Wow. It’s been so long since I’ve actually posted here. I feel super guilty about that. I’m not sure if anyone still reads this. I guess it’s time that I clued all of you in on what’s going on.

I’ve been promoting and making machinima for over two years now. The time has really flown by. Since the beginning, moo Money and Sasha Rudie, my real life persona, have been one and the same. In so many ways, they still are. However, I need a balance.

I’ve actually splintered off and married myself. I encourage all of you to say hi to Money Moo, my new partner in SL. Freud would have a field day analyzing this relationship! Money Moo will be running the Bayjou Theater in the mainland Linden Department of Public Works city project, Bay City. She’ll be holding regular events, classes, premieres, and displaying machinima.

The 2007 Second Life Community Convention caught me by surprise in so many ways. I was shocked by all of the attention that I received. As some of you may know, I planned the Machinima track. It was attended by very few, as everyone was at the Business and Education tracks. Since then, I’ve been out of the spotlight. However, I haven’t been out of machinima.

What have I been up to? Well, I’m no longer working for Alt-Zoom Studios, but I still help manage Machinimatographers, the group BuhBuhCuh Fairchild and I started two years ago, as well as Lukanida, the free backlot island. It is now restricted to group members only due to squatters. I’ve been working on projects for Linden Lab, Cisco, PBS, and many more companies. In the coming months, I’ll actually put up a *gasp* portfolio, so that you can see all of the cool projects that I’ve worked on in my time in SL. August marks the two year anniversary of my being full-time in SL, and I’ve accomplished a lot. I’ve also been blogging machinima daily for Massively.com and WoWInsider.com.

Some of you may take this to mean that I’ve left all of you for World of Warcraft, but the truth is that since I blogged daily on Massively, the mutual leads over at WoW Insider thought that I could do the same for them. I played WoW years ago, but don’t currently play it at this time. In order to become familiar with the scene, I immersed myself in their community and got to know many talented machinimators, including Baron Soosdon, Ian Beckman, Selserene, Pinkhair, Gnomechewer, Dopefish, Malu05, Olibith, and many others.

In terms of the splitting off that I’ve mentioned earlier, I’m going to keep the professional side of me and the educational side of me separate. SashaRudie.com will be the host of my portfolio, as well as my resume, and professional accomplishments. MooMoney.net will be the host of my personal blog, which I will start trying to regularly update. There’s so much new technology that’s out there and I can’t wait to share it with all of you!

What’s coming up? Well, in about two weeks, you’ll see what I’ve been working on for the last six months. It’s a project that means so much to me emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Many of you participate in the Second Life Relay for Life. I’ve been working on a 17ish minute documentary on how four volunteers spend their time fundraising in SL for this event. The few people that have seen the draft have told me they’ve cried, so that’s my goal. I want all of you to be reaching for your tissues! After it’s released, it will immediately start being refined to take out some branding and cleaned up for real life festival submission. I want the world to know what ACS/SLRFL is accomplishing in Second Life!

I will also be releasing a more detailed tutorial on making machinima. I’ve been seeing a whole new crop of SL machinimators that seem to be solely interested in machinima from the money-making aspect of it, rather than the art. Then there are the people that are blogging a lot of misinformation that I feel is hurting the machinimator community in SL. You’ll be seeing a lot of advice blogging and tips/tricks from me in the near future.

Another of my goals is to ease the transition of machinimators that come from outside of SL. We all know how huge a learning curve this platform is, so imagine how shocked they are! However, a lot of them have been working on machinima a lot longer than we have and have plenty of sage advice for the newer crowd. There have been monthly meetings going on in SL to discuss current events in machinima and I’d like to make the SL crowd more aware of them.

Money Moo was going to be teaching some classes at SL’s 5th Birthday celebration on behalf of Bayjou Theater and the FIlm Appreciation Society. However, not only was it too short notice, but when I looked outside of the plot, there were tons of self-serving machinimator plots everywhere. I saw signs and video screens as high as the sky, glowing, blinking, and rotating. It may as well have been the mainland and their for sale signs. I don’t have a problem with people making money, but I saw portfolios, links to websites, landmarks, and basically everything but giant “hire me!” signs, and I felt that it really took away from the community feel of SL5B. Has Second Life really become every person for themselves? I know and love a better community than that!

The AMAS Machinima Festival skipped last year, but is coming up again in New York in November. The awesome team of Friedrich Kirschner and Frank Dellario are heading it up. I intend to be there and I invite all New Yorkers and anyone within driving distance to check it out!

So that’s what comes to mind so far. If you’re reading this, let me know that you’re out there! I would love some helpers that can assist me in mass educating the general public about machinima. Spreading the word is time consuming! I am so proud of everyone that has taken up machinima. You’re doing a wonderful job, and at times it can probably be frustrating, but don’t give up!

Well, this has turned into a giant opus, but the point is, I’m here. I still very much believe in machinima and I want everyone to believe in it too. It’s not only a great tool for educators, but also corporations, individuals, and even as a form of self-expression! Machinima will only become more popular in the coming years and I want each and every one of you to be a part of that with me. What do you say?

That about sums it up.  I know this post is odd, considering I’m planning a trip to Europe in just 3 months, but I’ll explain.  I’m not that tech savvy and, right before SLCC, my monitor started having this poltergeist thingie happening to it.  It would randomly blink on and off and I’d have no way to predict when it would or wouldn’t.  I refused to believe it was anything with my system, since it’s less than a year old.

Well, it looks like it’s my video card.  I’ve been bluescreening if I do anything intensive, and sometimes nothing intensive. I’ve logged in every now and then to record machinima, but even that is risky for now.  I’ve had a large number of people get angry with me for not being around and I’m actually getting kind of tired of it. Real life happens. I’ve been around for the last 18 months almost night and day.

Why can’t I just go out and buy a new video card? See, that’s the funny part about contracting. You agree to do some work for someone and then suddenly it takes over *4* months to even prepare the contract to start work. I thought it would be done in the beginning of November because it was prepared for final signature. I see no end in sight, but there’s still a tidy January 1st deadline on the project. Since it’s a time-intensive project, I didn’t want to take on a complicated assignment and be pressed for time.

While I have a boatload of money on the way in 20-30 days, I don’t have the advance I’ve been waiting on. Sure, I could RMA the video card, but then I’d be without an entire COMPUTER while I waited for 3-4 weeks. So I’m sure that you can see my dilemma here. I want to be there for people, but I can’t while my computer is flipping out.

I miss socializing with all of you, but I hope you’ll understand why I’m not there.  I don’t normally like to discuss this stuff in public, but I also don’t like the hatemail. If you want to contact me out of SL, I’d be happy to chat with you, but not if it’s something that requires me to log into SL.

See you sometime soon!

My methods of contact are as follows:

AIM: moomoneySL/YIM: sasharudie/MSN: mooofnapa@hotmail.com/Skype: moomoney

~moo Money

Who lives in England or within a train ride of it?  I’m planning and budgeting now.  Let me know!

I’m sure that those of you up on Second Life scandals saw my odd goodbye to Second Life Insider. Many thought I quit or was fired. Your concern was touching. It wasn’t saying goodbye to me, though. I was saying farewell to an old friend. I know that it’s shocking for a lot of you. It was surprising to me, as well. I had about a week-long lead on you guys, if that.

The good news is that the writers of SLI were wrapped into a monster huge site for everything MMO-related, Massively. There *will* be an adjustment period for this site if you’re used to SLI. It has different tagging, layout, and whatnot. HOWEVER, none of the SLI staff left. You’ll still get the same great news from us. It’s just on a different site.

Here’s the lowdown. There are like 25+ writers that will cover as much about different MMOs as is humanly possible. Some have even chosen to write SL news! There’s even a tag for Second Life news alone. Did you know you can search for posts by your favorite writer? Even CATEGORY!

What does this mean for me? I’ll still be my same old self, writing about SL news. However, I’ll also be writing extensively about Machinima. Right now, I’m doing the Cinemassively feed, which is a daily Machinima or video post at 12:30pm EDT. You should also keep an eye out for my weekly interviews with Machinimists. In addition, there is a Machinima tag for news that doesn’t include video. It’s not just SL Machinima, either. It’s all the Machinima goodness from MMOs and even non-MMOs that you can possibly stomach!

Lists:

• moo Money’s posts
• Cinemassively
• Videos
• Machinima
• Second Life

Feeds:

• General list of feeds
• Second Life
• Machinima
• Videos
• Cinemassively

So I’ve been holed up, not in SL much, angry at TMo, and obsessed with Redbull. Let’s set that all aside and focus on the awesomeness that is Web 2.0. I found some exciting tools for all you geek boys and girls out there.

We all covet our precious beta invites and share them on Twitter, but say you’re still not able to get an invite. Join the queue with InviteShare. I gave out my useless Pownce and ImInLikeWithYou invites and perused the list of sites in beta. I finally settled on Stixy, which I will get to in a minute. I added my name to the list of people seeking invites. Within an hour, I had an email announcing that I had been invited! Oh happy, joyous day!

With that, I cruised over to Stixy, which is an online collaboration site. Sure, that’s what Pownce is, but not in the way that Stixy is. Only one person technically needs to make an account in order for everyone to participate, should they choose to make their whiteboard public. For the project-minded, you can create notes, add photos, add movies and documents, like Word, Excel, and PDF files, and even make a to-do list that reminds you! I tested it out with my Twitter buddies and it works pretty well.

Yeah, you could use a site like Basecamp, but is it as cool as this? Nope! It’s so visual and really lends to creativity. I see myself using it to create storyboards for machinima, adding pictures, ideas, and notes about what works and what doesn’t in a scene. There’s plenty of space to do this as well. I’m not even going to speculate on the size of the stixyboard, as they call it, but it’s huge. If you’d like to test out this site, head on over to my public board and try it out. I’m sure you’ll love it. As for an invite to it, please sign up for InviteShare as mentioned in the first paragraph. That’s how I did it!

<3 moo

P.S. My username on both sites is moomoney. Friend me!

*UPDATE: Thanks to panthar, it’s now a Digg link.  Digg it!* 

Having been a previous Sidekick customer, I can tell you that I loved the functionality of their data plan. I dropped my phone and ended up switching to a different kind, but I still never forgot about how awesome it was. I’ve been eyeing the Sidekick 3 for a while now, but I didn’t want to be locked into a contract when I barely make phone calls. That’s why when the SK3 became available in the Prepaid section, I was thrilled. I could pay about the same every month for data only, but have the freedom to make phone calls if I needed to.

On their website, it states:

Sidekick^® rates

Get unlimited e-mail, Web browsing, domestic instant messaging, and domestic text messaging for $1 per day, and spend only $0.15 per minute for nationwide calls.

Wow! That’s so cool! So I dropped *450* USD to buy the phone outright and stuck it on the prepaid plan. SLCC was coming up the following week, so I was eager to set everything up and stay connected. I don’t have a laptop, so it was my only means of communication.

I first encountered a problem when I tried to sign up for Twitter alerts (40404). I got a text back saying that the text was denied because it’s not in my service plan. I called in and was told that they block it because of spam, like joke a day websites. I didn’t buy this excuse, but I had a trip to go on, so I left it at that for a while. Now I’ve discovered these awesome t-shirts called Reactees that allow people to get messages when they text 41411 and your keyword. Again, I got the service denied text. Not about to stop there, I also tried Google SMS. Yep. I was denied.

This had me fuming. I have unlimited data. Why can’t I text to short code? I called up T-Mobile and explained my problem. They sent me over to the Sidekick department. I talked to this guy for a good 20 minutes where he told me that it was indeed a covered service on the Prepaid plan. He also told me that on his backend website, it was showing that my sim card wasn’t connected for texting. He seemed really sincere about wanting to help me, but when nothing worked, he elevated me higher in the ticketing system.

As soon as I got on the phone with this girl, I was told that no, this was not a covered service. She said that she only recently found out about this and that the other guy was misinformed. She didn’t seem that sympathetic that I just wasted 450 USD on a phone that does not do what I want it to do. She said that Prepaid plans do not cover it because there are third party charges associated with those short code numbers. I pointed out that there is nowhere on the website that it says they don’t allow those services. She claimed that it was not their fault and I could take no recourse. She also said that the sim card connection thing was a glitch on their side and I should disregard what he said. Wonderful!

Not wanting to be on a contract, I asked if the Flexpay option allowed text messaging with short code. She was able to give me no definite answer. So basically, I can’t even guarantee that I’ll be allowed that service unless I go under contract with them for 1-2 years of my life. It took them 35 minutes to tell me all of this. Thank you, T-Mobile. You suck.

In other news, does anyone want to buy my expensive paperweight?

So Redbull distribution called me back yesterday and said that since I wasn’t a company that resells, I’m not qualified to get product from them.  This has left me so brokenhearted.  Redbull, if you’re out there and you see this blog, please reconsider.  I’m not asking to be your spokesperson or anything.  I just want your sugarfree goodness!

I think it went well, though I had to leave a message.

“Redbull USA how can we help you?”

“I’d like to know about distribution.”

“Are you a company?”

“Well, no, but I drink like 5-9 Redbulls a day and I’m tired of paying convenience store pricing.”

“Ohhhhhkayyyyyy please hold.”

I hope they call me back tomorrow. I’m excited.

I leave at 5:35am tomorrow for Chicago.  I’ll be at the Hilton sipping foofoo drinks by noon.  With that said, I know a lot of you are coming to SLCC and I’d hate to miss a call from one of you.  I have recently purchased a T-Mobile Sidekick 3 to use for the conf.  I will have access to email, instant messaging, texting, etc.

My contact info is as follows:

• AIM = sashab00ty
• YIM = sasharudie
• MSN = mooofnapa@hotmail.com
• Twitter = moomoney
• Email = machinimoo [at] gmail.com
• Phone # = 254-214-1299

My real name is Sasha, but I also answer to moo.  I am very approachable!  Just look for the blonde midget.

So I’m making the complicated transition to web hosting.  I bought moomoney.net, where you can find my blog.  I’m still working on the template and a proper site for moomoney.net, but for now, you can reach my blog by going to either blog.moomoney.net, or machinimoo.com.  Thanks go to Cristiano Midnight for keeping machinimoo.com safe for me until I had a use for it!

Please be patient with me as I step out of 1996 and learn CSS and PHP, plus every other language that makes me want to stab myself repeatedly.  I love you all! *muah*