I had to chuckle at one sim today though, which did all these and the notecard and pop-up said that they did not allow spamming, group invites or griefing.

The irony of this was not lost on me. But seemed to be lost on them.

It was 5 years ago that Tukso Okey started performing in Second Life, and I’ve been honoured to have been attending his performances (or “gigs” as we call them in the UK) for more than two of them.

To be honest, I’m rather surprised to discover that I’ve only been a major fan of his since September 2009 because I’ve been in Second Life since October 2007. I was under the impression I’d discovered Tukso quite early on but it seems not.

Tukso is an amazing musician who lays down his backing track live on a digital loop playing keyboards, drums, bass guitar, rhythm guitar, and then plays awesome lead electric guitar over it and also sings.
I think he is without a doubt the best musician I have heard in Second Life and I try to get along to his gigs whenever he plays in my timezone. Tukso is in Seattle, USA and I’m in the UK, so an 8 hour difference does make it hard. But he’s dedicated and plays at all hours!

To honour Tukso’s 5 years in SL, and because one did not already exist, I have set up a Flickr Group for people to add their photos of him.
Go to www.flickr.com/groups/tukso/

As Tukso says… peace. And spread the word.

Wishing a very Happy Christmas (or equivalent) to all of my Flickr, Second Life and WordPress friends!

—

Skin: Laqroki
Hair: ROGE
Outfit: Graves
Location: ROGE store.

For me, the clue is in the name “Second Life” – an alternative life, secondary and separate from your real one. But it seems that is becoming less and less the focus of SL, with residents being encouraged (and in some cases forced) to involve their RL more and more in their SL.

So when did this rot start to set in?

Some might say it started with Age Verification where you were required to provide some form of RL identification. This was probably the first time you were required to disclose your RL identity. Up until then, provided you didn’t have payment information on file and were using a free email address like Hotmail, Yahoo, etc., there was no link between your RL identity and your SL one.

Others might say it started when LL stopped the idea of a firstname & lastname and instead moved to having just a username and an optional Display Name. In many ways this weakened the separation between SL and RL – a username is just a login for a website or service. You were no longer creating an identity or character; you were just creating an account. Perhaps the distinction is subtle, but I think it is relevant and significant.

Others might say that it was the introduction of Viewer 2.0 and the different way in which it presented profiles, no longer calling the tabs “2^nd Life” and “1^st Life” but “Avatar” and “More Info”.
Or perhaps Viewer 2.0’s emphasis on voice chat, with text-based interaction being de-emphasised and harder to find in the User Interface.

But, for me, what really highlights the fundamental shift in attitude are the profiles at http://my.secondlife.com

One of the sections of your profile is called “Social Identities” where you are able to link with your Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn, Plurk, Twitter and YouTube accounts.
Now I happen to know that Facebook and LinkedIn are adamant that you must use your real name and real identity to have an account with them. Yes, many SL residents do have a Facebook account for their Avatar but you are on borrowed time there – when Facebook get round to noticing they *will* delete that account.
So Linden Labs are encouraging you to link your SL account with RL services that only have relevance to your RL.

Of course, you could argue that just because LL allow you to do this it doesn’t mean you have to – and you would obviously be right. But I think it highlights a push by LL to make Second Life just another social media / social networking tool; a glorified 3D chatroom and messaging facility for the casual user, with the immersion and roleplay that many of us enjoy being of secondary importance. There is even talk of a reduced functionality internet browser-based Viewer to make SL “more accessible” to more people. And if that doesn’t sound foreboding to you, then it probably should do.

So one has to beg the question at what point Linden Labs should rename “Second Life” to “Augmented Real Life”?

One of the attributes that defines art is that it is open to different interpretation. Art should elicit an emotional response, should engender debate, perhaps even controversy.

By that criteria, this picture is possibly the closest I have come to creating art.

The picture had its genesis in September 2010 when I found the oyster and pose at a Japanese sim. However, whilst I loved the picture that ensued, I never felt that my skills with GIMP were sufficient to do it justice and I posted it pretty much “as is”. However, things have changed a lot since then. For this revisit, I masked out the blue background so that I could add a new one in, used the distort tool to painstakingly push and pull all those horrid straight edges and angles into beautiful curves, sorted out the terrible clipping issues on the girl, and added a shadow to the shell so that it blended in with the new background more.

You can see the original picture here:

Sharing the photo with my friends has provoked some very interesting responses. Apart from the usual (but ultimately dismissive) “well done” or “cool”, I’ve had people perceive cuteness with an “awwwwwwww”, another friend ask me if I was ok, as they saw the girl curled up in the foetal position and interpreted that as her sobbing and trying to shut the world out. Another saw the girl as being precious because pearls are precious.

For me, the latter is most close to what I see. There is a phrase – “a pearl of great price”, which derives from one of Jesus’ parables in the Bible (Matthew 13:45-46 according to Wikipedia) which denotes something of great worth that is to be treasured. For me the picture shows the girl as being a pearl of great price, but also very fragile and vulnerable too. Something to be prized, cherished and adored. I also see elements of birth in it, as a pearl is grown inside an oyster like a baby in a womb, so the girl being in the foetal position is appropriate. Of course, there’s also the practical consideration of fitting the girl in the oyster and the foetal position is the most compact!

But what do you think? What does the picture say to you? Do feel free to add what you see by commenting – I’d be really interested to hear.

—

—

A friend recently IMed me with exactly that. And, to be fair, most of us have been there. But don’t panic, and all is not lost.

Likewise do not panic if you accidentally moved something. Or if you rezzed something and exceeded your prim count and half your house got returned to you instead (that happened to me once), or your landlady had a blonde moment and returned half your stuff (happened to me also).

Here are some handy hints on what you can do in each circumstance.

You moved something

If you’ve moved something by accident the first thing you should do, if your Viewer supports it, is to hit Ctrl-Z which is the shortcut key for “undo”. Very often this will snap things back exactly as they were.
Phoenix and Firestorm both have this functionality, and doubtless many other Viewers do too.

However, this does not always work. So you will have to move it back manually. Now your first inclination will be to grab the object and start dragging it around but this is the worst thing you can do as, trust me, you will not get it back to exactly where it was. Oh, sure, it may be “good enough” and that’s fine. But then you wouldn’t be reading this if you were happy with just that. Besides, in the case of segments of a house it will not look right unless correct down to the smallest decimal point.
What you need to do it right-click on the object, select Edit, and then choose the Object tab. If you look at the screenshot above you can see what I mean. I was running Firestorm Viewer so if you’re using a different Viewer it might look slightly different.
If you look on that you’ll see all the numbers for the exact placement of the object. Now, with some rezzboxes (the box that rezzed your house) they add the exact position co-ordinates of when they were rezzed to the description field. So if that’s the case then you’re sorted as you can manually set them back to the correct value. They will very likely write the X, Y and Z values as , eg. <105.83778, 146.98111, 35.75515>
If not, you may be able to deduce the settings by looking at surrounding objects. This is often hard though.
One sure-fire way, albeit rather tedious, is to rezz a copy of the house (you may need to go to a sandbox if you have insufficient prims to do that) and examine the values of the offending segment and also those of an adjacent one, and with some very simple maths deduce the offset of one to the other. Then return to your proper house and apply the same offsets, thus returning the moved segment to its correct position. So if, for example, SegmentA is at 100,100,100 and Segment B is at 100,110,100 on the new house, and on the proper house SegmentA is at 200,200,100 then SegmentB should be at 200,210,100 because there is an offset of 10 on the Y co-ordinate.
I find that using a simple spreadsheet to do this helps enormously. If there is enough demand I could make one available.

Finally, prevention is better than cure. Once you have things back the way you want, be sure to lock the object. All this does is mean you can’t accidentally move it again until you unlock it; it’s just like the safety catch on a gun. You’ll find a tick box to lock & unlock objects on the same tab as all the numbers we’ve been looking at – it’s called “Locked”.

You deleted something

First thing to do is to find it in your inventory, and it will be in your Trash.
Right-click on the object and see what menu options are available. On some Viewers there is the option to “Restore to last position”. Phoenix and Firestorm definitely have this, and I’m sure many other Viewers do too. If that is the case then use this option and you will very likely find the object restored to its correct place. However, I disclaim all responsibility if for some reason it doesn’t, especially if it is a no-copy item that disappears into the far blue yonder never to be seen again. You have been warned.
The other option is to just rezz the object in approximately the correct place and then use the techniques mentioned earlier for moved objects (although obviously not the first one to do with “Undo”)

You had something returned

First thing to do is to find it in your inventory, and it will be in your Lost & Found. Something worth bearing in mind is that if a large number of objects are returned to you, SL may package them up. You will find what looks like just one of your objects but it will have an icon that looks like a pile of building blocks rather than the normal icon for an object which is a box. Rezzing this will rezz all the returned objects inside the package, although possibly in the wrong place. But at least they will be rezzed in the correct relative positions to each other so it should be a case of calculating the offset to their correct position (as I outlined earlier) and then moving them.
However, if it is just one object, and not a package, then use the same technique as outlined above for deleted objects.

—

My friend Rorrim Wrigglesworth has built this wonderful Garden of Remembrance, which includes The Cenotaph.

Please do visit it to pay your respects. It is located at RoBeck land in Second Life (click here for SURL)

The Two Minute Silence is at 11:00am 11th Nov 2011 (UK time, which is 3am SLT/PST) and Remembrance Day will be on Sunday 13th Nov this year.

www.britishlegion.org.uk/remembrance/the-nation-remembers/remembrance-sunday
www.bbc.co.uk/news/11734920
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day

—

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them.

—

Update: I was at the Garden of Remembrance for the Two Minute Silence, and was very moved that there were 11 other people there at the appointed time (11am UK time).
We were all silent and then just after 11.02am somebody said something appropriate. I added the quote in italics above and someone immediately echoed “We will remember them” (which is the correct and traditional response).
A few more very appropriate things were also said.

It doesn’t sound much, but it was very moving and very special. Possibly the most special thing I have experienced in my 4 years on Second Life.

The creativity and ingenuity of the residents of Second Life never ceases to amaze and delight me, and none more so than sims that have beautiful attention to detail and are a visual treat.

I was exploring, looking for Japanese sims for a photo shoot I wanted to do, and came across the simply wonderful Japan Dream Kenjin. This sim is so worth a visit – it’s a seaside fishing town that is just crammed with visual detail and atmosphere.

—

Skin: Sophie by DrLife
Hair: Holly by KeeLee Designs
Outfit & shoes: Hentai Hottie 2.0 (Classic Version) by Danika
Backpack: Randoseru Japanese backpack by House of Curios

Slink Mesh Boots!!, originally uploaded by Nana Minuet.

I have to say I was getting very excited by Mesh, especially with the recent announcement that Phoenix is going to be supporting it (thanks to some dedicated work by Henri Beauchamp of the Cool Viewer).

These boots are a great case in point – imagine how wrong the knees would look in that pose if those were sculpt boots!

However, all is not as good as it seems; I’ve learned that the current implementation of Mesh is worse than useless, for clothes at least. It would seem that a mesh object attaches to your skeleton, not your “flesh”, and cannot be resized in-world. That means that if you are slim like the model in the above pics, those boots would look great. However, if you are any other size than her they won’t fit. Oh, sure, an alpha layer will mask out the bits of you that the boots cover but if you have bigger thighs than her you’re fresh out of luck.

One of the biggest benefits of Second Life is you can be who you want to be. You (or, rather, your avatar) can be exactly as you want it – it’s the overriding expression of your individuality and what makes Second Life so wonderful. But if Mesh clothing is going to force us all to resize our avatar to the clothing, rather than the clothing to the avatar, then this is a bad thing.

There is a JIRA running on this. It’s rather technical but the gist of it is “change Mesh to resize to your flesh not be fixed size and attached to your skeleton”.
See https://jira.secondlife.com/si/jira.issueviews:issue-html/SH-2374/SH-2374.html