Andreas-Hofer-Platz 7, 8010 Graz, Austria
Registration Number: FN 299158 p
Registration Authority: LG für ZRS Graz
VAT Registration Number: ATU63720414
Managing Director: Iliana Suppan
Contact email: office nospam@virwos.at @ virtualworldservices.at

Exchange Herald

Okay, Linden Labs is buying XStreetSL and OnRez. Linden Labs will close OnRez soon, which is no big deal as not much happened there and the services are very similar.

So the only marketing for Second Life content will soon be SL itself and
XStreet, as the Lab announced. It no big deal for most users, not much will change right away. For those in the less than 1% of SL players who maintain a positive cash flow in SL, and the even smaller fraction that do so with a free account only,like me, it creates a bit of a problem, per the Acquisition FAQ: (If that link is busted, it's Knowledge Base Article 5809.)

I currently have a US dollar balance on Xstreet, what will happen to that balance?

For the time being, your US dollar balance will remain in Xstreet and you can manage it as part of your Xstreet account. Eventually, your US dollar balance will be combined directly with your Second Life account. At that time, you will be able to view and manage those funds when you sign into your Second Life account.

Thus, eventually, extracting Linden Dollars thru XStreet will be impossible unless one pays L Labs for a premium account. Free accounts cannot sell Linden Dollars. One can try a ticket:

Ticket Description
Summary: Requesting permission to sell Linden Dollars
Basic or Guest Access - only a few ticket types allowed: LindeX Tier Review
Contact Email address: arth.karas@gmail.com
Details: As a free account, I cannot sell Linden Dollars in LindeX. I was able to do so through XStreetSL, but that ability will disappear eventually, per the Acquisition FAQ.

I have been creating and selling virtual and real goods and services in SL to other residents. I have been making purchases in SL, but my SL income now far surpasses my SL needs. I would like the right to sell $300 USD per month.

Thank you, Arth.

We'll see how that goes. Since my personal quest is to do everything that can be done in SL WITHOUT buying a premium account, it poses an interesting challenge.

Love, Arth.

Heralding a Financial Thorem

Salary Theorem...

Dilbert's "Salary Theorem" states that "Engineers and scientists can never earn as much as business executives and sales people."

This theorem can now be supported by a mathematical equation based on the following two postulates:

As every engineer knows: Power = Work / Time

Since:
Knowledge = Power
Time = Money
Knowledge = Work / Money.

Solving for Money, we get:

Money = Work / Knowledge.

Thus, as Knowledge approaches zero, Money approaches infinity, regardless of the amount of work done.

Conclusion:

The less you know, the more you make.

Herald Terraforming

E-mail to arth.karas@gmail.com from the clear blue sky:

Arth,

I’m looking into buying a private island for my company and trying to see how much it costs to get a custom terraforming. I saw Neko has RAW files for 1000L but I think I need more land than the biggest has. Any information would be helpful.

Thanks, h

Greetings, h!

Thank you for writing to me. I'm not sure how you know of me, but I'll be happy to answer.

For custom terraforming rates, I googled "Second Life custom terraform" and found several vendors, technique patterns, prices and bids. xstreet lists several who are selling custom work search for terraforming from $32 USD to $106 USD. I do no know any of the work personally. MY SL Project was active for many months, and I saw similar bids for that work there.

You did not ask about the following, but consider these:

You can make your own RAW files. One tool is a freebie rawfile editor for Mac. More generally, Second Life itself is the simplest RAW file editor I know.

When you order your sim, the generic "flat 30m" on the order page fills the sim and works well if you plan no dramatic heights. A 100m flat might still be avaialable free from the Linden Labs concierge without a RAW file. It is the most versatile template, allowing dramatic island depressions to 0 (well below the standard water depth of 20 m) and heights of 200m without any special skill or outside technologies for terraforming.

To fulfill my SL Mentor duties, I direct you to the terrafroming tutorials here, here, and here, and the Second Life Knowledge Base articles #4060 and #4115

Personally, it takes me about 3 hours (I'd ask about $50 USD) to take design parameters and do a complex terraform by hand in SL. Simple ones take and cost much less time and money. (One simple full sim form took me 8 minutes from arrival to completion.) I normally teach the land manager or owner how to use the terraform tools with SL voice while doing so. Installing integrated water works, trails, walks, and such are separate projects, but I make placeholders for those projects while I am terraforming so that other builders and users can see the build progress and can coordinate efforts.

The sim owner can and should save any successful terraforms to his computer regularly via the land edit menu. Then the owner can easily revert the sim by uploading the saved file when accidents happen.

Yours,

--
Peace! Shalom! Namaste! Paix! Sére! Aloha!