GO NOW. The Starlust Valentine Hunt is on again and you should get there before it ends February 22nd. Yes, Valentine’s Day is over… however, there are many prizes that have a shelf life far beyond pink candy heart season. Personally, I think the whole thing is worth doing just to pick up the pack of textures from Moo Money, shown above. There is also a cool record shelf from Ponitee and a nice little skybox from NUT that is flooded with sunlight. Get over to the lobby of the Starlust Motel [SLurl] to pick up a hunting HUD and an explanation of how it all works. The more familiar you are with the Starlust sims, the faster it goes. Good luck!

I have recently discovered the Brinksie blog and had to give it a plug. I read my fair share of Second Life blogs and this one is an absolute standout. What impressed me immediately was the quality and clean aesthetic of the photographs — they like a lot of the same things that I like, and it was really to see products and people I’m familiar with presented in a way that made them seem fresh. Also, they are covering some of the best content and content creators in SL, from fashion to furniture to freaky toys. If you haven’t added Brinksie to your blogroll (or hell, if you only read one SL blog…), you should! http://www.brinksie.com/

GO NOW. Lately it seems that people, including myself, have rediscovered the Trilogy sim. I’ve been taking photos there recently, some just for my own fun and some with friends. Luce Portland did a plaid shoot there for her blog and got some great pics of her own — visit her blog or her Flickr stream to see more. Meanwhile, my various Trilogy photos are also all on Flickr.

The current Trilogy theme is “The Woodcutter’s Daughter” and the products in the various shops all work together to create a sort of hip, tweedy fairy tale. If you haven’t been, head on over and explore a little — it’s not a large place, but there is a lot to see (and buy). It’s a fantastic little exercise in themed commerce and custom atmosphere.

GO NOW: It’s Choice Stamp Rally time again! This is one of my favorite events in SL, and WinterChoice 09 is my third rally. It’s easy, fun and you get rewarded for things you’d be buying anyway (in most cases). Here’s how it works:

1. Visit the CSR site for a list of participating vendors. Fantastic shops like Picnic, 109 Prims, Sick, Vooner, LPP and DP Yum Yum are involved with the rally.

2. Buy a product from one of these shops that includes the CSR stamp card. Specific items in each store will be marked with the CSR graphic.

3. Wear your stamp card (or cards — you can attach them all over your body and/or to your HUD), then visit each participating shop and click the CSR machine to get your stamp.

4. When your card is full, go to the CSR Prize Hall and claim your item of choice.

All the prizes are shown up front on the website and you can go through and choose which, if anything, you want to rally for. I really like the stamp rally because, unlike a hunt, you’re guaranteed something you want from an excellent vendor and you are supporting at least one of these vendors by buying a stamp card. I wait for the stamp rally to make certain large purchases — I’ve had my eye on some furniture from Picnic for a year or so, and finally decided to buy during the rally. I ended up with an item I’d intended to pay for anyway, and got a great prize (worth about 600L!) as a bonus.

Also, the rally is well designed, and there is something satisfying about filling up the little cards with the stamp iconography. I also enjoy the size of the rally — there are 20 shops total, most of which are places that have interesting selling spaces and products that I enjoy browsing. That’s enough locations to make the rally substantial but not enough to make it exhausting. It’s also fun to see avatars going through the rally ridiculously covered in cards — I think eight cards is the most I’ve ever had attached to me at one time.

CSR is a Japanese event and some of the best Japanese designers in SL participate. Vooner animals alone make it worth a run through! Also, one of the most highly sought-after items in the rally comes from DP Yum Yum. They’ve begun making a limited edition avatar for each rally — the bunnies were first, then the shy sheep, now the white tiger. These avs are not tinies and can be dressed in normal clothes and hair, and people go crazy customizing and personalizing them in all sorts of ways.

The stamp rally runs until Jan 18, 2010. Don’t miss it!

Schadenfreude released these amazing lanterns a few wee hours ago, and it is not often I am so thoroughly charmed by a product. The lanterns each have snowflake patterns cut into the sides. A candle within casts shadows through these cutouts — shadows that flicker and move with satisfying reality. Sounds simple enough, but the genius of it all lies in the cutouts themselves.

These are not ordinary snowflakes. They are batflakes, pigflakes, krakenflakes… I had to pick up a krakenflake lantern for my shop Mr Tentacle (shown bottom, above) — the cutout is a a tangle of tentacles and ships. I also couldn’t resist a crowflake lantern (top) for my virtual home and a merflake lantern (middle) for my outpost in the floating pirate city of Armada. The cutout patterns are also available as framed wall hangings in either plain or shadowbox form — I plan to hang these in my other shop Atomic Owl.

Thank you, Allegory Malaprop, for designing these. In the sea of SL holiday crap, they are completely secular and, while certainly seasonal, could still probably be used year-round. I haven’t purchased several variations of one item like this in a long time — I admit, I had to walk away from these before I unnecessarily surrounded myself with Schadenflakes (how many lanterns does one person need, after all?). If you’d like to grab a few for yourself, look for the purple teahouse (one of Turnip’s) outside the Schadenfreude elephant in Lloyd, Starlust.

The Down the Chimney Hunt is in full swing and, as I posted previously, I have two stores involved in this hunt. I’ve been building my ass off this week, but the exhaustion is worth it as I start seeing people interact with my prizes. The above photo is by Renee Harvy, who blogs for SLEX and the CITY and is also on Flickr. Renee happens to be wearing the Mr Tentacle Comfy Sweater and standing in the Atomic Owl 4 Season Photo Scene, (very likely unintentionally) showcasing both my prizes at once! This is, in a word, awesome. Lillian Shippe has also taken a range of photos using the Atomic Owl prize that are really incredible — I can’t do them justice here, alas, since there are so many to see and love, so please visit her Flickrstream for a better look.

Grab the prizes for yourself at Mr Tentacle in Harold [SLurl] and Atomic Owl in Armada Breakaway [SLurl]. Enjoy!

GO NOW. On Wednesday, December 2nd, New Trivia Monkeys officially opened to the public (I’ve been busy building the place over the last couple weeks, which is why I’ve been MIA). NTM is a little spot for Gogomodo trivia and games. There are animals to play with and ride, silly drinks at the bar, and lots of comfy seats… but you may be asking, why does this exist and why was Mako involved, exactly?

NTM is an homage to the original Trivia Monkeys, which closed suddenly and without explanation (as so many places in SL do) sometime in early 2008. The idea for NTM started when Honey Potez, longtime trivia hostess, left her position at Club Shiraz in November. While chatting about her future hosting endeavors, we began reminiscing about other venues and got really nostalgic for the old Trivia Monkeys. The SL trivia scene has changed quite a lot since 2007 — there were certainly regular events but the schedule wasn’t as full as it is these days… nor was there a community like we have now. The original Trivia Monkeys, which was just a little tiki hut with some poseballs and Gogomodo, was one of the first places I experienced a sense of trivia community. It was a clubhouse. It was a place to relax. It was a place to laugh with friends and dance on the bar but also a place to sometimes be alone and zone out to the brainstream of Gogomodo. Honey and I rounded up JoshuaStephen Schism, also an old Trivia Monkeys regular, and we acknowledged that there really wasn’t anything quite like it currently on the grid… then discussed whether or not there needed to be. We decided that there was indeed still a place for Trivia Monkeys, and, after suckering in Circe Falta (also an original Trivia Monkeys person) to be our fourth, we set to planning a new Trivia Monkeys.

The new incarnation builds mostly on the clubhouse vibe of the original. We aren’t running paying Gogo or daily contests, though if you choose you can gamble for cash on the machines along one edge of the fence. Most days it will be simply a place for Gogomodo hangout. We don’t expect to make much, if any, money on it — it exists because we loved the place that inspired it and want to share and pass that on to newer players. Gogomodo was how we all got started playing SL trivia, after all, and newbies can come to NTM and find info about other venues and paying games.

Another important part of what NTM is involves neutrality. As the trivia scene has grown over the last two years, several venues have become regular, successful hangouts and developed subcultures of their own. Certain hosts are associated with certain venues. There are in-jokes and friendly rivalries. NTM is Switzerland. Honey, Josh, Circe and I run in slightly different trivia social circles and have loyalties and/or paying gigs at different venues, and so it was nice to realize that by coming together we’d be creating a neutral ground. We plan to use the place for one-off events, maybe things like trivia open mic nights where aspiring hosts can get a taste of what it’s like to face a question-hungry crowd. We’ll see where it goes, but it has no obligation to be anything to anyone specific, which is nice.

I built NTM from scratch. It was important to me that it be a warm, attractive venue. In 2007, I didn’t care much about how places looked — that they existed at all was enough (this is grossly oversimplifying, but for the most part things didn’t start to really look great in SL until 2008. A shift occurred then as SL took another step towards the mainstream and it became less about the raw functional delight of “look what I can make” and more about “look what I can make that doesn’t look like shit”). But, as an artist and in the last two years of being involved in SL, I’ve become more and more sensitive to quality content creation and well designed virtual environments — and I’ve become sensitive to ugly, careless places as well. Environment makes a difference. So I took my time building. We could have had a shack with Gogo up and running in an hour. We could have put in the exact same build from 2007, actually. But I built it from scratch, hand-texturing almost every prim and testing everything with the goal of creating a place that people would feel comfortable — whether or not this is a conscious reaction on the part of guests, I hope I’ve succeeded a little.

It’s hard to explain what was special about the place to people who didn’t experience the original Trivia Monkeys… but the opening event on the 2nd came close. Regular trivia events in SL draw an average of 10-20 people — we had 30+ show up for animal trivia that first night, many of whom entered and immediately said things like “Oh, déjà vu!” and “I used to love this place!” Names and faces I haven’t seen for two years came out of the woodwork — maybe they’ll start playing trivia again! New players marveled at the response, which was fun. All in all, an excellent opening, a build I’m very pleased with, and an endeavor I’m proud to be a part of.

Come visit New Trivia Monkeys [SLurl]. Hang out for a bit and play some games. Have a silly drink — Honey stocked the bar with concoctions that reference other trivia venues. Oh, and join the free subscribo group to stay updated on events and happenings. Stay tuned!

GO NOW. Drowsy is having an autumn moment — an old-fashioned train that conjures the Hogwarts Express or Darjeeling Limited (depending on the avs you encounter within) has derailed in an autumn landscape of red and gold trees. Watch out for the wolves… though the deer don’t seem to mind them. The Drowsy crew (BP, Kurotsubaki, Cloudy) has set up a few small shops inside the train, and there are a few empty berths for taking photos. It’s another beautiful — and temporary — installation from extremely talented content creators.

Both my shops (Atomic Owl and Mr Tentacle) will be stops on the Down the Chimney Hunt, which is another hunt curated and organized by the awesome Nuala Shippe of Kunstkammer. Looking forward to this!

From 10am today, November 7th, until 10am tomorrow, November 8th, Double Standards will be hosting a 24 Hour Triviathon to benefit the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life. I’ve got one of the hosting slots from 1-2am SLT. Come on down to Double Standards and try your hand at trivia for charity!