Welcome to RyconFox

    Yep, I did it: I finally went avatar hunting in InWorldz(had to ditch the starter bunny, the ao was driving me nuts) and came across someone who ported over the Wingless avatars so I'm a fox again(I feel like myself again lol). I've also gone ahead and moved the Gashapon SL/IW! blog over here so I can keep them updated without cluttering up my blogger window.

    I've considered InWorldz to be my second home with Second Life being my first. I have the eventual goal of bringing 3, maybe 4 regions online to kickstart The Fur Valleys: InWorldz! to do our valleys in SL proud. I believe if it can be started here, it can become a huge success. The sims would be set up how the original valleys were set up with Fox Valley being the HQ/Welcome Center/Rental Agency, and most of everything else was residential. The only catch this time is the regions are going to cost $75/ea vs $1,000/ea and the upkeep is going to be $75/mo vs $300/mo. I'll also have the option to either bring online a full 45,000 region or regions with less prims like how the openspaces were, so this is going to be a nice venture. Only thing standing in my way is, you guessed it: funding. I have a page set up on GoFundMe for $400. What exactly will $400 do? $400 will bring 5 regions online for a month or 2 regions online for 2 months. I probably could've planned it out to pay for 5 regions for at least 6mos but that's a tad pricy at $2,250. I've also had the idea of bringing in people to be beneficiaries however, no one wants anything to do with anything. I've also had the idea of starting with one region and expand once rent levels off but that's been trying also. For now the plan is to get product into the Gashapon store, get it open, and save up profits from that to either later buy an estate from someone or cash the Izzies in to bring the sims online as the rate coming and going right now is $5=2500iz, so using that as a guide, I'd need $400 or 200,000iz.

In the meantime, enjoy the pics of me in the Wingless and image of the shop.

    Good Morning everyone, I sit here this morning contemplating the valleys final project: my last contribution. To those that know me and my avatar Rycon Bamaisin, I dabble in opensim alot as it's an alternative to build and do whatever I want without issue. Recently I was brought aside by one of the folks I relay with in SL and told about another virtual world that has everything OsGrid has and most of what SL has. Those that really know me know I like to be thorough and won't jump at something just to do it, so I started comparing InWorldz to Second Life and the differences are staggering.

        1. In SL a full 256x256 region contains a max of 15,000 prims whereas in Inworldz, a full
            256x256 region contains a max of 45,000 prims.

        2. In SL a full region costs $1,000 to set up and $300/mo to run. In InWorldz a full region costs
            $0 to set up and $75/mo to run.

        3.The exchange rate in SL fluxuates depending on how cheap or forgiving LL wants to be. In
            Inworldz the exchange rate is stable.

        4. In SL there use to be a discount applied to sim owners if they were able to bring people in,
            then got rid of it. In InWorldz, this discount still exists.

        5. In SL all the official bodies are close-minded and not willing to help anyone just to help
            anyone. In InWorldz, everyone around you is helpful and full of information.

        6. In SL uploads cost L$10/ea and mesh price is calculated. In Inworlds all uploads are free.


        This is why my contribution to the fur valleys will be done in stages where each stage somehow fundraises $750 to bring 10 regions online(there were 37 in the origional lineup). This will also help jump start the furry fandom in InWorldz where a fandom has yet to exist or survive. In doing this I would also attempt to bring origional valley owners Mako, Wolphin, and Foxkin over to make them valley owners as the price of regions and amount of prims per region should be exciting enough, but you never know. I'd also like to point out that if anyone steps forward and pruchases a region(s) or has an existing region that wants to joint the valleys, there would be a set of rules everyone would have to follow. These rules would become the Fur Valley Rules and all regions that make up the valleys would have to follow them.

    In creating the valleys, each region owner would become a valley owner and admins would become valley admins to further create the community aspect. Valley Owners would come together weekly to discuss things going on the valleys much like how community elders would come together to discuss things going on in their community. I was teetering on wither or not the regions should have the closed off island look that use to be there or have a more communial look like Bay City. Either way the valleys would be home to furs and nekos only but anyone could come and visit(wither a fur or neko is a region owner or not).

    I foresee several creative minds going to work scripting, sculpting, and building. Fox Valley would become the HQ for the valleys and would contain a welcome center, rental agency, and beach club spot for FOUSE radio. It would also start a snake of commercial properties that would start at Fox Valley and go down into Rabbit Valley. Furry Park would once again become the sandbox for the valleys. Cub Conclave/Kit Estates would reestablish the Cubfur area that use to exist there and would include a rp school and adoption center.

    This is where I stand. It's obvious it will only be a matter of time till all the major groups leave SL and I don't want to be left without an out. InWorldz has so much to offer. Yes alot of things we would have to remake or rescript but since uploads are free, remaking stuff should be that much easier. If anyone wishes to help contribute, please let me know by sending donations to paypal logansryche at gmail dot com with the subject line of Fur Valleys IW Donation.

Thanks everyone, Matt

     Morning everyone, it's 6am here on the east coast as I'm about to head to bed. If anyone's been over to the Team Fox Star blog, you'll notice it's now the Fouse Radio blog along with a final straw post. What happened? Well it's a long story but to sum it up I went over to the RFL site to go register Team Fox Star thinking that things had improved and to my disappointment, they got worse. I was greeted with a notice that teams now must have a minimum of 5 members. This is very off-putting as Sage and I have ran Team Fox Star by ourselves since we started Team Fox Star in 2013. We usually run into people who feel that by joining a team they can get something monetary out of RFL and when they don't, leave us in the dust.

     The second thing that I was greeted with was that all teams have to be named something PG and be ran in a PG environment. That may not be as severe as the 5 team member minimum but there are some groups that will miss out on RFL because of how they conduct themselves. RFL hasn't even started yet and I can already tell there's going to be issues. If Dwen was still the chair this wouldn't be an issue but this person they put in charge for 2015, this Random Darrow... really doesn't have as open a mind as her predecessor did which lead to butting heads over event content(even though they were clearly marked adult and done on adult marked sims) and caused several large contributing teams leave RFL. By the end of RFL 2015, more then 15 teams left over a wide range of issues.

     I have to give Random credit though for stepping up to the plate and not backing down when teams barked over comparing how Dwen ran RFL, or issues with vendors, or the other long list of issues that continued to grow. That's about all I'm giving her credit for. Random came from running a First Life team where the dynamics are different. There are things that you can do on a First Life team that you can't do or just doesn't apply when it comes to Second Life and it didn't seem like the message was getting through. Yes you can apply your knowledge of running a First Life team to running a Second Life team but running a virtual extension of the American Cancer Society you need to have more business orientated experience. Do I think Dwen made a mistake by naming Random his sucessor? No. He saw what she had done with her First Life teams and thought she could handle it.

     For 2016 the wife and I have decided to join Oldesoul and his team. That guy and his team work their tails off for everything that they do and am proud to have us and Fouse Radio at their disposal. I look forward to seeing how a real relay team operates where everyone looks after each other and relays because they feel it's right or because they've had or have a loved one with cancer instead of for monetary purposes.

Go Relay,
Matt

    What is done can't be undone. Yes I'm still ragging about Black Label closing and I'm not 100% sure why. I mean, I was their webmaster - not an owner or even or co-owner. The blog will remain in case anyone's curious. Today was my good friend Omni's rez day in SL and had a 13 hour dance event. If there's one thing us furs know how to do, it's put on a dance event. It's like it's on our DNA or something. It was ten years ago today the Omni came to SL and became friends with everyone.

    I think I've been had and I'm not entirely sure how that would've benefited the other party. I posted a thing on the SL forum that I was looking for someone to come help me set up funding for the save the Fur Valley project. Everything looked legit and then the dude disappeared. Logged off and hasn't been on for three weeks now and both his site and the site he created for my cause is offline. No L$ exchanged so I really don't know what his end game was, but after apologising to Cait over it, we talked about what they were working on to help strengthen the estate and came to the conclusion that the checkerboard pattern works best because each sim has a suround to give it that island feel and I consider that to be one of several things keeping Foxkin Estates afloat. Northstar also said no but that's their loss.

    We also agreed that I could keep the twitter account going as it seems to help at least a little bit to get the word out that we're here and at least 3 furs who follows the account stopped by for Omni's party which was awesome. This leads me to my next point. For me personally, I'd like to attempt to raise money to bring 3 regions online to fill the hole that currently exists between Neko Valley, Serenity Woods, Crawler Prime, and Howling Valley. The sims would be owned by myself and let me partake in ownership in the valleys. I talk about it like it's the Holly Grail or something and in my mind, it is. It was the first place I came to when I came to SL in 2007 and a place I've continued to give my loyalty to even as others have jumped ship for whatever bullshit reason they pull out their ass.

    The setup would rely on having control of both parcels on Ryu Valley so one can be turned into Fouse Radio Beach and the other would start the commercial sector that use to exist here. The first sim brought online would be named Racoon Valley and be 100% shops, but be beach so it looks like it belongs there. The second sim brought online would be named Vixen Valley and feature shops plus a convention center. This center would be experimental in potentially bringing physical cons into SL to eliminate several real world problems(cost being the main one). The third sim brought online would be named Kitsune Valley and would either be 100% rentable or become a private sim that mimics Kitsune Sea. The smart way would be to raise money and bring each sim online one at a time but if somehow I had enough funding to bring all three online at once, I would do so.

    I've become leary to crowdfunding as there's a 60/40 chance your idea is going to flop if either you don't have a starting market or people don't find your idea attractive enough to fund. I've thought about asking convention owners to see if they can help but I'm leary about that also because this has become more of a personal endeavor then a community thing even though having a convention center could benefit both real life cons and second life events/cons. I supoose time will tell and everything comes down to wording.

    Moved the Gashapon shop out of the Zen Mall as I could no longer afford to pay the rent over there and branched it off the Neko Valley telehub. I'd like to see the shop flourish where others disappear but again, everything takes time and money. What I'd really like to see is a sim of nothing but Goshapon only shops like they have in Japan but that's again, wishful thinking. Stay frosty, Matt

    Decided to finally post-cook the Valentines roast that never got cooked due to the wife getting sick(found out she's allergic to Clindomiasin) - it'd been sitting in the fridge since Valentines due to not having enough prep/cook time as there was always someone to take to an appointment or someone had to go somewhere else.

    Word on the Fur Valleys project is there is no word on the Fur Valleys project. I'm taking a more aggressive/business approach to getting the valleys back together because no one else has the spine to attempt it this way. Still waiting to hear from Gray Grayson wither or not him and Prancer are moving Northstar & Polaris over to form the new HQ. They would sit right below Wolf Valley and if we moved Bliss Kingdom over that forms the downtown. These 3 sims would become the commercial area of the valleys and if there was a way to connect Ryu Valley plus a full-sim sandbox, moving the other sims can go by the wayside for the moment.

    I stay in contact with Foxkins admins as I'm on friendly terms with a couple of them and they have their own idea on how to reformulate their sims as that's what's checker-boarded right now. I believe my way will not only reform the valleys, recreate the community that's apparent on Makos end of the valleys(Red's a lost cause since he could care less), and help rebuild the furry community in Second Life. I had to stop and think: ok, we're rebuilding the valleys but why? Why start now, why the valleys, what end goal is there? Then it hit me: the ending goal should be to attempt to create the furry fandom in SL. This would solve several RL issues like money and location expenses. -Ry

    I've gone ahead and brought back my can tab redemption program permanently now. The goal is the same: collect 24,000,000 tabs to yield roughly $5,000 by July 2016 to take the wife back to Disney World in December with a friend(have to pre-order to get the best deals), and currently have 4,389 tabs saved up. The wife's grandma started saving some and then got a few on her floor to save and I'm sure if I give it time, everyone in Brighton Towers will be saving them for me.

    So I leave this up to you: my readers... my base. If you have unwanted can tabs and are willing to send them to me, message me over twitter and I'll give you my address. Only have one or two? Send one or two. Have a crap-ton? Send a crap-ton. I'm not going to impose a minimum amount to send. A lady a few weeks ago send me 10 taped to an index card. The most I've ever had sent to me taped to a card was 30. If somehow by July I manage to raise 25-30,000,000 tabs, I'll invite someone else along with us picked from my twitter.

Stay frosty, Matt

      Many of those who follow me either in SL or through twitter know that I was rescently let go of webmastering the in-world extreme metal club Black Label. The entire thing was a shock because I'd just been paid earlier that morning and by afternoon they made the announcement that they were closing everything down: the club, the groups, the land: everything. Tried getting the owners to reconsider or leave it in trusted hands and just by the way the main owner talked about it, I knew her mind was up. Said the reasoning was internal that the both of them were tired of the wining and the lateness of the staff, and other things.

      From my prospective I can see why they closed. When I came to work for them in 2014 I was already picking up where a previous webmaster had either left or was fired or dropped off the face of the earth and it was up to me to fix this mess of a website they'd left me, which was fine because it let me creativity shine through and the end result was the layout that was there until the site went offline(which I have a backup of). I want to say it was probably late 2015 which I noticed that something was going on - either djs were late, staff was never around, or there was someone trying to pull rank over the owners which lead them to being booted from the club/sim but I mean, they always found a dj or host to fill a spot so the end result must have been in im's then what was said in the groups.

      As many in SL know, I run Fouse Radio with my wife and SL Partner Sage and I know from doing stuff with ESO with my brother-in-law that in both instances, we'd fight like dogs to keep someone from trying to take control of what we worked hard to keep afloat. We went through a similar thing with COD: Ghosts. A player named KSI(not KSI_Gotbobo but someone else) thought they could run EPiC Nation better and tried to take it over by ordering Kyle to give it to him. If there's one thing I've learned it's you don't order anyone to do anything unless you have the power to do so. He was promply kicked from the clan and reported to Microsoft, and then later banned for using a JTag'd Xbox. My point was that I've been there with dealing with those that think hostilly taking over something is the best way to do things.

      I remember telling the owners numrious times that if they ever needed anything or wanted someone to let me know but no, they were through so Black Label is no more. I know many of you reading this are probably thinking to yourselves 'yeah but it was theirs and they can do to it whatever they want' and for the most part that's true. I guess I feel partially responsible for keeping Black Label going because without a webmaster to keep the site and social media going, no one out there on the net's going to find it(and there are those in SL who search the net instead of SL's fucked up search pages for this stuff). How did this impact me directly? Well I lost my land. Without a paycheck to keep the tier up, landlords don't care about the why, just that they get paid so they can pay Linden Labs to keep their sim going. It's a vicious chain. Thinking back on it, I don't think even if they gave a heads up I'd feel any different. I still would've lost my land, and I'd still be here blogging about it. That might come off as one-sided to alot of readers and that's fine(I'm not going to apologise for it). The point to get across was that the owners could've sought other ways to keep the club open. It's too late now though. It's over. My rant's over.

Hello everyone, welcome to my personal blog. Here I'll be sharing my own thoughts on all matters no matter what they are. I'll start by sharing that i'm a steampunk/jurassic park/fallout/Second Life nut and i'm not afraid to talk about matters that go on with them. I'm an avid 80s purist which gets me in hot water when I get into then/now/ways of thinking debates. At the time of this intro I'm married, have 2 cats and a dog, live with the wife & her father and recently took on her step-brother so he didn't become homeless. I don't suit, but I'm a furry(another topic that gets me in trouble) when not many in the fandom were foxes(I think there was maybe 3 or 4 of us that were, now their everywhere). I drive a 2010 HHR but only because I have to as my ideal vehicle is an '84 F150 4wd(none of that EFI computer bullshit). Now that I've spilled my life story in a non-standard run-on paragraph, if you care to follow my ramblings, make sure to click the follow button.

Welcome to my world,
Ry