For those who came in late, Lovecraft Forest is named for the American writer H. P. Lovecraft.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890-1937) worked mostly during the era of Pulp magazines, publishing frequently from 1905 to 1935. Largely unknown and unappreciated in his own time, his works quickly found a circle of follower and admirers including Robert Bloch, Stephen King, Bentley Little, and Joe R. Lansdale. Many fans of the American horror story look to him as the logical successor of Edgar Allan Poe. He also frequently corresponded with many contemporary writers of the period including August Derleth, Clark Ashton Smith, and Robert E. Howard.
Lovecraft is a complicated writer, heavily influenced by the increasing of scientific, mechanical, and relativistic influences of the time and the subsequent diminishing of religious fervor that marked the preceding years. He stories frequently deal with the horror of a purely nihilistic universe, such as in stories like Herbert West: Reanimator (1922) and disinterested alien gods for which mankind is little more than insects, such as in Call of Cthulhu (1926.) Of my favorite works are the historical pieces of past horrors, such as the magnificent Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927.) His “Dream Cycle” work (chiefly 1920-27) tend to reflect the influence of Lord Dunsany’s works and features his classic, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath (1926).
He is also credited with much of the literary philosophy of Cosmicism, which usually holds that the universe lacks a recognizable God and the universe, though potentially populated with other beings, is chiefly indifferent to the activities of human beings. His chief contributions to subsequent horror writers including the Cthulhu mythos and the famous literary device, the infamous book Necronomicon. Development of a fantasy roleplaying game by Chaosium named for Call of the Cthulhu, has introduced Lovecrafts universe to an entirely new generation of fans. Introduced in 1979, the game is now in its 6th edition and celebrating it’s 25th anniversary.
An excellent introduction to Lovecraft can be found the Wikipedia article on his life and work here. Many of his works, now in the public domain, have been made accessible through WikiSource here.
Another of my favorite gadgets in SL is the Skywalk HUD from aubreTEC Labs. It let’s you work up high by automatically rezzing round plates under your feet as you go. It sits quietly in your HUD, and when it detects that you might fall, it instantly puts a plate under your feet. It works in mouselook too, making it easy to move about as you work without even thinking about it. Up and down are handled easily, so its like having a magic carpet for your personal use on demand. Even more clever, if you find you’ve locked yourself inside our outside a large build, just “sit” on one of the plates–”poof” it’s like sitting inside a non-physical vehicle, enabling you to quickly pass through solid objects!
I’ve used this little gem ever since I started on SL, and I can heartily recommend it for sky builders. It looks cool, it’s automatic, it’s pretty, and highly configurable to your tastes.
Here’s Harold at 530 meters above Lovecraft Forest using his Skywalk to keep aloft:
The Skywalk HUD is available from aubreTEC Labs for L$450, or about $2 USD.
This site is running on the blogging system, Wordpress. One of the great things about wordpress is that there is a great variety of templates to choose from. Moreover, some templates are better suited to specialized plugins, such as widgets used in the sidebar. I’ve tried several of the last few weeks and after much trial and error, I can say that the advanced template K2 is clearly one of the best for advanced features, ease of use, and support for customization. K2 is short of “Kubrick 2″ an evolution of the original Kubrick template provided with Wordpress.
One of K2’s great strength is that is supports a good handful of built in sidbar widgets, eliminating the need for several customization plugins. Even more exciting, if you’re into tags, K2 has built-in support for Christine Davis’s Ultimate Tag Warrior (see Lorelle’s review.) Also built in is extensive support for Arnaud Froment’s Extended Live Archive plugin that makes “live” browsing of blog archiving a snap with almost no setup for the blog owner (easy setup guide at 24 Fighting Chickens.)
With themes, you can quickly change the look of your K2 blog. It even comes loaded with a cool litte star-wars based theme which we use on Pietor.com.
Many blogs are running on Wordpress and K2, including this one, so if you’re looking for a highly customizable way, with plenty of bells and whistles built-in, K2 may be just what you’re looking for to support your own blog.
OK, trite title. 
Lots of development in North Jaguar Valley as new teraforming blends the valley into Lovecraft Forest’s Sentinel Hill.
The first lighthouse of the Lovecraft Forest Coastal Watch has been placed on the southwest short of Lovecraft Forest with a bridge leading to the Keeper’s House in north Jaguar Valley. The Keeper’s house is the beautifully modelled “Witch’s Hat Garden Victorian” by Julia Hathor, the lighthouse is the “Cape Hatteras” by Ante Flan, and the Gothic Bridge was created by Insky Jedburgh.
Harold has been busy building the central workshop with SkidzPrims. A spatious 60 x 60 x 20 meters, this two-level workshop will house some of the exhibits for Lovecraft Forest.
He is also credited with much of the literary philosophy of Cosmicism, which usually holds that the universe lacks a recognizable God and the universe, though potentially populated with other beings, is chiefly indifferent to the activities of human beings. His chief contributions to subsequent horror writers including the Cthulhu mythos and the famous literary device, the infamous book Necronomicon. Development of a fantasy roleplaying game by Chaosium named for Call of the Cthulhu, has introduced Lovecrafts universe to an entirely new generation of fans. Introduced in 1979, the game is now in its 6th edition and celebrating it’s 25th anniversary.