Society

Hallo liebe Freunde,

folgenden Text, den ich auf www.nachdenkseiten.de gefunden habe, möchte ich Euch nicht vorenthalten. Ein Schrei nach Hilfe, den man zumindest nicht ignorieren sollte, auch wenn man selbst aktiv nichts dagegen unternehmen kann. Aber zumindest kann man helfen, diese von den Massenmedien nicht verbreitete Information, weiterzuverbreiten.

Peace on earth
Galen


Mail aus Kirgisistan
von Raushan Aitkozhaeva:

“Wir befinden uns inmitten eines Krieges (Kirgisien, Stadt Osh). Hier passiert gerade etwas Furchtbares, Unvorstellbares!!! Das Erschreckende ist, daß in den Massenmedien nicht einmal ein Zehntel dessen wiedergegeben wird, was hier vor sich geht. Eine “Ethnische Säuberung”, wenn man so will. Ganze Stadtteile mit von Usbeken bewohnten Häusern sind bis aufs Letzte abgebrannt, Menschen werden in ganzen Familien inklusive Frauen und Kinder niedergemetzelt. Draußen sind ganze Berge von Leichen und Verletzten, denen niemand Hilfe leistet. Ganze “Armeen” junger Menschen kirgisischer Herkunft wüten in aufgebrachtem und oft nicht nüchternem Zustand bewaffnet durch die Stadt; sie töten und verbrennen alles, was ihnen in den Weg kommt.

Das ganze wird von der Politik unterstützt. Der innenpolitische Konflikt ist lange gereift, sodaß jemand jetzt auf sehr listige Weise davon Gebrauch machen konnte. Es scheint, als ob gerade deswegen die Staatsoberhäupter stillsitzen und darüber schweigen, was hier passiert. Mein Eindruck ist, daß das Weggucken unserer Regierung irgendwie durchdacht, geplant ist.

Sergey (mein Schwiegervater) ging heute morgen auf hohes Risiko und zu unser aller Schrecken aus dem Haus, um Lebensmittel zu holen. Auf der Straße lag ein verletzter, sterbender alter Mann. Sergey wollte ihm helfen und drehte ihn auf den Rücken um. In dem Augenblick kam eine Gruppe von Jugendlichen angerannt und begann, den Alten mit Füßen zu treten. Einer von ihnen schrie: “Das ist doch ein Kirgise!”; ein anderer entgegnete: “Nein, er ist Usbeke! Komm, wir zünden ihn an!” Als Sergey in Hilflosigkeit wegging, lag der Alte bereits tot und in Flammen auf der Straße.

Von offizieller Seite her wurde gesagt, man solle alle Gewalttaten und Chaos verhindern, aber daran hält sich hier niemand. Das Zugucken geht weiter! Helikopter fliegen herum und Autos fahren mit Blaulicht durch die Gegend, aber das alles passiert nur zum Schein – es gibt keinerlei aktive Hilfe von Seiten der Polizei oder offizieller Organisationen.

Letzte Nacht hat eine Kämpfergruppierung ein Militärgelände, nicht weit von unserem Haus, eingenommen. Dort gibt es Waffen, Helikopter und vieles mehr. Sie haben schon davor eine riesige Menge an Waffen gehabt (wir fragen uns, woher die ganzen “einfachen Leute”, die gegeneinander kämpfen solche Schusswaffen bekommen konnten?), und jetzt werden es immer mehr, und dazu noch schweres Kriegsgerät.

Für uns hier bedeutet das Ganze, daß wir nicht mehr an Lebensmittel kommen, vielen droht schon jetzt reale Hungersnot, denn die Reserven gehen zuende. Es wird uns verkündet, daß es Hilfslieferungen gibt mit Essen, Wasser und Medikamenten, aber das ist nur ein Tropfen auf den heißen Stein. Brot ist gerade geliefert worden, aber seltsamerweise bekommen die Russen davon nichts ab. Wir wollen kein Brot! Wir wollen Leben!!! Warum wird in den russischen Nachrichten gesagt, daß sich der Zustand hier stabilisiert hat, obwohl hier alles immer schlimmer wird? Es gibt nur eine Antwort – jemand möchte nicht, daß die Welt davon erfährt. Oder sie tun einfach nur so, als würden sie es nicht bemerken.

Mein Ziel ist es, diese Nachricht so weit wie möglich zu verbreiten – daß so viele wie möglich weltweit von der Situation hier erfahren. Wir fürchten, alleine gelassen zu werden mit unserem Leid!!! Die Tatsache, daß der kleine Anteil an hier lebenden Russen bisher verschont wurde, ist wohl nur eine Frage der Zeit. Die wütende Bevölkerung hat Blut gerochen, den Kampf angesagt und gesehen, daß sie ungestraft davon kommen würden. Wir haben hier Todesangst! Jeden Tag wissen wir nicht, ob wir ihn noch überleben werden. Bitte, gebt diese Nachricht an alle Möglichen Seiten weiter, stellt sie in die Nachrichten und Foren!!! Bitte lasst uns nicht alleine!!! Dies ist ein ernsthafter Hilfeschrei!!!”

Hello dear Cybertravellers,

yesterday, after a spontaneous photo shooting session, we decided to put up a small, but fine exhibition of three pictures in cyberbohemia's Observatory.
You can find the Observatory on the highest mountain in the northern part of Cyberbohemia.

The exhibition is called "Marbelous world" and contains photographs by Susanne Sindlinger.

A lot of work is going on all over Cyberbohemia. A new welcome area and many improvements (mainly in details) are done these days, so beware of falling rocks...and always wear a helmet

It also makes me pretty proud, that in the next OSGazette, there probably will be a small article about Cyberbohemia. It clearly shows me that we already have some attention in OSGrid, and that our concept of peace, beauty and art is accepted and welcome.

Actually, a few days ago, i decided to visit SL again, after a very long time. Two things I could instantly notice. The first thing (the positive thing) were the thousands of green dots on the map. Wow, really amazing how many people are in this world. Which brings me directly to the second observation...the major part of SL is ugly. Pure ugliness, lack of imagination, phantasy, and absolutely no space for beauty. This is no offence to the builders in SL, it only clearly tells me, that money leaves no space for beauty. Money is the death of beauty and creativity.
Its a deep concept question behind that. Cyberbohemia, for example, is done purely for beauty and creativity. Its my hobbie to maintain the servers and everything needed, and the costs are affordable, even for 14 sims. Second life is a different concept. The costs are high to run a sim, and people need to run a business to cover the costs and get an income. This results on most sims in basic structures, low prims, and many shops. Only few beautiful sims are left which are run by enthusiasts who can afford the high prices in SL.
So the virtual worlds are a good picture of our society. Compare the beauty of a modern shopping mall with the beauty of a nice garden; then you have the difference between SL and the open grids.

Good to have both alternatives. One for business, one for beauty. Well, I've made my choince, and I hope, one day people will discover OSGrid as a place of beauty and creativity, where they can spend some time far away from commerce. Hopefully, one day, OSGrid will have as many (or even more) green dots on the map, so people can easily socialize. Cyberbohemia will work hard to help increasing the number of visitors in OSGrid ...

Love and light
Galen

Hello dear Cybertravellers,

these days I'm very busy making our first machinima. Most of it is ready now. It's going to be a 10 minute tour through the gallerys of Cyberbohemia, and through some of the highlights of Cyberbohemia.

Fortunately, Kirtan Dreamrezzer agreed to make the music for the video. I am really happy about that; he will compose the music so that it fits to the video. Maybe he will mix his older songs...actually, i don't know, and I'm looking forward to hear the soundtrack. I'm sure it will be great!!!

In the meantime, nothing spectacular happened in our cyberspace. So maybe now is the time to tell you a little about my RL. As you might have seen (and probably will see in the trailer of the video), Cyberbohemia is dedicated to love, peace and nature. Well, those words are written down very easy and fast, and they sound very good. But its a big difference if it just sounds good, or if people try to live those words. To be a virtual environmentalist is easy, but in RL its a bit more difficult.

So today i would love to show you one of my bigger steps towards being a RL environmentalist:
Last year i bought a HP Velotech Scorpion FS. Lol, this is not a new fancy graphics card for my PC; its a bicycle. To be more precise, its a recumbent bike and a three-wheeler, a trike.
I'm a bicycle enthusiast. A very big one; i always loved bicycles, and when i was a child, my bike was my horse (i called it Hatatitla... lol, remember this name?). One of my biggest wishes is to see the whole world driving with bicycles. Not with stinking fast cars. With environment friendly, slow bicycles. Like Mao said "one bicycle for every chinese", i would love to say "one bicycle for every human". I'm very sure that would solve a lot of problems, that we have on mother earth. Not only the pollution would be much less, also the people could start to live in harmony with their natural rhythm again.

All around me, people run around like hamsters in a wheel, stressed, never having time to relax. Very sad indeed, and i am sure, that the return to a much slower lifestyle would be a great release for us humans.

So i started to replace my car with the bike. But, even as a bike enthusiast, its pretty hard for me to drive the 20 km from my home to my work every morning and every evening. In the morning its pretty easy, its going downhill for most of the time. But in the evenings, when I am tired, driving 20 km uphill is sometimes not very pleasant.

I decided to make an experiment, and today, i can tell you, that i've found the ideal combination:

Last summer, I bought an electric motor for my bicycle. To increase the range, so i can use the bike even more often, and (for me even more important) to decrease the psychological barrier to use the bike. Before I had the motor, I sometimes decided to take my car instead of the bicycle. One day, there was too much wind, the other day i had to climb too many hills.... very easy to find reasons to go the lazy way

But now, with the motor, i can really tell you, riding the bicycle is pure pleasure. If I am tired, I push the controller one step further, and even the steepest hills get flat. There is a sensor that measures the amount of force that I bring on the pedals, and the more force I use, the more the motor helps me. So the steeper the hill, the more the motor helps, and it really feels like always driving on a flat road. And I have the full control of how much the motor helps me. It can add 35%, 70%, 150% and 300% of my own force. Usually, i add 35%, but when I'm tiered I add 75%. So easy, so nice.

The Li-Ion battery lasts between 30 and 80 km, depending on how much additional energy I need. Usually I can ride around 60 km before I have to recharge the battery. And I roughly calculated, that I need only the equivalent of around 2-3 cl of gasoline for each 100 km. Imagine, this equals around 3000 km for one liter of gasoline!!!!
Of course, I get my electricity 100% ecological from a green electricity company, so no atomic power is used for riding my bike ....

My setup is:

Bicycle HP Velotech Scorpion FS
Motor: BionX 250 HT



The whole setup is not cheap, thats the main disadvantage. But I hope this will get better in the next years, when they start to sell more of those electrified bicycles (so-called Pedelecs; Pedal-electric).

For everybody who is interested in having a environment friendly method for transportation, and who loves to be in the fresh air, I can fully recommend this setup. The trike offers a very comfortable ride, and you can transport a lot of cargo on it. And its very save; its pretty hard to fall off a trike.


Greetings to all,
Galen

Although it's not directly connected to virtuality, I'd love to show you a small youtube video which i think is really interesting. With good ideas and a little help, one can build his/her own little house very very cheap, and, even better, absolutely ecological. A good friend of mine blogged this video a while ago, and the more I think about this fantastic concept, the more i feel that this is revolutionary. Where I live, people usually pay the most part of their income for rent, or, they buy a little house, and then they have to pay at least for 30 years the loan and interest. Hundreds of thousands of Euros. Not to mention, that many houses are built with unhealthy and environment-unfriendly materials.

So i think this is a great way to free ourselves partly from the capitalist system. There is much more to say about this form of house; I'm pretty sure, living in a round house affects the way you think and feel... but this will probably discussed in a later blog entry.

Also, this is a test for the new youtube plugin, that i have just installed

Love, Galen

Today i would like to tell you about a very unpleasant experience in VWs, the assassination and robbery of my first virtual existence.

I was know in the OpenLifegrid as Galen TechnoShaman. I really loved this world when it came up a few years ago. The Openlifegrid was the first grid, where i had the intention of "settling down", of creating a real virtual existence. I did my first VW steps in SL, but soon i found out, that SL is not the place for me. I am interested in a deep social exchange, not in business or smalltalk, and i want to have my own land to create, script, live and love.
OL seemed to me a very promising world at the time of its beginning, so i decided to make my existence there. I became one of the foundation residents, those were the first residents, who owned sims on the mainland and were the first paying supporters of the new world. They were promised to "have a voice", and take part of the direction where the future development of Openlife will go.
So far, so good, i was one of them, and i felt pretty proud to be one of them. I've met many great residents in Openlife, really wonderful people. I rented 4 sims on the mainland to put up my virtual life.

After some time, the new possibilities of a private cluser were offered; these were sims not on the mainland; like islands in SL. I got one of those clusters with 4 sims. Sakai promoted these sims very much, and he promised to move all objects to the new sims, so you don't loose your builds. Well, in short, he didn't transfer anything, although i asked him many times to do this for me. This was the first moment in my virtual existence, where the shiny picture of Sakai became its first grey spots and the first doubts came up, if I have made the right decision to start my virtual life there.

Anyway, time went on, and with the help of Julius, we made the Dreamrezzer Gallery on one of the sims. Its was a beautiful japanese garden, put up for our first real art exhibition. We wanted to make a professional exhibition with vernissage and the possibility, to talk directly to the artist. Therefore, we decided to put up a life audio stream, where visitors could hear the artist speaking. A few months before, Sakai offered a streamserver on demand for every resident. he called it "Sakaistream". When i asked him to set up the streamserver for me, he promised me to do that, and give me all necessary information.
...well, and then, nothing more happened. He did not put up the server, he did not give me any information...null, nada, nothing. He didn't reply to my mailinquiries, my IMs, my attempts to contact him via other residents or to my forum entries.
Luckily, one of the residents on OL had her own streamserver, and she offered us to use her streamserver. A great offer, and it worked perfectly. During the vernissage, we had a nice audiostream running in a good quality.
The next problem was, that i asked Sakai to give me a save oar of my gallery region. The reason for that is (if i ever need explain, why i love to have a backup of my region...) that i am in contact with artists, who have no or only a slow internet connection at home. So I need the gallery on my standalone. To plan exhibitions, its essential to be inworld, look around, see positions of pictures, plan the environment etc. etc. After talking with Sakai, he promised me to give me the save oar....
Again, it was just a promise, nothing happened. I made many many inquiries, but after this moment, Sakai totally ignored me. No mailanswers, no IM answers, no contact inworld...

... until the time came, when i had to pay my quarterly renewal. Before, I had decided to move away from OL, and not to renew my regions. When i did not renew, Sakai IM'ed me that i was overdue. I IM'ed back, that i made the decision to move, and i explained him, what the reasons were.

A long story (and maybe a bit confusing, as there were many more details in the whole story), but what does this story have to do with murder and robbery?

After my last IM to Sakai, my user account was simply disabled in OL. I was not able to connect again inworld or on the website.
All my mails were suddenly classified as spam and returned. No way for me to contact Sakai again.
My account had about 7 € in inworld credits left, that i could not access anymore.

I consider this as a murder of my Avatar, and a shameless robbery of the 7 € that I still had.

Thanks to Sakai, my young virtual life ended really adventurous. I didn't expect something like this, and to be honest, i was really shocked. Before everything happened, i didn't really realize, that an Avatars existence is a "real" existence. Your Avatar holds items, you have money in your virtual pocket, you have friends, you have a property... everything virtual but very real.

So thanks to Sakai again, that he brought this fact clearly in my mind. It also clearly prooves, that the decision to move to OSGrid and run my own sims, was absolutely right. Here i have my own saves for my standalone, here i have put up my own streamserver, here i can put up nearly as many regions as i need for no additional money (for the same money, that i payed in OL for 4 regions, i've rented my own rootserver and i host 15 regions at the moment)... here I am free.... and here I meet many interesting people, and i'm happy to have some of them as my friends.


So dear fellow cybertravellers, as an advice, be careful where and how you start your virtual existence. Even when it starts only as a game in your mind, you will identify with your avatar, and your avatar will become a part of your life. And if somebody decides to harm your virtual existence, it will do harm to your real life. Simply because you can't separate virtual life and real life; they are the same. And i can tell you from my own experience, you are totally defenseless. For them its just a database entry done in seconds, for you its part of your life.

I wish you a wonderful virtual and real life,

love Galen

"Dedicated to nature, art, philosophy, spiritualism, love and culture",

the Dreamrezzer project is located on a beautiful landscape, coming from the real island of Semisopochnoi (Semisopochnoi in Wikipedia)

Cyberbohemia is about to be a living community, a meeting place, an art exhibition sim, a place for philosophical and spiritual discussions, and above all, a beautiful spot of nature and secrets.

The project is running by cyberbohemian and rainbow warrior Galen Technoshaman as architect, admin, scripter, terrains creator, and Julius Balogh as the main builder, texturer, landscaper and gardener.

Dreamrezzer's first art exhibition was located on the Openlife grid, where we've already done a brilliant vernissage with live streaming of the artist on a japanese garden sim.

You can find pictures of the exhibition here: http://olxchange.ning.com/photo/albums/dreamrezzer-exhibition
You can find some text about the exhibition here: http://olxchange.ning.com/profiles/blogs/exhibition-eschatological


We started our project in the Openlifegrid, but decided to move to a more "open" grid. The project is still on a kind of "alpha stage". You will (at least) find the Castle in the Sky, based on Miyazaki's Laputa (Laputa picture) , several small meeting places, a welcome area with Teleports, a slideshow, a notecard giver , and some fine tobacco.

You will also find a managed sandbox and some cool freebies on "Cyberbohemia sandbox", and we plan to make a homestead community sim for interested homeless artists and builders in the future, if there is some demand.

The central hub of Cyberbohemia is the region called "Cyberbohemia", thats where you should teleport.

As we are far away from the rest of the world, sometimes teleports get confused, and you end up on Cyberbohemia somewhere high in the sky in some kind of mouselook. To avoid this nasty bug, (re)start your viewer and enter "Cyberbohemia" in the "starting location" field of your viewer.


This place is a garden of delight but it's pretty empty for now, so let us know if you are interested in joining the project as a builder, scripter, artist, educator or just curious. For events, we have our own streaming server with at least 50+ slots (audio already exists, video under construction), and once we get voicechat running, we have a good method for conversation.

There's already a group dedicated for all the Dreamrezzers, so let's rock!

No matter, if you are interested to join the project, to help us with your inspiration or with your presence, or if you want to spend some time on Cyberbohemia ..... everybody is welcome at every time.

"Mi casa es su casa" ... or "Welcome home"

The Dreamrezzer project on the virtual island of Cyberbohemia in the OSGrid http://www.osgrid.org

We call ourselves "Dreamrezzers", meaning, that we create (rez) our dreams in virtual worlds. The word Dreamrezzer was invented by the mexican artist Enrique Ros, who used it as a brand in the virtual world Second life. We are proud to keep this name alife, since this word contains much of what its all about for us in virtual worlds.
The "new" Dreamrezzers were formed in the year 2008 in the Openlifegrid for an art exhibition of the german artist H.J. Kaeppeler. Julius Volken (now Julius Balogh) and Galen TechnoShaman created the ambience and the technical background for the exhibition, and formed this way the new Dreamrezzers. The exhibition was held on one sim, which was created as an entire japanese garden.

After the exhibition, Julius and Galen decided to move together to an open grid. The possibilities of an open grid are exciting for a builders community, although the management and the maintaining of the needed hardware is much more complicated than in a managed grid. The decision was made to move to the OSGrid. There we created our new home and called it Cyberbohemia. This name is based on the bohemian lifestyle, which is a sweet, artistic but simple life. Simple in means of consume and wealth, not in mental aspects...

Cyberbohemia now consists of 11 regions. 9 regions are the core island of Cyberbohemia plus one sandbox (hey, you are all invited to come and build on Cyberbohemia sandbox ... scripts are enabled for the moment, until it gets abused!!!) plus one showroom, which will be used in the future for commercial projects.

So we layed the seed for a living community in the OSGrid .... now its up to you to give it some life. You are always welcome to enjoy the beauty of Cyberbohemia, or if you are interested, to join the Dreamrezzers community.

Love, Galen