Socially|Mundane

Did Ari just call me a loafer and freeloader? Yes, yes he did. He's so asking for whatever happens next -- he has no idea what he's just unleashed on his poor unsuspecting blog...

I also feel constrained to point out that I've already added some meat to my bones after he told me I was not sexy enough. Men, there's no pleasing them, is there? *folds arms and sniffs, nose in the air*

Speaking of shapes and proportions, Ari has this *cough* difficulty *cough* with uncommonly tall people. If you don't believe me, pull up his SL profile, it says so right there. When I first met him inworld, I breathed a sigh of relief that he was taller... and now I'm even shorter since I've just adjusted my shape.

At the moment I'm definitely looming over him though, because I've turned into a Na'vi and you know how tall they are! And if you have no clue what I'm talking about, that's a reference to the movie Avatar. I was going to ask if you've been living under a rock, but then an Italian friend told me this evening that the movie is only opening in Italy on Saturday. So much for snide humour, eh? Darn.

...Suddenly Malaysia feels a whole lot more "advanced". o.O

"Important notice about the group! Read attached!"

Whew am I rusty.

Got my hands dirty in the CSS blog theme and template design again. I forgot how much I enjoy it. It's a strange mixture of creativity (where a creative's mind is a wild, untamed thing wanting to always be free) and the hard, logical 1+1 always must equal 2 disciplined routine.

Linden Lab had it right:

"We'll do the non-flexible world-container coding side of things and let you be the creative types to build the world."

I think I'll offer blog-theme design as a "product" in SL. I'm thinking L$5K for a custom theme.

Muahahahah!

I used to have to cross into the Blake Sea and Nautilus through Kshumay. On one end, the owner erect this giant tree right into the corner and the other side had this hideous grass textured block (as well as having banlines on his parcel).

Second Life, Linden "Mainland" - the staple of the grid. When I first entered SL in spring 2006, there were (if I remember correctly) three continents and a couple hundred "estates" (private simulator regions) and that was about it. After a few weeks I, like most others, got the land-ownership itch. I went to a few lessons graciously provided by "New Citizens, inc." - general overview of the grid and how to go about doing things. it was a two-hour class and I was riveted.

It was shortly after that class (and shortly before Linden lab discontinued the program) that I went and bought my "First Land" as my first land. The program was simple: Linden Lab offered 512 square meters to all premium (preemies) accounts at L$1 per square meter - to keep it affordable. I'll never forget those few weeks I owned that parcel in the brand new region called Glenboon. It was within a couple weeks when I decided I needed more prims and sold-out for I could buy a larger chunk (I went strait to a 4096 in Dunbeath and was the only one on that entire sim until others started showing up three months later. It was heaven.)

Private Regions: the bad.

I have never "rented" land from any other SL resident. Part of this had to do with my own perceptions. At the time everything was Anshe Chung - and expensive. I was still buying my Linden Dollars through my credit card and slowly gaining grid experience. As beautiful as those builds were (and I presume still are if they're still around,) they were expensive. Besides, I didn't want a house and luxurious place (have one already in first life. The house part, anyway.)

Driving in to work this morning listening to the radio as most people do and I heard an ad from the "Advertising Council" (Ad Council), a massively influential not-for-profit organization and leader of PSA (Public Service Announcements) production in the United States. The advertisement is part of a campaign called "think before you speak" - good advice to be sure, and is running on radio and print.

The specific advert I heard was called "Gay". Here is the exact quote1:

"there once was a time when "gay" meant happy. then it meant "homosexual." now people are saying "that's so gay" to mean dumb and stupid. which is pretty insulting to gay people (and we don't mean the "happy" people). 2. so please knock it off. 3. go to [redacted because I don't want to advertise for them].com"

Wow. Talking about a massive partisan agenda. You know what? Feck those gay people who are offended. And feck you Ad Council for this dumb-ass advertisement. There is no "right", Constitutional or otherwise to "not be offended". Talk about hypocritical on a biblical proportion! You are so effing gay. Our language evolves. Word definitions change constantly.

I have finally and officially decided why I really don't like the Trudeau (and probably most other) boats and tall ships that are so-called "SL-wind sailable". They are built for looks, not function.


In my three-years on the grid I have never owned or wanted to own any boats at all, especially sailboats. Because they aren't "boats" - they are cars on water that don't "sail" - they drive. Even the "motorboats" drive like a car. and cars in Second Life don't really handle at all like a car. In fact, it's just "flying" the same way you can fly in SL without sitting on anything. The only difference is you have a prim (name your vehicle here) attached to you, and because it's set to be physical, the simulated gravity is in effect.

Car, airplane, boat, submarine: I find it cheesy and silly that at a dead stand-still, you can spin around and around like a top. I really roll my eyes if it's any kind of sailboat. And it's the creator's fault because they are focusing on how it looks, not how it works.

Like everyone who has one of these, I wouldn't know any better - except that as of a few months ago, I do.

Copybot.

It's a loaded word the very mention of tends to generate some serious paranoia if used in the context of being applied against someone.

In the Second Life vernacular the word "copybot" conjures utter fear among creators - and perhaps it gives a little insight to how musicians and book authors and movie producers feel with regard to the whole file-sharing of their works.

However, it is a statistical fact that the anything that has been "copybotted" - an umbrella term to represent copybot proper along with all other methods of "ripping" prims and textures to create full-permission copies (it doesn't work with scripts) - is most often not resold or given away, but rather users "stealing" for themselves.

It also is a statistical fact that all copybot activity across the grid amounts to a fraction of a fraction of overall grid business activity to begin with. I am not trying to minimize the effect and devastating circumstances the use of copybot against a creator can have. I am only saying that Second Life and its economy is so large that copybot activity is barely a noticeable drop of water in a swimming pool when viewed in context of the "big picture" - though it really is a terrible tool that can wreak havoc on a creator's business. But that's not what I am really writing about here.

What I am writing about here has been going on ever since copybot first existed back in 2006. It simply is a lot more prevalent now and is a way that the very word "copybot" is misused and abused in a far more insidious way. As a competition-killer and nothing more than that.

Spotted this at the Grid Status reports:

"Wednesday January 6 2010 at 5:00 a.m. Pacific, we’ll be closing logins and disabling major in world services for ninety minutes of upgrade work on our databases.
During the maintenance, logins and account registrations will be unavailable."

All, I can do is laugh with fond memories! If you are an "oldbie" then you recall how every single Wednesday the entire grid shut-down at 6 A.M. to 10 A.M. for "grid maintenance" which often included a viewer update (and sometimes lasted a lot longer!)

Yes, the entire grid was completely shut-down to public access. Only Lindens were allowed in. The SL Blog back then didn't have a 150 comment limit and it was fun to follow that entry and reading how so many people were actually going through serious withdrawals.

Ah those were the days. Of course those also were the days of complete and utter frustration when Teleports wouldn't work for three days straight, or the grey-goo attack that screwed the grid up for three days, or the bug that cause the Lindens to turn off all scripts for three days...

Of course anyone who signed-up after the "new" grid technology that allows "rolling updates" won't understand the nostalgia of the entire grid effectively shutting down and just can't appreciate it.

(Via Second Life Grid Status Reports » Blog Archive » Logins and In World Services Down for Maintenance Wednesday a.m.)

When I set my draw distance out 10 years and envision Second Life then, here is what I see:

Everyone has an avatar. Avatars have the ability to travel across virtual worlds, maintaining their unique identity (and inventory) as they go. Some are stunningly vivid fantasy avatars and others are hyper-real. You express yourselves through your avatar using interfaces we weren't able to imagine in 2010.