the lonely escapade in outer space

Lenore Koenkamp's SL bio:

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Okay then. (Yes, that's a quote.)

Also, note to self: even on an island sim it might not be appropriate to wear a bikini top in the workplace:



Taina Dorben--all of one day old--came by and asked if I'd give him a massage. He asked me to use voice, which I did (and shouldn't have). He (and whatever woman was in the background) laughed at what I typed in main chat because I was "sexy" and I wasn't talking about sex. They seemed perplexed that--standing in the Solace Beach sales office--my first priority wasn't to screw the avatar's pixels against the nearest wall, but (shocking, I know) sales.

It gives me even less confidence in the process that anyone can bypass Orientation Island--if Second Life even has such a thing, these days--and just dump themselves, whole and dripping, onto the main grid.

Me, honestly, I was wearing the Alaysia skin I got at Skin Within's half off sale, with the fAkE oilslick bikini top and broomstick skirt I got from Operation Squeegee. It's comfortable, it's cool, it goes with many things, and how often do I get to wear pure island get-ups?

Not past today, I'm sure of that. Or at least not in the sales office.

Jolie O'Dell goes into the difference between journalists and bloggers, after touching on the topic a few days prior to that entry. I am absolutely clear on my position in the spectrum--I am a blogger, first and foremost; I am not a journalist. (In point of fact, the closest I've gotten to actual claiming of journalistic status is to name myself a "muckraker".)

To that end, I am frequently biased, highly opinionated, slanted, impassioned, slipshod, and dare I say it, inaccurate--never by intent, but I have made mistakes in the past, and not all of them I retract. Still, I'm interested in her conclusions, and I'm not offended by her dividing points between those of us who blog, and those of who report the news as it happens.

Darrius Gothly presents a plan to save Second Life...and he may have a point, there. It does seem like a simple enough fix, and I've been trying to think it through; I just don't see a problem with such a proposal.

Even with the fringe cases, they can easily be gotten around. Escorting off a residential parcel? Stop doing that, or arrange it purely as a gift-from-resident transaction, entirely by IM. Or even better--have a whole group of escorts, services, camgirls, voicegirls, whatever, chip in on a single unified 'pay station'--and have that be the first pay stop. After that, they can do the escorting on any grade of land they want--money's not trading on residential property.

The other fringe case I can think of is folks keeping a donation jar in their homes. I still don't understand why one would want to, but I've seen it a few times, and the easy way around that is also to move the action to a commercial parcel--because if it's a social club, it's a club, innit?--or to locate the donations off-site or off-parcel--either at a nearby community center rated for commercial use, or again, by way of person-to-person 'gift' transactions.

Either way, it might work, and it might work quite well. Let's see if the Lindens perk up and put it into practice.

the days going by are getting in the way

I agree with Roger Ebert on this one--Governer Bobby Jindal's logic, while accurate, is definitely on the morbid side. Yes, a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf will throw thousands out of work. But I'd rather have that than risk more ecological devastation, until we determine if we can cap the broken well at all.

In related news, Operation Squeegee had a small goal: $5000 US, to send to the National Wildlife Federation. Several days in, they downgraded to $4000 US. And they made it. Our efforts gained recovery areas in Louisiana and Alabama much-needed funds to keep going forward with their efforts.

Now, Operation Squeegee only ran for fifteen days; that was their pledge and their promise. This was a short fundraiser, for all it was intense and a great deal of fun. But don't despair if you missed it--the National Wildlife Federation is still taking donations directly for recovery efforts, and that link will send funds directly to wherever it's most needed at the time, year-round.

This ongoing project is decidedly NSFW, but it's also a fun application of the science of sound. If you don't own a rubber outfit, how do you know what it sounds like? If you've never worn waxed taffeta, would you recognize the sound? That site will help. (It does pop up separate windows for each .mov file, so prepare for some load time.)

With the avalanche of negative responses to RealID's proposed sharing of personal information widely, you'd think that companies would back down from such a unsteady precipice, right? Actually, no. Google introduced Buzz with the same wideband sharing of user information--though admittedly, that was why many of us chose not to use the service. Yahoo, Google and Bing all mine personal data to better target ads to the end consumer of their search services--or the companies to which they sell our personal data, at the least.

Now, there's a bit of hope on the horizon, or at least a bit of consciously applied effort at regulating transparency: Bynamite currently has a plug-in available for download that tracks every time your personal data is tapped, and you can control--to a point--what ads you'll receive based on what's in the plug-in stored folders for information.

It's not a bad idea. (Though right now, it's only available for Chrome and Firefox.)

Like movies? This column offers three invaluable resources for people who want to know which film is worth their time and money. Since most films from major production companies are almost all pitched the same way ("In a world...*explosion!*) these days, it helps to have some advance insight.

The only place I disagree is with independent films. Some films just slip through the cracks, not because their production teams lack confidence, or don't want them out there and reviewed, but simply because the cost of the film reduced their shoestring budgets to nothing. While some of these films are picked up and reviewed at Cannes and Aspen, not all of them are. And some amazing filmmaking is coming out of the L$3.99 houses these days.

I'd also add that the article's link for James Berardinelli is wrong--so here's the right one.

I'm fascinated on occasion by what The Virtual Whirl column chooses to report, but this time around, scan quickly through the Whirl itself, and go directly to the comments. Some fascinating ones there: many people took offense at perceived "attacks" against sparkle ponies in WoW; whereas another resident pointed the conflict out in no uncertain terms, labeling sex Second Life's only market of value.

I wouldn't precisely agree; other virtual items sell as well, from some merchants. But I will say it is the largest market on SL; that, in fact, if you subtract the camgirls, the voice workers, the escorts, the BDSM clubs, the S/m islands, nearly the entirety of Gor, all the silk makers, the fetish fashion designers, and the whole sex furniture/sex tech industry--there's not a lot left.

In fact, if we move that one step further and remove everything which has a short skirt, expansive cleavage, or involves 'sensual' poses or dances...well, not even Caledon is untouched on that one, that goes everywhere, mainland and island estates alike. How often have we seen hair, shoes, stockings, frocks, described as 'sexy', 'flirty', or even 'fun'? And yes, I think they're right when they say the residents of SL are being hypocritical if they're denying the pervasiveness of the sex industry because "SL isn't all about sex!"

No, of course it's not--but it's still mostly about sex, as Zindra proves out--and as much as the Labs change search to cut down on Adult-rated items showing up, as much harm as the Labs try to do to that sex industry, it's still there. Second Life isn't all about sex...but SL sex is what sells, and what keeps selling. And we are being hypocritical if we don't understand that.

but you see that line there moving through the station?

Two more days of Operation Squeegee, and I have fallen far far behind on my blogging!

So here's some quick catch-up:



This is actually two items in one. First, the antlers. I had separate picks of the antlers, but, for all its loveliness, taking pictures in Winterfell that aren't photographically enhanced is tricky--it's perpetual twilight there. So I took them by the fire, and...well, everything came out well-lit, but remarkably orange.

So, I thought I'd put out the Iris Chair next to one of the trees. I may leave it out, it's ten prims of gorgeously realistic oversized iris; and the antlers...frankly, they're a very very simple pair of antlers, three prongs, as I recall, pale; with again, the detail of the lavender iris with the golden throat on each one.

But I love them. I really do, to the point where I've been wearing them for two days now.



Did I mention the chair sparkles on touch? Ten prims and sparkly particle effects! These and the antlers are both from Fire Good and can be found for only one more day at the Operation Squeegee headquarters site in Ctrl Shift H.



Haven's also a part of this event; and this is the little camisk thingy she pulled up. The colors are good here, but trust me, in person this thing almost shimmers. The shadowing is gorgeous, the color blending is top notch. It's one of the prettiest little outfits she's ever done.



This is FaKE's triple-set--four, if you count the 'tattoo' layers of crude oiled arms/legs that I can't normally see on Snowglobe--that has been entitled Oily Water. This is the broomstick skirt, and the upper bikini section of the Oilkini.



In a separate pack, you can also buy the Oily Water Wingtips. These are the backs...



And these are the fronts. Everything is detailed in a, dare I say it, really pretty shimmering teal with brown-black 'oil drip' accents, and there's an additional patina layer on the backs of the shoes that reminds me of the tone oil takes when mixed with dangerous surfactants and churned by wave action.

If I have time I'll dig up more, but in the meantime, go to the Squeegee headquarters! We're offering you beauty and wonder to help pelicans, and help at least part of the coast survive. Their goal: $5000 (US). And they're pretty near that, with one whole night and day to go.

did you plan this all along? did you care if it went wrong?

You ever get the idea that the universe is speaking to you? Though this is an overly sarcastic comment, methinks.

That, or my personal SL Deity has changed from My Lord Stiv to Bill the Cat.



And sometimes, building in the Solace sims, I find the oddest things under the water. This is a Nissan something. No idea why it's standing upright like that.

And yes, yes, I am the little bat-winged chipmunk. Shush.

Fascinating little bit on Cyber Command's encoded logo that mentions Kryptos, still unsolved more than twenty years after construction.

And DJ Earworm has an amazing touch with video and music remixes--No More Gas takes on dystopian futures, the danger of the American way of life, the desire for more at any cost, death, dying, despair, fashion, the cult of personality, and fighting on even when the fight is doomed--using only pop songs recorded over two years.

Also, remember when Gaia used to be a kids' game? Now there are little kid-size avatars running around in molded rubber with tentacle-rape helmets and fetish stilettos. When, precisely, did this get out of hand?

Though it's centered on viewer 2.0, Alice's Lessons on Viewing should very nearly be required watching for all residents of the grid. (Alice also helpfully gives tutorial tips on flying and walking.)

[17:29] Emilly Orr: Hi, ecstasia. Let me know if I can help with any rental questions.
[17:29] ecstasia Seubert: ty
[17:30] Emilly's Google Translator: ecstasia Seubert:Company

Why does my translator keep doing this? It's like it's got a Beanie Babies fetish, or something.

Also, the Lindens rolled out the first stage of their Search fix. For many of us, it's too little, too late, and the damage is already extensive, resulting in extraordinary loss of sales and trust in the Labs.

How'ver, there's something else going on in search that's somewhat mystifying to me personally:

• Exclude parcels for private sale in general search

Now, granted, I don't use viewer 2.0, and I rarely use the All search category, but is this referring to "All" or to all of Search? F'rinstance, if I happen to be searching Land Sales and I want to see all land selling for L$2.50 a square meter, it won't return any private land offer results?

That's more than a bit insane-sounding.

And last night in Organica, Operation Squeegee raised over L$165,000 in Lindens from the attendees of six hours of psytrance and goa. Wonderful benefit; wonderful cause. We're still going until the 15th.

waiting for the pen to move

Sometimes, I get spam on this blog, and it's annoying, and it gets deleted. I don't even bother doing the polite thing and answering back anymore--just blip and it's gone.

One of the comments here was weirdly, too lyrical to delete.

Search and you will understand why the lava lamps were in the heart of generations.

So fine, their actual address included leads to a marketing site for website development; on that point, they fail. But they did get me to look up manufacturers of lava lamps, so now I'm giggling over the Planet Lava listings, and lava lamp mods for actual black light use. And--again from Oozing Goo--how to make lava lamps at home. Whee!

So, getting back to Operation Squeegee.

Obsidian Desires released a set of spools of vintage thread with poses that are nothing short of phenomenal.



Each of the items comes with embedded poses, they're all copiable, so if you wreck something in positioning, you can just delete and start with a fresh copy.



Admittedly, I bought these because I loved the concept--giant vintage spools of thread, a giant thimble, all with poses changeable at a click (there's a drop-down menu for each piece, or the set as a whole).



They don't work out in Winterfell as well on the ground, but nothing stops me from putting them somewhere else. And even with that, the thimble's out at Luctus Isle; it's such a lovely little set of two poses, I couldn't take it back.



From contemplation to acrobatics, this set has you covered. It comes with four pieces--one independent thimble; one independent single spool of thread; one paired set of two spools; and one ten-prim unit that contains all four pieces as a set grouping.



You can find them until July 15th at the Operation Squeegee event site in world. They'll cost you just L$100, and for that price, the rich sheen of the thread coloration, and the accuracy of the vintage logos on the spools become even more amazing. Highly recommended.

for those you left behind and the ones who've gone before

This is the kind of thing that makes Jarl Otenth Paderborn tear out his hair:

We'd really like to hear from anybody who has had problems with the terrain of their build - shifting without human intervention.
We've had this happen 3 times at our homestead sim; the latest on Monday has effectively trashed the build.

This time we have heard from 2 other people who have had something similar happen to them.
I'd like to know how many more there might be.
Please ping Bavid Dailey if its happened to you ...

While I appreciate their trying to find out this information, there are several problems with this announcement:

1. Miss Lunata Lupino obviously can't read, or she would have registered the notice, sent earlier, that said the Victorian Shopkeepers Association group was for announcements of new products, or announcement of sales of Victorian-themed products, from owned businesses only, and not more than once per fortnight (every two weeks).

2. Mr. Bavid Dailey (I'm assuming it's Mr.; do correct me if I'm in error) isn't even a member of the Victorian Shopkeepers' group, so in effect, Miss Lupino is sending out a notice for the wrong reasons to benefit someone who's not even a member of the group.

Tch. I think we have one new name in the "rule breakers" category. It's so sad, too, because we were down to only one name on that list, Mr. Pierre Ceriano, and since his assignment to that role, he's been remarkably circumspect.

Another new Linden heard from, and thankfully, not a member of the alphabet school of Linden hires: Sea Linden posted on the Linden blog about the myriad problems in Search. Xie pointed out something specifically, how'ver, I thought worth addressing here:

We'll continue to test different and better ways of using picks information, but for now, starting with this upcoming release, picks are no longer included in Search relevancy. They will still be visible in resident profiles in the viewer, but they won't affect Search until we find a better way to use that information and add value to Search. We do appreciate the value of picks, but when we do include them again we want to be sure it adds to the relevancy rather than making it worse.

What does this mean? Well, for those of us who kept picks of businesses--whether due to them offering us gifts, actual Lindens, or shopping incentives, or just because we valued that business and wanted to support them--it means that that pick information will no longer be counted as part of what feeds into the search metrics.

In short, this means:

• Paying people/offering incentives to people will no longer work to keep X amount of picks in place; as this information isn't recorded, it won't matter past the update whether a given business has one pick shown from a resident, or ten thousand; none of that information will be accessible by internal search engines.

• Merchants may stop offering pick incentives; while I am far from noble in this regard, all of the businesses I keep around in my picks are there because I support the makers. Had I more picks, I'd toss in FallnAngel Designs, House of Ruin, Show Me on the Doll, Discord Designs, Blue Blood, Draconic Kiss, Schadenfreude, Silent Sparrow, Nomine, Dare Designs, Bare Rose, Curio Obscura, Wunderlich, Kouse's Sanctum, Evie's Closet, Shiny Things, Tacky Star, Graves, the Secret Shelf, Yellow Jester, Reasonable Desires, Home of Sanu, Lassitude & Ennui, the Painted Lilly, Painfully Divine, Paradisis, Wishbox, Distressed Textures, Haunted Saddlemead, Octoberville, Low Prim & Grim, UnZipped, Cave Rua, Tusk, Cherished, Grendel's, Cosy Shire, Magic of Oz, Turnip's Homes & Stuff...and that's just off the top of my head.

In the long term, the end results are far more terrifying:

• Merchants, without the ability to link search results to picks, will, barring any incentives to keep their customers listing them, have to resort to advertising. This will make advertising clearly a money game, because the blog entry also intimated that they're looking at some way of enforcing keywords, or striking them altogether.

• Merchants who lack the funds to upgrade their ads may well fold; and, whether they fold or not, this is another inevitable march down the path to banning user-generated content, because while offering incentives and/or actual Linden payments will likely still work in generating picks in profiles, those metrics will be stripped from search popularity, leaving only keywords (likely, soon to be enforced business-appropriate alone) and amount paid for ads.

Businesses are already suffering, have been for over a year now, since the switch to Google-based searching. It sounds like this is taking several more steps towards helping more businesses fail on SL. I guarantee you, we will see some store closures on this one.

Ciaran Laval muses on estate-wide bans of survey bots; whether or not it's true, it is intriguing to contemplate, because Virtual LittleThing is one of a scant handful of really good, well-intentioned, and--might I add--openly admitted--bots on the grid. To have her banned, when all she's doing is tracking grid stability and grid ownership--that seems remarkably like shooting oneself in the foot because one didn't approve of the footwear on the person across the room.

The BBC's now picked up the story of Blizzard's attack on internet security and privacy; what's more, there's a very lovely phrase quoted in that article from one of the site forum's community managers:

"Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven't been connected before," the post continued.

Just let that sink in for a moment, really understand what xie's trying to say:

• Anonymity makes people mean.

• Anonymity means no one backs their words and can make incendiary statements and foster destructive modes of behavior.

• Anonymity is a barrier to intimacy and social interaction.

• Anonymity means we can't have nice things.

I want to know who these people are who believe these things, really and truthfully believe these things. Because they're wrong and I want them fired. Seriously--they are dead wrong, and they shouldn't be working in net-based occupations anymore, because obviously, they are impaired in their ability to reason.

Want people to hurt you, really hurt you, get under your skin and work the knife in deep? They have to know you to do that. Unless you're ridiculously oversensitive and the thought of a puppy with a bandaged paw makes you weep openly on the subway, no one completely unknown to you will ever be able to hurt you emotionally--unless you allow them that access in the first place.

For the most part, any troll on the internet is just that--an attention-seeking drama muffin who has too much free time and a staggering lack of social awareness. Where trolls get personal is when they learn who you are and where you live, emotionally; then they can make their jabs and ripostes with a greater sense of accuracy; and sure, pair that with a genuine intent to harm, and I will grant you, that's a bad thing.

But to assume that anyone who wants privacy on the internet is obviously just out to disrupt, deface, irritate and harm? Oh, bite me. That's so far beyond wrong the Hubble telescope couldn't see it with the really good lenses.

"I can't even begin to fathom why you would do this", posted one user, while another wrote that it seems "like someone who likes Facebook came up with it, while being blissfully unaware that an awful lot of people deliberately avoid Facebook".

That user I would agree with. There seems an inordinate amount of desire to be the next Facebook, when what owners of online games and forums should do is consider anything Facebook adopts to be a death knell for their site. Facebook has done the anti-privacy bit--and from the second they announced that change, they started losing those taunted millions of users.

People on the net don't want any random strolling psychotic to have access to their home address, their childrens' names, their place of work, their hobbies--and adopting real names only as a policy? Virtually ensures that there will be bad acts as a direct result of this policy implementation.

With no sense of hyperbole whatsoever, I tell you this: this time next year, there is going to be at least one assault (if not full successful murder); at least one home invasion; and at least one, if not dozens, of rapes--all of which will be tracked down to information discovered from RealID implementation. Watch and see.

I'll leave you with one last snip from the article:

"[...] one Blizzard employee posted his real name on the forums, saying that there was no risk to users, and the experiment went drastically wrong.

"'Within five minutes, users had got hold of his telephone number, home address, photographs of him and a ton of other information,' said Mr Brand.

"The post and topic has since been removed from the Blizzard forum."

It doesn't matter if it has 'since been removed'. What matters is the ease with which the information was discovered--and posted in the first place. All from a real name.

You don't believe me, stroll over to the Encyclopedia Dramatic entry for Prokofy Neva. Like Neva or loathe her, there's no reason anyone deserves to have their RL info linked in a permanent place on the net. (The only codicil I have to that is I'm not absolutely sure it's her real name and home address, but even the threat is a tangible one for me. I've had enough problems with people I know threatening harm to me and mine; let alone folks on the internet with nothing better to do of a day than wreak mischief.) And the entire RealID verification system? Will not help assuage any of these fears.

Let alone the harm it's doing to the transgendered community--there are a great many transfolk who play World of Warcraft. Some of them were not in transition when they started playing, and now are. A friend of mine is in this situation, and is mortified that now his 'real' name--which Blizzard refuses to change to his current, and legally granted name--reflects a female gender, when he--and his now all-male characters--manifestly do not.

Lastly, Interplay is encouraging folks to sign up for the Fallout Online newsletter on their site; this is not so much an invitation to be spammed with developer news, as much as it will be creating a beta list of folks interested in the first look at Fallout Online, aka "Wasteland mutants for EVERYONE!" If you're interested, go sign up; you just might get an invite to the beta.

Next up: the round of purchases made recently for Operation Squeegee. First in line: Obsidian Desires' "Spoolz" set.

[Late insert: I found another World of Warcraft player with insight on the RealID mess. She references the Counterstrike incident (look there for the link) which is pretty much what I think RealID is going to cause, in spades.

[Lest you think But Em, that's just one isolated incident, how about this one on for size? Friend of mine is a WoW addict, and is in a very large guild. She had a fellow meet her on the forums, flatter her eyes, flirt with her long enough to get her to give him her real name and home address. He came out for a visit.

[To become a part of her RL life? Maybe. To see how good she was in bed? Who knows? But the one thing she does know is he slipped a sedative in her drink when she was about to go on a big raid. Sleepy, and feeling ill (she reacts badly to some medications), she told him to go ahead and take her spot, and curled up on the couch behind him...where she subsequently passed out.

[Not much happened from there, though when she discovered the drugging, she got a restraining order. But what if he'd been interested in worse things? And all this happened two years before the RealID system came online.

[How much worse is it going to get from here?]

(Tip o' the nib to Mr. Lalo Telling and Miss Felicia Day, for finding that link.)

no one can protect you, no door to run to

Why was the Ajax viewer banned?

And that rather puts the lie to Linden Labs not being able to block access to whichever viewer they want--as long as that viewer internally self-identifies. Blocking Ajax means they could block other viewers, especially damaging ones like Neillife--if they wished to block them.

In ebook reader news, Amazon is a slow and subtle creature--they filed a patent for a device that was likely executed only in diagrams at that point, and filed it for the US alone--which meant they never had to inform anyone developing similar devices that they might be in violation of upcoming patent law.

Now? They have their patent. And they can start going after offenders against said patent--which didn't exist when they applied for the patent.

Sneaky, Amazon. Very very sneaky.

Internet history lesson: anything that can become Fun, and a fad, will. Witness:

Around noon on July 6th, 2010, Amanda Palmer sent this out on her Twitter feed:

amandapalmer i don't usually hop on the youtube train. this one MUST be seen. DOUBLE RAINBOW ALL THE WAY AGHHHH http://bit.ly/rainbowman

This resulted in someone auto-tuning the audio into a song, which she mentions three hours later:

amandapalmer oh my god. DOUBLE RAINBOW AUTOTUNED. man, this shit happens FAST. thanks everyone for link http://bit.ly/RainbowAutotuned

Wau. Just wau.

Meanwhile, the battle rages on for net privacy versus net transparency. The latest battleground? Battle.net, of all places. Blizzard, the company behind World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and the upcoming Diablo III, has stated their firm and unwavering intent to stand behind RealID, the certification program that links your real life information to your game accounts in all Blizzard games.

Why is this a bad idea? I spoke with one of my friends who plays WoW, and is having to deal with the repercussions of the effect. She lays out her home situation, for instance. She trusts herself, and those she friends; okay, fine. She trusts her first partner, and those he friends; also fine. She more or less trusts her other partner, but he's known to friend on whim, and she's not sure she trusts those impulses.

Move it farther out. Now, friends of her friends, friends of her first partner's friends, and friends of her second partner can also see her real name. Move farther out still, and their friends can see her real name, and she has no idea who those people even are.

What can be gotten with just a first and last name? Well, in the US:

* home address
* home phone
* birthday
* age
* appearance
* parents' names
* childrens' names
* childrens' and parents' ages
* spouse, if any

With a little financial expense and/or hacking ability:

* Driver's license number
* Car insurance number
* make and model of vehicle
* high school records
* college records
* college papers, if any were published or stored
* library card number
* rental history with library, videostore, grocery story, pharmacy...the list goes on

With a cop or private investigator involved:

* court history and/or criminal record
* military service record
* medical records
* psychological records
* vacation spots, plans, time share ownership

Yet Blizzard seems to think this is just fine and dandy.

Count me out. No Diablo III for me, that's my final decision. But it reflects a worrying trend that's on the rise.

In the meantime, trying to build, trying to review, trying to do a lot of things, but between summer heat and the grid refusing any form of stability, I'm rather stuck. Expect more tomorrow. Between spates of attempting-to-build, I did hit Operation Squeegee with a small vengeance (over $1000 as of yesterday! They're not RFL figures, but we are SO pathetically grateful for ANYTHING, and even that little will save birds, help keep the fight going, and inspire people, I swear to God), so expect pictures and product reviews tomorrow.

Noticed a few people had put out freebies for the event. Pondering making up a freebie thing. Not sure if I will or not, but hey.

And that's the news of the day, off for more battle with the grid.

the rain is unrelenting, and it's still coming down today

I am profoundly against this article for one reason, though it does make good points elsewhere:

Get rid of keyboard typing as the means to communicate. Let people speak to each other naturally by using Voice Over IP technology. This probably means a strategic partnership for Linden Labs.

Has anyone stopped to consider that not everyone on the net wants voice as a default? That a large number of us want to type things out?

Think of it as the desire for personal privacy. Personally, I think of it as the desire for literacy--if I'm with someone who can't type (who is otherwise equipped with working fingers), I really don't want to hear them talk. Much of the internet, including the web, is not voice-enabled to this day. Much of the internet, including the web, will not be voice-enabled for at least five more years--if then. Call it elitist if you will, but anyone who doesn't value learning, and education, and any excuse to keep learning--well, I'm just not interested. Move along.

[Following up on this article: Apparently, he's been getting quite the vociferous responses against his 'Get rid of typing' approach:

OK. "Get rid of keyboard typing" is too strong. The better way to put this is: Make voice the default means of communication and integrate it cleanly into the environment. Thanks for pointing this out.

Now, while I still don't agree with his approach, I can at least understand it slightly better, because he's approaching this from a business point of view. In this case, it's still a stupid thing to say, but it's an understandable stupidity, because enterprise users of SL may be easier to sway if stupid ideas are presented to them. (Personally, I'd think that would be the wrong way to go, which may be why the entire enterprise team of Linden Labs was sacked.)]

Operation Squeegee news. There's been live music, or at least a live DJ, almost twenty-four hours a day for the past two days. There's been a ton of community support. And I am very proud to mention in just two days, Operation Squeegee has raised over L$130,000.

Two. Days. That's phenomenal.

In grid news:

[16:52] Mari Moonbeam: Details on the roll out-roll back -skip if techie stuff makes your eyes go @@

:Asil Ares commented on SVC-5927:
--------------------------------

Falcon Linden wrote: "...the original issue with objects being queued is definitely caused by my throttling. And, what's worse, there appears to be a bug in my throttling code that's causing avatars to be frozen as well. This was not detected because it only appears in release builds and not in debug builds. Andrew has also discovered an issue that causes overall lag to be worse in 1.40 combat regions than in 1.38 (although most regions are performing better)."

@ Falcon. When stuff goes wrong (and it will), debrief and move on. I like this simple "debriefing mantra":

* What happened?
* Why did it happen?
* What can we learn from this so as to do it better next time?"
[16:53] Magdalena Outlander snickers and keeps her comments to herself.

So apparently, the grid-wide restart? Is not to bring everything up to the same code, it's to roll everything back from 1.40 code, to 1.38 code. Wonderful.

Apparently the problem was radically noticeable in combat sims, where it wasn't noticeable in other sims, because of the unique physics that happen there--namely, folks would fire, all the bullets would clump, appear to freeze, then suddenly reach the avatars all at once to lethal limits. Miss Moonbeam summed it up thusly:

[16:54] Mari Moonbeam: "we're all dead --who won?"

So, we struggle through.

In the meantime, an all-too brief introduction:



This is Mr. Trasgo Beaumont. He is very devoted to historical accuracy. For example, he made that incredibly curling mustache himself.



I only had time for a couple snaps--I was supposed to be working--but he's well worth looking up in world. He has a couple of very interesting links for historical attire, and apparently he does historically-accurate (virtual) portraits--so if your dream is to fall into a Jan van Eyck painting, f'rinstance, Mr. Beaumont might well be your source on the grid for that.

Finally...I'm catching up on Doctor Who, as I can, but being as how I'm not a) in the British Isles, and b) possessed of cable or satellite TV, it's proving somewhat difficult.

And there are Grand Mysteries this time out...



11:59 am. Scotland. Levshire, did they say? June 25th. Only it's night out....



12:00 pm. Scotland. Whatever town it is. June 26th. Still night.

Oh, yes. Mysteries abound...

and you won't bring me down

News of the Kin project dying the death of all outdated gear is somewhat confusing to me, personally; it may be dead and unmourned in Europe, but in the US, we're just starting to see ads for the product. Maybe they've decided only to market it over here? Why?

Miss Ruina Kessel has put up a survey for House of Ruin products--she sent it out just to her group members, but she wants a wide, diverse range of replies, so I'm tossing it out to my readers--take the survey, please? She's right, it's fairly painless, and it will help her figure out skintones and eye ranges to keep.

Some while back, Roger Ebert did a column on video games. He said there was no way they could be art--or, to be more blunt, Art, with the noted capital. And he received a great deal of grief for this column. Many people now, at the other end of the debate, see his latest address on the topic as a retraction.

I do not. I see it as him stating--logically--that he doesn't have a good working definition of Art, in his mind, that applies to the topic--namely, that video games cannot be Art. So he withdraws from the argument.

I'm now wondering, what definition of Art would include video games? Can video games be uplifting to the soul, engaging on all levels, profound and meaningful? I think about the art exhibits on SL that have touched me, and I have no problem including digital art in a debate about art in general--but does that mean the art has touched me (and it would touch me no less were I looking at it in an actual lath and plaster building), or that Second Life is the art?

I think Ebert is correct, in this: we don't have a good working definition--at least, not yet.

Though while we're on the topic of the digital realm, vis-à-vis art, how about this? Crosses into cyberpunk, political commentary, and stretches into art-as-protest as well. Keen!

Finally, Hulu was doing so well--good agreements with the networks, an acceptable layer of ads for the most part, really inventive ads on their own--but now they have a pay service. And while the pay service does let subscribers see shows that may have dropped off the free service, or complete seasons of shows that Hulu only carries the latest episodes of for free...they show ads. $9.95 per month to subscribe, and THEY SHOW ADS.

Hulu! The whole point of a subscription service is to BYPASS THE DAMN ADS! If you don't catch on, your subscription service will fail. Not might; WILL.

Miss Sanura Snowpaw--I've worked with her before, on the Wear Grey for a Day project--is also part of Operation Squeegee. Her blog is here, and she's done a lovely set of casual wear for the event.


(The Dolphin tee; the Dragonfly tee.)

It's odd; in SL I'm not much for casual wear; in RL, it's most of everything I own. (Well. Still only own the one pair of jeans, RL. But that's not the point.)


(The Whale Tee, the Praying Mantis tee.)

The point is, there's a reason that cleavage matters in SL for tees, and this series shows exactly why. But even with that, these are fresh and lovely, and while yes, the graphic is high on the chest, and tends to fold and disappear if I'm in any pose where my breasts are pressed together, I think the shading and the overall clean lines of solid color make up for it.



They do all have larger designs on the back of the tees. This is the back of the Praying Mantis tee. (The reddening of the design is my fault, I'm snapping the shot in front of a red-lit table.)

And she made a lacy black-and-white pinstripe option she calls the "Lacey Beater":



This is a very streamlined option. Plain, simple, elegant as casual wear gets--nicely done.



Lovely bit of shading along the sides, both top and bottom, too. Though because there's a jacket bottom and a shirt top, there is one small flaw:



It's little, and bypassable; I think I only noticed it because I zoomed in when checking the angle. It happens, it's difficult to pattern-match at times.

Elsewise, these are lovely pieces that would slide easily into virtually any closet on the grid. They could even be unisex if the man is confident enough (well, maybe not the lacy monochrome set). I think she's offering them up for L$50 each at the event site. They're well worth a trip out.

I won't be covering all of the fashions--there are fifty vendors, perhaps more! But what I can, when I can, I will.