voyeurism

Temasek - first pic of the waterfront rentals

within twenty-four hours of coming onboard as Temasek's third architect, Lim Pikajuna has already worked his magic on the northeast corner the sim.

having come up with a brand-new bespoke design for Temasek, here is the first pic of Lim Pikajuna's waterfront chalets :-)

today, all four of us were present at Temasek this evening. the atmosphere really was electric, in large part due to the tremendous creative energy that each of the three architects was feeding off from, yet at the same time contributing to. as for me, it was just a huge thrill to be able to watch the team at work :-)

to God be the glory!

Temasek - introducing our third architect :-)

i am very happy to introduce Temasek's third architect to you.

Lim Pikajuna joins Chief Architects Derekcsy Cortes and Limkopi Davis. Lim is no stranger to crafting finely detailed builds - in fact, i was so enamoured by his workmanship that when it came to selecting a building for the Raymaker Hotel at Unzen, the choice - to me at least - was clear.

welcome to the team, Lim, and thank you :-)

Technorati Tags: Second Life, Singapore, Temasek

Temasek - a place like home

the one-hundred-and-fortieth episode of ventriloquy brings you some of my initial reflections in the first five days, working with Derekcsy Cortes and Limkopi Davis to build the sim Temasek.

Temasek is designed to be a showcase of the best that Singapore has to offer, in terms of her culture, historical heritage, geography and ecological diversity.

please join me in this 4.5 MB download, as i talk about how the opportunity to design and build such an ambitious project from scratch, has enabled us to learn from a variety of disciplines and epistemologies, in some very powerful ways.

Show notes:
- my 4 June 2007 entry / ventriloquy episode 109 (no place like home)
- FreeLife magazine issue #12

Temasek at dusk - a view from the fort, towards the Welcome Area

Temasek - map, as of 25 February 2008

for those of you who are wondering what Temasek looks like from the air, here's a map.

i envisage this to be the first in a series of posts, so that we can track the evolution of Temasek for posterity :-)

clearly evident from this pic is how skilfully Derekcsy Cortes has terraformed the central water-body to mimic the characteristic belly-of-a-carp shape of the real Singapore River :-)

Temasek - first pic of the Visitors' Centre

over the weekend, Derekcsy Cortes worked on the Visitors' Centre at Temasek.

Derekcsy based its design on the old Kallang Aerodrome, which is presently the headquarters of the People's Association.

the Visitors' Centre at Temasek, along the banks of something approximating the Singapore River

Temasek - first pic from the historical zone

just a quick peek at how Derekcsy Cortes is interpreting the historical zone at Temasek :-)

his attention to detail is clearly evident.

for those of you who would like a little background information on the significance of cannons to the history of Singapore, here are a couple of good places to start :-)

active avatars in Second Life, ranked as a proportion of countries' respective population sizes (January 2008)

following up on last month's post, here is the breakdown of figures for active avatars per country for January 2008, normalised against the respective population sizes (again, population totals were obtained from the CIA's World Factbook).

for those of you who are new to this, i'll give you a concrete example (if you've read my post from September 2007 on the same topic, you can just skip ahead to the next paragraph). the United States had 190018 active avatars during January. the population size of the USA in July 2007 was 301139947. this means that 0.06 percent of the US population had avatars active in Second Life during January.

i took the top 40 countries by active avatars (ranked by absolute numbers), and processed them by 'active avatars as proportion of country population'. just like for the December figures, Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, Hungary, India, Mexico, Peru, Romania, Russia, South Korea, Turkey and Venezuela have been excluded, because the proportions are really tiny.

here's what the numbers for January look like :-)

1. the Netherlands 0.10 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Slovenia)

2. Slovenia 0.07 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.11 %; displaced in rank by the Netherlands)

3. United Kingdom 0.07 % (proportion has increased, from 0.06 %; rank has increased, displacing the USA and Denmark)

4. USA 0.06 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by the United Kingdom)

5. Denmark 0.06 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by the United Kingdom)

6. Switzerland 0.05 % (unchanged)

7. Germany 0.05 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Australia and Belgium)

8. Australia 0.05 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Germany)

9. Belgium 0.05 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Germany)

10. Canada 0.05 % (unchanged)

11. France 0.04 % (unchanged)

12. Ireland 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Spain)

13. Italy 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Spain)

14. Portugal 0.04 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Spain)

15. Norway 0.04 % (proportion has increased, from 0.03 %; rank has increased, displacing Spain, Sweden, New Zealand and Austria)

16. Spain 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Ireland, Italy, Portugal, and Norway)

17. Sweden 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Norway)

18. New Zealand 0.04 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Norway)

19. Austria 0.03 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Norway)

20. Singapore 0.02 % (unchanged)

21. Japan 0.02 % (proportion is stable; rank has increased, displacing Finland)

22. Finland 0.02 % (proportion is stable; displaced in rank by Japan)

23. Greece 0.02 % (unchanged)

24. Brazil 0.02 % (proportion has increased, from 0.01 %; rank has increased, displacing the Czech Republic and Israel)

25. the Czech Republic 0.02 % (proportion has increased, from 0.01%; rank is stable)

26. Israel 0.01 % (proportion has fallen, from 0.02 %; displaced in rank by Brazil and the Czech Republic)

27. Poland 0.01 % (unchanged)

analysed this way, Singapore is still the Asian country with the highest proportion of active avatars in Second Life.

Technorati Tags: geography, globalization, Second Life, Singapore

Temasek has a new architect :-)

this is just a short post to introduce Derekcsy Cortes.

Derekcsy joins Limkopi Davis, as the second architect of Temasek - the sim which we are constructing as a cultural showcase of the best of Singapore.

Derekcsy spent most of today terraforming, and he's formed a river (much like the lower course of the Singapore River) as well as built the Welcome Area. he's also got some very good ideas on how the land might be used. right now, he's working on the rocky shoreline, which will approximate to Labrador Park.

Raymaker Land Management - the website is up :-)

now that i've finally gotten my MacBook Air up and running, i've had time to put together what i hope is a clean and simple site for Raymaker Land Management :-)

i would be very pleased if you could kindly check it out when you have the time :-)

better yet, visit me in world at the Raymaker Land Management Gallery at Durango :-)

Technorati Tags: Raymaker Land Management, rent, Second Life

St Michel - the Jules Verne Museum featured in Deja Vu International magazine

The March 2008 issue (Issue Number 5) of Deja Vu International, features a very complimentary write-up of St Michel - the Jules Verne Museum :-)

i would like to thank Anna Avalanche for taking the time and effort to cover the Museum so extensively over eight pages, starting from page 65.

her photographic eye is first-rate too, with some very dramatic images hinting at the various highlights of the installation.

i've repurposed the article as a PDF (3.3 MB) and an in-world THiNC book, which is available from any of my vendors (list of vendor locations available here).

thank you very much, once again, Anna!

[update 1: a very warm welcome to all visitors being directed here from the 20 February post in the Jules Verne News blog :-) bienvenue!

update 2: an equally warm welcome to all visitors being directed here from the 7 March post in Anna's personal blog :-) ]

update 3: as of 25 August 2008, the Museum is closed. i would like to thank all of you who took the time to visit :-)

update 4: as of 1 January 2009, please visit the Museum at its new location at Lily]