Picture “No title” by Shifty

World is painted in color
There is no just black and white
There is grey and all its shades
I am waiting patiently and for a while
I am seeing into you sometimes…
The visions of a poisoned mind
They rule my time, but are they true?
Don’t try to grasp my world
I can’t myself
I am learning…

World plays in sounds
There is no silence or out loud
The major and the minor keys
And I am in between
The voices leading and misleading…
I am waiting for the next song
And for my next road
I am seeing into you and I am in love.
A puzzle, a phantom, a mystery, a gunman
A poet, and a human
I fear and maybe more than you do…
Won’t ever grasp your world
You can’t yourself
But are you learning?

I am afraid to become weak
You are afraid to be a looser
But stubbornness is not the best streak
And vanity is not replacement of assurance
Who loves won’t care
Who loves gives up
The world is not in red and white
The world is mixed up by sounds and wine…
By feelings, colors, poems, dreams…
By me and you, by you and I
By us…

Maryna Wind

….. When the only person who can save you, is you.

There is something in you angelic
Something innocent and pure
Something is shining. Shining within you’re,
Giving light to a broken heart.

Many times we were disappointed.
Many roads were leading nowhere.
Please don’t worry I will not burn you -
I am not fire… more like light from a distant star.

Doubting, troubled… your soul can’t sing
And the sparkle is losing its strength
But you’re shining, still shining within
Giving light to our broken wings.
Maryna Wind

Maryna Wind

A Star has to shine forever,
People who worship her need the light to remember.
The moment the Star gets in a shadow,
People will be lost and forget her.
The moment she disappears under a horizon, the Abyss of Loneliness is what’s awaiting her.
You are my Star and I worship you…
M. Galekh March 11, 2010

Cocoon

I must you

Escape

Some say silk support

30 times its own weight

How many times can you support

The weight of my choices

Frigg Ragu is a natural story teller in both lives. Using her own poses and works on Flickr, she shares with the rest of us the endless possibilities of the metaverse. If you would like to take part of her journey and share in the stories, I welcome you to visit Frigg’s Flickr page and visit The Companion where you will find  her pose shop. In this story, anything is possible.

*Avatars by Alpha Tribe

** Original artwork by Frigg Ragu

Asian Vogue II - Pose & Photo by Del May

Del May is not your typical SL artist. Actually, there is nothing typical about Del May whatsoever. Her art and style is of her own and she is always evolving, pushing the boundaries one nudge at a time.

Euridyce and Orpheus - Pose & Photo by Del May

I have been following Del May’s work for just about a year now. When I first opened my Flickr account, she was one of the first artists that grabbed my attention. Many, many favourites ago - Del May caught my eye with some of the most unusual and poetic pieces of SL Art I had ever seen. To me, Del May seemed to be about risks, challenges and growth. Needless to say, Del May still has it.

From poses, to this unique style and to her works of art; Del May has made a name for herself. Del May did and still does things that no other artists have done. Yes, I truly do admire her and I am not alone.

Watching Del May develop over the last year has been exciting and like me, so many of us are curious to see what she will do next.

As for her poses, Del May’s shop has also done its share of developing. She certainly outgrew her little under water shop but it isn’t just the about quantity of poses she produces. These poses that Del May creates are works of art on their own. Whenever I am looking for something original, emotional or provactive - I visit Del May’s shop. Del May understands how form and movement can tell a story. Not only that, she understands how important every detail is to convey this story. I would think that those who visit Del May’s shop or use her poses are likely to agree, these aren’t your average poses. Del May poses are special.

When it comes to sharing her work, Del May stays busy with expos, like the one at nOrth Gallery and and recently at The Benzaiten Gallery – 13.

Lethargy - Pose & Photo by Del May

Another project, one I find to be most exciting, is Del May is opening her own space where she and others can share their work. Details will surely come out soon but for now I can say that I am sure that this will be another incredible venture we will all enjoy as it unfolds.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet Del May in world on a few occasions while supporting other SL Artists and attending various organized events. When you meet Del May in world, she is not at all intimidating. She is a warm personality; she is kind and flattering. However to look at her, Del May obviously stands out. Her looks are beautiful but not in the traditional sense. Del May is, in fact, a rare breed and is truly an individual in every sense.

Perhaps this is why we can’t stop watching?

Who are neko’s and what are their origins? Read one of the stories in the issue Odyssey of Uncover Magazine.

If you need a guidance to create an outfit for the party, check our favorite neko blog: the Virtual Neko in Second Life.

Join the happy party at Nameless Coffee

Club Atonement, INSILICO WEST

Picture by Chou Skinstad

nOrth Cafe - picture by Carthalis Rossini

What do you get when you fuse cyberpunk, dirty electro/progressive sounds, delicious textures adorning coffee shop walls and some of the best artistic talents in SL? You get the opening of nOrth Gallery INSILICO.

nOrth Presents

As someone who loves to follow the art community of SL, I am always looking for the next great thing. When I saw the plans for nOrth Gallery, I knew this would be something spectacular.

INSILICO is already known for its incredible and unique design and is a haven for artists looking for the perfect shot. Now artists, art lovers and the like have another excuse to come visit INSILICO.

When you first venture in the coffee shop part of the gallery, you can’t help but to be overwhelmed by the colours. The walls are bold, vibrant and warm; the coffee bar is both elaborate and fun. The atmosphere is inviting and gives way that there is much more to see.

Starlash, owner of nOrth Gallery, kindly gave me a tour of the gallery as everything was just falling into place. Seeing the transformation as it was happening was such a great treat. As I gave her my feedback of how wonderful the place is, she gracefully spoke of everyone else’s talents. Truly it was a team effort.

The second floor of the nOrth is lined with remarkable pieces from INSILICO resident and artist, Carthalis Rossini. Each piece is proof positive of his love for his home. Perhaps this is why he has been chosen as the gallery opener. Aside from his dedication to INSILICO, his pieces are all very unique and special.

One more level up at nOrth is a mixed bag of exclusive pieces from some of the greatest artists I know. Del May, Ariel Brearly, Mielo Minotaur, Fingers Scintilla, Sanam Sewell, and Sura Abismo will line the walls together; each artist showing exactly why they were chosen for this momentous occasion.

This Saturday, February 6th from 3pm-7pm; nOrth will open its doors with huge festivities. DJs Miss Cyberpink and nOrth’s very own Starlash will be on hand for your listening pleasure as you take in your surroundings. Don’t miss out!

The journey starts at The Lost World: http://slurl.com/secondlife/Beguile/125/73/24

Rez: Yes
Mature: Yes

But what can you see on this map? Not every country has this freedom. My friends live in one of such black-holes zones: Internet traffic is controlled; emails fail; news are filtered; and lots of sites are unreachable.

At some point nobody is surprised when it happens in China or Russia.

But is Australia going to be next?

Show your support for Aussies during the ‘Australian Internet Blackout’ anti-censorship campaign by Moggs Oceanlane

“The Australian Government is planning to put the proposal regarding centralised internet filtering (read censorship) through Parliment in 2010.  This will put Australia in an elite club with China, Iran and Saudi Arabia – countries that already have centralised Internet Filtering - scary huh? (and you know, we are meant to live in a democracy!!).

The list of censored/filters sites will include “unclassified content” – but there are no indications that a list of what is being filtered/censored will be disclosed to the public – they’ll just have to find out as it happens.  The filtering will not only limit what can be accessed online but, as indicated by the testing that has already taken place, will significantly slow down the Australian broadband network.  This week there the “Great Australian Internet Blackout” campaign in running to raise awareness in the media of this issue – many Australians still have no idea of the Governments plans.

So what can you do to show your support?

Take an action and support Australia: Say NO to Australian Government, because you never know if your country is going to be next.

Explore Winterfell sims at http://slurl.com/secondlife/Winterfell%20Amaranthine/242/209/36
Rez: Yes
Matyre: Yes

Tip #1 Trash it!If you have never used or looked at an item/folder, the chance is very high; you’ll never do so. So trash it!
…
What stops you from doing this?
Curiosity about what is in there? If you were so curious, you would have looked at it already.
Regrets about loosing something valuable without knowing about it? If so, go and look through everything, spend hours browsing, rezzing, sorting it all, you’ll know for sure, you didn’t miss a thing.
You still can’t trash it? You just can’t let it go? You really can’t? Then I am sure, your real home looks like a warehouse too You must be keeping all those wires, old videotapes, shoes, postcards you never look at, probably once when you’re packing while moving to another home.
But, if it is really impossible for you to trash some items, because you heart starts breaking thinking of it, there is a way to keep them and reduced your inventory (unlike in rl).

Tip #2 ArchiveHow to archive:
*You rez a box, drag and drop in as many items as it can handle (I prefer around 100, otherwise it will take much longer to open); For full permission items, such as landmarks, you can also use a notecard.
*Name the box something like ‘Archive: Textures’;
*Take the box into your inventory and put it into special folder named Archive;
*Trash those items you copied into the box;
*Clean the Trash.

Tip #3 ManageThe best way to keep your inventory in order is to sort things BEFORE and NOT AFTER. What does this mean?
*Name or tag your items and folders.
*Sort those items you need, put them into prepared subfolders and regularly delete those items that were not sorted. Do it each time before you log off.

An example with the Landmarks folder:
*Make some subfolders in the subfolder Landmarks: Shopping, Clubs, Exploration and so on. You may create extra subfolders in the folder Shopping, something like Appearance, Clothing, Shoes, as many as seems reasonable and manageable to you. Making too many subfolders can make it less manageable.
*Each time you get a landmark, put it into one of the folders you created. It takes you couple of seconds, but saves hours sorting them out afterward.
*Later, on Your Inventory Cleaning Day, you can filter Landmarks and delete all those you haven’t sorted into your folders, without teleporting to those places. (If I occasionally come to a place that dissappeared, I trash that landmark and do a new search for a new location. It takes less time than teleporting each time to a place to see if you still need that landmark.)
The same process of management is useful for Objects, Textures, Scripts, Snapshots, Clothing, Appearance, Notecards. There are a lot of items that you don’t need, so don’t waste your energy on them, trash them as soon as possible. Keep only those things you need. If you are sure you need them, make a subfolder ‘Unsorted’ or something similar.

Tip #4 Y.I.C.D.
Your Inventory Cleaning Day. Make it a habit. Once a month would be enough. Put it in your agenda. Make it a fun time with your friends.
*Go to a sandbox or a place that can handle some extra prims. It’s a good place to rez those objects you are not sure about. Remember: deleting a rezzed object doesn’t delete it from the inventory, if it has copy permissions. Delete it from your inventory immediately, as well, if you don’t need it anymore.
*Filter and trash: bald bases, duplicate items, demos, objects named ‘Object’, unpacking scripts, hover texts scripts, all unsorted landmarks, notecards, textures etc. If you were following my tip #3, it won’t take long. If you constantly leave items unsorted, you will end up spending more time on this stage (if you don’t know how to filter, see Link)
* Trash or Archive.
* Clean the Trash.
* Feel free from those extra 10K items you didn’t need.
* Go celebrate!

For more inventory management tips you may want to check:
“Inventpry Management tips” on Second Life Wiki
“Inventory Management 101” on SL Nowt
“Tutorial: Inventory Management” on Sheek
“Inventory Explosions” on Shopping Cart Disco

Read online
Cover by Ian Conolly
Special Edition, 2009 Too many people to credit just here, all are included in the mag.
3 special features:
- “How Mrs Bones stole YOUR Christmas”
- “Holiday Jam”, in collaboration with almost 60 Slifers, Plurkers and Flickr members
- Your letters to Santa (funny, sweet or evil ones)
Our Flickr selection for this issue includes pictures by Wolf, Nedeko, and Nina Becker, thank you very much for posting those in the Uncover Magazine Flickr group.

Read online

Cover by Ariel Brearly

Issue #6, 2009 The notion of impossibility within Second Life is mostly defined by the limits of possibilities in what we call “Real Life”. To some, it is the impossible in their own life: having social or professional activities, a physical outlook or a lifestyle that we feel is out of reach. To others, “impossible” in Second Life is about more complex possibilities, perceived as totally impossible: being a faun, a dragon, living on another planet or travelling in time. When we chose impossible as a new theme to our issue of Uncover, we had in mind rather metaphysical impossibilities, images and stories of the improbable, of the things that solely exist in our minds, creativity, dreams.

Our Flickr selection for this issue includes pictures by Shifty, Sole Krams, and Kalle Contepomi,  thank you very much for posting those in the Uncover Magazine Flickr group.

I would like to thank all who ever contributed to our publication, those who reads and supports us and of course members of our Flickr group.
I hardly can name all people involved, but today I’d like to say a special thank you to
Imogen Miklos, Kristi Maurer and MichaelJ Rossini who gave a bright start to Uncover.
I also would like to thank Prad Prathivi for support and contribution during the past year.
And I would like to thank Chou Skinstad for all she’s done for the magazine and very often those were impossible things

Sincerely,
Maryna Wind

Each time when you login into SL, you spend your REAL time there.

Each time you laugh staring at your screen while having fun with your virtual friends, you laugh in REAL.
Each time you get upset because of something in SL, you get upset in REAL.
Your physical body reacts on what you see and hear in SL.

What do you keep apart when you say I keep RL and SL apart? Your identity. In RL you are so “many” years old, having a job, hating your boss and probably afraid to tell him/het the truth, because he/she may fire you. In SL… you are a star, slebrity, going from party to party, enjoying compliments on your looks. You are your own boss and decide yourself how and when you’ll spend your REAL time in this virtual world. You may suddenly be a cat, a tiny, switch gender, be a part of a role play. Here you are who you always wanted to be, so aren’t you more real in SL than RL?

I do…

It was my third day in SL. I was still walking around help island, bothering mentors with questions and making friends. It was peaceful, friendly and even a nude griefer at the local sandbox couldn’t spoil that. My friends and I knew every inch of the island from the northern sim border to the southern, from west to east. It felt safe. Everything was cozy and we talked about the Mainland as if it were a legend, another dimension, an afterlife. We decided that we wanted to stay on help island as long as possible, because we knew there would be no turning back once we left.

Suddenly, though…Black Screen… Teleporting scroll line… Some-thing happened (well, not something, it was a SL glitch) and all new residents from help island appeared at the place in the middle of nowhere! We had been driven out of paradise… shocked, disori-ented, lost children not knowing what to do or where to go.

“Where are we?” Overcome with childish curiosty.. “Let’s explore”! We went flying around a big forest, waterfalls, mountains and lakes. It was really amazing. At that time, the viewer didn’t register your teleports and I was too distracted by events to create a landmark. I was never able to find that place again. And I am still searching…

Since then, I’ve made thousands of teleports, none have been as exciting as that first one, but there are still many places in SL that amaze me. Each day I discover new places and it seems like the longest journey ever. At times I have to be fast, as many places disappear in a split second.

Most of the time we are busy, but if you decide to ‘take a day off’ and enjoy the spirit of exploration again, please, consider my helpful tips:

“In-world” possibilities:

*First of all, you can use the built-in search (ctrl/cmd+F). I like the Showcase tab, which is also available on the official SL website. Showcase is the Fashion, Music and Arts Guide to SL. Residents submit their locations to Linden Lab and, if the business/location meets certain criteria, they are included in Showcase. The places you’ll find there are well known and you may also have seen pictures of them on Flickr, as well as in many SL magazines. For me, Show-case listings are only a starting point. If you would like to discover a real jewel, you need to dig deeper.

* Ask your friends. We often take for granted what we know, so your friends might not even be aware that you’ve never heard of their favourite “OMG!” place.

* Inspect people and objects, use profile picks to find more unusual places. How do you inspect an object? Right Click>More>More>Inspect and you see information about the crea-tor and owner of the object. Then, using resident profile picks, you might find a great new place.

*For fashion finds and some fun, I use the FashCon HUD. Use the Tour Bus option and every five minutes you’ll get a landmark to a shop owned by a designer in the Fashion Consolidated Group. Sometimes five minutes may seem too long, but other times you may want to stop the tour to enjoy a really good look around. You can obtain the FashCon HUD from any shop with a FashCon kiosk.

How to make a SLURL in-world:
*Open the map (ctrl+M) and click copy to clipboard. You may also use this option when inspecting a landmark (right click -About Landmark from the inventory). Instead of clicking Teleport, click Show on Map and when it shows a destination then click copy to clipboard. Now you can paste the SLURL to a notecard, email or wherever.

“Out of world” possibilities:

*You may browse some Flickr groups:

SL Tourist Board (SLURL in descriptions) http://www.flickr.com/groups/sl_touristboard/

Favorite SL places http://www.flickr.com/groups/835535@N25/

*You may visit some websites:

SL Buzz: snapshots with slurls http://snapshots.slbuzz.com/

BlogHUD: snapshots and blogging with slurls http://bloghud.com/

Snapzilla: snapshots with slurls http://www.sluniverse.com/pics/

By sending an in-world postcard (snapshot) to the email of a website, it automatically sends a slurl with the picture. Easy isn’t it?

How to make a slurl “out of world”:

*Go to http://slurl.com/build.php and build your own slurl.

Basically slurl includes: http://slurl.com/secondlife/ part +Region name + its X coordinate+ its Y coordinate+ its Z coordinate (use %20 instead of space in the Region name).

Read online in English

Read online in French

Read online in German

Cover by Ariel Brearly

Issue #5, 2009 It has always been in the deep nature of men to go further than their usual and natural territory. It is this very innate desire to explore, see, learn more, that has pushed sailors at sea; and a similar passion that sat men on the first planes and space shuttles. Our most ancient history, our most secular religions are full of journeys to the unknown.Today is our turn. Since Uncover Magazine set its office in a flying ship, we have wanted to use this opportunity to follow the trails of the great explorers, set our own coordinates, make our own route…Today we start our own Odyssey…

Our Flickr selection for this issue includes pictures by Dahlia Black, Mistero Hifeng, and Designerpete Enyo, thank you very much for posting those in the Uncover Magazine Flickr group.