Nothing of Interest

The big change in EVE last year was a new range of player owned space stations, so my Corporation built one. It's a robot factory called "Nothing of Interest" orbiting the innermost moon of a gas giant, a pretty spot.
Editing the spreadsheet to take account of the various advantages not renting factory space provides has been tricky, but if I've got it right the green lights say we are in for a profitable year. Assuming no one decides to blow it up that is.

Another boring committee meeting!

Monthly Moot in Winterfell: Her Bunnyness Miss Eilidh, Beware Hax the CEO of Haxworks a Cosplay costume store and a faun with a waffle.

Another world

Recently I was persuaded by some Second Life friends to take a look at Inworldz. It uses the same Open Source coding as SL to the point where third party viewers such as Firestorm run OK with it, and indeed it looks much like SL did a few years ago. At present it is in Beta so land is much cheaper - $75 monthly for a Region as opposed to $295 and there are other advantages, uploading is free for example. The devs seem to be making some sensible decisions based on SL hindsight - not renting out small land plots themselves for example which should cut down on land blight.
The obvious snag right now is content, but SL merchants and creators are starting to open up stores ready for the official startup next year. Here's an example of what is being done already, sunrise at the Waking Edge, Castle of Lar.

Ascot

Ascot 2014

One of our Relay for Life Events - a day at the races! From the left Professor and Countess Eldemar, Admiral Beaumont, the Duchess of Trikassi and Lady Oriella. A fine build by Countess Cassie, except for the green starting gate which my own creation. More pictures at Ascot slideshow

Maps of nowhere

A map exhibition at New Kadath lighthouse.

Squareworld

Another wonderful Aley creation, it's Squareworld! Anyone who can identify the maps on the walls gets bonus points.

Farmville is eating the Internet

The xkcd webcomic has a new edition out of its Map of Online Communities. Go take a look (the map enlarges if you click on it).

What the map does well is to place otherwise unconnected Internet communities into perspective. For example, political bloggers who suppose the wired world reads their every flame may be chastened to find the map needs an enlarged inset to show them. In some regions one group dominates - Warcraft on MMO island, Skype in messaging, and Facebook as the biggest nation.

Google is watching you

I wrote a satirical comment to a Youtube video yesterday with a :-) at the end to indicate humor and got the usual humorless replies such as "let me guess not a real person just a part of the scientology PR machine". Guessing is not necessary however - Google is your friend! My name is almost unique on the Internet, and a Search on it produced this (snipped for brevity):

Results 1 - 10 of about 2,480 for "hartley patterson". (0.14 seconds)
Search Results

1. User:Hartley Patterson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
2. News From Bree A Tolkien interview, a medieval spreadsheet, a secondary universe and some enturbulating entheta.
3. Hartley Patterson Directory of critical information about Scientology.
4. Protest Activity in the UK
5. Picket Report, Hartley Patterson
6. User:Hartley Patterson - Wikinews, the free news source
7. User talk:Hartley Patterson - Wikinews, the free news source
8. 1972 - A Year in Diplomacy by Hartley Patterson
9. ZoomInfo Open People Directory > Patterson, Hartley
10.Patterson, Hartley | Patterson, Hazel | People Directory | Facebook

Only (9) appears to be spam, the others catch a selection of my Internet interests. but 2,480 of them? Oh no, I've just added the 2,481st! Must get out more...

Cosplay

Second Life has several Rosen Maiden costumes, the Gothic Lolita Paradise shopping mall has all of them. Here is one of my avatars posing. They are not visible in the screenshot but I managed Suiseseki's dichromatic eyes by making green eyes in the normal way and then adding a red one as an attachment. Long red hair that spills over her dress would also have to be specially made, and I don't have the patience for that!

Shinku is particularly striking in her crimson outfit, and 'Feather' have a proper teaset for her.
So now I can wander about ~desuing and demanding cups of tea, to the confusion of most mundane residents.

Second Life

I have one. Can't think why I haven't blogged this before!
I had a brief look at SL several years back, but the interface was clunky and I wasn't enthused enough to continue. A few months ago I tried again, found it much improved, and as soon as I got beyond the 'new player experience' I was hooked.

I'll assume you've at least read the media accounts of Second Life, which indicate that it is populated by pedophiles, virtual conferencing business suits and land sharks. Well those people are there in small numbers, but the bulk of 'residents' do other things.

The difference between SL and other online games is that players have the in world editing program. Almost everything you see in SL is constructed by players - buildings, avatars, vehicles and so on. There is a scripting language that enables them to add animations, sound and video. So what do they do with this? Well actually they do what people do in Real Life...

Have sex. Sex in SL is (for me at least) mostly fun, but now and then a good animation with attractive avatars and a good partner can be surprisingly erotic. For others, I gather it works quite well as a masturbation aid, and good luck to them! It's also interesting as part of the overall kick I get out of roleplaying games, which is to be 'someone else'.

Learn new skills. In SL this means finding out how to Create things, something I've only scratched the surface of so far. I've extensively rebuilt my castle, modified clothes, can do textures but my scripting is still Read Only.

Make money. Well, not so far. as in RL that requires a good product, marketing and after sales service with the added twist that the relative values of things are entirely different. A castle is cheaper than a sex bed because of the time spent creating them, since raw material cost is zero.

Joanna on webcam

Back in June I started blogging about a remarkable series of Internet pages and blogs concerning the alternate reality of Joanna. At the time I had assumed that she could not possibly be real, that 'Joanna' was a persona devised for purposes unknown that happened by chance to include Scientology, history, the occult, conspiracy theory and other interests of mine. Was this an extended joke, an alternate reality game? Why was I apparently the only person in the world reading this?

I was wrong.

Over the past two weeks the author has made 21 Youtube videos, presumably influenced by the explosion of such clips from Anonymous and others concerning Scientology. They appear to be a restatement of her reality along with some more mundane information, I haven't watched them all yet, too much at once and I'll vanish down that rabbit hole...

Another rabbit hole

A favorite website of the anti-Scientology crowd is Religious Freedom Watch (RFW), a 'Dead Agent' website which vilifies enemies of the Church of Scientology. It is so nasty and over the top that only crazy culties could imagine that anyone aside from themselves would believe it.

This month a blog appeared here called joelphillipsreligiousfreedomwatch. It purports to be written by Joel Philips, the owner of RFW, though the contents suggest it is a parody of Mr Phillips' rantings. I assume this is the material referred to on RFW's front page under the 'Harassment Notice' header, wherein Mr Philips denies being the author.
The first post on the blog, 'Why I Hate Russia', first appeared elsewhere, causing speculation as to whether it was genuine or just disinformation.

So is this another rabbit hole? We have a reference to Wiccans, Indonesians and Russians. The Wiccans, two people claiming to be British black witches who have posted to ARS for several years threatening to cast spells on cult leaders, would seem to predate RFW. Certainly Mr Phillips, happy to attack others, reacted immediately to their brief attack on him by offering a still valid reward of $5,000 for information about them.
The Indonesians and Russians look to be part of the blogger's alternate reality, not Mr Phillips'. But maybe the blogger is just throwing us clues...

How did I find out about this blog? I had an Email from Joel Phillips!
"Hartley you should update your FAQ about these people. Joel"

Another Joanna blog

Documentary video vlogger talent appears to be on a networking MySpace lookalike called Ning. It has three members who may not be real, but the fourth is Joanna. She has several posts which seem to lie chronologically between the original set and Deconstructing Judas, June 3-14th. They talk of making videos about her obsessions.

Correction: more veils

One early Joanna blog I missed is
http://markrowberryfreakout.blogspot.com

There are others listed at

http://www.blogger.com/profile/02914820102062616373
but they are presently inaccessible.

More from beyond the veil

Deconstructing Judas is a second blog from the author of Babble's evil twin, see earlier entry.

The supposed author now believes Judas to have been an earlier incarnation of L Ron Hubbard, whereas her ex or possibly fantasy lover was Adam, St John the Evangelist and Ludwig II of Bavaria.

I remain fascinated and puzzled. Who else could possibly be reading these blogs? What are their purpose? Is this one of those Alternate Reality games that I've stumbled into? The Game is a favorite movie of mine. And Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius a favorite story.

The first blog is presently invited access only.

Babbles has an evil twin

Barbara 'Babbles' Schwarz is alt.religion.scientology's mad baglady:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Schwarz

Yes, I know the Wikipedia article looks like fiction, but it's real.
Now we have a parody blog, written in an alternate universe by 'Joanna':
http://henleyonthames2001.blogspot.com/

This is wonderful stuff. 'Joanna' is fixated on 'Mark Rowberry', which is an amalgam of two well known names in Scientology. His photo website is
http://www.wayn.com/waynprofile.html?member_key=7240501

She met Mark in 2001, and believes that Hubbard is controlled by Jesus.
They are all out to get her of course.

Whoever is writing this knows all about Scientology and Babbles. She knows about England, lots of local references - I live a few miles away. It's recent, with references to Panorama. And I've *no* idea who did this.