Virtual 52 1/2

Relaxing in an artful flowerbed

2011-11-22T04:00:00.000-08:00

Stretching out my tired writing arms

Yesterday I was walking the stylish floors of the Palais Orleans, and just as I was about to leave I got an IM from anibrm.jung, the owner of Art By Nature! (SLurl). I had visited the place before, and now she had a couple of new photos.

I TP'ed over, and got a nice chat with her.

ANI is doing RL nature photographs, and as you can see she has created an SL gallery that confirms with the theme:-) You are literally walking on green pastures while admiring the beautiful shots. She has a nice video on Youtube presenting her art too (Video).

What I like a lot is her attention to details in the scene; like in one shot the focus is on a nail in a fence, while the horses on the field behind is blurred. It so reminds me of one of my favorite movies: American Beauty. If anyone of you have seen it, you will remember one of the main characters walking around, videotaping odd stuff like an old bag of plastic dancing in the wind, just because he found it so beautiful:

"Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world,
I feel like I can't take it,

and my heart is just going to cave in."

ANI gives me the same feeling with her best shots. Eveyone (including me, lol) can make a nice sunset picture, but it takes more of an artist to show us the hidden treasures in the nature surrounding us.

I have given some thoughts about the difference between a gallery mimicing RL (like the Palais Orleans) and more NPIRL-like places like Art by Nature! Being quite a NPIRL fan I must confess to generally liking those places best. Even so, when art itselves is clearly SL bound, it creates a nice contrast do display it in surroundings our brain holds for real.

But when it comes to displaying RL photographs, NPIRL is definitely the way to go. So pictures set up outside in the rain, and grass growing throutgh the floors of the few buildings works so well. Art by Nature! is definitely worth visiting, and if you bring someone special, you can relax together on a coach by the fire, sharing the beauty around you and in your selves.

Fleet Week video

2011-11-22T01:46:00.000-08:00

The Third Annual Fleet Week in Winterfell is just over, and the place now looks sadly empty without all the magnificent vessels. Loki Eliot has made this nice movie and placed it here:

http://youtu.be/LySyVaQo7_M?t=2m45s.

One fun thing (for me that is LOL) is that my humble castle is clearly visible in the background! Seems I need to turn down the lights a little bit...

Dark Night Of the Soul Indeed

2011-11-21T02:17:00.000-08:00

I love sitting while I write...

Morgana Nagorski has an exhibit at the Palais Orleans (SLurl) you don't want to miss.

If you don't know Palais Orleans, it's a classy and classic contemporary art gallery, often housing high-quality exhibitions. And this one is one of the better I have seen here.

I have real problem summing up these pictures. As I walk around, I find myselves touched by each work, as if they spoke to me. When I look at "Battered and Exhausted" I really recognize not only a battered avatar, but an exhausted human. And combined with a wonderful lightening effect this is a true piece of art.

And then there is the screaming face of a woman clearly being abused by another avatar, titled "Don't Hurt Me" - it's just too strong for words really.

Walking further down, I find "Let's Go Get 'Em", a curious piece with a beautiful girl standing between torsos on sticks... And futher down is "Empty", depicting an empty railway station.... I think you get the impression: This is an exhibit with lots of very different pieces that has one thing in common: A lot of work and care has been put into them, and they deserve to be studied as the great art they are.

It seems like every time I tire of the lag and the crashes and conflicts with RL and funny and useless new viewers from the Lab, I stumble upon something like this: An exhibit that showes the real power of virtual worlds: Great art that just would not be possible without virtual worlds.

Thanks Morgana, for giving us your art and talent.

Moving from ReactionGrid

2011-10-06T14:00:00.000-07:00

ReactionGrid has been my "home" in OpenSim for two years now. During that time, I have really not done much building, but it have felt good to have a foothold outside of the somewhat varying strategies from Battery Street.

OpenSimulator today is a much more stable product than it was 2 years ago. So stable, in fact, that an installation on my basement "server" really fulfulls my needs.

In addition, HyperGrid has become useful too! Today I managed to jump out of my own grid for the first time . and I could even fetch some freebees from another grid. Awsome!

It does not really feel good leaving ReactionGrid. The people running it is just plain fantastic. Even though I messed up my credit card on Paypal and got my region closed, they restored it from backup to send me an OAR. The reason I move is just that I so love having full control from the server up; it makes the grid experience more fun for a geek like me:-) But I will probably miss that someone else is keeping my region up....

On the positive side: I now have 4 regions and as many prims I care to load my server with; lots of space to expand!

My grid is accessible from the outside - but I want a period of testing and some building before I publish the URL. After that it would be great to have some hypergrid visitors!

Disbelief and mourning

2011-07-24T14:00:00.000-07:00

Friday afternoon we believed that Oslo was being attacked by an international terrorist organization. A car bomb was set up, blowing up a central part of the city. Then there where reports about gunshots being fired on the site of a traditional youth summer camp. And we wondered: What next?

Saturday morning I woke up and was given the answer to the question "what could possible be worse than a car bomb making my beloved city look like a war zone?". The brutal truth of more than 80 young people being cold-bloded murdered by a right-wing lunatic have made me cry all weekend, even though I knew none of them personally.

"If one person can hate this much, just imagine how much more the rest of us can love", one of the survivors said to cnn. I got an Im from an old friend in SL I have not met in a long time, asking if I was hurt. I have spoken to other friends as well. SL
Virtual worlds can really be an outlet for love as well.

In a somewhat crazy RL, that's a comforting thought.

Amilia at the Auggers - Artful and moving debut

2011-07-11T01:24:00.000-07:00

Amilia Fixed has a debut exhibit at the Auggers photo gallery. There are two series exhibited at ground level: Book of Anatomy and PostCards from My Dark. On second floor (TP to Gallery 2) is the faun series and the reflections series.

The B&W anatomy shots are very real looking, but Amilia assures me it is her own avatar ("i preffer to use myself because i don't bitch about long hours"). She also tells me there is a lot of work involved, and that I don't find hard to believe.

There are more than technical value here though; the pics communicate emotions, and that is rare for these kind of shots.

The emotions comes throught even stronger in the My Dark series - they are dark indeed. It may be that my background makes me understand them and really feel the pain, but I am also sure that the true understanding of the artist is very contributing to these qualities.

The Faun series almost made me cry - but then I guess I might be just too emotional for my own good? A story of love - and loss.

Even so, do yourselves a favour and check out Amilias exhibit - it's a truly artful public debut.

Tender and alive

2011-06-06T10:42:00.000-07:00

Cat Boccaccio har a new exhibit at Galerie 17. It is called "tender", and consists of several works showing love in female - female relationships.

I find these images hard to describe, or at least describe why they leave the impression they do. The thought that yet again is foremost in my mind is "how does Cat manages to convey true emotions from avatars?"

These images are strong and touching. They tell a story that is both human but also deeply connected to the social structure of Second Life. Also, the quality of the images are superb.

Do take a look at these pics.

And yes, I am still alive. Actually, my RL is more alive than for a long time; perhaps that's why my SL suffers gravely, as this blog is a silent vitness of. But I have not let go, and I probably never will:-)

Kindle, Light My Words With Fire

2011-03-30T06:06:00.000-07:00

I have just got a new toy: An Amazon Kindle. Its a really nice device, even though the GUI is rather old-fashioned compared to modern pads. No touch-screen. No colours. But the features that are there are well thought out and works flawlessly.

I like it so much I thought my avatar would want one too. So I quickly buildt one. Now he can sit and read The Times like an old-school british gent, even if its a modern variety:

I have previously blogged about the PC version and the Kindle Store so I won't repeat that; it's enough to say that my Kindle has 3G access to more books than I could ever read almost whereever I am.

And even if I am out in the sun, its a joy to read because of it's electronic inc screen. It really looks like paper, and there is no glare or reflection. One cool feature of e-ink screens is that they only uses power when changing content. Amazon has made use of this and made a feature that displays an image on the screen whenever you turn if off. The image is choosen randomly from a set, and it just stays there.

Interestingly enough, I think I like the thing precisely because it is rather limited. When reading a book one does not get tempted to surf facebook and read email at the same time, because that's just not possible (or at least too cumbersome, LOL). Instead, I fall into this state of natural relaxation that I get when reading an old-fashioned book printed on paper.

And if I do sit down with the thing just to play, I end up reading much more text than I would normally do when just spending some free time on the web.

And it got me wondering: Second Life is a highly graphical environment. State-of-the-art 3D moving graphics and animations. But would that be enough to make me stay and spend as much time and money inworld as I do? Actually, the answer is simply no. If I could not spend lots of my SL time "talking" to people, that is, creating written words and stories, I would not have found the motivation to stay.

So, words are important, and words with people even more so. In a world where pad-and-phone makers are duelling for the nicest icons and the most vivid pictures, it's good that someone still focuses on the words. They make my day and my life, and I so look forward to both read and write a lot more.

At Nordan Art

2011-03-21T03:33:00.000-07:00

I got a group message about an exhibition at a place called Nordan Art the other day, and figured I should take the taxi and check it out. Om the outside it looks rather classic; a great build though with lots of details. Notice the gorgeous glass windows in the back.

If you have the courage to face the unknown (litterally) and walk right through it, it's like you take the blue pill and walk straight into wonderland. Luckily, I ran into Bella on the first floor, and when she made it safely through I dared follow.

"Standing, she lit her cigarette, took a puff, took a leap of faith and walked on fire for the first time. It was incredible!!." -- from Bellas profile

After climbing several stairs we got to the top, facing the most gorgeous crystal art. Rebeca Bashly is the artist, and here she has done some amazingly detailed work. This is a must-see.

Bella wore the most fabulous detailed costume I have yet seen in SL. Made by a Japanese designer that must really have worked his mouse arm to exhaution. It led us to talk about avatar apperance as art, and further on to discuss what kind of people where staying in SL.

We landed pretty much on the idea that SL is populated with people that has imagination and creativity above average. At least those that stay and that you like to meet.

Also, that art in SL takes many forms, and that SL in itselves makes us all content creators, just to different degrees. How amazing it would have been if everyone was in SL - a true global village!

But today the bombs are falling on Libya, my country are sending 6 jet fighters to that desert land so far away, and our PM is desperately trying to convince everyone that Norway is not at war with Libya.

And even though one can argue it's for the greater good of the people living there if we do get rid of their mad dictator, we all know that our government-owned oil company has been doing business with Muammar "al"-Gaddafi for a long time, enabling him to strenghten his position and continue his life in luxery.

So now we have to bomb them.

It's a hard word. I hope there will still be beauty and happiness around for people in Libya when this is over. Like there is in SL between our RL battles.

How to protect yourselves against RedZone and other IP tracing technologies

2011-03-16T05:22:00.000-07:00

RedZone was a tool for banning potential content thiefs and griefers, including known alts of known perpetrators. It could also warn you if someone in the vincinity was a know alt.

The question is: How did RedZone know about your alt accounts? The answer is that the RedZone servers used a loophole in SL to track the IP adress of the users computer, and when it discovered multiple accounts using the same PC it was fair to suspect they where alt accounts.

As you may know, your IP adress is also quite useful for tracking down your RL location and identity, so the privacy issues here goes far beyond alt tracking.

RedZone is now banned from SL, but the basic technology loophole that can be used to track down your IP adresses is still available. In other words, nothing can stop other people from doing the same thing.

The problem is the handling of media and HTML in the SL client. Whenever the viewer plays media or shows a web site, it will contact the media or web server directly. So if you walk into a store with a music URL, media URL or HTML on a prim, your viewer will get the URL from Linden Labs servers, but will proceed to call that URL directly.

Now, whenever you contact a server, that server will know your IP adress. So the following sequence may happen:

You walk onto someones land
The parcel have a music URL pointing to the land owners home server
Your PC will call that server and dutifully tell it your IP adress
The land owner have a visitor scanner that will know your Second Life name
The visitor scanner will send your second life name to the same server that serves the Music URL
That server will log that your SL avatar walked onto the parcel at the same time as your PC requested the music URL.

It's a no-brainer to deduce that the two are connected, and your IP is busted.

How can you protect your IP adress? The simple answer is: Don't play media or music unless you trust the owner of the thing.

The following setting should do:

That is, remove the check from "Allow Media to auto-play" and "Play media attached to other avatars".

Update: I guess you should also remove the check from Streaming music: Enabled" (forgot that one).

The drawback is that you have to press Play in the viewer whenever you really want to listen to the music or watch the HTML-On-A-Prim thing, but that may be a small price to pay to keep your RL identity safe.

I just have to love Bryn Oh

2011-02-23T14:23:00.000-08:00

You find yourself outside a pretty normal looking door. But when you get inside, it's like there never was any house there at all :-)

Bryn Oh, world renowned for her spectacular and detailed sculptures and builds, are exhibiting sketches from the build process of some of her work. They are interesting in themselves, but what's really got to me was camming a bit outside:

Seems this was not a normal house after all:-) Or was it just hit by a hurricane?

SL! You just got to love it!

Eat, Pray, Love my Ubuntu Netbook

2011-02-12T15:16:00.000-08:00

Amazon has made a kind of a silent success with the Kindle reading tablet. Apple has got a lot of publicity for its music distribution system, but the Kindle is a bit more anonymous.

What I did not know until a coworker told me the other day was that Amazon also distribute the Kindle reader as an application for iPod/Pad, Mac, Android and Windows. In effect, what Apple did for music distribution, Amazon has done for books.

The service is really fascinating. Amazon.com has, at the time of writing, 580,208 titles in the Kindle eBooks store. There are 6,091 titles published the last 30 days alone, of all kinds: "How to write a sentence: And how to read one", "The Day After the Dollar Crashes: A survival guide for the New World Order" and "Two to love [nights in bliss]" all listed in sequence if you wish. It's like a kind of treasure hunt in an old book store, the only difference being these are new titles!

When you find a book that seems interesting, you can download a sample (the first few chapters) and read a bit, just like in a real bookstore. The only difference is that you can be anywhere; on the train, bus, airport or the beach. Never again a day with no book to read!

Sadly, both Apple and Amazon have chosen to ignore users of Linux. But there is a difference: Using Wine it is possible to run a lot of windows applications on Linux, and while iTunes runs badly in Wine (if at all), the Kindle reader flows like a breeze on even a slow netbook. And when we talk about books, a netbook is really the second best thing after a real kindle tablet....

After getting a preview or buying a book, it is synchronized to your home folder in the Kindle reader.

Lyra, my MSI Wind Notebook, is running Ubuntu 10.04 Netbook Edition. It's a tiny 10" 1 kg thing, not very fast, but each time I try to put it away on the shelf to use a more powerful computer I find myself returning to it in within a week. Its just so functional when it comes to surf, email and write on that I can't seem to live without it. And I am sure that Kindle will make it even more indispensable.

Amazon has made a very functional GUI. When you are reading, you can put the book up on full screen, so that nothing else disturbs the mind. Instead of scrolling you turn the pages one after another, and that really makes for easy reading.

There is one major difference between iTunes and the Kindle book store: While Apple has abandoned their copy-protection scheme, Kindle books are only usable on readers connected to your Amazon account. There seems to be ways to break this scheme, but I guess it's not really worth it. With books selling for less than US10, it's less than half the price of buying the same soft-cover book in Norway.

I am now starting on chapter 5 of "Eat, Pray, Love", the first eBook I have purchased on Amazon. (Btw, the literal Norwegian translation of the title is "Eat, Love, Live"; I suppose Pray is not really as catchy here in Europe as it is in the US.) Anyway, Lyra and me will hit the sack really soon now; I think I want at least one chapter before I close my eyes:-)

The Art Maze - simply amazing

2011-02-05T10:06:00.000-08:00

Fuschia Nightfire,my first artist friend in SL, recently participated in an exhibition called the Art Maze. Migina Miklos, RAG Randt and Neeks Moonshadow was the other participants that I noticed, but there may have been more. Unfortunately, this wonderful build was dismantled before I managed to publish this post, but I am so happy to have kept several photos of it that I like to share.

From the starting point, a pink tunnel leads down into the underworld

Fuschias sculptures really shows their true beauty in this environemt

What a way to display a really huge lady!

Behind a dark wall I discovered this cave

Bricks floating in the air - this is just so wonderful NPIRL

A dark and scary tunnel leads to....

... an amazing underworld sea!

Sitting on a leaf in a cave, pondering the wonderful world of virtuality, was a real treat.

Not to mention sailing on one in the swift stream :-)

And finally floating in the space above I was free to marvel of the artists involved

One thing that really amazed me was the clever use of space; being able to accommodate such a large set of displays on a rather small parcel was surprising. Apart from that, the texturing was superb, and all the caves really felt like caves; not a square prim in sight:-) And while the build did contain pieces of art, like sculptures and paintings, this is more of a case where the build itself becomes art. Simply amazing.

There is a page with videos from the build: https://sites.google.com/site/artmazeinsecondlife/home/art-maze-videos

If you ever get a chance to see any exhibition by these talented builders and artist, don't miss the opportunity. Fuschia currently has an exhibit called 'Virtual Unreality' at the Fruit Islands Art. This exhibits closes at the end of the month, so make sure to pay it a visit before then!

Second Life on a stick

2011-02-04T07:08:00.000-08:00

Ener Hax has written several great blog posts about running your own OpenSim server on a memory stick. In this post, the focus is not OpenSim, but Second Life.

Obviously, Second Life's sims and servers resides at some computer center operated by Linden Lab, and can't be put on a stick (at least not by us). But the second life CLIENT, along with a suitable operating system, like Ubuntu Linux, CAN be installed on a stick.

Why would I want to do that? Well, my rather security-concious employer has issued me with a laptop that is completely locked down when it comes to installing and running unauthorized applications. And Second Life, being officially categorized as a game by our firewall vendor, is definitely a no-go. So to avoid having to lug around with two computers when I get to spend a night at a hotell and want to go inworld, I need a free OS on my laptop.

The trick that worked for me was to actually remove the hard drive from the laptop and boot the laptop with an Ubuntu install CD. Then I inserted a 16GB memory stick, and started the Install.

This procedure also works for an external USB hard drive, btw, and since a HD is generally faster than a flash disk memory stick, you get a better result.

When the install is done, I just put the hard drive back in place again. So now, whenever I want a free computer, i just hook up the usb disk and hit escape when starting the PC. This gives me a choice to boot from the USB stick, and it boots Ubuntu Linux with Second Life installed.

There are a few tuning tasks that must be completed for this setup to work well.

First, you need to define a RAM disk to use for caching and temporary file storage. USB memory is not very fast, and if you let SL store it's cache on the stick there will be a rather annoying pause every few seconds. Codfather has a nice blog post about how to do this, including how to set up Firefox to use the RAM disk. In the Second Life client, you choose preferences, Setup, and set Cache Location to /var/ramdisk.

Then, you need to disable some services normally running in the background, all of them creating disk wait situations. Go to System->Settings->Startup programs and disable things like disk warnings, external desktop, Evolutin warnings, update warnings, print services, check for new devices and Ubuntu One.

Apart from the fact that this is a typical business PC, not very suitable for running 3D graphics stuff like SL, this setup works unbelievable smoothly. Running on low graphics, tuned a bit up with 184 meter draw distance, I get an average framerate of 11, which is quite useable.

I had a wonderful morning in SL today using this setup, and I hope it won't be the last!

New SL Hardware

2011-01-21T13:17:00.000-08:00

One of the things that has made me so tired of SL lately is a steadily decline in performance from the laptop I use most often for SL. The way my friends list is just full of "loading". The way it slows down to a crawl.

So this week I rezzed a new graphics card for my desktop computer, and now I am testing out different OS-es and viewers. Fun really! I hope that I soon will be ready to really explore SL again!

I started out with Ubuntu 32 bits, but as I had some crashes when flying over sim crossings in my beloved but oh so demanding estate of Winterfell (well, not really mine, I just live there...), I switched to Windows 7. Same shit. So now, the 64 bit version of Ubuntu is wading into the hard drive, and I am kind of excited about how that will work!

When testing, I was kind of impressed by Kirstens latest viewer. It's got the viewer2 GUI with some twists, so it works a lot better. The dreaded sidebar and all the GUI windows are transparent, for instance. And I love the slider at the top of the window that controls your draw distance without the need to open the Settings dialog.

Anyway, the card gives some awesome pictures of the world on the 24" screen, so it's a lot of fun! Stay tuned!

52 1/2 of 52 1/2 - A year gone by

2010-12-03T08:01:00.000-08:00

Looking peaceful from a distance, but try to walk close...

One year ago, I was going to close down this blog. I felt out of inspiration, empty of things to write about, and generally fed up with virtual worlds. Then I got a few unexpected comments that somehow lifted the confidence in my own writing, and inspired me to start again. So I set myself a challenge: To write at least one blog post a week for a whole year.

One year later, the count is 99 posts. It's done!

Google Analytics is an interesting tool. I don't have hundreds of readers, but it tells me that during this year, people from 64 different countries have visited my blog. That's kind of awesome!

During this year, my interest in SL and virtual worlds have changed. When I started my challenge, I found it more fun to write about SL than actually living it. Now I feel that my need is more back to exploring the world instead of writing about it. More about making stuff instead of takings snapshots for the blog.

It's like I have written myself back to SL. Even if I still have too little time to spare for it. Work is taking a lot of time and attention these days.

I have also taken a few steps out of SL and into the OpenSim environment by getting my own sim in ReactionGrid. I have a building project there that suffers of a serious lack of progress.

Even if I love writing, it does take a lot of time. I tend to formulate and reformulate a lot, even if the result is rather far from Shakespeare's English.

The net result of all this is that I won't repeat my commitment for periodic postings on this blog. No, it won't disappear, and I will still write from time to time, but next year will be more inworld focused (at least that's what I hope:-).

There are so much to see! So many gifted people doing awsome stuff in lots of different worlds. I so want to see it all.....

Feathers Boa has an awsome exhibit at Four Island North. It shows how virtual world art can be of a quality matching the best of RL, and also surpass it because of the added possibilities the grid makes possible. It's deeply moving too. Do go take a look.

And this I guess is what will happen to my blog. 2011 will be the year of virtual art and art alone. I will write when I find something awsome worth sharing, and I hope some of you might find that interesting.

So there we go. A year has gone by. A new one is starting. I do look forward to what it will bring!

52 of 52 1/2 - Shamen Gallery reopens!

2010-11-26T12:29:00.000-08:00

Really no reason for a gallery to be indoors - This is SL after all!

Back in July, I wrote about the closing of Shamen Galleries. That was a rather sad happening. So more the happy was I when Rune IM'ed me and told me about his plan to reopen for himself. He kindly asked me over to check out the place before the official opening on Sunday, November 28th (at 10:00 am SLT).

I arrived meeting him and Tegan Jenvieve chatting around in voice while playing backgammon. Now, for some reason, I am trying to force myselves to get familiar with Viewer 2, and doing voice there was a first-time. I spent several minutes trying to find out how to activate voice, only to conclude that there is no way to deactivate it. And the button has moved to the lower left, and stopped being a "hold down while you talk" kind of toggle. If you want to do voice, just click on Speak, the green light is lit, and you just talk. I had to admit the whole thing worked pretty smoothly, and it is a nice experience talking to people you meet. I do feel, however, that doing voice makes me loose some of the immersion. Voice becomes the main line of communication, and the avatar reduced to a kind of puppet. But in a lot of situations thats quite OK.

After telling me about his vision for the gallery, Rune called a nice turtle to show me around the lawn.

Anje Aichi has a nice series of female avatars - they kind of display some emotions and life that are very unusual in my experience.

Sandralee Palianta had some RL (almost) nudes (of herselves, if her profile picture tells the truth...).

He plans to have several exhibits where the visitor can participate in the art. There will be a permanent exhibit along with themed ones. The first theme is erotica, and this one will be open for the rest of the year.

One of Shamen Galleries great strength was the connections Rune and Cierra had with a lot of artists in SL. They allays seemed to be able to get both well-known and exciting new artists for their shows. It is a pleasure to see that Rune have not lost that network.

Fuschia is doing erotic art - thats new!

When I looked at them I thought "gee, these gives me sensations down my spine, whoever made those?", and when I did an Edit it was no real surprise that it was her. One of SL's greatest artists, she makes great art in all the different expressions she explores.

Also on show is some of the work she has done togheter with Tegan. A must-see. Tegan is the director of the new Shamen Galleries btw.

Bobbi Laval is a new artist for me, but I hope it will not be the last time I see her work.

There are lot of different artists' work around - and that's a big strength to this place.

I have always loved black rooms in SL, having built a few of them myself. Rune has made one too, and again Fuschia blows my breath away with her sculpture "forbidden fruit":

The fruit of passion burning violet

After the tour it was nice for a sore-foot avatar to just sit down and relax for a while. I'm glad the SL community still have people like Rune and Tegan, artists and hopefully a lot of visitors:-) All people with a genuine love of life, beauty and art that makes this such a unique place to be.

51 of 52 - just a nice morning walk

2010-11-18T02:33:00.000-08:00

I just love Winterfell....

50 of 52 - Aristocratic Rezday and Blogger Pessimism

2010-11-10T21:28:00.000-08:00

When the Ladies and Gents in Winterfell get together to celebrate a 5-year rez day, it's rare to spot an ARC below 2000.

There are a lot of negative blog coverage about SL and LL these days. The lab goes through all the typical pains any upstart business settling down does, and that is bound to create frustrations amongst a lot of their customers. This, in combination with a more mature OpenSim technology, has led to a certain exodus from Second Life to other worlds.

But it's actually just a certain. The statistics in HyperGrid Business shows that the total growth in virtual worlds is more than 10 times larger than the decline in SL regions. 1605 regions increase in OpenSim based worlds versus 137 lost from SL.

A sim is not a sim, as Ener loves to say, but even so these numbers indicate that virtual world usage is rising. And for those of us that loves these fairytale places thats a good sign!

The single most interesting strategic decision that Linden Lab will need to make during the next few years is weather to embrace or resist the OpenSim ecosystem. There are several interesting options available for them. They can choose to work with a few major OpenSim Grids to allow hypergrid and asset transfer to and from SL. They can themselves offer lower-cost OpenSim based regions integrated with Second Life. Or, at the extreme end, they can try to convert the Second Life world to OpenSim. True, that would be a huge project, probably too huge, but it all depends on the will.

From the IT world, an example comes to my mind.

IBM, faced with the growth of the free Linux operating system and the Java language, both competing with their proprietary systems, have chosen to embrace and offer these technologies as an alternative to their own. And it seems they are having great success with both lines.

So I think thats the middle ground that the Lab ought to run for: Work with and extend the OpenSim product. Offer OpenSim Grids with the competitive edge of being able to interact with the Second Life grid. And perhaps do that together with some OS grid operators.

Ladies and Gentleman, a toast for the future of virtual worlds:-)

49 of 52 - Stacking Prims

2010-11-03T02:48:00.000-07:00

Victorian outfit for a Victorian Castle Builder

SL's model of payment for server space is the use of Prims. The price of a Prim vary, as do the amount of land you get for each prim. In a normal SIM, prims and land are tied together with the constant of 2,295 sqm/Prim. This is actually a fairly high value compared to the real world, and it limits the level of 3D detail that can be recreated virtually. As I am writing this, I am looking at the bookshelf in my living room (a home-made 28 prim piece LOL) that contains at least 400 prims worth of books and CD's. And there are lots of other stuff in here that would require lots of prims to recreate truly. Even being a bit conservative, this 32 sqm room contains at least 1000 prims, requiring the constant of just 0,032 sqm/prim. Thats two orders of magnitude better resolution than SL, and if it where to be matched would require each sim to hold 2 million prims instead of 15.000.... Virtual worlds still have a long way to go!

To cover up this loss of details, builders commonly paints what should have been individual prims onto a surface; that is a complete bookshelf with books is just 1 prim with 2 different textures: Front and sides.

The same things happens with prefab houses. Builders draws windows and other details on textures. This looks nice from a distance, but close by you notice the lack of true 3D windowposts and the like. Also, most prefabs I have seen using this technique has a kind of "blurry" feel.

Anyway, building my own homes I prefer to build using discrete prims. So, in my castle-in-spe, the thin glass window prims are truly recessed into the thick stone walls. And since all the windows uses the same texture, and all the walls are using the same texture, the viewer can render the outside walls of the castle loading just 2 different textures, even if the layout of the walls vary. This leads to faster rezzing.

Meshes might change all this, allowing us to create true 3D details without using prims. However, it seems that the lab will still count "equivalent prims" - that is one mesh object will count as several prims. Noone knows these rules yet, but I do hope they do not "punish" detailed 3D design too much. If they do, we will still get prefabs with painted windows, and that would really be a vaste of this new technolog.

But I think stacking prims will still be the most engaging way to build!

48 of 52 - Writers block

2010-11-03T02:45:00.000-07:00

So after 48 weeks, I have failed. One complete week and no posting on the blog. My only comfort is that earlier this year I have actually posted more than once a week.

SL is kind of depressing sometimes. Friends disappears. Old places vanishes.

But new people and fantastic creations surfaces too, so I guess the future is not all that bad.

47 of 52: House of Cards @ Burnning Man

2010-10-18T06:11:00.000-07:00

Miso Susanowa, Xenophile Neurocam and Trill Zapatero has made an interesting build on the Burning Man grounds: House of Cards. To quoute:

House of Cards:

The History of Social Networks

Considered As A House of Cards

The theme and inspiration of this build is based on personal experience
in the growth stages of the social networking scene leading
up to Second Life and the present virtual worlds.

Beginning with the earliest BBS and MUD environments, through the
VRML and 2D progenitors of the mid-90s to the current VWs, the
birth and growth of virtual worlds and communities is imagined as a
tenuous structure: a house of cards.

An Avatar has climbed these shaky and transitive platforms and is
reaching for the future hypergrid/worlds.

Inside, the build is decorated with screen shots and other materials from old virtual environments. Also, there are animated texts and other effects floating all around.

There is an extensive sound environment inside the build, so please turn up the sound if you are normally wandering SL as a deaf (like I do at the office LOL).

The terminal gives you a notecard with more info

I found the idea quite interesting: That SL is just the top card in the stack (for now) in a big house of earlier attempts to create an immersive environment. Some day, SL will be as old-fashioned as text-based MUDs feels today.

Now, MUD ruled some 25 years ago. That makes you think, because who can imagine what kind of environments will we have 25 years in the future? Will we even be able to detect any difference between our first and second lives? And how will that impact how we live them?

Follow the white rabbit! This is an innovative build well worth seing!

46 of 52: Viewer 2 and "fast fun easy": One of three isn't that bad?

2010-10-15T13:35:00.000-07:00

I could hardly believe it, but when trying out the latest Viewer 2 on Lyra (my tiny netbook), it actually outperformed Imprudence on frame rates! Even in the sculpt-heavy estate I live in it was easy to move around.

Viewer 2 still ain't fun and it still ain't easy, but one of three is at least something:-)

45 of 52 - Linden Lab and Moore: Do they keep up?

2010-10-10T06:50:00.000-07:00

In 1965, Intel Co-funder Gordon E. Moore formulated what has later been known as Moore's Law: The number of transistors we manage to squeeze into an integrated circuit doubles each year. In 1975 he amended it a bit, reducing the growth rate to a doubling in two years. A colleague of his factored in the performance gain made from this, and predicted that the performance of computer components doubles every 18 months.

In practical terms, it means that if you buy a new computer every 3rd year, you would expect a 4-times increase in performance if you run the same programs. Often enough, you don't, because the new computer comes with a new version of Windows that consumes even more of the machines resources, but that's another story LOL.

I've been in SL for 3 years now. And I wonder: Has Linden Lab kept up with Moore's Law? Have Second Life performance doubled twice the last 3 years?

It's easy to forget how bad things where in "the good old days". I could never expect to be able to be online for more than an hour at a time without crashing. Several times a month, the whole grid would be down because of unexpected or (sometimes) planned maintenance. Remember the pictures of the monkeys: Clearly inspired by the novel 2001 by Arthur C. Clarke, it was clear to all that Linden Lab was run by cool people who also knew their sci-fi literature. It kind of made us all happy to feel that we lived in a world where our creators was still busy shaping it.

I have not seen this picture for ages. One reason might be that the grid is almost never down anymore; clearly a performance increase we all love, even if it is seldom prised. And when we talk about performance: It's now generally possible to walk around a dense club with 40 other avatars with no problems. In short, a SIM mostly just works. I remember my first beach party; we where about 15-20 people, and everyone was happy about how smooth things worked: Somehow, 20 people in a sim was a great feat! Sure, nowadays we complain when 80 people tries to get all their attachment in at the same time, and long for the day when technology will allow 40.000 people in one place, but the hard fact is that NO VIRTUAL WORLD IN EXISTENCE TODAY OUTPERFORMS SL. So yes, actual capacity has at least doubled.

When I joined SL, median concurrency was around 30.000. During the next 18 month, that figure doubled to more than 60.000. So, at least during that time, Moore's law held true.

Since then, concurrency have flattened, to say it nicely, but somehow I feel that technology is not to blame for that.

A more important reason for the absence of the monkeys, however, is that the Lab has somehow "grown up", no longer profiling themselves with these kinds of images. And it seems to me that this is what the long-term residents and bloggers miss the most: The feeling of being "pioneers", of being loved by the kings and the queens and the demigods that used to be around.

Now, we have a world with a few well-defined options for server space rentals; options that has mostly remained stable during the three years I've been in SL. As we are used to when we order a web hotel or a virtual server on the net, we use automated systems that fixes everything, and have no rational need for a spike-haired arch-angel to show us around or care deeply about what we do.

Is that the simple reason while SL is not growing anymore? Because we just miss the monkeys and the punkhead CEO and the magic bean plants growing outside Gov' Lindens mansion?

Whatever, in 3 years I expect to be able to invite at least 160 people to my 6-years day!

44 of 52 - Three years in SL

2010-10-02T01:25:00.000-07:00

There is a certain tradition of jumping naked from the sky on your rezday. It's supposed to make you reflect on your second life, what it's worth to you and to help you decide whether or not to go on with it.

What to say: Those incredibly hot pictures was snapped on the office computer, and the office is now a week away LOL. So I'm sorry to say you all have to miss my naked butt falling down on the Winterfell estate.

That ought to make you happy:-)

So, my forth year in SL started by looking at the beauty of the sea and the green and my naked ass. Sounds quite appropriate.

To see what the future might hold, I then decided to try the Display Name feature. Fired up an old alt account, logged into the dreaded Wiewer2 GUI and managed to find the correct button. Just to get a grip on how it would feel, I set my real life name as display name and started to walk around.

Yes, if ever one can talk about avatar identity, it was a bit lost now. This was just me, walking around the project grid. When this is going to the main grid, I will definitively explore this further - it somehow felt rather cool.

I see the attraction for some "serious use" of virtual worlds. If ever SL will be the platform of choice for such use. Of course, in OpenSim, you can register any name you like, so this is really not needed, except perhaps for the unicode possibilities.

This was a kind of hasty and messy post, I guess a bit like how my SL feels right now. Now it's on to a RL vacation instead:-)

43 of 52 - Living IRL in San Fransisco

2010-09-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

Live music in RL too! Sound level unreachable in SL at home, a fact my neighbors probably appreciates...

This week has actually been very busy blogwise, even if none of you my ignored faithful readers here would have noticed. Attending the Oracle OpenWorld conference in SF, I have made 20 RL blog posts in 4 days, actually right now I'm starting the 21th... Ok, it's mostly technical, but there are exception, like the event yesterday at Treasure Island, where the Black Eyed Peas set the night on fire:-) Hmm, Cristopher would have liked to be there too!

Now, are there any relevance between this conference and virtual worlds? Actually, there are several!

Regarding content, it seemed to me that the musicians and dancers in the Black Eyed Peas had costumes one normally only see in virtual worlds:-)

Cloud Computing is a major theme this year, and any OpenSimulator based world with intention of growing towards the size of SL will need this kind of technology to be able to scale.

The third facet is that Oracle, afterbuying Sun this year, also owns the MySQL database engine. And MySQL is actually used by both Second Life and OpenSimulator-based grids to keep track of all the items in world and in our ever-growing inventories. So it's good to be ensured of the continued support and development of this product.

The last point is that Linden Lab's HQ is actually just down the street from the hotel, but more of that in another post, when I get home and get the Jet-lag out of the body:-)

42 of 52 - What's the carbon footprint of an avatar?

2010-09-15T03:00:00.000-07:00

Sitting on the bus the other day, feeling very environmentally friendly (/me not flying around like in RG), I started to wonder about the impart virtual worlds and avatar has on the world.

To find out if avatars have a carbon footprint at all, we need to look at servers. Boring square boxes with expensive components that runs our world. If you don't love the look of a data-center in the dark, feel free to jump to the conclusion at the bottom:-)

The main component in a server is the CPU/Processor. It's the closest thing to a brain that a computer has. Back in the dark ages of the beginning of the PC era, a CPU was only capable of thinking of one task at a time (some say that's typically male:-) ). Todays processors have several "cores", that is, they are capable of running several tasks at the same time, thus somehow acting like several processors on one chip (not unlike some woman I know....).

The Second Life server software runs one full region per dedicated CPU core, while 3 homesteads or 4 openspaces shares a core. Doing some simple math, we find that the grid as of today demands 24.500 CPU cores. In addition, there are database clusters, inventory servers, login servers, web servers, development servers, the aditi test grid, and so forth. To keep it simple, we estimate 5.500 cores for these, giving us a need of 30.000 CPU cores.

A modern server deploys 2 6-core CPUs in a 1U rack mounting for a total of 12 cores per server. This gives us a need for 2.500 servers. To be able to visualize the volume of servers: 2500 servers needs 55 full-height racks, or a row of lockers around 30 meter long.

A typical "pizza-box" server - the hei1ght is commonly measured in U - this is a 1U server holding 12 full sims!

Our hero system admin has servers stacked closely in racks.

Alternatively, 2500 servers is about the equivalent of a so-called "cloud container" - a kind of superserver installed in a housing the size of a 40 foot container, designed for huge datacenter usage. One interesting aspect of these containers is that they are designed for out-door operations, to get the benefit of free cooling. So, next time you encounter a 40 feet container (the long ones), you can think that as of today, this is the smallest box our world can fit into.

Unfortunately, most of Second Life probably runs on older servers, perhaps with just dual core CPUs, making it a potential total of 7.500 servers or 170 racks in an 85 meter row..

Is this how Second Life looks like?

7.500 servers each taking 200 watt power and 200 watt cooling consumes 3 million watt, or 26 million kWh per year. Thats a lot of power, but it's actually a lot less that the viewers! If we assume a mean login concurrency of 60.000, each running on a PC consuming on average of 150 watt, we must add a whopping 79 million kWh per year for a total of 105 million kwh per year.

That's the equivalent of 5200 average Norwegian households, or a bit less than 20.000 people. Considering that second life is the home of more than 500.000 avatars logging in at least once every week, this means that an avatar consumes just 4 percent as much power as a human being, or about 210 kWh/year. Add to this the fact that an avatar seldom drives a car, and when they do it's always a zero-emission vehicle, so maybe it's not too bad:-)

According to this report, the mean carbon footprint per kWh in the US was 1.4 pounds in 1999. Converting to metric, it gives each avatar an average carbon footprint of 133kg/year, or 0.15 metric tons. To visualize that, my medium-sized car, running 20.000 km/year, has a carbon footprint of 4.55 metric tons.

An avatar has a carbon footprint of 0.15 metric tons a year!

So yes, an avatar actually have a measurable carbon footprint, but fortunately it's a lot less than us human. For me, using the my bike just 2 km/day instead of the car would offset my avatars carbon footprint (not to mention giving me a body he would envy me lol). Anyone up for that challenge?

41 of 52 - The Traveller

2010-09-09T13:36:00.001-07:00

Hermes Kondor is an artist I discovered a long time ago. He describes himselves as

"Spiritual healer
Student of Spirituality
Digital artist
Professional Photographer, in RL and SL"

I am impressed with his used of colors; vivid and strong, yet not over the edge. The motives are often a bit mysterious; focusing on spirituality and (as I feel it) space. His new exhibit, The Traveller, is really a must-see. Grab the taxi and discover your own spirituality.

I'm off for some live music; Max is in town:-)

40 of 52 - And what about Open car rental?

2010-09-03T05:41:00.001-07:00

It's certainly big, but where is the engine?

Imagine a world where the sole inventor of cars are the only one producing them, and they are making them for rent only. Part II (Part I here).

A few years ago, Linden Cars decided to publish the blueprints for the dashboards in their cars. At the time, they felt that innovation was needed because frankly, even if their cars was OK, the dashboard was dull blue with some rather old-fashioned rounded buttons. True enough, before long, several people was making their own dashboards and contributing improvements to the official one.

Although mostly beneficial, it's a bit risky retrofitting your car with a new dashboard. Not long ago, the makers of a very clever green-colored dashboard decided to have some fun. They incorporated an auto pilot that started the car while the person renting it was sleeping, running it over to a rival car designers house to let i stand in the courtyard, flashing the lights and honking the horn. At times, the poor guy could not get out of his own house because of all the cars flooding it. As a result, Linden Cars have discourage users from using that particular dashboard.

While allowing people to use third-party dashboards, the car maker has also tried to make a new dashboard by themselves. Hiring a bicycle designer called "Strange Spaceship", they made Dashboard 2.0 with a non-transparent head-up display that hides the complexity of the roads from the driver, giving her instead lots of tabs with illogical symbol that lists her phone directory and the content of the trunk. Needless to say, the controversial design has lead to a number of accidents, and most new renters of linden cars now retrofit their vehicles with an independent dashboard.

But back to the cars. Some clever people also noted that when they had the blueprint for the dashboard, they could use that information to figure out how the rest of the car was working. Being a bit tone-deaf they choose a manufacturing method called C#, set up a project and a few years later the alpha version of the blueprints was ready. OpenCar was born.

You too can put together an OpenCar in the basement, but it's really hard to keep it running. So most people choose to rent one. Several independent but small outlets have blossomed, promising big car experiences for small money.

Most OpenCars sports an enormous trunk of 4500 liters, and you can have them for as little as US$10 a month. On the other hand, they don't come with an engine. Being quite a modern concept, they draw their power from a shared engine in the sky. Trouble is, if you pack your car with 4 cubic metres of family luggage, and fills it up with kids and a husband, you might not get enough power to make the car move at all. This has led to people renting up to 16 cars at once to ensure they have the sole use of one cloud engine.

Another challenge with renting an OpenCar is that the blueprints are not finished yet. This means that you might start your car in the morning, discovering that the pedals have been replaced by a flight stick overnight, or that the trunk is suddenly in the front of the car in stead of the back, but a lot of people find this just fun.

No-one knows when the OpenCar concept will be more stable, or how long Linden Cars can keep ahead of development. Also, some people are thinking of abandoning cars, finding them rather old-fashioned. An upstart maker of flying saucers have been given lot of attention lately, together with a company that wants us to sail instead of drive. Needless to say, life on the move has never been more fun!

Sometimes turning around is wise

2010-09-03T01:42:00.001-07:00

Apple has released a new version of iPod Shuffle. The previous one (on the right) was even smaller and had no control buttons, somehow culminating the trend towards minimalism that this product has developed through.

So, it seems that the lead innovator in GUI design has discovered that it has somehow made a bad design decision with this product. The interface was perhaps too simple for a good first-hour experience?

As Gizmodo said it: "If you need something like this for exercise, or if you just hate the fact that there are no buttons on this one, buy the last-gen shuffle before they're all gone, or wait till next year when Apple changes its mind. To tell the truth, this new shuffle is just okay. We don't know what kind of a statement they were trying to make with it, but suffice it to say, the message wasn't received."

Now, this kind of feedback reminds me of how Viewer 2.0 was received. Add to this the fact that 2.0 is used by less than 20% of the labs customers, and that it has not increased the user retention rate notably, it makes me wonder: When will the Lab do as Apple has just done: Realize it's threading the wrong path, and turn around? And when it does, will they be able to make an innovate back turn?

/me can hardly wait :-)

Because what we really want is this: Not just a U-turn back to the 1.23 GUI, but something with the "I just want this" feeling. Like Apple just did when combining the "new" retro-shuffle design with the iPod Nano screen. That's sexy! Just like we want Second Life to be!

39 of 52 - What if Linden Lab was a car rental company?

2010-08-30T01:00:00.000-07:00

Having just spent some RL time (not to mention money lol) to buy a replacement for the 1o-year-old-car-that-had-a serious-oil-leak thing, it seemed a bit natural to apply that experience to virtual worlds.

Imagine a world where the sole inventor of cars are the only one producing them, and they are making them for rent only.

So you want a car too? For some reason or another, no-one is actually selling a complete car. Sure, all the parts are available, some even for free, but putting together your own car has always been a hassle.

That leaves you basically with two choices: Linden Cars and Open Cars.

Linden Car offers 3 different models (Full, Home and Open). They are all extremely popular, well built and whenever you go to a Linden Car event, you get to meet a lot of people. If you want to manufacture and sell equipment and gadgets for Linden Cars, you have to rent from them to be allowed access to their marketplace.

The full car is black, big and powerful - you know you want one!

The Full car has a 1500 liter trunk, one-time rental fee of US$1000, and a monthly fee of just US295. In theory, it accommodates up to 5 passengers, but in practice it's slowing down when it carries more than 3.

The Home car is slick and fast, but don't carry much load

If you can't afford 295 a month, there are cheaper models available. The Home model has a smaller trunk, just 375 liters, and it's a two-seat model only. Even smaller, the Open car has just one seat and a mere 75 liter trunk, really just suitable to shop some nice-looking flowers at the local store.

The Open car: Mostly a toy

To get one of the small models, for some reason you have to rent a Full car also. This has led to a marked where owners of the Full model are sub renting their Home rentals, though this does come at a premium. Even if an Open model is just US$125 / month, you normally have to pay 150 to sub-rent it.

All Linden models include free mileage and gas, which is nice since a Linden car can't be stopped - it's engine is always running even when it's parked overnight. Being an environmental-aware guy or gurl (Calefornian?) you may worry about this a little bit, but since gas is included in the rent most people seems not to care.

Initially, Linden Car was the only car-maker in the country. In later years, a number of smaller companies have started to offer cheaper models based on the Open Car standard. In my next posting I will have a look at that market too.

RL Interludes

2010-08-29T13:20:00.000-07:00

A glimpse from my RL: After a 2 hour walk in the wood, I came here:

OK, so it's by the parking lot, but I DID walk two hours before returning here...

We all need breaks to be able to function as human beings. Be it a 1 minute timeout in the handball game, a 5 minute coffee break, a 1 hour lunch, 2 hours of solitude beneath the trees, a weekend away from work or a months holiday in the sun, breaks are a necessity for us. Because of how our minds and bodies work, we tend to dig ourselves into holes where there are no longer any know exit. That is, until we start to think about something else for a while.

Putting life into perspective, I think it's called.

I can't say anymore that I take a break from virtual worlds, because they have become my breaks. A year ago, that was not the case, and I sometimes miss the exciting feeling of thinking about SL day and night, logging on every time I had a possibility to slip away from my life, but at the same time I fear it.

Night Flower recently returned from a 17 month break from SL. Her pen being as sharp as it ever was, she continues to write very personal from her life. In her NWN blogpost, she writes:

"The wiser, truer part of me takes Night's hand, and settles in to reminisce about old times, wrapped in the warm glow of a virtual sunset."

Sometimes a break need to be really long to work. Welcome back to our world Night; I hope you will be happy:-)

Btw, I really disagree with Soror Nishi in her post where she "...denounce the illusory myth of the Integrated Personality". She says "For one person to demand that the other give up using, say, the phone as it is destroying their lives is clearly rubbish, why would SL be any different?".

I say that virtual worlds ARE different from almost any other media or entertainment. The illusion of reality it creates can be so powerful (partly because lot's of it are not illusions, there are real people behind the keys also!) that it has the strength to tear your person in two.

When you feel that your life is just a shadow of what it could be because you are mentally away most of the time, you do need to take steps to realign yourselves with your shadow. You need to be one and whole to be happy.

Aw, enough crap:-) Next post I ponder the question "What if Linden Lab was a car rental agency?"

Till then: Be happy!

/me playing with my shadow

38 of 52 - Enerville Gone (again, sigh)

2010-08-27T13:26:00.001-07:00

The straight edge is the result of a known OpenSimulator bug :-)

Ener has been tidying up her sims in ReactionGrid, even to the point of sinking the landscape down in the sea, as a sort of a sci-fi version of Atlantis. I won't call her silly - whenever I have left land in SL I have allways cleaned up after me. And while I don't loose sleep over Ener Hax (even if I prefer cognaq to martinis:-) ) it's a bit sad that Enerville is gone - again. Whenever I was a bit stuck in RG, I used to tour Enclave harbour just to loosen up and get some inspiration. Thanks for that, Ener! I will certainly start hypergridding in when new Atlantis has again risen from the virtual sea:-)

Still no waiter in this estate, and now I guess noone will ever come:-)

But there are other interesting places in RG. I decided to take a tour around the grid.

A Hebrew teacher is building this temple:

There is a recreation of the 1939 New York World's Fair (WF1)

Here are cities...

... and a small version of London :-)

Now, there are lots of these experimental build sim's (including mine, LOL), and I find it refreshing that lots of people are experimenting with virtual worlds, even if none of us are very professional builders. As a social and entertainment plattform, SL has reached a level of detail and quality in the content available that is unattainable for people who's main focus is not the creation itselves but the use of inworld build mechanisms in education or creativity. The SL tier price is just too high for non-professionals too. Somehow, OSGrid sims seems to have a focus on usability instead of impression; of being the work of involving teachers as a backdrop for their personal contact with their student; of being just pure joy of rezzing prims and feeling good about it.

Virtual worlds are evolving at every level - the future seems bright indeed!

The Emerald Mess and Trust in a virtual world environemt

2010-08-22T22:57:00.000-07:00

Since I mentioned the Emerald viewer in my post yesterday, I feel the need to raise a general warning about the use of 3rd party viewers.

All software you install on your PC is a potential security threat. There are a few technical security measures on modern operating systems (Linux, MacOS and Windows 7) that limits what an application can do without being given consent, but there is still a lot of headroom for creating havoc.

More specifically, any application can access the net, upload information and receive instructions on what to do without you knowing anything about it. So really, you are at the mercy of the supplier when it comes to your security on the net.

Last week, the head of the Emerald development team inserted code in the splash screen to facilitate a Denial of Service attack on a blog writer he had some grudges about. He misused the computers and network connections of EVERY Emerald user, making us all an unwilling tool for his childish prank. The Emerald project seems to be in deep shit right now, mostly because the lack of trust this incident have created.

But it could actually have been a lot worse. When you use any viewer to log into Second Life, you give that viewer total control over your account.

I don't know what security measures Linden Lab have on the server side, but in principle nothing is stopping malicious code inside the viewer to send your password to an external server, transfer money to another account, or use your avatar to send griefing IMs or do any action whatsoever.

Not only that, but nothing is stopping it from receiving commands from a central server in real time. This is an exploit normally known as a botnet.

It's a scary thought, but anyone with such a control over a popular viewer could actually destroy Second Life, or at least force the lab to roll back everything to last backup. Lets say someone managed to insert code into the latest release of the imaginary and very popular Pink (:-)) viewer: Two scenarios are particularly scary:

1. The bored prank's wet dream:
Sunday evening, with concurrency at its highest, every running Pink viewer starts to shuffle money around randomly to other Pink viewer users. If you have payment details on file, the viewer will buy as many lindens it can and transfer those too. The viewer deletes every no-copy item in anyones invent, and when it's done your avatar undresses, shows off a big Pink d**k, and jumps on the nearest avatar it can find. If that avatar too is Pink controlled, well, there is no telling what position they might start to use.... If you panic and close the viewer, another Pink users instance will log in your avatar as a bot, the bot will go around all your land, delete all builds, abandon all land, and the mad dance will continue until Linden Lab is forced to shut down the grid.

2. The cold criminal:
He is in this for the money. So, he will slowly tap accounts and buy lindens with your credit card, hiding the fact from the owner by displaying a fake sum in the top-right corner. If he is not greedy, he might be able to get real dollars out of SL before anyone raised the alarm.

To be sure, I will guess that Linden Lab has server-side and other operational security measures that may detect and stop such attacks, and there are technical and legal ways to find the ones responsible afterwards. Also, it will probably require too much work for anyone to fully exploit the possibilities. But they are scary enough even on a much smaller scale. So, using a 3rd party viewer really requires trust.

How do you find whom to trust? If the viewer is registered in the labs Third-Party Viewer Directory, then it's a sign that the authors are probably not going to mess with you (though it must be said that Emerald was on that list until recently:( )

This brings us directly to the core of trust in a virtual world where the only thing you know about a person is their avatar profile and the sum of all public statements they make: In blogs, on twitter and inworld.

Some viewer developers are active bloggers. I find that attitudes and expressions are rather exposing of the characters behind the av. There are developers I trust and developers I don't trust. I can't tell you who you should trust, because you have to make that choice by yourselves. I just wanted to tell you that yes: there are third-party viewers that is much better than the official ones, but you really do have to be a bit careful when choosing one.

37 of 52 - Art and Arms race?

2010-08-21T23:15:00.000-07:00

Finally back in SL - and trying to keep up with my blog, barely managing this weeks post ... I remember an old quarrel as to whether Sunday or Monday is the first day of the week. Since it suits me I am going to define that Sunday is the last day; that way I managed a post this week too!

The Emerald Viewer has taken the login page one step further. Instead of just showing a picture of some unknown beautiful place, there is a link that will bring you there when you log in - so simple and yet so powerful - that's a feature the lab should work on! But perhaps they just don't want to let the Emerald people head the development. Some more thoughts on that later.

Today the link took me to a place called Springfield Gardens. It's a beautiful garden with a gallery! Connie Arida had some nice works on display there, including a 1973 quote on the need for secondary worlds:

"Man needs a 'second' world, a world of humanity created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. 'Illusion' means creative play at its highest level."

Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (1973)

Really thought provoking!

The garden and the surrounding beaches are very well done - if you like the sea you will love the way the violent waves hits the rocks. It's a homestead; the owners welcome you to explore her art and her home. It's just such a prime example of what can be done with such a sim - it's just so sad that a homestead is just a bit too pricy for most people not aiming to make money in SL.

So what's up with the lab these days? SL enterprise is gone; educators are flocking to opensim grids, and viewer 2 gets more and more decimals: currently it's 2.1.1, but I'm still a grey cloud when I try to log in.. sigh...

The announcement of the new Display Name feature in SL made me suddenly think about the arms race between the US and the former Soviet Union during Reagan's presidentship. The tactic was to force the soviet to spend so much money on the military that the rest of the country would suffer so much that the government eventually would fail.

Now, the features Linden Lab has made lately (apart from the appalling viewer 2 GUI that is) does force the Opensim community to work on catching up with SL instead of introducing goodies for themselves. HTML-on-a-prim, the tattoo layer, new media interface and soon display names means that the lindens are again positioning themselves at the head of the race, using their sheer marked size to regain some control of the direction that virtual worlds will go.

Even after laying off the main developer, the lab claims that mesh import will come. Somehow I feel that this will be implemented slightly different than the Opensim modrex module, again forcing the OS community to redesign. Oh well. History has shown that server side, open software has prevailed. Opensim will be for virtual worlds what Apache is for the web server marked, and its success or failure will mostly depend on weather or not these kinds of immerse
environments will really be commonplace.

But back to viewer development: There is one single crucial difference between the efforts of Linden Lab and all the other viewers: Where all the rest focuses on features that are aimed solely at making a better product for the current users, LL focuses on expanding their marked. If the viewer 2.0 GUI gives them 2 new customers they don't care if they loose one. So they try to find a direction where they think these 2 new customers are. The danger in such a strategy is of course that you risk loosing the one you had and not gaining any new ones. The statistics don't show any huge growth of SL, and whenever I'm in-world using Emerald, it seems that about half of the people around me has ditched LL's viewer (for those that have not tried it, Emerald shows you what kind of viewers other people are using).

This is clearly a race. The Emerald people have introduced features like new attachment points only visible to other Emerald users that gives them a richer experience of SL than the official viewer. Now, LL is not going to stand and watch while an external group takes that kind of control over their product. My fear is that if viewer 2.0 adoption is still less than 10 percent at the end of the year, meaning they will have failed in the viewer competition, the lab will be tempted to use the TOS to clamp down on thrid-party viewer development further.

Seems there are interesting times ahead of us, to say the least. I am happy though that with Philip back on the helm, the lab is again focused on the consumer marked. I just hope they will keep focusing on the creative consumers, keeping it a world made by us, for us, and not going the Playstation Home route where everything is slick and smooth and thoroughly commercialised. Walking around there just makes me sad, because in contrast it so lifeless compared to both SL and the OS grids. No, I want worlds where Connie Arida and everyone else that finds joy in creating and showing off can do so even if there are no money in it for the entertainment industry. Luckily, it seems Opensim will make sure this will happen. It's up to the lab to decide if they want to be a part of it still:-)

36 of 52 - OpenSimulator Diva Release - Offline vacation post 2

2010-08-10T10:00:00.000-07:00

Riding a Hippo in my local world - part of the Diva fun

Having a private sim on your own PC can be very nice sometimes when you just need a place to break havoc of everything. OpenSimulator gives you just that possibility. I have done several OpenSim installations in the past, and though I always got them working it used to be a pain editing configuration files and getting all the components to work together.

Now, Diva Canto has put together a nearly complete release called Diva. The only manual steps you need to take to get it running is installing MySQL and using the console to create a database and a user. All the opensim config files are written by a simple config utility.

When it's all up and running, you log into a world with 4 regions configured in a single mega region; that means no region crossings when you fly around! (Megaregions is something sorely lacking in SL; it will allow much more seamless car and boat races for instance.).

Four of these islands makes up your starter world.

I loaded an .oar file exported from ReactionGrid; in less than 15 seconds my landscape and builds appeared.

Not much here yet; too many projects going on....

Even more impressive, the oar also contained a large skybox building ground:

Prototyping heaven...

When you run OS locally on your PC, you have full access to the console, and can make oar exports whenever you want. Low-end OS hosting providors often does not give you that possibility. Its a great way to Undo large changes to landscape and builds that where less than successful (and believe me, that happens all the time:-).

I feel that the 0.6.9 release of OpenSimulator is a kind of a breakpoint for this software. For the first time things seems to work seamlessly. OK, there may be more server crashes than in SL, but when it's running it's working as smooth as one can wish. Even with the region server running locally on the laptop, performance is great.

In addition to the server, Diva also distributes a large library of useful stuff, like nice trees (not to mention the Hippos:-) ). Yes, I can finally have a real forest sim!

When you build something on your PC, you may want to let other people walk around in your creations. There are (at least) two possibilities: Either get a sim in an OpenSim based grid and export your OAR to that sim, or use a tool like Stored Inventory to backup builds and restore them to any other grids (including SL!). If you buy the single avatar version, just remember to name your avatar exactly the same in every world (as if you did not do that already...). I have uses Stored Inventory a lot, and it's simple to use and works perfectly.

Have fun building!

35 of 52 - Live music - Offline vacation post 1

2010-08-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Joonie sendt a group message about a concert gig last weekend. It turned out it was a set of live-sendt sessions, streamed to SL on a big screen. Sadly, my early timezone made me miss all except an early jam session, but it was a nice expericene to be able to see the real musicians.

While pure SL sessions with avatars on stage is nice enough, you do miss the varied expressions of artists, probably because the animations normally used in such gigs are just repetitive steps and playing motions. There is a distinct lack of technlogy and awareness that would enable musicians in SL to express themselves more through their avatars.

For instance: The rythm in the music should be transfered to the animations, allowing movements syncronized with the beat. Singers should be able to guide the microphone and lower it in pauses. Different guitar playing movements playing in tune with the intensity of the music.

How nice that there are still areas of possible improvements!

34 of 52 - Winterfell to get a live music stage!

2010-07-28T23:30:00.000-07:00

A music-loving avatar just waiting for some live action

Serra Anansi has recently reorganized a few sims in the beautiful Winterfell estate (where I currently live). Now she has found room for a live music stage! And there is a competition for building it too. I think it's a great boon for the estate to have such a gathering point - in reality people are seldom "at home" in sl, so meeting neighboors are not too common.

Winterfell Building Contest

Are you up for a unique challenge? We are looking for a unique mix of steampunk, goth, and elven to be the stage and focal point of Winterfells newest addition; “Anodyne Garden - Winterfells Live Music Venue”. If you think you have a great idea for this unusual and fun stage, send us an entry! If your design catches our eye and fulfills the following criteria you will be awarded L$5000.

Criteria:
- Stage must be 15 meters wide by 7 to 8 meters deep
- Stage may be up to 150 prims
- No seating is required in the build
- Scripts are acceptable if kept to a minimum
- Coordinate with the existing build (textures and sculpts available upon request)
- Accentuate and highlight the view of the water way behind the stage
- Meld the unique styles of Steampunk. Goth (not vampire) and Elven in a pleasing way

Other Details:
- Entries must be sent to Serra Anansi by midnight August 3rd SLT.
- Designers may enter up to three designs
- Check out the location: SLURL
- L$5000 will only be rewarded if we receive a usable design (a winner is not guaranteed)
- Winner will be announced on August 4th
- Winning design must be presented (copy and mod) by 6th of August for instillation.

Thanks for your interest and have fun!
Miss Serra of Winterfell
serra.anansi@gmail.com

In memory of Shamen Galleries

2010-07-23T12:53:00.000-07:00

Rune Shamen and Cierra Loxely buildt and ran the Shamen Galleries. They always strived to attract the most amazing artists, but not only that: Using themes, they managed to make exhibits where the works of different artists buildt each other up. I will never forget the Religous themes exhibit for instance:

Now the gallery is no more. Cierra told me the reasons behind the closing, so I know this is not a bitter ending. No complaints about the lab, the lack of visitors or griefers. They have had a great time running the place and working with the amazing artists in SL.

Will I miss the place? That's for sure. But on these occations, it's important to focus on the positive. This couple has spent countless hours giving us amazing art experiences. I am grateful for that, not taking it for granted. Other projects and activites are lining up, and I know it's exciting and important stuff they will fill their lives with.

"Everything that has a beginning, has an end". Now, Cierra and Rune are cleaning the slate a bit, making room for new beginnings. And who knows, some time in the future one of those may bless us in SL again.

So thanks for all you gave us, and best of luck with all your plans!

Thread Softly on my SL Dreams

2010-07-20T01:59:00.000-07:00

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

--- William Butler Yeats

Julianna Jonstone has a great exhibition in the Palais Orleans Studio. Dreams, one of the pictures in the exhibit, has this beautiful poem of Yeats written in the background, in a print hardly readable. But that only made the discovery more joyful.

Dreams and Offering (not shown here because I won't scare off any nipple-sensitive americans, peace be with you all) is now on my wall because in combination they managed to make me understand AND feel how a loving bsdm relationship in SL could be.

It's true in any relationship that sometimes we do not tread softly, even if we really want to. But in SL, where a lot of the nuances in communication is lost because of the text-only medium, it's even easier to trample other's dreams with muddy boots. I find this poem a good reminder to be careful.

Go see this exhibit if the thought of some pencil-draw nude woman's breast don't make you uneasy. If it does, then I pity you; you should probably not read this blog but be content with Linden Lab's official sites, like SL7B.

33 of 52 - MOTD recommend estate rentals - Is it Philip back on the helm?

2010-07-19T01:23:00.001-07:00

For a long time, the Message Of ToDay has advertised for premium membership and Linden Homes. Suddenly, there is a change: Linden Lab actually recommends their major customers (estate owners) instead of their own underbidding offers.

If this is a management decision made by the new (old :-) ) powers that be in the lab, its a small but noteworthy step in the right direction. Because the one thing that keep people in SL more than any other factor is when they get involved in a community. And most successful communities are buildt around dedicated estate owners (like Sierra Anansi in Winterfell). They add the value needed for the SL product to be a success.

Think of SL as a tree: The roots are the technology, the trunk is the products that LL makes money on: Island rental, mainland tier, etc. But a beautiful tree needs lots of branches of various size and form, to support bird nests, tree houses and autumn leaves. In the periods of growth, these where provided by us, the residents.

Then the lab tried to make branches of its own: Bay City, Nautilus, Linden Homes. To a variety of degrees, these are new products that underbids competitors, because they are sold to end-users at tier levels lower than what estate owners are offered. But as all other LL mainland, they lack the day-to-day care of the land that only estate owners can provide.

When the lab starts to compete with their own major customers, forcing people out of the marked, they are essentially sawing off the branches they are sitting on, because an SL with just mainland would soon be deserted.

So, Philip, a small cheer from me for this move!

32 of 52 - On the move

2010-07-13T02:34:00.000-07:00

Lately, I have felt a little lost, living alone in a skybox above some crappy mainland. Some new neighboor at the place where I kept my shop and skybox home also started to pollute the area with tasteless particle effects LOL. So, I decided it was time to move again. Somehow, I keep dropping by the Winterfell estate, so when a search showed a free parcel there, I took the leap and started to move. Rezzing the skybox was rather painless, but moving all the artwork took a bit of time, jumping back and forth to get a few and putting them up on the wall at the same place. Cat and Fuschia in particular have made works that are not grouped, so moving them took a little careful prim manipulation.

Down on the ground it is beautiful green, with a wood and a seafront. My closest neighboor, Princess Ivory, has a cute little castle on the ground, and even has a nice blog! Hope to get to meet her some day:-)

For now, this means tirering down a bit in in SL, but since it's summer and lots of other stuff to do anyway that's OK. Not sure what to make on the ground yet, but I guess some idea will pop up soon enough!

31 of 52 - Movies and Virtual Worlds

2010-07-02T00:42:00.000-07:00

Wonder what Edward will do when I take his seat? /me needs a silver chained garlic

Sitting in the dark theatre the other night, watching vampires and werewolves tearing each other apart for the sake of pure drama (a girl, a boy going steady with the girl, another boy in love with the girl, and the widow of a boy killed by the boy going steady with the girl because he tried to kill the girl, and a boy in love with the widow who is just using him to get revenge on the first boy and the girl, LOL sounds like first-class SL drama to me), I began to think of the similarities between going to a movie and logging into SL.

Both experiences are trying to create an effect of immersion. Watching Eclipse, the third film in the Twilight series, it's easy to find yourselves in the head of Edward or Bella or Jacob (depending on your orientation I guess). You see what they see, experience the situations like they do, and don't know much more of what is happening outside of their fields of vision. The only thing lacking in the experience is the actual physical contact: The feel of the cold winter night, the heat of another persons skin close to you in a sleeping bag, the softness of the tender kisses in the fields of flowers.

I discovered that the feeling was not that different from the feeling of being inside the head of my avatar, watching events unfolding in front of me. I see what he sees, experiences situations like he does, and don't know much of what is happening outside his field of vision. The only thing lacking in the experience is the actual physical contact: The feel of sand between my toes, the heat of the sun as it rises from the sea, the softness of the tender kisses in the fields of flowers :-)

Yes, unlike SL, a movie has a script. But when you view a movie, you don't know. You just observe the actors following it. Just as you observe other avatars interacting with yours; they have motives and emotions that may not be scripted, but are just as unknown to you as the future actions of Bella and Charlie.

The real difference is of cource that you are not merely a spectator. You are an actor, equal in importance to the other persons on the screen. But unlike an actor, you have no script to support you.

Some would say that being immersed in SL is not an act. It's just living out your life in a different setting. But I would say that almost everyone I meet has some kind of filter between their avatars and their real self: They don't reveal their name, where they live, their phone number or RL email address. Some change gender and almost everyone is thinner and more muscular and good-looking than irl. Lots of people use SL as an escape from their lives and therefore really wants those filters. Just as we use movies as an escape from reality: For a short 2 hours we live in the woods around Fork or walk the purple forests of Pandora.

After the Avatar movie launch, there where several reports of depressive symptoms in people having seen the move: They becamse so owerwhelmed by the beauty of the Na'vi's world that they had a hard time leaving it. Some times, when I have to click the X and close down that field of flowers, I feel like that. There have been times when I could not manage to log in, just because I knew how the end of the session would feel.

But I guess I won't miss Breaking Dawn when it opens, just because it's a bit sad when it ends. So that's more of my virtual worlds attitude at the moment: Live the day!

In addition, there are the times you just use the viewer as a tool - creating environments, scripting, taking photos. To compare that to the movie world, its more like being a director or a camera man on the set - I guess they don't immerse themselves in the movie like the audience do at the end. Just as when I poor concrete into the feet of my oil rig in RG (LOL), the viewer is more of a tool like GIMP and avimator.

But now it's a nice summer day, so I will leave the computer in the trunk and get some real sand and sun and people close.

30 of 52 - Living in the shadows

2010-06-29T17:46:00.000-07:00

A transparent dome in the roof lets the sun through

Eners nice post made me want to try the shadows effect in the new Imprudence viewer. Somehow it sounded rather like a gimmick to me, but when I saw it in action it was actually kind of jaw-dropping. In the picture above, the shadow of the flags actually moves in sync with how the flag flows in the wind!

Sun shining on opposite wall through a slit window

It works dynamically when you build too; the shadow changes when you twist prims around.

The shadow in the middle of the picture is that of my low-hanging skybox!

In this pic, even my avatar has a shadow, and that too follows the movements of the limbs, and behave correctly when you fly. (It does disappear after a minute or two, but hey, this is experimental software, remember? :-)

Best thing is; it seems this requires very little GPU overhead. But it's adding a whole new level of realism to scenes; I'm really looking forward to a stable version of this feature!

Talking about shadows; today (June 30th) is opening day of Eclipse - the third Twilight novel. Yeah, I know, it's all teenager love and romantism, I should be too old for that kind of stuff, but I have to admit that I loved the books, and the first 2 movies have been a thrill.

So, what we all want now, is not just any shadow, but an actual eclipse. That will not happen until the rather over-simpliefied pattern of the moon allways rising when the sun sets is made more realistic. Will this be another first of OpenSim?

29 of 52 - Life in a thread

2010-06-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

I have often thought of Second Life as life hanging by a thin thread. It takes so little to disrupt it, to feel that the thread is almost breaking.

Lately, it seems that the gods of network and computing has conspired upon me to cut the connection. I wonder if I am somewhat cursed - every computer I try to connect to SL (or ReactionGrid for that part, poor Chris have had a hard time at the support desk LOL) seems to wither and die - and yesterday, when I was happy and finally had a screen giving me 30fps inworld, I managed to forget the modem at home... sigh...

Anyway, I guess that since the sun is shining and the day is a nice warm summer day, I should be outside building with real heavy wooden prims instead. I just miss some people....

The parts for a new VPN server has finally arrived; next week I will hopefully have a more stable network solution at work, and a more updated PC at home LOL. In the mean time, I'll go enjoy the sun.

Much have been said about our departed CEO, M. Much of what he tried to do with SL was not what a lot of us "hard-core" SL-er would like to see. But in his first year, he did manage to improve stability on the server side a lot - and for that at least I am thankful. Now, if Philip can just initiate a Viewer 3.0 with some stability and performance tricks up the sleave, like running 30fps on a modest laptop, HTML texture download, working through firewalls at port 80, facebook login (no, just kidding!), the combinded effect would be great!

RenderFarClip and BBBC6 - How has it been?

2010-06-21T01:50:00.001-07:00

Ener gave a nice tip on her blog a while ago: If you set Debug->RenderFarClip to a high value, you can see farther than the 512 meters that is max in Graphics Options.

I discovered today that in OpenSim sometimes you can see through non-existing regions too! If you look closely between the two windmills on the right, you can see some other mills near the horizon far behind: That's actually Ener's builds in Enclave Passage, 3 empty sims away:-)

BBBC, final topic:
Did you find this year to be harder or easier than previous years? Did you have fun? What did you get out of it this time around? Do you think you'd do it again?

I found some of the themes not harder perhaps, but a bit more thought-provoking. It's been fun, as it was last year, and I'd definitely do it again! Blogging a post each and every day is not something that I will manage (I just know that my enthusiasm for all things goes in waves, virtual worlds and blogs no exception). But it was nice to have a sort of "pressure" on me this week - even though it kind of broke apart at the end. It's also fun to read what other bloggers write about the same theme - I guess Zippora's post regarding crossing the SL-RL relationship border is the one I will remember best.

BBBC5: What't on my mind?

2010-06-17T14:28:00.000-07:00

I wanted to give you the reasons for the L$ fluctations, the secret of forever youth and tell you how to be rich and famous in Second Life. But right now I feel too tired:-) Some other time perhaps!

BBBC4: Forever Young?

2010-06-15T22:13:00.000-07:00

Today's challenge: Is your avatar more or less your current biological age? Do you portray a younger avatar, or older? Why is this?

Who is he trying to impress?

When I shaped my av, I wanted to avoid looking too much like a testosterone-filled body-builder. That said, I guess my avatar do work out a bit more than I do :-) But I don't consciously try to appear a certain age. I'm clearly an adult, and I think I look like one in SL as well. I guess it feels more comfortable, not having to play a part of some sort. Cristopher is in most ways quite like me IRL.

And yes, I do have more formal wear, both in SL and RL:-)

While getting rid of the noob look inWorldz however, I clearly ended up looking much younger than I really am. And that actually felt good:-) I do think I will keep that look there, to find out if visual avatar age do make a difference.

The inWorldz me

Somehow I wonder if looking young is more important for the female avatars. Joonie summed it up quite nice: "Is this what you want to see?"

Does it matter as much for a male? Well, look at the guy to the left. Michael Douglas is 66, and he kind of look like it. Even so, Catherine Zeta-Jones, 40 but not looking quite like that, had a rather nice comment about her husband the other night: At the Tony Awards, she said:

"See that man there? He's a movie star and I get to sleep with him every night."

(Do take a look at the video clip, it certainly made me smile:-)

It's kind of sad that she felt the need to apologize for that in the aftermath. Undignified, she said. I think it must be the nicest compliment a man could get, LOL.

It seems to me that being old has been less of a turn-off for a man than for a woman. But that is changing, luckily; Sex and the City 2 is just one sign of it. The fact is, people of both gender is getting more and more conscious about keeping their bodies fit and looking attractive, even at 60+. So, the old rock-and-roll saying "Die Yong, stay pretty" is maybe about to die.

Pretty is also so much dependent on your attitude and expectations; and virtual worlds teaches us to love a soul rather than the physical expressions of it. Our avatars are the virtual expressions of our souls, so if any of us are looking younger than our physical age it does not matter I think, as long as we match the age of our mind. Because in SL, its the mind that counts, really!

28 of 52 - BBBC3: Escape to inWorldz

2010-06-15T02:48:00.000-07:00

For those of you wondering if these posts are somehow connected to British Broadcasting: They are not:-) Big Bad Blogger Challenge has established itself as a yearly event in the SL blogsphere, initiated by Alicia Chenaux, one of the bloggers in my blogroll.

Noob entering the coffee bar

Today, the topic was all about relationships in SL, a minefield of a theme that made me run screaming to the wardrobe and dress in a dirty shirt, red tights and a lame unisex wig. Then I slipped, quite Narnia-like, out the the back of the locker and stepped into inWorldz.

I rezzed at a coffe bar, and was immediately greeted by 3 no-noob avatars hanging out there. Strange how the sad look of my avatar makes me feel a bit "outside". But that feeling soon disappeared when I stepped into the freebee shop and met 2 nice greeters.

With free jeans, shoes, Dark-side-of-the-moon-T-shirt and hair running wild, I had my first chat inWorldz.

Lots of nice stuff to get you going without spending money on clothing. Seems there are several shops around, but I did not have time to explore.

Inworldz is not hypergrid-enabled because of concerns regarding content protection. Like SL, there is an established economy; you can even use ATMs to transfer funds to and from SL. Honey, my first friend there, told me that lots of the people around was content creators, a lot of them run-off from SL. With free texture uploads, that is rather understandable. According to a comment on the iliveisl blog, registration in inWorlds have skyrocketed the last week, perhaps because of people loosing faith in LL after the layoffs and years of customer contempt.

"InWorldz is a Virtual World initially based off the OpenSim software. Efforts however, are being made to move past this source code and becoming closer to the Second Life standard for working improvements. "

So, they have forked off the OpenSim code. Works nice if you want to compete with Mark and have the resources. There is a special inworldz viewer version, but I was able to connect with no problem using the Hippo viewer on Linux.

It will be exciting to follow the growth of this world; seems here is potential for lots of grid refugees in the month to come.

BBBC 2: Life is good:-)

2010-06-14T09:58:00.000-07:00

Prototyping a river sidewalk

First on the list of three positive things going on in my Second Life is actually happening outside of SL: I have finally gotten the inspiration to start building in my ReactionGrid sim again! Now, Ener has posted a lot about the pro and con about migrating to RG; suffice to say there are challenges indeed. Worst is the lack of all my favourite SL textures that I have no licence to export. But it's part of the learning progress, and kind of fun!

Treacle Darlandes and her great fractals

Back in SL, I find that great art is created every week. Few things in SL gives me more joy that discovering art and talking with artists.

And last but actually most important: I got someone that cares for me. Someone I care for. At the other side of the real world, but that does not matter at all. No list of positive things in my SL would be complete without that fact.

BBBC1: The Why and the How

2010-06-13T13:50:00.000-07:00

Today's Topic: Why did you become a blogger? How has it enriched your life?

I started with an RL blog several years ago, mostly because of the tech involved in setting up a blog server in the basement LOL. To find something worthwhile to fill it with, I started writing reviews of every novel I read (and since that was pre-SL time for me, I actually had time to read a few...).

After a while in SL i discovered the SL blogsphere, and that inspired me to start a blog about the art gallery I was running at the time. Cris' Gallery is now history, but the blogging habit survived.

Blogging my SL adds another dimension to it. It's also a kind of ice-breaker when I meet artists and gallery owners I like. It seems like a lot of my posts are about art; I have a strategy of only writing about the exhibits and works that touches me. It happens ever so often that I walk around galleries that just don't give me any good wibes - instead of writing a post basically saying "this sucks" I rather just pass it. So my blog is not a journal, it's biased towards the stuff I find I love in SL (and lately also in the virtual world beyond SL).

I find writing so fulfilling that sometimes it seems much more fun to blog about my SL that to actually live it. Sigh. But the knowledge that people all around the world reads what I write adds an excitement to the writing. So basically blogging enriches me because it is a natural form of getting out my creative (?) writing, just as SL sometimes releases my creative building skills.

I'm looking forward to this week, hope I can manage a post every day!

Exhibit @Shamen - that made me think

2010-06-12T23:47:00.001-07:00

Under a full moon, Shamen Galleries floats magicaly in the air

Fuschia's dancers are inside the pyramid

The man in black is normally the villan...

Inside, the theme is also dance...

A merry-go-round amongst the dancers!

Tegan Jenvieve had some amazing dancers on display

[0:05] Tegan Jenvieve: the single dancer came first
[0:06] Tegan Jenvieve: and was just a organic work
[0:06] Tegan Jenvieve: wasnt trying to do it at first
[0:07] Cristopher Lefavre: hmm - so it kind of developed into a dancer?
[0:07] Tegan Jenvieve: yes
[0:07] Tegan Jenvieve: i dont plan sculptures
[0:08] Tegan Jenvieve: they become what they are ment to be

An artist at work while I watch - That's just what SL IS

In front of my eyes, a beautiful yet simple form was created - a butterfly unfolding its wings. I watched it grow, leaving the simple childhood, taking complex forms, changing colours - as the creators mind envisioned it. Makes me think of SL as the clay in the potterers hand, or as the keyboard of a composer.

[0:36] Cristopher Lefavre: Do you have any vision when creating this? Not neccesarily a vision of form; I wonder what kind of ideas drives this?
[0:37] Tegan Jenvieve: i just build til it says its done

In the middle of layoffs and uncertainty it shows a core part of what SL should be - and as long as that is still possible, a lot of other stuff makes no difference.

Sometimes, some singleminded thoughts race to the front of my mind, making me write stuff that, in hindsight, I can't understand how I could. What do I really care if SL has 1 or 7 or 70 million active users? I can understand that the business man M would rather want 70, but somehow I really don't believe that's possible, however much LL works on web integration, first hour experience and facebook connections. I just don't believe there are that many people in the world that is up to the creative standards of this virtual environment; be it as creators or inhabitants. Lets face it: The biggest MMO, WoW, has 11 million players, but that's a game and you don't need much imagination to walk around and slice each other up with swords. It takes a lot more to live in this world.

I am afraid we will still somehow be victims of money-mungerors that will do anything to make SL grow exponentially, instead of focusing on making this community incrementally better. The present mess would make me hesitate investing heavily in SL. But also, I firmly believe that the present population of SL is so strong and dedicated that I don't fear anyone hitting the button to turn off the moonlight in our world anytime soon. If the present management deciedes to throw in the towel because they can't make SL grow like a rocket, I am sure some other people would gladly step in to keep it "in maintenance mode", as Computerworld blogger Mitch Wagner expresses it.

But I won't try to predict too much. When it comes to SL, I try to live in the present. And today was a good one.

Thanks Tegan, for making my day!

A Big Thank You...

2010-06-11T00:40:00.000-07:00

The linden bears in front of the stones made my alt cry - they so symbolize the playful culture that used to mark SL before Mark...

... and all the best to those Lindens that have worked hard to build and keep our world and now find themselves on the outside of the door. I don't really know any of you, but I guess many of you have kept SL spinning despite the strategies of the current management, not because of it.

Even if you are a talented and gifted person, loosing your job means a lot of insecurity and worry that you really don't deserve. For what little it's worth I feel for you and hope everyone of you will be fine.

So while yesterday I focused on one possible outcome of this mess, I too am deeply worried about us loosing so many dedicated virtual world enthusiasts. Even more so if management have used this opportunity to rid themselves of any internal opposition. If so, then I am afraid the odds that SL will wither and die in its present form is much greater. And the odds that any venue you start on will be a success will be much higher:-)

Take care all of you!

Stand by me Sweet lady
We go in and freely
We give up our senses
Our walls and defences

Into the sea
Make love
Make waves

Into the sea
Make love
Make waves

-- Sivert Høyem

2010-06-08T14:44:00.000-07:00

I took a dive into an unknown place when a group notice in french announced some event I was not sure was:-) I landed on a dance floor in a place called ASHANTI & ENZO'S QUIET WORLD 2. Quiet it was not:-) 10 people dancing make a noise even isl lol. Some nice pics on the walls, I added Musica by karen Tempest to my collection (good thing I have expanded my place...).

Everyone talked mostly french, so while the music was good and everyone welcomming, I logged out, perhaps most because it was close to midnight here and in France lol.

The Gracie Kendal Project

2010-06-07T12:35:00.000-07:00

Gracie Kendal, aka Kris Schomaker IRL, is an artist specializing in colorful abstract oil and acrylic paintings. Since I first saw her work I have loved her colors, her vivid imagination and her large-scale expressions. She has a new exhibit out now, "Read All Over", at Karuna. It's not SL centric art, but art of a universal quality nontheless.

Other than her paintings, Kris has set up on a virtual travel, using her blog and even a book! to connect her RL identity as Kris with that of the avatar Gracie. If you are seriously interested in the theme of avatar identidy, then her "Gracie Kendal" project is definitely required reading. This is actually an art project in itselves, mixing her art with both pictures of herselves and her avatar. The dialogue between herselves and her avatar will make you both laugh and think.

27 of 52 - What is True SL Art?

2010-06-04T08:13:00.001-07:00

One avatar losing it? "Identity Crisis" by Cat Boccaccio is a must-see.

When I discovered art in SL a little while after I first rezzed, most of what I found was RL pictures being scanned and uploaded as SL textures, displayed in a frame just as they would in a real life art gallery. This kind of art is still thriving, and it's a great to be able to use SL to experience exhibits one would normally never get the possibility to see. But there are other levels to art in SL.

One such dimension that is growing stronger is the use of SL to create pieces that would be impossible IRL. 3D, scripting, movement, dynamic texture changes and transparency are all examples of techniques that is used to create this new kind of art.

But another dimension is art that expresses the SL society; situations, personal behaviour, limitations and possibilities that are unique to avatars, and how these facets of virtual worlds touches the human soul, mind and body.

When you combine these two dimensions, you got art that can not be created nor understood outside of a virtual world. That is what I would call true SL art. It's still rather rare, because not only do the artist need to master the techniques; she would also need to have a life experience in SL; he would need to really immerse her selves in the environment; she would need to have his heart broken by losing people.

Gender confusion is deliberate :-)

Luckily, several of the talented people that joined SL in the boom some three years ago have understood what SL does to a lot of people, both good and bad. Cat Boccaccio is one of them. She is still the only artist that I know of that can make truly erotic avatar art, and now she has taken that understanding of SL into the NPIRL sphere. Her work "Identity Crisis" should be experienced by anyone into art in SL, because amongst all the other great works at the UWA exhibit, hers is the only (or the only one I saw I should rather say, its a large exhibit and I may have missed a few...) that takes 3D art to a personal level.

Go vote!

26 of 52 - What's in a virtual life? Music and dance anyway!

2010-06-01T05:30:00.000-07:00

As I'm writing this, I am the the UWA to vote for Cat's entry in the competition they are running, "The UWA 3D Art and Design Challenge". Lots of interesting stuff around, do have a look!

Two blog posts have gotten my attention lately. Peter Strindberg wrote very personal about the relation between his first and second life, and how a change to the better in his RL really changed his SL. And London Spengler, triggered by a post by Quaintly, wrote about the reality of SL.

I wanted to write something clever about these issues, because they somehow touched me deep down as to how I feel about SL these days. But I think the summer heat has gotten to the creativity center of my brain, so for the moment it seems like an impossible task lol.

Instead, I let my alt out to find some music before closing my eyes last night. She found a singer kalled Krisie at Twilight Live, and had a nice quiet evening before the net broke down completely. She is a bad blogger though, not taking note of the full name of the singer nor making a slurl. But I guess that's life sometimes:-)

Griefers IRL too:-)

2010-05-29T13:34:00.001-07:00

In yesterdays final of the ESC this guy jumped up on the stage to participate in the Spanish act. According to him, he just wanted to "say hello to Spain" LOL.

He got his few seconds of fame in front of 18.000 people and 120 million viewers. In SL, at most 50 people would have had a chance to see it live, but with 50 people in front of the stage it would probably have been too laggy to jump up. Our virtual worlds still lack the support of large events.

But isl, the soldier boys' sword would have been virtual....

25 of 52 - /me in Battery Street!

2010-05-27T05:28:00.001-07:00

No flying the straight line in RL...

This autumn, I will be attending a conference in San Francisco, within walking distance from the Lab. I guess the view of the office building from the street will be less exciting than visiting the Linden Village in Second Life, but it will be nice to have seen the place anyway.

Thanks to Google, I do not need to travel across the globe just to see the rather mundane and sad-looking entrance to our world...

The thought of this made me think about distance. In virtual worlds, distance does not matter. We can reach any place on the map within seconds. Even places outside the map can now easily be reached through hypergrid. If I want to visit M Lindens office I can be there in a blink.

The physical world is different of course. The journey that brings me close to Mark Kingdoms office is almost 20 hours long. And why does this matter?

Lots of us are separating RL from SL, mostly because it allows us to be more open, more personal and closer to people than we would normally dare. I have told people on the other side of the world more of my inner emotions than I would have told most anyone IRL. And that's one of the greatest things about sl: Inbetween griefers and money mungerors you can find the most amazing persons. All open and caring because we know we can retreat to safer grounds if need be.

But this separation is more than anonymity. It's also about real distance. If I met someone ISL and found her living a 20 minutes walk from home, I guess I would be more careful about what I said. It could be my neighbors wife on the other (dance?) ball LOL.

So distance and physical location counts. I guess that's why it seems to be non-offensive to ask anyone you meet which country he/she lives in?

Anyway, I do look forward to see the east coast; never been farther east in the US than Minneapolis. And who knows, even if M does not let me in, I might find another second lifer around?

Eurovision Song Contest

2010-05-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

We often think of US as the home nation of TV, but did you know that the worlds largest TV event is actually European? You may think the Superbowl a large event; in 2010 it had an average audience of 106.5 million. But the yearly Eurovision Song Contest final has an estimated 125 million viewers across Europe and the close east.

This is basically a song-writers contest, but today the performance and presentation of the singers and dancers are equally important.

The winner is chosen by televoting in each participating country. It is a two-stage process where each country gives 12, 10, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 or 1 points to 10 other countries (you can't wote for yourselves:-) based upon the number of televotes. This means that small countries (like Norway) has as much influence on the result as large countries (like Germany or United Kingdom).

The quality of the entries varies enormously, from simple and boring pop songs to innovative and beautiful works. But the value of the art is not the reason to watch ESC. It's the varied cultural expressions! I always finds it so fun and amusing to see what's popular in different counties:-)

Last year, Norway actually won the ESC, so we get to host the event this year. It has caused somewhat of a headache, because it's so expensive. Actually, the national broadcasting had to let go of the rights to show the world championship in football (ok, soccer, if you live in the US:-).

The video above is the Romanian entry. I like it because its a simple melody that gets easily inside your brain, and the video has some nice virtual reality scenes. Have fun!

24 of 52 - Art with a sting

2010-05-12T19:02:00.000-07:00

Kick a noob - or a griefer?

Is this art? Very often, Second Life art are beautiful, but rather uncontroversial. When visiting Shamen Galleries the other day, I found that Miso Susanowa have created a few items that raised my eyebrows a bit.

Be advised - you don't want to make your confession here

[2010/05/12 12:16] Cristopher Lefavre: Now you are supposed to say "father forgive me, for I have sinned...."
[2010/05/12 12:16] [
(this converstation I really can't share with you...)
]
[2010/05/12 12:22] Cristopher Lefavre: You did WHAT?
[2010/05/12 12:25] Cristopher Lefavre really wanted to be part of that fun
[2010/05/12 12:27] Cristopher Lefavre: That will be 5 ave Lindens
[2010/05/12 12:27] Cristopher Lefavre: every night
[2010/05/12 12:27] Cristopher Lefavre: in a week
[2010/05/12 12:28] Cristopher Lefavre drops hustler on the floor and picks up playboy

The things you hear when taking confessions in SL!

Building this kind of installation IRL would be a much bigger hassle, so in practice the RL artworld is kind of lacking in this type of art. Its more Not Practical In RL that Not Possible.... Again, SL makes a huge possibility to create new kinds of expressions.

I'd better take my own advise...

... or I might end up here?

"Foundation of guilt"

This work really got to me; at first the dark red colour theme drew attention, but it's more than that. It's like it contains a vision, something I don't really understand. Why make such a lively depiction of the catholic teaching of hell? In the midst of installations that somehow makes fun of the church? But I guess these are just my interpretations. Go see for yourselves!

Miso has an installation called State of Mind. You can see it at the Excalibur Studios. Be warned though, I was TP-ed home by some script, maybe because I did not enter my social security number at the keypad? LOL, jokes aside, State of Mind is worth going through, there are lots of pokes at the modern internet based society, kind of thought provoking.

I've got the Pnigalion!

2010-05-04T14:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since I saw this piece I have wanted it on my wall. And today my wish came true! Cat herselves came over and helped me set it straight (its a complicated unlinkable multi-prim scritped work). But it does not matter. It's in my living room to stay!

Excuse me while I find a chair to sit on and enjoy this moment:-)

(You can find out more about Cat Boccaccio on her blog).

23 of 52 - Half of a US judge, the TOS and a Sesame Street machinema

2010-05-04T01:03:00.000-07:00

I popped into the gallery of Peoney Feld the other day. She is a well-established artist in RL, and had a lot of interesting stories to tell about her works. The Law and Art exhibit at the third floor was what we talked mostly about; I definitively recommend a visit. Do read the notecards in the box, or even better: Ask her to tell you about it.

She had a copy of her RL oil painting showing a US judge and one of those black document suitcases you often see lawyers carry around. Somehow that picture captured my attention; it was like it was filled with some mystery. But I do guess it makes an even stronger impression in RL.

Btw; Everyone has seen a picture of the Mona Lisa, one of the masterpieces of the italian multi-genius Leonardo da Vinci. But if you ever moves your real life eyes away from the computer screen and let your legs move you to the Louvre in RL Paris, you can see her eye to eye. And believe me, that makes for a so much stronger impression. You really don't understand the mystery about her until you see her on the wall. At least I did not.

As a curtisy to Peoney I won't show the inside of her gallery or the art to you since she has clearly marked her land with a message in the About Land box: "No Photography of Artwork & Studio Allowed". However, the remark does raise some interesting points. Embedded in the new TOS is the Snapshot and machinima policy that gives you some explicit rights:
DISCLAIMER: I Am Not A Lawyer, so the following is not legal advice. Contact your attorney if you need to make sure you interpret the TOS correctly

"... Linden Lab and the Residents of Second Life (collectively, “we”) grant you the following copyright licenses:

A License To Capture. You may take snapshots and capture machinima of the 3D content we created that is displayed in-world, and
A License To Use. You may use the resulting snapshot or machinima within or outside of Second Life in any current or future media."

The only exception being an explicit prohibition of snapshots in the covenant of a private sim. On the mainland, there are no exceptions.

In other words: If you display your art on the mainland, you collectively gives anyone permission to take snapshots and publish them. This is great news for bloggers like me, because it gives us fair usage rights comparable to RL bloggers and journalists alike.

Now, that does not mean that you loose copyright on your work. I guess there is a fine line between fair use, like publishing a blog post about a gallery with pictures of the art, and publishing snapshots that in practice is a full copy of the content. When I publish photos from an art event, I normally try not to shoot an artwork directly from the front, in case anyone should just cut if out and republish it.

Anyway, enough boring legal stuff! Lets do some kindergarten:

Peoney pointed me to Chantal Harvey that has made a machinima from SL as an entry to a Sesame Street animation contest. The 10 Little Aliens machinema is just so fun to watch, and a real good example of how to use virtual world technology for real life purposes. As Peoney tells me, Sesame Street wanted to ban the entry because it was filmed in SL; such a shame. I concur with Peoney when she asks everybody to vote for this animation, just to make our world more visible.

Btw, in Norway, the show was altered a little bit and presented as Sesame Station. All the colorful figures lived and worked on a small railroad station.

The sign in the background says Tickets.

Time for lunch. Where is the Cookie monster when you need him!

22 of 52 - Ubuntu 10.04 Lucid Lynx

2010-04-30T05:43:00.000-07:00

This week has been spent almost mostly IRL due to lots of work, and my ghostly experiences in Cats exhibition. So I don't got a lot of exciting virtual world stuff to write about (LOL do I ever actually?).

Anyway, after reading this post by Melissa Yeuxdoux I clicked Update Version on my work Ubuntu computer today, and have found that both the official Viewer 2.01 and the Cool VL Viewer works fine. As do my VPN connection. It does seem that the computer is running just a little bit faster too! Once disconcerting thing is that the close window button is now at the top left of the windows instead of top right. Oh well, will probably get used to that:-)

Glancing at the release pages there seems to be a lot of new fancy stuff, so I hope to get Lyra upgraded soon too.

Next week I hope to finally get Cats price awarded picture on the wall; I have cleaned away some stuff.

Happy Free Weekend, everyone!

Is there anything else I can help you with?

2010-04-27T11:55:00.000-07:00

Seems I have missed something; Jayn tipped me to try live chat to solve my ghost problem, something that I have actually never tried before. After stating my problem, the kind person at the other end responded:

[07:00 AM] Naeree:

Christopher, we will restart the region to resolve this issue. Please try to log in in about 15 minutes after clearing your cache and changing your log in location.

[07:01 AM] Naeree:

Is there anything else I can help you with?

WOW. They actually restarted a region just for me! And problem was solved in a few minutes. But the thing that really made me happy was this "is there anything else I can help you with?" question.

That's an attitude I like as a customer.

Thanks, Naeree, for being my personal ghostbuster!

STILL a ghost :-(

2010-04-27T04:08:00.000-07:00

Now, here is something new. Last night I finally managed to log in and go home. I happily logged out again, from home, feeling relieved that I was no longer hanging around Cat's exhibit as a ghost.

But don't you know: Today, I was again unable to log in. And again, I was standing as a ghost in the gallery, even if I WAS NOT THERE WHEN I LOGGED OUT!

Sigh, SL....

Art and a ghost blogger

2010-04-25T11:36:00.000-07:00

After a RL-heavy weekend it was nice to log onto SL for a short session (I thought LOL) and sort through some group messages.

First stop was the WASP (an australian university). Never got around to see M Lindens doodles; its nice to see that its possible to sit in them at least:-)

Next off to Cat's Cyberfunk exhibit at Gualdo. Something new from her again:-) I was just sitting wondering which one to buy....

And now the embarrassing part of this story begins. My viewer crashes on me. I try to log on again, and SL insists that my account is locked in a logout process for 5 minutes. I try again, and its another 5 minutes. LOL. Well, its late, I was kind of tired,and I just closed the lid, not thinking what I left behind....

When I checked the email this morning, there where several IM's indicating that people thought I was online, but just did not bother answering. Awww. Rude. But the worst part is that my ghost was still standing in the middle of Cat's exhibit. I discovered that when I still could not log in, and checked with an Alt.

Its a strange feeling, standing there, looking at "myselves", and not being able to do anything about it.

Seems I'm really stuck in the middle of nowhere for now: In SL, I'm a ghost that's visible, but can be walked right through. I am online as seen from any friends list, but if they try to IM me they won't get the offline message. Even so, the IM's are sent to email, as if I really was offline.

The Lindens are working on it (according to the ticket system) so I hope I will be able to get off (and on again!) soon. So to you who tried to reach me last night: I really was just dreaming:-)

21 of 52 - Fuschia again

2010-04-20T06:20:00.000-07:00

I really don't know where she gets it from. But Fuschia Nightfire never ceases to amaze me.

Yes, I've seen all-white environments before, but they have all been huge skyboxes or full sim places. Fuschia has managed to fit the entire installation inside a 20m sculputured megaprim on the ground, and it still captures the whole screen when you are inside.

I'm usually very involved when I'm inworld, that is I have a strong sense of "being" my avatar. Ener had a blog post about this that I found very interesting. Just like me, she use to position her avatar facing the one she is talking to. It feels kind of right to keep your av aligned to the actual action. When I'm around looking at art, I mostly walk around, letting my av "look at" the work, even if I use the Cam controls to zoom a bit. Somehow it does not feel right to just let Cris sit in a corner while I cam around the whole place.

It's really not just emotional either. The main difference between virtual worlds and the Web is NOT that everything is in 3D (there are 3D web apps around, and lots of 2D content in SL). No, the main difference is that everyone viewing a location is also represented there for everyone else to see. And that's really huge. Even if it's just an avatar without any Real Life info being viewable, it still breaks the normal anonymity people are used to on the Web.

So, as a courtesy to everyone else around I feel it's right to let my avatar indicate what I am looking at and what I am doing. Because a virtual world is all about participating, not just looking.

Anyway, when the SL window goes all-white I really feel I am enclosed in a bubble of white. It's like walking inside the work of art.

Again, art in SL is evolving at a furious pace. It's a great showcase for virtual worlds, because the medium offers possibilities not available anywhere else. Not just by viewing 3D art, but also by being able to participate in the art. There is a freebe white skin available inside the gallery, and by dressing more appropriate than I did, you can add yourselves to the artistic expression other gets WHILE watching it!

The installation is currently available at PiRats. She has also made a machinema of this installation, it's on You Tube.

PiRats is an interesting build btw. It's not spectacular in itselves, but it had a quality of design and build that I find rare.

20 of 52 - Viewer 2.0 - inspired by World of Warcraft?

2010-04-14T12:36:00.001-07:00

First time I saw it, I was actually thrilled about viewer 2.0. It seemed slick, modern and kind of cool.

Then I had to search for the functions I wanted that was kind of hidden, to somehow hide the complexity of the UI for new users. Like showing the position I'm in. It kind of annoyed me, but OK, its fixable.

Later on I found that the chat and IM system with small icons showing in the bottom line, instead of transparent text merely scrolling up the screen was cumbersome in actual use. I spent so much time clicking on icons to retrieve conversations, it really worked me up.

The other day, I suddenly noticed I had not been using viewer 2.0 for a long time, and I also felt I really did not want to. So I wonder: What makes me react that way? Is it just a question about getting used to the interface, as M Linden says? Or is there something fundamentally wrong with it, as lots of residents feel.

Now, the above situation is not unusual: 2 Inventory windows, a chat window and the edit dialog, all up at once. In viewer 2.0, that makes your view of the world rather small I think it's safe to say LOL. In contrast with the previous viewer:

All the windows are transparent, allowing you to keep oriented all around you, even if you have lots of stuff going on. Also, the tabbed IM window with blinking tabs signalling new messages is a fast and easy way of switching between conversations, if you don't want multiple windows open.

The old UI elements is smaller and less obtrusive in the old viewer. In viewer 2.0, the buttons, fields and borders around stuff are so much more "in the way" of things.

Now, SL is not the only virtual world in town. Its not even the largest; that position belongs to the game World of Warcraft. So, I thought it would be interesting to look at the GUI of WoW, comparing it to the line of development that Linden Lab is now taking.

The incredible Hulk - Cristopher

In contrast to the viewer 2.0, there are lots of small UI elements on screen; text and graphics effects showing what's happening is popping up all over the screen.

But when you open some dialogs, your view is suddenly gone:

Please Cry Wolf if you see them, cause I certainly can't

Non-transparent dialogs. Makes me wonder: Is this where the LL developers got their inspiration from? Do they actually play WoW at Battery Road?

Walking through a toombstone - am I a ghost now?

According to Ener, Phantoms are your friends. Seems that is true in WoW too:-)

One funny detail: When you choose to exit the game, your character sits down, looking kind of tired:

Apart from the non-transparent dialogs, WoW looks nothing like Viewer 2.0. It's not pretending to be a web browser to hide it's complexity. Because a WoW screen can be fearfully more complex than the beginner examples I show here. Yet, people don't seem daunted by the complexity of the GUI; rather the opposite. More than 10 million people actually pay monthly to play WoW, as opposed to Second Life that has a little more than 100.000 paying (premium) members.

So: Did LL had to simplify the viewer to get people to stay in SL? The latest numbers actually indicates that it has not helped a lot.

For me, the hunt for the best viewer continues. But I doubt it will be viewer 2.0.

Eastern Stupidity

2010-04-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

"Eastern Wisdom" is a proverb that carries a positive meaning in my country. I would love feedback from any Asian user that might stumble upon my blog. I have actually spent some time exploring links and translating comments, just to check for constructive remarks.

Alas, whenever I get a comment containing either Chinese or Japanese characters, they are just malicious exploits of the commenting system, trying to post links to various porn sites.

To any of you Eastern Idiots posting these: I don't tolerate it, and will just delete them on sight. So just don't bother:-)

@Palais Orleans Photo Studio

2010-04-12T12:20:00.001-07:00

Coming online tonight I got an invite from Cat Boccaccio, offering champagne and a chance to look at some new works. I took the taxi to Tasogare, and was greeted by Cat and a nice lady called Chasity that looked anything but:-) The wonders of SL!

Cat showed some pieces that was new to me, and that I really liked. Stunning effects of water distortion on the detailed tattooed body:-)

madison Arnahan is not only the owner of this nice gallery, she is also an artist, and I really liked her work:

The combination of the B&W wood background and the delicate skin and lace colours was something new in avatar art (at least for me). I just love to spot creativity!

Again, one thing so great with SL is the possibility to meet the artist and talk about their work and emotions, even if they live on the other side of the world. This will certainly not be my last visit to her place.

I got to meet Peoney Feld, an artist that "...enjoy a little humor in my work...." Indeed she does, "postcard from SL" hit me right on target:-) Hmm this was a dangerous evening for my L$ account:-)

She had some sharp observations about peoples sexuality that I quite liked. I am looking forward to touring her main gallery.

Also on display by Cat was "Pnigalion", "...a scripted work that was entered (and won) in the then Perspectives 2010 competition.".

During my years in SL, I have seen several artists explore the possibilities of scripted art. It's often fancy to look at pictures with wheels turning around, clocks ticking, water flowing or blood dripping. But too often, it's effects for the sake of the effects. That does not make great art. But here, Cat has made great art. The work tells a story in a subtle way, so subtle indeed that I overlooked the effect first time I saw it.

This is truly where classic art meets modern virtual world technique in a novel and irresisteble combination (at least for me; I have a copy on order LOL) . If you have not seen this piece yet, go have a look. And if someone ever doubts that virtual worlds are a serious tool, show them this piece. In all its artistery, its also truly NPIRL, and shows us the way art is evolving.

Just some time off :-)

2010-04-08T13:29:00.000-07:00

I really needed to slip out tonight, so I slid American Beauty into the DVD player, fired up Hagrid on the sofa table and dived into SL.

Nice new garden outside

Rune Shamen and Cierra Loxely runs Shamen Galleries - not long since I was there. But I've been getting these group messages about a new exhibit closing soon, so I made it my first stop on my list tonight.

Trasgo Beaumont has made this great classic statue - with some SL twists

Redecorated inside shows the fabulous range of artists these curators knows

I'm not really very knowledgeable when it comes to art. But every now and then I encounter works that just seems to reach some spot deep inside me.

gliding gulls in black sphere - I am enchanted

Who other than my favourite SL artist, Fuschia Nightfire, have made this innovative work? Fuschia , thanks for beeing in SL still. You give me a reason to stay too.

While looking at art I started getting group chats from Maximillion Kleene, a singer I have heard before. He was about to start a live concert at the Romantica Yacht Club. The black glass sphere was burning in my Recent Item pocket, but I felt for some music before rezzing it at home.

The one and only Tipping Cow:-)

"What a day for a daydream" is making me smile even as I write this:-) I just so enjoy this artist.

I do love watching Kevin Spacey finding his second youth, quitting his job, working out, flirting with his daughers girlfriends. But a great concert in SL is just such a nice end of the day too.

Now, this strange neighboor is throwing out his son because he thinks he's gay - and he runs away with Kevin's daugther LOL - but who did really shoot him at the end? The freak and the daughter? The wife? The poor mad gay colonel? hmm, I have wathed this movie several times, but I'm still not sure:-)

Ener wrote a great post the other day (she often does btw; she is just so productive, I can't really understand how she manages, something strengtening in the poutine?) Anyway, she wrote:

because LL is shifting does not mean it is evil

So true. LL is focusing. One may not like the focus, or the lost opportunities to make easy money (wow, I remember the fun I had, buying land at the auctions and selling it for profit, was so easy I almost got a bad concience LOL). Those days are long gone. But SL still grows. Art and music is thriving. And there are lots of places to explore.

I will add:

because competition grows in virtual worlds does not mean SL will not be able to compete in lots of areas.

Now Kevin is undressing his daughers GF, not understanding how bad he is off until she reveals she's a virgin. Now, they're sitting the kitchen, drinking coffe, he asks her if her daugher is happy. So cute.

SL's strenght is in the social networking sphere. But being strong there will keep other markets away. Because if you do education, you may want to keep the flirting and the dancing a bit distant, just to ensure seriousness. If I ever want to convince my employer to use virtual world technology to communicate, it seems much easier to use a grid that is not seen as a kind of game. That's just one reason I have faith in OpenSim grids like ReactionGrid.

The man is dying wathcing a photo of his lost family, finally being happy and content with the life he had lived.

The other reason is standardization. If you create content targeted to Second Life, it will not neccessarlily work in any other grid. If you create content in any OpenSim based grid however, it will be portable to any other grid or hosting provider. You can develop offline, just giving the provider a single .oar file to publish your complete region. You can copy your region to other worlds, or just move it. The lack of such possibilities have allways limited creators.

Yes, that thing of beauty is finally home in my living room!

"It's hard to stay mad when there's so much beauty in the world." says the dead Kevin. I guess that is true regarding Linden Lab as well.

19 of 52 - TOS and the final Rainbow Viewer

2010-04-06T11:23:00.000-07:00

A sore-eyed avatar looking at the SL TOS documents in the background

Running on Hagrid right now is Boy Lane's Rainbow Viewer final edition. There will be no more versions, due to the Labs rather messy Third Party Viewer Policy. Boy no longer feels comfortable with the expressed responsibility LL requires developers to take on by accepting the new TOS. Really sad, because the Rainbow viewer was the only one optimized for my Wind Netbook.

Btw, did you know that the SL TOS is now almost 20 pages? And that it references 17 - seventeen - additional documents containing legalese covering subjects ranging from maturity ratings to gambling policy?

To be fair to the Lindens, they do operate a large business in a world run by lawyers, and have to make sure they have their back free. But if they want to continue to run a world with content largely being supplied by end users, they need to take some actions. To take some responsibilities away from the creative minds in this community. If it becomes necessary to hire a lawyer to interpret the TOS before you start to produce and sell content in SL, then a lot of the small suppliers will just leave in disgust. Fun has left the building.

In contrast to the ReactionGrid TOS that is a simple half-page statement.

The sad fact though is that the day that RG gets to the same size as SL, it's TOS will probably also have grown. Today, the people behind this grid has nice titles like "CEO/Developer" (a clear contradiction in terms in established businesses LOL, how great it would be if they decided to keep it so! But there are foul forces in play in the business world sigh) So I raise Cris' Theorem regarding legalese in virtual worlds: "The page count of the TOS of any virtual world is proportional to its population and size of management."

In Norway, we have a beloved author of children books called Torbjørn Egner. In one of his books, The Peoples and Robbers of Cardemon Town, he formulates an even simpler law: The Law of Cardemon:

You should not bother others,
you should be nice and kind,
otherwise you can do as you please.

I think that will be the terms of service for entering my SIM:-)

18 of 52 - Building in ReactionGrid

2010-03-31T05:38:00.000-07:00

Sunset in my offshore sim Vaiya. Stars and Stripes raised to greet an unexpected visitor.

This is not a "Linden Lab sucks and I'm leaving Second Life" kind of post. Not at all. Not that I don't see why lots of people, not least estate owners, have reasons to feel less than well treated as large customers of the lab. But as it is today, Second Life is 100 times bigger in area and population that any other comparable grid. It does have features no other grid have. And I've got friends there (including my lost friend who is finally back!).

But the thing I really miss in SL is the opportunity to have a sim of my own, for a price that is sensible for my usage. (Hey, US 1000 to get it, and US 300/month? Sorry, forget it.)

Check out my cool red sneakers (yes, I seem to twist my legs all the time)

I have tried various grids based upon OpenSimulator several times. But it just have been too many bugs, to unstable. Until now, it seems. Tempted by the successful builds by Ener in Enclave Harbour, I decided to give ReactionGrid a go. The team not only set up the sim in a couple of hours, it also worked flawlessly from the first login. Now I've got what would compare to an SL OpenSpace SIM, just double the prims (8000, all mine!) for a price I can afford, even as an amateur builder with ambition of becoming pro.

And they do know how to treat a customer right! The first evening Felix Techie came to visit, wondering if everything was OK. And later on, I've got an eMail from the CEO, wanting to hear my ideas for my sim. He came over yesterday, we had a nice talk, and he offered me various assistant. (I pay LL double what I pay him, but they won't even answer my support tickets... sigh. I guess they're too busy making pencils for M...)..

Got my flags and my Domino rezzer

After a week, whats the good, the bad and the ugly with Reaction Grid?

Good:
- Faster than SL when building
- Logins seems as stable as SL
- Sensible technical architecture means stability and low cost
- Scalable megaprims (no, not megaprims, ANY prim can be scaled to 256 meter!)
- You can fly as high as you want
- They actually got customer support!
- Professional and knowledgeable people come here
- Second Inventory transfer my objects fast and easily

Bad:
- Landscaping is laggy in OpenSimulator (not specific to ReactionGrid).
- 590 unique logins last month

Ugly:
- Physics sucks. Watching my dominos falling is like watching grass growing. Ah well, cant have everything I guess:-)

I have not done much more than making an offshore team for my sim, and just started on a project 1000 meters above ground. I do look forward to do more though!

Happy easter, everyone!

17 of 52 - Exploring ReactionGrid

2010-03-23T11:12:00.001-07:00

You have to be a virtual world enthusiast to hang a building on a chain like that:-)

A while ago I stubled over the ILiveISL blog written by Ener Hax. I liked it so well that I had to take a look at her estate, Enerville, and liked that so much too, I actually considered moving there. Then the very next day, Ener announced the closedown of her estate.

Just sad.

But then she started to write a lot about the OpenSim based ReactionGrid. Pictures on her blog suggested interesting things. So, when she announced the opening of Enclave Harbour I took the first interstellar taxi to reactiongrid.com to register myselves there. Registration certainly was easier than LL's, and for sheer luck the Rainbow viewer that I mostly run had an entry for ReactionGrid, so before you know it I landed on a welcome plaza, like a handsome noob again:-)

One of the core administrators sat napping in his chair... hmm wonder how this grid runs when they sleep at work?

Yes, this seems to be the entire grid!

A short Map TP later (it's REALLY NOT a big world you know) landed me on a beach full of junk. Hmm.. and I thought Ener was so environmentally aware, running her estate on solar power...

I stumbled around a bit, found a road, and then the first signs of a civilization.

Admiring the view at the top of the lighthouse

I did a bit more exploration of the 16-sim estate.

What will be in here, I wonder?

Where are the martians that landed here?

They are not warming themselves by the fire...

Some rough scripting still; steering this boat seems a bit different when lying with my head beneath the seat LOL

Ener has done some great builds, like this sun-deck-on-a-gigantic-flower thing:

And the start of a commercial center:

Still a rather empty world, 590 unique logins last month; seems too much to hope for a waiter to bring my icecream

The entire estate has 1 - one - shop, but it's a nice one:-)

No wondering where you are!

There are wind power...

...and solar power plants

But somehow, the place is not as peaceful as I imagined. Seems the estate is under siege, could it perhaps be some L***** **b agents flying around in that UFO, eagerly awaiting for a moment to crash the party? Anyway, the gun is constantly following it, so I guess they are serious with security around here:-)

Solar-driven gun? What happened to "make SLove, not waReaction"?

Finally I ran into Ener. Not just a great builder, she was also a most welcoming and nice person.

A really cool avatar lady!

She TP-ed us over to where Nickola was building a learning path. We ended up talking and having fun (well, the two ladies was the most fun I have to admit, making fun of my counties fjords and some very unhealthy canadian food I promply forgot the name of LOL), but it was a great time!

One noob and two pioneer gridnauts

Nickola had made a nice ride, which I had to admit already had tested.

I am glad the default avatar had such strong arms:-)

It was a great evening even if there hangs a shadow above me: my best friend in SL has suddenly vanished from the grid. I so hope she is fine. Please come back.

16 of 52 - How to become wise

2010-03-18T16:04:00.000-07:00

An old eastern proverb says that there are two ways to get wise: Either you travel around the world, studying it and getting to know the people you meet, or you sit still and watch the world flow past you.

After spending a week in London IRL, I yet again find that while I feel kind of wiser travelling the world, I also long for the quiet place at home where I can just watch the world doing it's crazy deeds.

SL has made me know the world in a different way. In my best moments of being Cris, I feel I am a bit wiser for the experience. But while I chat and blog english all my second life long, IRL I feel like a noob, stuttering and barely able to formulate questions in the class I am attending.

So I wonder: What kind of wisdom does SL bring: The one you get while exploring the world, or the one you get by letting the world fly past you?

In my best moments of being Cris, I would insist of the former. But when I meet the REAL world, it teaches me differently. Yes, of course there are experiences in SL that makes some RL tasks simpler (the way I seem to THINK in english for instance, is a habit found during long chats inworld). But in no way can SL (or any other virtual world) replace the experience you can get elsewhere.

(And I'm sorry there is no picture in this post; I tried to sit down in a budhist temple but ended up 20 meter below the ground with my legs in a less-than-comfy meditation position behind my neck, and whatever I tried to do the 140 percent package loss in this city defied all rescue actions. Better luck next week:-) )

Loosing packages

2010-03-15T14:27:00.000-07:00

When travelling, one allways wonders if the suitcase really went on the same plane. If the airliner manages to loose my bag, I'd say that they had a baggage loss of 100%. If I had two trunks and they lost one of them, the loss would be 50%. But it could never be more than 100%, could it? How could they loose more than they had? (OK, if it was a bank I guess it could be possible; for them it seems posible not only to loose ones savings, but a lot more:-) ).

Whenever you connect to a server on the internet, all communications between your PC and the server is gathered in "packets" of data that is transmitted together on the net. Each package may be routed on different paths, and the basic transport of the Internet does not guarantee that a package will ever reach its destination. Or if it does, the order of the packets received may be different than the order in which they are sent. (The internet does have protocols that can take care of both of these issues, but SL does not use them. That's why you sometimes see chat lines coming in the wrong order when you type.)

But SL does notice when it looses packages, and just like any airliner it faithfully reports this fact. If you ever get a high number of package loss in the statistics bar, you know you've got trouble:-) But I have never before seen SL reporting MORE packages than it was expecting. I guess that's what a package loss of 144.4% means.

Must be the London fog:-)

15 of 52 - At the dragons nest

2010-03-12T06:08:00.001-08:00

Few get to witness the birth of a dragon. Ninka called me over to look at the one she has started to make. Gorgeous textures; really feel lifelike hoovering above me:-) Will be awesome when she is done, I have no doubt!

RL work is still taking its tolls, and I seem to spend more time blogging about SL that actually living an SL. Sigh; it's kind of easier having a blog editor open while working. SL takes too much attention. Buts it's a frustrating SLife atm. And I miss a lot of my friends.

Take care, all of you:-)

Server 1.38 - bigger than viewer 2.0?

2010-03-11T01:00:00.000-08:00

LL has just announced the beta of Server version 1.38, scheduled for roll-out in April. Now, why is this great news?

One of the new features of server 1.38 is llSetLinkPrimitiveParamsFast(). It will allow a script in a root prim to control other prims in the link set, without a 0.2 second sleep as the previously available llSetLinkPrimitiveParams imposed.

The great upside of this is that for objects with moving parts (for instance, the Drama Dolls), it will reduce the need for having a script in each prim to do animations. As you can see on the illustration above, its quite a few scripts:-) /me hurts in the head just remembering all that coding.... Fewer scripts means less memory usage, and less memory usage means less load on the server, leading to less lag:-)

In the Drama Queen set, there are 25 scripts that could probably have been replaced with code in the root prim script using this function. That's 1.6 Mb of memory at rez time - not to mention all the work on creating and maintaining all those really small bits of code and the interface between them.

There are a few other nifty bug fixes too, although not revolutionary. What I really like about the 1.38 announcement is the attitude it shows: LL seems determined to fix server side stuff and script functionality to make SL work smoother. So it's not all bells and whistles and big spaceships GUI's, but grinding nuts and bolts too.

And while viewer 2.0 is highly controversial, I have yet to see big protests against the 1.38 features.

We are heading for a more flexible script environment where there will be limitations on script resources on a per parcel / per avatar basis, but where one will also have better control on these resources. It will also be possible to allocate far more resources to some scripts, which may be real helpful.

So, while Server 2.0 is still a long way into the future, its nice to get at least some attention on the server side problems too.

International Womans Day

2010-03-08T01:00:00.000-08:00

Today is the International Womans Day, a day celebrated (at least here in Norway, where socialism is not considered a foul word LOL) by those wanting to oppose the long-time oppression of half of the worlds population.

From putting baby girls into the woods, through child porn and prostitution, rape and murder, woman are treated badly around the globe, so one can't deny the need for a day to fight womans rights. Sure, those of us living in the western hemisphere have less problems in this respect (even stock concervative US of A almost got a female president at the latest crossroad LOL), but it's still a problem. And it's a problem for us males as well, because when you oppress people to secure your own position, you will miss a lot of the things the oppressed people could have contributed to society.

An interesting news story about equal opportunities from my country: Ski-jumping is a classic sport, and until recently it was an all-male gig, but female jumpers have developed lately. However, there have been a lot of resistance among the "old-school boys" regarding this. As recent as 2004, the leading female ski-jumper, Anette Sagen, was denied jumping in our largest sky jump hill merely because the chairman felt it was inappropriate for woman.

Outside of the closed circles of the old men governing the sport this was met with amused anger. So when the newly renovated Holmenkollen ski jump in Oslo was opened a week ago, the city council (who paid for the fun, and really, if you spend USD200 million on something you really deserve a say or two) decided that Anette Sagen should be given the honour of the first jump.

But typically enough: The night before the official opening, all the major male ski jumpers was gathered to "test" the hill before the official opening, and it was actually our most successful male jumper that made the first jump. If this was merely an increadible short-sighted decision or the last attempt by the old school to take a revenge is hard to say. But it's been the main news story here in Norway for a week, culiminating in the exclusion of said jumper from the next two large jump events.

So there you go. One might say we make drama out of really nothing. We don't need the womans day anymore. Others will say that we will need the day forever, to make sure the world don't start running in reverse.

But anyhow: This post was meant to be a positive one, and a big "thank you" to all the great and talented woman in Second Life I have either met, or just admired the wonderful creations of.

Happy womans day, weather you feel a need to celebrate it or not!

14 of 52 - Why Second Life eventually will fail...

2010-03-04T01:00:00.000-08:00

... (and why OpenSim won't make it either).

However much I love Second Life as a resident, with its unique possibilities of developing ones creativity and meeting people from all over the world: As an IT professional, this world makes me want to cry.

The symptoms of the basic architectural problems are eminent everywhere: Lag, inventory breakdowns, sim crossing disasters and object delivery failures. But some of these are just that: Symptoms. The real problem is how Second Life is founded: SIM centric.

Second life really is a one-sim game. Its quite evident that when Linden Lab first tried out their idea, they made a server capable of running one sim, and one sim only. When they had done that, they started adding cludges of code to handle adjacent sims.

There are code to handle situations when an avatar looks into another sim. There are more code to handle avatar crossings. And code to handle vehicle and object crossings. All of that code is based upon the need for several servers to transfer work from one to another, and your viewer to connect to several servers. When you cross a sim border, your viewer actually changes its main connection to a different server. If that new server is a bit busy just then, it may delay answering your call for several seconds. The result is that your avatar is drifting, something we have all experienced. If the delay is large, the viewer will loose its sync with the servers, and you will end up drifting into the ground and finally crash.

Just imagine how fast this reconnection must happen if you are driving a boat or an airplane at high speed! The strange thing is not the catastrophes that happens to you, but the fact that it works at all:-)

So, Sim crossings is one major problem with this architecture. The second problem is that of scaling.

Second life needs one CPU core for each full SIM. This one core is dedicated to running a sim, even when there is no-one there to run it for. So, the architecture scales with land, making land tier expensive (because it has to pay for idle servers) and wasting processor power that could be used elsewhere in busy places.

A much more scalable setup would be to have avatar and scripted objects servers. One such server would handle a set of avatars and their objects, so you could scale with concurrent logins instead of land. A SIM would only be a set of information, accessed by any process needing it.

There are of course complications in such a scheme. I admit to not know enough to really criticize the Lab for choosing and upholding the architecture they have.

My proposed setup could have a huge impact on the economy of the world. Basically, tier could scale according to the use of your objects (traffic, running scripts) instead of the prims and land themselves. So a full sim for your home, used for an hour or 2 a day, would not be more expensive than an 2K parcel with a busy shop.

LL talks about "viewer 2.0" as the next main thing (LOL this was obviously written a few weeks age:-) ). Instead of doing "server 2.0", that should be a complete rewrite of the architecture. But that is obviously never going to happen, simply because it's way too late. The coding cost would be very large, and the transfer project enormous, because the world has grown to the size it has.

So, driven by the unstoppable momentous of its own weight, this single world may head to its grinding halt, where it has used every resource available to it and just can't scale no more. (A somehow interesting analogy to how our real world is doing; the momentous of its growth makes it seemingly impossible to change what we know must be changed to avoid an environmental disaster.)

Btw, OpenSim is unfortunately just a copy of the same flawed setup. Any OS based grid growing will face the same challenges the Lab has had to resolve in the past few years.

Somewhat pessimistic, I know. But heck, it should be spring, but there are 15 cm of fresh snow in my yard (sigh).

Snaily day and a new peacock

2010-03-02T06:16:00.000-08:00

PC and internet trouble forced me on to the mini PC with a cellular modem... the statistics shot above was actually nice, when I started I got a sim ping time of more than 8 seconds....

For those of you not knowing the details in this tool: FPS shows how many pictures are rendered every seconds. As you know, a movie runs at 24 FPS, if you get less than that then movements begin to look jerky. So 1.7... I will say no more:-)

Bandwith says something about the capacity for download, particularily for textures. The less this value, the longer SL takes to download all the textures in the scene. 599 is actually not bad.

Ping sim on the other hand says how long it takes the client to get a response on a sent signal. If that value is high, you are in trouble. 8 seconds means that if you press the up arrow to start moving forward, other persons will see you start moving in the sim 4 seconds later. You, however, will not see yourselves move until 8 seconds after you pressed the key. And if the server finds out you are bouncing into a wall, and sends the client a message saying "stop", it will take several seconds until it gets that message, and in between you may drift uncontrolled into space. Sometimes the message never gets through, and you crash:-( So, sim ping time is a nice thing to look up for.

Now I'm off home to debug my connection. Ninka sent me her new peacock, but I just kept crashing trying to unpack it.... Looking forward to see it for real!

Ninka's new shop

2010-03-01T05:38:00.000-08:00

My friend Ninka is doing wery well selling animated peacocks. She just moved her shop to a sim of her own (/me trying not to look too envious), and it's a really nice place.

Her animated birds are really well made - do TP over to Sheherazade if you have not seen them.

13 of 52 - Send in the Clowns

2010-02-25T23:06:00.000-08:00

Four of the olympic games last amateurs are ready for the final against Canada, and that's really cool. Yes, it's a joy to watch the girls win the cross country skiing relay, but somehow the taste is a bit dry in the mouth, because we know the size of the support organization behind it, and all the money spent just to gain those few extra seconds to get a medal. Our clowns had to pay for their own trousers:-)

Viewer 2.0's tight http/media integration promises great possibilities. But to really make use of those you actually have to have access to a web server. And you need a server that is running 24/7, communicating with your vendors or whatever gadgets you use in your store.

Even worse, if you plan to sell anything with an HTML-based GUI or HUD, the end user of your products will be dependent on you keeping that web server running. If you make a glitch, the great menu driven bed with HTML HUD you sold a lot of may die under their naked avatar skins - just imagine how popular that will make you:-)

In short, any product that is dependent on an external server is no longer a self-contained product in-world, but more of a service. This has two implications:

A service should not be sold as a product with the customer expectations that it should run inside SL forever. Instead, it should be licensed as a service with periodic payment to cover your hosting costs. That's the only fair way to treat the buyers of your products.

A larger percentage of SL's gross products will be services, instead of ever-lasting products. This will counter the problems of ever-lasting items that is slowing down the economy (if you perceive that as a problem)

Finally, since a lot of the best products will actually be externally hosted services, it will be even harder for amateurs to compete in SL. Just as it is in the olympics. A lot of us will avoid establishing a responsibility to run servers for our in-world customers, leaving those markets to the professionals.

I do wish that LL would start a kind of hosting program for HTML pages and images; they do host our textures now, why should they not host our media based content based on the same model: Pay once for the upload, LL provides the hosting for the common good of all SL inhabitants. I guess the answer is simple: LL really would prefer most content to be sold by professionals. They no longer care for our world - our imagination. Sad.

But I guess in the end, a clever SL amateur creator with a good idea may still succeed in this world - just as our guys in their genius idea of an outfit. So please: Send in the clowns!

Some Viewer 2.0 concerns

2010-02-23T23:13:00.000-08:00

Seems the new viewer will not be open source - only SnowGlobe will be that, and as of yet we do not know how much SnowGlobe 2.0 will differ from Viewer 2.0.

Anyway, seems that the Lab is now tightening its grip on the viewer marked, perhaps in an effort to take back control of the development of the viewer. 3-rd party viewers like Emerald has become popular with new features not supported in the official viewers, and some of them, like the new attachment points means that users of the official viewer may see less of an avatar than users of Emerald. Having external project making these kinds of architecture decisions if of coerce unacceptable for the lab.

And where is the Statistics bar? Have they removed it from the viewer, making it an "advanced SnowGlobe user option" only? hmmm that I don't like.

Second Second Life? SL Viewer 2.0 is here!

2010-02-23T10:41:00.000-08:00

I was just checking my account on the SL web page when I noticed the banner advertising the much-heralded Viewer 2.0. Downloaded, eager to check weather this would be the end of the world as we know it.

When logging in, the first thing I noticed was that the entire window was covered with panels LOL. After getting rid of a few, I got a screen like the one above.

There are lots of nice new features here; I particularily loved not having to click off all the blue group screen messages when logged in; they are available in a pop-up menu at the bottom.

Notice the navigational bar at top, making the view a bit like a web browser. One can click the Back button to TP to the previous TP location, and forward works too! And, a row of buttons, just like the Firefox navigational bar elimenates the need to sort through your inventory when moving around to your most-visited places. Does not seem possible to drop a folder there though, to get sub menus aka Firefox.

Lots of information is showing in the various dialogs, without the need to open new windows. And when I opened a message informing me of someone giving me an item, I could click on the name of the item and the inventory would open on that item!

The interface will take a bit getting used to, but for now I must say I really like the main ideas. Do have a try!

Tipping the cow

2010-02-20T15:37:00.000-08:00

I called Joonie; she was busy supporting Maximillion Kleene, who was having a concert at Gos. She TP'ed me over, and I'm glad she did. Max has a very sweet and involing voice, and I felt involved at once. No wonder there where 52 people at the show.

How do you describe a voice? It's really hard, because it was like it touched a nerve inside my neck; hitting some pleasure center in the brain that few singers finds.

No, the cow at the front of the stage did not sing. She was happy to receive tips however; falling over everytime someone showered Max with their lindens. I am more unsure about the function of the rubber duck; somehow I think that I don't want to know!

Gos is someone's mainstore; I have no idea what that someone is selling here, but the stage was nice so it might be good:-)

All in all, a great evening!

12 of 52 - Gallery visit

2010-02-18T03:00:00.000-08:00

I am a long-time fan of the art of Fuschia Nightfire (flickr, SL Facebook) in SL. So when I got a group message about a new exhibit of hers in Shamen Galleries, I just had to go look at it.

This time, she has made incredibly beautiful sculpt-based sculptures (sic), and sell them both as sculptures and pictures of sculptures. On first sighting I just saw the pictures (the models are outside LOL), and I was convinced she had made them by using avatar with poses and various skins. But next time I visited I looked around in the garden and saw the originals... omg, what a great work of art!

But this gallery holds a lot more. In fact, it's been a while since I have visited such a varied and high-quality exhibit anywhere. This incredible statue by CHUCKMATRIX Clip for instance (who sadly says in his profile that he's left SL).

If you have 222-odd free prims and three thousand L$ you too could have this piece in your hall

Some very colourful and exciting works

After a few visits here my living room is kind of "flowing over", I need more space for my art. Luxury problem I guess, maybe I should get a Linden home too?

Yeah, I know, I am probably not supposed to sit on the whip, but it was just too tempting:-)

I briefly met with Cierra Loxely and Rune Shamen who runs this gallery; they where both very welcoming and knowledgeable. (As for the welcoming bit: I find it a bit sad that as a visitor to various places one usually never gets as much attention as one does in the SL red light district; Shamen Galleries was a welcoming exception to this!).

And they have a nice coach for a tired blogger too:-)

Do take the time to visit this place. Highly recommended!

Dominos in Old York!

2010-02-17T05:36:00.000-08:00

I was working a little with my booth in Old York when Roland Francis, the creator and owner of the city, came by. He seemed to like my dominoes; he actually bought a set and started to fill the open space with bricks. They will be standing there for demo purposes for a week now; I hope people will like them:-)

We got help from an attractive girl in gorgeous white leather boots to test the cannon; it worked fine, but when asked "what is this?" I really had problems knowing what to call it. A game? A decoration? A toy? Any suggestions appreciated!

Anyway, the bricks are now available in Old York, in my shop and on xstreetsl.

Updated: Carriage ride through Old York

2010-02-16T23:09:00.000-08:00

RL work being crazily busy these weeks, I barely had time to pop into SL yesterday to pay tier for my small booth in Old York. (some of you know my history in this beautiful city goes a long way back; I opened up my first photo gallery there more than 2 years ago... ah, those old happy memories!)

Anyway, outside I met a nice horse that offered me a "free" carriage ride around the city. Sounded fun enough, so I got seated and had a few laughing moments of being guided through the streets and the forest.

Very unfortunately, I forgot to note down the name of this fun-loving SL-er playing horse for tips :-(

Anyway, so long, and thanks for a very nice ride!

Update: Fortunately, being the generous passenger I am, I did feed the horse some Linden love, and since that shows on the transaction history, I can tell you that the name of this great avatar is Cathartes Medina.

11 of 52 - Temple Obscurum

2010-02-11T13:33:00.000-08:00

Got on SL the other day, not really knowing what to do, so I just opened up the Showcase window. The title Temple Obscurum cathced my eyes, so I decided to have a look (Taxi here).

Apart from a real coolish blue look, and lots of dreamy details, there are a few dogs or wolfs roaming around:

Luckily, they seemed peaceful enough, but I guess they did contribute the lag of the place.

The scenery was beautiful, but all the moving textures and scripted items made a lag that somehow took away the fun of exploring, at least for me.

I ended up walking in the river because I constantly fell off the narrow bridges:-)

Outside, the whole place is covered by green tree-top like sculpted mega-prims, really nicely done.

The pics does not do the beauty of the place justice (as perhaps did not my laptop), so go have a look for yourselves if you need a blue dreamy place:-)

Celebrating Nelson Mandela

2010-02-10T22:45:00.000-08:00

"During my lifetime I have dedicated myself to the struggle of the African people. I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

20 years ago today, February 11th, 1990, Nelson Mandela walked out of the prison doors after 27 years of imprisonment. His life-long fight against apartheid in South Africa had succeeded, to the point where the regime chose to give in to the international pressure.

No doubt, Mandela is a strong man, and while he has advocated non-violence in his early struggles, he was no stranger to the use of force to make his beliefs come true. What truly sets him apart is his lack of bitterness after all the years of personal imprisonment and inhumane treatment under an oppressive regime.

During this last 20 years he has advocated strongly for a policy of forgiving and reconciliation. In 1993 he was awarded the Nobel Peace price together with the apartheid leader that was responsible for the release, and was elected President of South Africa in the first free election in the country.

If only the world had more leaders like him :-(

HiRez SL

2010-02-07T23:02:00.001-08:00

I usually run SL on "mid-class" hardware, that is normally powered computers with decent, but not top-of-the-line graphics cards. This weekend I got the opportunity to test SL on a friends "gamer computer" (he's a WoW addict, LOL), and that was a real eye-opening experience. Walking around the world with graphics all set on max, and still have 30fps, the Apollo Sims looked even more beautiful than I can remember them.

Still, things took a long time to rez, but I guess it's just that loading every prim within 512m range takes a while, even with the 1Mb network speed I got on the server connection.

The images are high-rez, click on them to view the full detail.

Fae in the woods?

2010-02-07T15:31:00.000-08:00

Out running today, I got a strange glimpse of the ripple effects between universes - and this time I did not hit my head :-)

She did look kind of sad and cold and lonley, so I tried to cheer her up, but somehow she just disappeared, singing something about a football game going on tonight.....

10 of 52 - Looking for some fun, Mister? XXX!

2010-02-04T01:00:00.000-08:00

When I saw the numbers for 2009, showing that residents took out more than US$50 million from SL last year, I started wondring how much of that was actual revenue for true SL products. Could it be that a lot of this money really was spent on RL sex related products and services, merely using SL as a convenient payment solution?

With that in mind, I set out to explore the red light districts of SL.

The Sex marked in SL is large, but for the purpose of this post I will divide it in three:

1. Sale of scripted gadgets (sexual organs, animations and beds, inworld video streaming)
2. Inworld escorting, including voice
3. Web cam escorting and porn distribution, where you pay in SL but the product is actually outside of SL (Skype, MSN, video download)

The first 2 categoryes I think of as being true SL products and services. The last category is merely using SL as a cash register.

1. Scripted gadgets
It seems to me that sex gadgets are the only items people are willing to fork out several thousand of lindens on. 1000 linden for a penis, 4000 for a decent bed or HUD. I am quite sure that several of the top 50 are creators of such items.

2. Escorting, club dancing
Lots of clubs, and lots of avatars doing SL-only escorting. 399 hits on "escort" in search. When I talked to some of the girls, it was clear that the competition was fierce, and there was no abundance of customers. I get the feeling that this is a game for a lot of people; they don't do escorting merely for the easy money, but also for the fun of it. Sure, I have not covered it all, I am sure some do good money on this business too, but the extent of this was not my major concern here.

3. Web cam escorting and porn distribution
First, I went looking for simple RL porn movies. Did not find too much, and what I did find did not seem to be any gold mines:

Icarus video player: For L$495 you get 1500 adult videos, with a promise that new ones will be added to your set each month.

At SLDVDs you can rent movies to play inside SL, or just use SL to buy movie files that downloads to your computer. They charge L$1250, or about USD5. Traffic was less than impressive though.

So, it seems porn is not really big in SL. What about webcam escorting?

According to BBC, the webcam sex marked is worth more than 550 million USD/year, that is 10 times as much as the total income from ALL SL businesses. A quick search using Google reveals an endless stream of pages, all offering a peek at girls undressing and performing live on camera.

This is also advertised in SL. 15 minutes of web cam is about L$8000, give or take, or USD30. That also seems to be the going rate for the same services bought on the web.

You have to organize 45 such sessions a day to get 500.000 USD out of SL. Now, a search in SL for webcam services resulted in a meagre 19 hits. Some of those was not web cam related, and 2 of them was just single girl operations. When I landed at places advertising web cam girls, I found that more that half of the escorts was NOT doing web cam. (A few offered reverse webcam though; a concept I do not quite get: You pay them to look at YOU, not the other way around LOL. Not my turn-on I guess).

Anyway, after spending a few hours searching for the more doubious places in SL the last 2 weeks, I have to say I am releived. The big part of commercial SLex activities are just that: SLex. Our virtual world is still mostly virtual, and that's a comforting thought (at least for me:-).

Experience Italy

2010-02-02T09:21:00.000-08:00

Jayn called me over to the Experience Italy estate. It is a kind of a tour through various exhibits in interconnected skyboxes. Start here. (There is an italian web site).

The various chambers are lovely decorated, and makes me stop to wonder how beautiful SL can be! The photos really do not do the experience justice.

The walls of the chambers are half transparent from the outside, solid from the inside.

Gorgeous light effects in the corridors.

Particle effects and floating text are used througout.

Be careful when you walk around; if you miss the portals with the bridges, you fall down to the mall on the ground, and that is not as grand:-)

Micalita Writer (beware, italian blog!) has done a great job with this one!

9 of 52 - Dream or reality?

2010-01-29T03:00:00.000-08:00

It's 5:30 in the evening; I close the lid on my computer; the fairytale world inside it dwindling from sight. Stretching stiff muscles, I change into running gear and exit my front door.

Outside, it's dark, but the fresh snow makes everything seem alight. The wide river I run along is frozen, leaving a huge stretch of fresh white snow. At the other side mountains are raising, dark trees covered with white snow leaving a ghostly impression.

As I run, focusing on my steps on the slippery soft snow beneath my feet, consciousness dwindles, the world shrinks to breath, snow and thoughts. It's like I'm flowing through the cold and snowy air, my feet taking control, my mind drifting back to my secret hiding place.

Suddenly, an impossible view is in front of me: It's like the fabric of reality is ripped, and through the teared material I can see people dancing among the palm trees on a sandy beach, the red setting sun is shining in my eyes. And as I fly against the hole into that other reality, I see you standing in the opening, bare feet on the warm sand behind you touching the snow in front of you. We look at each other, shockingly recognizable through totally incompatible images, and yet there is this deep feeling of a bond stretching between worlds.

I hug you close to me; your body feels so real against me; warm and soft, slightly shivering against my cold tights and nylon jacket.

Whoever is the master of this universe has noticed the damage in her creation, and has started to close the gap between realities. In the flash of a second we both know that I must choose: The beach or the snow; the dream or the reality. You pushes me gently back, and as the opening dwindles from sight the last thing I see before falling face down in the snow is your eyes, smiling against me. Then my consciousness slips and I know no more.

I wake up by the feeling of a warm and wet tongue on my face; someone shouting “... there is blood everywhere, call an ambulance!” The dog whimpers as I manage to lift my head off the snow and the hidden stone it rested on. “He must have slipped and fallen, hurting his head. Don't move mister, the ambulance is on its way.“

Next time I wake up I lie in a hospital bed; apparently I floated between life and dead for several hours. A doctor later told me he believed I unconsciously made a choice to return to life; only I know that she made the choice for me.

I can't wait to get home and open the lid to my dreamworld again:-)