New life - New blog

Because of variuos events in my second life, and also a change in its email address, I have made a new blog. I will not be updating this any more, so if you have stumbled across the web to reach this page, please click here to continue your travel:-)

More building

The RL me has been away for a 4-week summer vacation, including a trip to Sound-of-Music home Austria Alps. In SL, the virtual me has slept through 3 release candidate viewers and at least 2 unsuccessful server software releases. But its good to be back!

Have started again to build something on the Bay City plot I bought on auction. Not yet sure what it is going to be, but its fun to do some city-inspired buildings also. Think it will probably be one floor with a sale exhibition, one floor to show parts of my own collection of art, and perhaps a small apartment on the top for when I want to be a city-dweller. And of course a garage in the basement; room for a car to roam the city with. Stay tuned!

On the wall now is a great pic I bought from Music Huin on my first day back in SL; its gorgeous on the red brick wall.

Class 4 or 5 Sim?

Noticed this small but useful piece of information on the LL blog today:

"If you look at Help:About Second Life, you will find a line that tells you the host on which your region is running. That will say something like sim1234.agni.lindenlab.com. If the number after “sim” is less than 2133, the region you are in is a class 4 region..."

So, here is a simple method of finding out what kind of server your land is on.

Btw: The Big Mushamush sim is on sim5634.agni.lindenlab.com, so its Class 5. Nice to know.

Welcome, Mark!

New CEO at Linden Labs®. As is expected, they have lots of nice things to say about the chosen one, Mark Kingdon. One thing I noticed, thought is the phrase "... and passion for Second Life® that we were looking for.". Does that mean that M Linden has a history of being inworld as the rest of us; living with the crashes and adfarms, but also with the fabulous art, great people and plain innovation that exists here?

If so, this is indeed good news; and I hope the combined experience of being part of such diverse communities as the auditors and consultant of PwC AND the rather more relaxed online world gives him an excellent background for the job.

Welcome to my gallery any time, Mark, either as M Linden or as your eventual old inworld identity which I will hope you keep alive; it will be nice to know that the CEO of this world actually lives and walks amongst us.

Updated: Just found this on Reuters: Mark describes himselves as "... an occasional Second Life user who created the avatar Marcus Voom in January, 2007. Nice to know!

Update two: Melanie Kidd stumbled over an AFK-ing Mark and got herselves a nice pic:-)

The new trademark policy

Linden Lab® has published their new policy on trademark issues, and as the nice metaverse citizen I am, I will actually try to comply. Why?

Gwyneth Llewelyn has a very blog entry describing the pros and cons. In the end, for me it boils down to this: Our world of user-created content will be unique, and the conformity-loving executives of Sony with their slick and boring 3D game of Home should not be allowed to use Second Life in their marketing efforts.

However much disagreements we may have with Linden Labs, Second Life is our world, so its worth the effort of pasting in a few ®'s.

Vote for Jira Option to "Mute Visibility" on objects to alleviate problems with 16sqm parcels, ad-farms and probably a thousand other eye sores

Jira #VW-1017 contains discussions and various functional solutions to the problem of visual spamming on the mainland. Wouldnt it be nice if one could just turn off all those ads for XXX Mall and Empress Club? It would be as if they were not there! Not to mention all those ugly red rotating "for sale" signs on all the free parcels around you.

If you agree on that, please open the Jira, log in and vote for this feature wish!

HTML on Prim - Its working!

The new media feature giving HTML on a prim is working nicely. If you are running WindLight, this blog is now viewable at the stair of the Gallery. Nice!
Now, for the wishlist:

• URL should be specified on the Prims Texture page, allowing multiple pages per parcel.
• Click and scroll
• Script controllable

But its a very nice start, allowing me to display certain signs without converting to bitmap first!

Updated: Another Ad Farmer - sigh

Linden Labs® new policy on Ad Farms seems to be working - sort of. I have previously got removed content from a small parcel near our new rental houses.

The policy was originally targeted for small parcels, at least that was how I understood it. Seems the visual spammers have caught that, and are now instead targeting larger parcels. This 1024 lot is for sale just below my gallery, priced at about L20/sqm. More than double the market price for land, it is still not outrageous, but the gathering of visual garbage suggests that the Ad Farm thought is still there: Buy this land if you want your view restored.

Rereading the policy however, I can see no limitation on the size of the parcel for this to be regarded as ad farming.

Have been in touch with the owner, but to no help. He claims he sells this stuff, and this is his "shop", LOL!

Hope the Lindens agree with me that this is harassment - Abuse report have been filed. Stay tuned!

Update: The visual garbage is gone! No mentioning of the region on the Incident report page, so I cant say for sure if LL has taken action, but it seems probable! Every day there are ad farm incidents on that page, and 7 days suspension is not an unusual action.

All you Lindens, this makes us feel you are caring for the mainland; a big hand for you!

PSHome - but will it be home?

Sony are pulling its muscles to start competing in the 3D virtual worlds of the future. Mimicking some of the features of Second Life, Home allows customized avatars to walk around inworld, chatting and playing games. As could be expected from a console game provider, they mock the graphic quality of SL, instead targeting a look comparable to other games on the same platform.

Question is, are they missing the key feature for us SL lovers: That WE create the world? The slick graphics certainly suggest that the environments are created by professional game designers. None of the hype mention things like in-world 3D modelling tools, customized animations, script languages or a real-estate market. And these avatars just looks so boringly human. Are they just too photo-realistic to be any fun? And will Sony dare to allow the player to really control them? If they, like us, are born as sex-less androgens, will it be possible to add those missing parts? Not to mention using them:-)

Oh well. I guess this will be a much more tightly controlled environment, where content can be rented or purchased only from Sony and their professional partners. If that is so, will the avatars here have the same feeling of identity, the same feelings towards each others? Remains to be seen, I guess!

The positive outcome will be to familiarize more people with these kinds of environments, so that one day they will be ready to come and live in the Real Second Life!

Wonderland - Cyberspace Love

BBC2 aired an interesting program regarding the connection between RL and SL relations. They did manage to find people taking SL to the extreme, so most of us will not feel quite at home here, but its an interesting theme anyway. The YouTube version is her: Part1, Part2, Part3 and Part4.

How do one manage to handle an on-line identity when emotions span the technology bridge that binds us together in this dream-like world? And can art express the challenges - or offer help to manage them?

Cris' Gallery in Big M is now unofficially open

After long weeks of building work, and a lot of help from my beloved in this world, the new gallery is considered finished. The official opening is yet to be planned, but everyone is welcome to come and look around.

In addition to my pictures there is also ample room to sit and chat, having a dance or a cuddle with your dear one, or just sit and meditate in the quiet room if you rather feel like that.