I only saw her once, but that was all I needed

This from Cryptic Studios:

At Cryptic Studios, your privacy and security is important. As part of our ongoing efforts to monitor and enhance security, we recently detected evidence of an unauthorized access to one of our user databases. The unauthorized access occurred in December 2010, and evidence of this has just been uncovered due to increased security analysis.

The unauthorized access included user account names, handles, and encrypted passwords for those accounts. Even though the passwords were encrypted, it is apparent that the intruder has been able to crack some portion of the passwords in this database. All accounts that we believe were present in the database have had the passwords reset, and customers registered to these accounts have been notified via e-mail of this incident.

While we have no evidence that any other information was taken by the intruder, it is possible that the intruder was able to access additional account information. If they did so, the first and last name, e-mail address, date of birth (if provided to Cryptic Studios), billing address, and the first six digits and the last four digits of credit cards registered on the site may have been accessed. We have no evidence at this time that any data other than the account name, handle, and encrypted password were accessed for any user.

So, essentially, while it may only be my username and password that was hacked, it might be my real name, identifying bits of my credit card number, my email address, my date of birth, and my billing address.

Wonderful. People, this is not making me want to download and play Champions again, just so you know.

Also, I love that they're just getting around to telling us this happened now, when the original break-in was in December of 2010! Way to stay up to date, guys!

In a bit of RL news--and I love this idea--there's now a mobile hangover recovery service operating in Las Vegas, Nevada. The staff on the bus--which resembles a large RV or touring bus on the outside--are all registered nurses or doctors, and no walk-ins are taken. These are regularly scheduled appointments, they're simply appointments on a bus--or, for an extra fee, the doctor and his staff can come to your room.

Using a combination of liquid vitamin supplements, rehydration saline drips, and small amounts of drugs to combat nausea and body pain, the treatments won't kill hangovers, but they do alleviate most of the symptoms. Quite honestly, there should be a set-up like this in every major vacation destination. It's inspired.

Back to Second Life announcements--so far, I don't know if it's a bug or if it's a permanent, Linden-based change, but it's now no longer possible for estate managers and sim owners to filter objects by owner name. I'm actually hoping this is just a bug that will be fixed soon, because if you're on the ground trying to track down 150 screaming headcrab zombies that are lagging your sim all to hell, and you're not able to track down how many of them are owned by the given juvenile idiot who dropped them? It's going to make your job as a manager insanely harder than it needs to be.

Even better? Top scripts no longer refresh when you hit that button, say if you just want to see if the info's changed, or have moved to another part of the sim. Both of those two JIRAs need to be watched, because these are serious problems that need to be addressed.

And back to CaleCraft. In these early establishing days, we were dividing our time between exploring and mining, or in the case of the residents in the main village, dividing their time between building and organizing the village, and expanding their reach.

Every few days, Fawkes and I would make the somewhat lengthy trek back to the village, dropping off resources: sand, glass, cobble, coal; clean stone, stone brick, stone slabs, wooden planks, dyes; even on occasion baked clay bricks and ducken eggs (at least until the ducken pen was built), and seeds for wheat to grow. Other residents were also dropping off resources, and soon the community center had chests nearly overfilling with supplies for building and creating.

So, this is a Minecraft chicken. In the main default game texturing, they have white feathers, yellow beaks, a bright red wattle, and beady little chicken eyes. So why do I call it a ducken?

Well, that goes back to the Painterly texture set. One of their options is a pixelated version of the mallard from Duck Hunt.

(from the Minecrafting album)

You must admit, the body style on this particular critter does approximate "duck" more strongly than "chicken".

(from the Minecrafting album)

This is from one of my private worlds, by the way--this is not from the CaleCraft server. Not because CaleCraft doesn't have ducken--they do--but it was easier to hop in to a solo and stalk the mighty bird on my own.

(from the Minecrafting album)

Of course, that did have a down side. Most ducken do not like to be followed, and this one rushed me several times, ruining the shots I'd lined up.

Off to cull through more pictures, for future entries!