UPDATE, JUNE 9. Oh, I keep forgetting to talk about this, by the way, and just remembered it again, so thought I'd tack it on here as an update instead of forgetting yet again to write about it next time...

For those who don't know, there is a sorta culture war going on right now in the online world, between those who exist in the alternate reality Second Life (or SL) and those who run the image-sharing website Flickr.com. See, as the ability to take screenshots in SL becomes easier and easier, and more and more people start getting involved within the grid, just an explosion of images have recently been coming out of that community, with many of these people (myself included) turning to Flickr as a way to share them. What many people are quickly discovering, though, and especially those who are there primarily to share only SL screenshots, is that their accounts are getting labeled by Flickr as "NIPSA," or Not Intended for Public Sharing Areas; that is, neither their tags nor images are showing up in all the search queries there, nor all the groups, nor for viewing by the general public.

There's been a lot of confusion over what's been going on, of course, until finally a growing amount of SL players started just writing directly to the Flickr staff, where a quite clear view of what's been going on is now starting to emerge: that Flickr considers itself a website mostly for real-world photographs and real-world photographers; and that anything posted besides a real-world photograph is of course technically going to be allowed, so that you can share it with your friends, but certainly not promoted by Flickr or even allowed to exist within the service's search engine. And unlike most other SL players, I'm going to go on the record and say that I think this very smart of Flickr to do, or at the very least completely within their rights as a private company. The fact is that I was an obsessive fan of Flickr long before I started getting involved with SL; and that's because it's so easy there to find just these extraordinarily talented photographers, people who shoot at a professional level but who may not have a professional-level reputation or name. And frankly, this is why Flickr's gotten so popular over the years as well, eventually beating just about every one of its competitors in the image-sharing market; because it's just so damn easy there for amateur photographers to build a fan base, and to shift into at least a semi-professional career.

Adding non-photography images to the mix just dilutes what's already there; it makes it much harder, for example, to find creative nude photos, when you first have to wade through thousands of images of what are essentially cartoon characters. Doing such a thing is just going to piss off the existing real-world photographers who are already there; and it is these photographers and their fans who made Flickr what it is, and who continues to be their bread and butter regarding both traffic and pro accounts. And see, this is where it gets tricky with some of these SL people, because they're arguing that their screenshots are in fact "photographs" of their own, only of a virtual reality instead of a physical one. And that may be true in a certain existential sense, but it's important I think to also understand them for what they physically are as well -- screenshots from a piece of computer software, when all is really said and done, technically no different from a shot of a recent cool desktop you put together, or a still from the latest South Park. As much as I am for roleplaying the idea of reality within a virtual environment -- that is, to pretend while in the grid that the grid is as much a reality as the physical world -- I think it's a mistake to expect those who don't inhabit that virtual environment to roleplay that reality with you. It's a great argument for philosophers to take on, for example, or to create a panel discussion out of at a Bay-area tech conference; but it's a mistake, I think, to try to convince the staff of Flickr to take this viewpoint themselves, or any of the real-world photographers there who work so hard at their craft.

Now, that said, I do also agree with what a growing amount of SL people are saying; that Flickr stands to make a whole bunch of new money and fans (or someone else if Flickr won't do it), creating a special virtual-reality version of their service, with the same tags and searches and other bells and whistles of the real-world one. VRicker? SLicker? It wouldn't necessarily have to be just for Second Life -- hell, encourage those on the Sims, World of Warcraft, Ultima Online, Everquest, The Matrix Online, Star Wars Online, any reality that is based on a virtual interface, to be posting "photos" from their reality into this new database. This is a hot, hot subject these days, one that's going to do nothing but continue to explode, at least for the next three years if not more. Someone stands to make a lot of revenue and notoriety, being the first truly powerful media-sharing system for the metaverse; whether that's Flickr at this point or some young hot upshot remains to be seen.

Well, hi ho, everyone, and greetings from yet another glorious June Chicago day. It's days like this, in fact, when I so wish I had a laptop at my disposal; because the sad fact is that I have just a ton of computer work to do these days, but literally can't help but to pine for the great weather and friendly citizens this town is seeing right now. So, I end up with this rather schizophrenic schedule because of it; two hours of work at home, two hours hanging out with friends at a coffeehouse or bar, two hours back home, etc, not exactly the most efficient way of doing things.

I have yet more good news, by the way, to add to the ever-growing list of good news being compiled these days: that after immeasurable headaches and delays, the website for my arts center, the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography (or CCLaP), is finally set to open this weekend (and I actually mean it this time). And why exactly is it taking me so long to open this damn website, anyway? Well, here's why...

(Click here to view/download the insanely large version.)

This is, in fact, a diagram of cclap.org's front page, using a technique called "mind-mapping" and a free Mac program called FreeMind, which gives you a quick idea of just what a trainwreck the interior of my site has quickly become. All the little house icons, for example, represent a different HTML page that needs to be created, along with a series of templates for specifying how each of these pages will be displayed; the question marks each denote a different category in our database, each of which require their own HTML page, as well as a brand-new template, not to mention a self-standing RSS feed for each too. And this doesn't even count the new HTML pages that need to be created, which aren't directly linked to on the front page; nor does it count the upcoming sections that are not yet opened, such as merchandise and publications, our social network and a lot more.

Jesus! Are you starting to get an idea of why this is taking so long?! And this is unavoidable, of course, after making the decision I did earlier this year; that CCLaP would be opening this fall as a "homeless" center, using mostly our website to keep everyone in communication with each other, instead of waiting another three or four years to open with our own permanent physical space. That's a decision I'm ultimately happy with, because it allows us to actually start producing events and merchandise years before I thought we were going to be able to; but that does mean, however, that the website itself needs to be a marvel of efficiency and usability for the plan to work, something that will make people not only say "This is one of the cooler online things I've seen" but also "This is one of the easiest websites I've ever used." And this requires just a whole bunch of advanced thinking and work on my part, a lot of stupid little mindmaps like you see above, which I hate because I'd rather just be working on the site, but which I've learned before is a real disaster to do, if you don't have a comprehensive plan for the site already in place.

But like I said, the site finally is moving into a position of being ready, to the point that I'm confident of it finally being live come this weekend. And that plus all the other good things happening in my life these days -- the increased freelance work, the great experiences I'm having in Second Life, even just the better weather -- have, yeah, done a lot towards putting me in a pretty great mood lately. But see, times like these are always tempered for me as well, because it's impossible for me to completely forget the times when things were going just the opposite; that merely two years ago at this point, for example, my life was going about as badly as it gets for me. Whenever I go through periods of my life like right now, where everything seems to be going right, there's still a little part of me saying, "This won't last forever, Pettus, don't forget that;" and this of course is what gets me through the bad times too, is by saying the exact same thing to myself.

This is a mindset that comes naturally to me; I"m a political moderate, after all, a pragmatist and a realist, someone who's always been able to see all sides to an argument. And then combine this with the lesson I've ended up learning about the arts over the years; that if you truly do want to be a public figure, and to have an audience that follows your work, you need to learn how to let go of all the external things that audience is saying about you, whether that's good or bad in nature. And this, frankly, is the one thing that most of my readers and friends seem to have the hardest time understanding; of how it is that I can legitimately care so little about what all these other people think about me, think about my work and my opinions. Like, take my friend Phil for example, the co-owner of Dollop Coffeehouse where I hang out a lot, as well as one of my freelance clients. Phil and I were hanging out the other day, in fact, and I was illustrating a point about CSS2 by showing him my site; and he just happened to be there on a day when I was mentioning some of my online haters, which took him over to a particularly virulent entry recently over at LiveJournal.com.

And Phil was just horrified by what he read there, much like many of my friends get when stumbling across stuff like that, to the point where he felt the compulsion to post a defense for me there. And he just kept sitting there at Dollop, reading it and reading it, and he kept turning to me and saying, "Don't you want to know about all this horrible shit they're saying about you there?" and I kept having to say, "No, Phil, seriously, I don't really care that much!" Because this is how I see it -- that a LiveJournal person wouldn't be a LiveJournal person in the first place, unless they were naturally an immature gossipy drama queen on their own. Because that is what LiveJournal people do, is sit around having these giant high-schooley gossipy dramas with each other; this is what makes a LiveJournal person a LiveJournal person, as you and I out here in the real world both know, just like being an insufferable little smug self-satisfied Mac design shit (like me) makes you a MovableType person. So if a bunch of these LiveJournal people want to sit around and have a little schauenfreude session concerning me, I say more power to them; it doesn't mean, however, that I have to actually go over to LiveJournal and read anything they're saying. And it also means that I don't have to take such people seriously, when they don't even take themselves seriously enough to sign their own name, or to use a blog system I have even one ounce of respect for.

(UPDATE: And now that I've read over this, I want to make it clear that I don't think everyone who chooses LiveJournal is like this; simply that, among those who are like this, for some random reason they do all tend to flock towards LiveJournal. And I don't think there's a single sane person on LiveJournal who would deny this, either, despite how differently they might be from this type of person themselves.)

And there are a lot of people who wish they could be like that in their own lives, of course, and a lot of people who actually try to be that way in their own lives, especially now in our Fabled Age of the Web 2.0, when suddenly everyone on the planet with a blog has opened themselves up for merciless ridicule and stalker-like behavior from strangers. But see, the secret to all this is that your disinterest has to go the other way as well; that is, you can't then be flattered when people say nice things about you, or somehow tie your own mood into what your fans think of you and your work. Because the moment you do that, you see, is the moment you start telling yourself, "It matters to me what this complete stranger thinks of me, even when completely devoid of the context needed to understand where their opinion is coming from." And the moment you start saying that to yourself, the floodgates suddenly burst; suddenly it matters to you what any random stranger thinks of you and your opinions, whether that's good or bad. No, to truly not care about this stuff, there's simply a large part of yourself that you need to shut down, that cares what anyone outside of yourself and your trusted friends think of anything you do. And most people find it extremely difficult to do this, which is why most people fail at it, which is why stuff like that recent LiveJournal entry can get so many others riled up so easily.

This is not without consequences; as I've mentioned here before, such an attitude can sometimes play havoc with one's love life, as well as make it difficult to open up with even close friends. It's a choice I make in my own life, one done deliberately so that I can continue to have a public audience; and other bloggers will eventually make this choice as well, probably less intense for most because they talk about less intense things, and other bloggers will say that it's not worth it to them and hang up their blogs, leading us to the first decline of new blogs since their invention, which I'm telling you right now is coming within the next year, mark the date. All I'm trying to say is that, as much as possible, I try to live my life in the middle of the road; to not get too terribly sad about external things, not too terribly happy, not pay too much attention to other people's opinions, but rather focus intensely instead on how I'm feeling about myself, whether I'm happy or dissatisfied about what's going on with me, whether situations need changing or not. Combined with the "devil's advocate" advice I sometimes need, from people who have proven themselves over the years to be trusted and taken seriously, this has been enough to live my life in a way I've been rather happy with for the last 15 years or so. So, you know, I think I'll keep sticking with it for now; and I'm sorry to disappoint all you LiveJournalers out there, as well as anyone else who thinks they have the right to tell me how to feel or what to do. I'm not particularly angry about anything that anyone's had to say about me; just...you know, I just don't really care. Sorry!

So did I mention? I went out to an underground artistic event tonight! It was held by a friend of mine, in fact, by the name of Gretchen Hasse, both a comic artist in Chicago and a teacher of the comic arts. And she put together what I think is a really intriguing evening as well -- that is, her event is being held at a contemporary jazz club in Wicker Park, every Wednesday throughout June, where in the first hour she showcases a series of her students and other amateur animators, then in the second hour a whole series of "mash-up" animations are shown, while a live jazz quartet plays an impromptu soundtrack for everything being seen. Pretty cool! And of course was filled with sexy cool artists, just as you would imagine such a thing would be. Anyway, like I said, they'll be holding events again every Wednesday throughout June; anyone who's interested can simply show up to Davenport's, at 1383 N. Milwaukee, around 8 pm to catch everything that's being screened that night. (There's no cover, but you are required to purchase two drinks in advance; and be warned that simple well drinks are almost $7 a glass, although admittedly that's a rather large, rather strong glass you end up getting.)

Then after that, a bus ride down Division Street, back to Clark to catch the red line back up to my neighborhood; and since I was there anyway, and since I had a couple of bourbons in me at that point, I thought I might as well stop by The Lodge and have a drink as well. And I know this makes me sound old, I know that, but I just love stopping by The Lodge for a cocktail; because this is one of the last places still standing in Chicago, for those who don't know, where the actual Rat Pack used to hang out while here, specifically in the middle of the night after they were done with their "official" shows in the Loop or River North earlier that evening. And fuck, man, how do you grow up in the early '80s and not want to drink bourbon in the same place where Sinatra, Dino, Sammy, Eddie and all the rest did? How can you not feel like a complete and total badass while you're at a place like that?

So, okay, this is probably enough today for people to be pissed off even months from now; so I guess I should wrap things up here, before I manage to piss even more people off today. Don't forget, there are still two entries coming up here soon, that I've been promising for awhile now: the second half of the details for my Second Life sex club; plus some thoughts on the dark side of gender-switching within Second Life (or that is, the realization you make when playing another gender there, of just how creepy most people of your own gender usually are, when you're not around). And, er, I'll get around to detailing these, whenever I feel like getting around to detailing these. And that might be soon, and that might be a long time from now. So, um...subscribe to the RSS feed, I guess, so that you don't have to keep coming back here every day manually and cursing to yourself, "When the fuck is Pettus going to update this site?!"

Bye!