It's the weekend, which means it's time for another round-up of random photos; places I've visited in the last seven days in the grid, but for one reason or another ended up not writing about here. If you have a particular funny, breathtaking or plain ol' erotic photo from SL that you'd like to share here, by the way, by all means send it to me at inthegrid [at] gmail.com, along with a little story of how the photo came about. Click on any of the thumbnails below to see a larger version of it.

Well, another week in SL, which means another week of shopping; it's an addiction for me here, which is ironic considering how little I care about clothes in RL. Shopping, in fact, is one of the biggest forms of both leisure and entertainment there, enjoyed by almost every single resident you come across; and with the ease of content creation there, fashion is one of its biggest industries. Anyway, here are some shots of some of the new outfits I got this week; and yeah, I know, I really need to get in the habit of jotting these stores' names down. That reminds me, by the way, that I now have at least a little aid in this quest running in the sidebar of this blog; it's a reprint of the real-time blogHUD account I maintain, a device that lets you post to an outside website from within the game environment itself. I wear my blogHUD all the time while gridhopping; so make sure to check that list often to see the places I've recently visited. (Interested in learning more about the blogHUD and how it works? I did an interview last week with its creator, Koz Farina; you can read it here.)

Okay, but here's one of the places I did remember by name; the Ramos Design complex [Ramos Island 37/152/28], a sophisticated build with a lot of attention to reality and detail. It's a great place to take a stroll through one afternoon, if you're curious to see a retail complex that gets things architecturally right.

An acquaintance of mine named Tuber Potato rang me up last week; they were having an impromptu David Bowie night, and wanted to see if I'd like to join them. Glam-rock with the uber-nerds? How could I resist? Tuber's one of those residents I don't know much about (he purposely keeps his RL information a tight secret there); but he's definitely one of the people I would've hung out with when I was a teen, if we had known each other then, all into Monty Python and the old BBC "Hitchhiker" radio plays, always wearing ludicrous things in the grid like monocles and top hats and FDR-style cigarette holders. The main reason I like Tuber's get-togethers, though, is that he's assembled the most fascinating set of friends over his time there; cyborgs and prostitute-robots, small furry creatures, non-corporeal balls of energy and more. He is one of those lightning rods for those on the fringe of SL -- the Linux programmers, the hackers, the tattoo artists -- which is always what makes his soirees such interesting ones. And hey, a couple of androgynous dance nights added to it doesn't hurt things at all.

For those who are curious, by the way, the above screenshot there is a picture of the entire grid composing Second Life; as I've mentioned here before, it's a mighty big place. The interesting thing, I think, is that each of those tiny dots you see above represents a private island, 64,000 square feet of land (or one server at Linden headquarters) that an individual completely owns, and who pays US$3,000 a year (1750 pounds, 2250 euros) to maintain. I don't know about you, but I consider that quite a bit of money just to own virtual real estate; I'm constantly amazed when I check out the 'big board' and see just so many new islands there appearing every day.

The lower photo, then, is a close-up of what's informally known as the "mainland;" it is the oldest part of the grid, where the grid itself actually first formed (specifically, the section there with all the red dots), the one that grew sort of haphazardly at first by random servers being slapped up against each other. Some people consider the mainland a prestigious piece of real estate, a sign that you are an older player and someone who takes things more seriously; others see it simply as a destination for those who don't want to make the commitment towards a private island. It's certainly a fascinating place to visit, though; in the coming weeks, in fact, I'll be doing some "virtual volksmarch" reports from there, where I basically just roam the countryside and take pictures of what I see.

Dude! NINcropolis! Oh, how I wish a place like this had existed in the '80s, when I was a goth/industrial undergrad myself, and had nothing better to do on Thursday nights than to get wasted with my friends at Shattered and go nuts every time the DJ played Skinny Puppy. In fact, I'll go so far as to admit this -- that part of the particular pleasure for me with SL is to sorta relive those old goth/industrial days of mine, back when a night out involved an hour of preening and decision-making, the effort to impress your friends, instead of a bunch of grubby 40-something slackers in sweaters at a pub that my nights out in RL tend to be anymore. Well, you know, without the smoky clubs, the hundreds of dollars spent on clothing, and the 4 a.m. rap sessions in candlelit dorm rooms, praying to the Wiccan goddesses that you get laid before the sun rises. Dude, do you have "Stigmata?"

Oh, now here was something interesting I attended last week, that I ended up just not having enough about to write on; the latest meeting of the Society for Virtual Architecture, a long-time group of both architects and enthusiasts in the grid who come together regularly for social events. This one was led by Frank Koolhaas; in RL he is Mario Gerasa, editor-in-chief of Architectural Digest Italia. And he has an interesting project he's putting together, too; he's decided to organize the grid's very first guide to virtual spatial aesthetics. It'll be interesting to follow, I think, since even the first meeting proved what a divide there is in opinion, as to what is considered an unchangeable aesthetic value in a virtual world in the first place. As always, I'll keep you informed when I know the latest myself. Oh, and I caught one of the SL gods there too; Pathfinder Linden, known in RL as Linden employee John Lester, Educational Community Manager. Pathfinder basically acts as an official liason between the academic world and the one of the grid; he's ended up spearheading a lot of fascinating projects over the years, and is someone I'd love to interview for this blog, if he would ever have an interest, hint-hint, hint-hint-hint.

Here, an event a couple of days ago that I wasn't at for very long; the opening of a new Japanese teahouse, featuring live musicians and geisha dancers. Nice!

And finally, a little sneak preview of a longer entry coming later this week; why yes, the construction of this blog's virtual headquarters is going much more quickly than expected! It turns out that the process of building in the grid is much less complicated than I had been anticipating; our HQ has been going up like gangbusters, and will hopefully be ready for our first party in just another week or two. This is a big hope of mine, is to start "meshing" the activities of ITG within both the grid and the real world; to have this blog on the web, a PDF you can print out and read on paper, a HUD version you can read in the grid, live events within the grid too, hopefully even a big fun RL reader party at next year's Second Life Community Convention in San Francisco. Anyway, like I said, a much longer entry concerning building will be coming later this week.