So what's going on, Siggy?

You'd think that live broadcasting would be easier that recording. With the latter, you have to do lots of cutting, pasting, cropping, fiddling with sounds, and so on. But it turns out that "live" has challenges of its own. So, MBC went for switching to a fortnightly format and then to a hiatus. By "hiatus" I mean "not happening unless folks decide to do otherwise.

Yours truly has been very busy in real life so it's not necessarily a bad thing personally to get some extra time. But it's good to keep a presence in Second Life so I've committed to doing some regular writing for the Metaverse Tribune. Recka Wuyts and Bethany Slade have been wonderful in allowing me carte blanche on topics, so I can pick and choose what I want to write about. In truth, that's the point of being a "freelance writer" - the freedom to shift from topic to topic depending on the level of interest.

So on Christmas Eve, 2011, I made a case against Net Neutrality in my Op-Ed piece Net Neutrality: Just Say No. This was in response to an earlier article by Skylar Smythe, who argued that the private sector was "censoring" content by seeking to make some people pay more for access than others.

In one of my sober moments over the Christmas period, I wrote an article that appeared on New Year's Day, 2012, entitled 2011: (Hardly) in Second Life. This was a discussion about why my presence in SL has dwindled over time, although not as a result of joining the "Second Life is dying" brigade.

Not long after that, I penned Hacktivists: Freedom Fighters or Self-Centered Script Kiddies, with the latter interpretation being my favorite. I rather hoped to have some self-centered script kiddies take me task on this one but alas, I'm nowhere near as fun a target as the FBI or Google.

I spent a couple of weeks at the end of January on the road in real life, so it wasn't until February 6th, that I was able to write about the IPO for Facebook in Of Privacy and Profits: The Facebook Frenzy.

Meanwhile, the Wetaverse show isn't yet posted at the MBC TV site, so stay tuned to see what happens! I have an article submitted to the Trib and will alert folks when it appears.

The Wetaverse: A New MBC TV Show on Sexuality

It's in the can, as they say, but not yet posted. The first ever Wetaverse show was recorded last week in a mammoth session that ate into my drinking time. Well, maybe not that much, but a splendid time was had by all as the inaugeral show took place.

Frolic Mills talked about virtual penises, as did I and Foxxe Wilder, my bar-propping companion to the show. We also had veteran SLer Steve Cropper with a film about the Gorean sims, and talked with two Gorean role-players, Johana Haystack and Elysa Swansong.

Love and Life in Gor from Reputation Australia on Vimeo.

There was some erotic poetry from Morgue McMillan and a film called "Love Everlasting" from director Nino Heartsdale and camera by Emanuelle Courtois.

The aim was to have this out on Valentine's Day - sentimental souls as we are at MBC - but the hearts and cupids came and went while the show stayed in the editing phase.

The nest show is scheduled for the Ides of March, conspirators willing.

MBC GRIDwrap: 11-23-10

A special edition of GRIDwrap where Dousa interviews me about journalism, truth, Second Life, and Real.

GRIDwrap #25 from Metaverse TV on Vimeo.

I Want To Be A Celebrity

The Metaverse Broadcasting Company, MBC TV, are currently airing episode 3 of their virtual reality show, I Want To Be A Celebrity, which is curiously entertaining. However, I don't want to talk about that but the theme song to the show, Celebrity by the UK band The Thought Criminals.


I should start by saying that I loved it so much, I bought the album. And at $9.99 from iTunes, it's a bargain. Here's what the blurb on Amazon.com has to say:

"The Thought Criminals was formed in South London, UK in 2004 when programmer/musician Kirlian Blue and vocalist/frontman Rocky Goode, set out to form a band that would blend early 80s dark electronic music with the more modern alternative dance music of today. The duo worked feverishly on their concept and then enlisted the help of famed dance producer Tony Messenger and mixer Robb Henry to tie things together. The result of their effort is the debut album, Die Young: Stay Pretty.

"The Thought Criminals sound can only be described as an EBM laced Sci-fi/80s/Electro Punk montage. Kirlian, supplies the backdrop for Rocky's tongue & cheek (sic) vocals. Die Young : Stay Pretty, is a 10 track release which contains 3 bona fide singles: The catchy pop hit (I'm Gonna Be a) Celebrity, the old school EBM Date Rape Lovers and the explosive My Baby's a Suicide Bomber. In addition to the album tracks, Die Young: Stay Pretty, includes seven bonus remixes that will be sure to pack dance floors across the globe."

Electro/dance/punk is the best way to describe it. Cyberslut is another great tune that will appeal to the Second Life brigade, which also comes as a 12" Club Remix version with the iTunes download. I need to make a visit to 6th Element Club to see if anyone's playing parts of this album.

MBC News Show For April 17th Now Available

The mid-April Metaverse Broadcasting Company news show is now available. For the fashionistas, I'm wearing a sweater and shoes from Redgrave, along with trousers from Muism.



For those who really don't care about what I'm wearing, I'm curious why you are still reading my blog!

MBC's "Zero Hour" Preview - Spot the Siggy!

Robustus Hax of MBC TV is in production with a new show called Zero Hour. When he asked for extras to stand around in a field, I was pretty sure that this was the sort of job I could excel at - standing in a field. So I slipped on my new outfit from Cattiva e Cattivo (product placement in Second Life, folks!) and TPed over to the set.

So here is the teaser-trailer now available at MBC's site and on Blip TV. The devilishly hunky blue-eyed, blond-haired Adonis is me. The voice, however, is not. I have been dubbed, possibly because union rules state that a speaking part has to be paid. Or not.



I think I was a little late for the Oscar nomination this time around, but next year I'm hoping to be stumbling down the red carpet with Angelina Jolie on my left and a bottle of cognac on my right.

MBC Interview Airs

Last Thursday I did an interview with Melvie Pawpaw, a real life associate professor at Kent State University. Melvie teaches a class on assistive technology and uses Kent State University island in Second Life to augment her classes. Melvie was actually very laid back about the whole thing and interviewed well. The latest edition of MBC News features the interview.


As a side bar, in order to visit the sim, I had to have permission to join the Kent State group. Two days after the interview, I was unceremoniously booted out. So much for my short tenure at Kent State.

Still, there has to be some kudos attached to my being ejected from a seat of higher learning. Makes me feel sort of radical. Sort of.

SLebrity and Trademarking

I heard from Robustus Hax of MBC. The name SLebrity had been considered but there may be some Linden Lab involvement in the show, which may cause problems. Why? Because the word SLebrity is clearly a portmanteau of SL and celebrity, and the SL element is trademarked. There may be a case for LL to go up against MBC because of this.

I say "maybe" because you can't trademark a word, only a mark. The word slebrity (no upper case for the first two letters) exists outside of the Second Life universe. For example, on May 11th, 2006, a blog post appeared entitled SLEBRITY SPOTTING, with the words in a caps font.

So the word slebrity cannot be trademarked retrospectively, although maybe SLebrity can. I'm certainly not going to consult my real life patent attorneys on this - and those of you who have such people working for you know the cost involved! - but from what I know of past work with them, I bet slebrity is OK but SLebrity is not: The former predates Linden Lab's annoucement in 2008 about branding and the latter is obviously SL related.

I may have some challenges of my own at some stage. My name, Sigmund Leominster, is mine, and mine alone. My initials happen to be SL. My blog, SL on SL is a gray area, but I have it as SL© on SL™ because the first SL is my intials, and I can copyright these, but the second is an abbreviation for Second Life, for which I use the obligatory ™ marking.

My friend Seikatsu Koba is working on a logo for me. I think it should be fun to see what happens if his starts appearing in the Second Life press!

I Want To Be A Celebrity; Or A SLebrity

Either I am ahead of the curve or one step behind. I'm certainly not slouch when it comes to starting a post with a mixed metaphor.

Metaverse TV have announced a new program, I Want To Be A Celebrity. I could kick myself repeatedly for missing the opportunity to promote the use of SLebrity here, especially since I do some work for MBC! Here is the danger when you live outside the loops. Clearly the folks at MBC have been working on this but I'm not in the Inner Circle so didn't know.

Maybe it is not too late. My next step is to alert the good folks at MBC that SLebrity is better - especially for search engines.

Stay posted; I'll let you know how it goes

2008 SLentre Award on Blip TV

Thanks to the hard work of Robustus Hax of Metaverse TV, the SLenterpreneur of the Year Award show is now available via Blip TV. Those of you who missed the ceremony and who are curious about my voice, now's your chance to see and hear it.



The whole thing is just around 15 minutes long, which includes a track by the Rolling Stones at the end. So grab yourself a cup of tea, sit back, and watch a slice of SLife.

More SL on TV?

Well, as I hurtle headlong toward the New Year, the opportunities for increasing my media presence appear to be landing on my virtual desk - which is, I have to say, a very nice desk and one that I bought way back when I lived in a single-room rental.

I have an offer from MBC to host a new show with the working title @SLentrepreneur, which would be a joint venture between MBC and SLentrepreneur Magazine. Add that to the twice weekly news report AND another TV show in January (Life on Line), I may just about be maxed out in my second life. Here's my potential 2009 work list:

New Editor: SLentrepreneur Magazine
Men's Style Commentator: FreeLife Magazine
News Reporter: MBC TV
Host: MBC's @SLentrepreneur
News Reporter: Life on Line
Freelancer: Second Life Herald
Freelancer: Castle Keep Magazine

Add in the blogs SL on SL, SL on RL, and SL on VL, and you get an idea of why I have to sit down over Christmas and do some planning. Trouble is, I love this stuff and it is fun. Of course, it leaves little time for other Real Life things such as movies, books, family, friends, and all that jazz.

Or does it?

SL on TV

A part of my move towards becoming a virtual media presence, my debut TV report can be found on the latest MBC news show, reporting on the recent Robodock festival. OK, so it's a tiny one-minute slot and, on hearing, is punctuated by irritating inspirations of breath, but we all start somewhere, right? On the upside, I did the voice taping as a one-shot deal - no replay button here, boys and girls.



What I missed out on was the opportunity to work on the Miss Virtual World contest. Vijay Saeed got that gig and I wasn't even able to get into the building due to the place being heavily (over)subscribed and so laggy that by comparison, walking through molasses with bricks strapped to my feet would have been faster.

The show's producer, Dousa Dragonash, has asked me to work on two news slots per week from now on so be prepared for more "SL on TV" in the future. Mmh, SL on SL, SL on RL, SL on VL, and now SL on TV... is this a theme and can I market it?

Adding to the Media Portfolio: Reporting for MBC

Well, after a few weeks of "will I won't I" in regard to doing some work with the Metaverse Broadcasting Company, I finally completed my first field report this evening. With MBC anchorman, Recka Wuyts as the camera operator, I visited the Robodock Festival at the Resonance sim to report on the two-week event.

I also met with artist, Bryn Oh, who made a rather spectacular clock, filled with tiny details and insects! She also has a hidden store that is hard to find - allegedly. She has had 10 customers. I love the idea of "The Quest for the Secret Store" as a concept, bu it really sucks as a marketing tool ;)

Bryn also runs a quiz: You answer three questions and you get a free sculpture. Get one wrong and you are orbited. Needless to say I couldn't resist the challenge; and needless to say I failed on the first one. All I can say is that being orbited isn't the end of the world.

The other interesting component of the TV piece is that I got to talk to Robustus Hax via Skype as he recorded my script. And blow me down if I didn't do it in one take! Actually, I have done that in real life with recorded interviews so it isn't too tricky.

Home Sweet Home

Siggy, you ask, where does a Media Whore hang out in Second Life? And does it pay to be a hack? Well, the answer to the latter is "yes," provided you're prepared to spend a little bit of your real life actually writing. You can pretend to be many things in Second Life but you can't "pretend" to write. You can talk-the-talk and walk-the-walk however at some stage you have to pen-the-pen. It helps if you actually enjoy writing and have some commitment to things called "deadlines" and actually learn to listen to editors.

Oh, and you have to be innately curious. Almost pathologically.

At the moment, in order to establish some sort of reputation, I'm writing for three different periodicals with three different target audiences. I also have this blog and now my podcast. At some stage I intend to talk to the folks at the Metaverse Broadcasting Company (MBC) about maybe having a talk show. Really.

Back to where does a hack hang? One place I like to occasionally prop the bar is the Speakeasy Club, a mafia-themed dance bar where my friend Logan Walker lets me sit at the bar with a Jack Daniels, IMing folks and watching the dancers. A hack has to have such a locale - it's part of the image.

But my real retreat is a two-storey apartment hovering over 300 meters in the sky - the ultimate in low-lag living. There I have a desk, some comfy snuggle chairs, a bed, and a collection of 19th century art that I use to fill my walls. The art I love and created myself by uploading textures and framing them. Not rocket science yet it means I can have a very personal collection.

My apartment also has a patio with space for parties, dancing, and a temporary hot tub. Of course, I'm not going to tell you where it is but at least you can take a peek ;)