Snapshot_009

First, special thank you to Grace Loudon who posted a teaser to this article on her Tumblr site.

A fascinating and unfortunately truthful commentary on MMO’s (Massive Multiplayer Online) ‘virtual worlds’ and really strikes home. At least it does for me. It’s a really good read.

The portion of the article Grace quoted is repeated here:

Slowly we fall out of love with our virtual world but somehow we stay addicted to the grind. We in effect make a Faustian bargain with our virtual world; we replace what should be hours of danger and excitement with the comfort of predictability. We become like the husband and wife that can barely tolerate each other but we stay together because we feel safe and secure with the devil we know.

So I ask does this ring true for you, too?

Continue reading ‘Evil Change or Predictable Doldrum?’


Million LindensToday is the day ticketing opens in order to request your shiny new parcel on the Zindra “Adult-Rated” continent. It will be a mad land-rush to be sure and no doubt tickets will be handled on a first-come, first-served basis.

However, the majority of the grid is completely oblivious to this compelled moved from all places mainland of the freshly defined “adult-rated content’. I won’t go into massive detail on all this stuff and you, dear reader, are among the highly-informed and already are clearly versed in the situation and like me, are preparing for the vitriolic mad mob-rush as land is flipped like crazy; known and established mainland of the “Mature” (and perhaps even some “PG”) variety will quickly turn into wasteland and the green pastures of Zindra quickly become polluted with laggy prims as far as the eye (graphic draw distance settings) can see.

6) When will the tickets be available? The ticketing process will open on Monday, the 29th at 10am PST. They will remain open for 3 weeks, closing July 20th at 10am.

7) When will I hear back from Linden about my ticket to move? We ask that Residents be patient as we are expecting a flood of requests. Submitting a ticket to ask when the first ticket will be addressed will only prolong the process as it increases the support load.

[From Zindra: An Update - Land and Sea - Second Life Blogs]

There was a time in Second Life when land-shopping was a pleasurable process. Especially with new sims recently brung online. However, after being in SL for more than a few months, one learns quickly that fresh, shiny new Linden sims is not where you want to buy.

Second Life Vewer logo #There are no covenants, and except for the established “cities” of Zindra no restrictions whatsoever. meaning your neighbor can do anything they choose, no matter how horrific it looks or how much it lags all agents within the sim.

This is why land-shopping established regions is better: you know what’s there. See a club? Move-on. See a bot-farm or camp-herd? Move-on. You get the idea.

I’m not a virtual real-estate entrepreneur (a.k.a. “land-flipper”) so I won’t be doing what I suggest. However, if you are, or you’re game enough, here’s how you take advantage of the entire situation:

  • Hit the search box for anything and everything that might appear as “adult” on the mainlands – visit the place and contact the parcel owner.
  • Pass them a prepared notecard about the new policy and the compelled (by Linden lab) move to Zindra and include links to the Wiki articles and blog entries to educate them.
  • Tell them that they have a choice: keep this parcel, abandon this parcel or try to sell this parcel.
  • Then offer to by the parcel from them for L$2-per-square-meter from them. Promise them you will not touch a thing – allowing them time to move.
  • Once the parcel is cleared out, flip it at L$3 or L$4 per square meter, make profit.

Little Shop Of Horrors Meets Alice?Of course there is a large risk in this. The first being that everyone is trying to emigrate from the mainland, not to it. This means you could be sitting on land tier for a bit of time.

Unfortunately, there will be those who do what I suggest and will be rather unscrupulous by selling to those inexperience or uninformed people who really need Zindra land – but buy mature.

However, if you’re looking to get into the land business and willing to take the risks required for a quick profit, opportunity starts knocking at 10 a.m. on June 29th, 2009.

Art: Ari Blackthorne; Ez Beam; CallieDel Boa


Snowglobe on my windowLinden Lab releases it’s own ‘after-market’ viewer, which I find funny, especially since I had just run the gambit on after-market viewers for Second Life Grid in my most previous post. Now in addition to the “official” Second Life viewer from Linden Lab (LL), said company releases another viewer in parallel to it.

Yes, I mean in parallel. This isn’t like MS Windows “Home” versus “Professional” or “Final Cut Express” versus “Final Cut Pro” where there is a ‘lesser’ and ‘greater’ of the exact same thing, but rather a completely different thing that accomplishes the same tasks. Think Microsoft Windows versus Apple OS X. Both are Operating systems upon which is the main user-facing interface for interacting with a computer. Both accomplish the same thing: managing the computer resources itself and allowing other productivity or entertainment applications to operate on top of it.

It’s the same with a “Grid Viewer”: they accomplish the same thing by providing a means to access a Second Life Grid and handle all the grid-level work. Like Operating Systems (OS), there are many Grid Viewers; MS Windows, Apple OS X, (many variations of) Linux; Unix; Xenix (yes, it’s still used) and so on. Also there are many iterations of grid viewers including the “official” Linden Lab viewer, Nicholaz (defunct), SL Cool, Gemini, Emerald, Meerkat, Imprudence… the list goes on.

Continue reading ‘Microsoft OS X and Apple Windows?’


EmeraldsIsn’t choice a wonderful thing? Where “Emerald” relates to Second Life, it also is a Grid Viewer and a damned good one.

I, like many other ‘experienced’ SL residents am hugely disappointed in the current iteration of the “official” Second Life grid viewer coming from Linden Lab (version 1.23.x). I was looking forward to the many new usability features and massive list of bug-fixes included in this, such as the setting of default permissions for uploaded files, bulk permissions-setting for object contents and the fixing of an annoying bug that unloads textures too quickly. Unfortunately, this viewer is horribly buggy with regard to breakage, primarily (for me) the total mess-up of picture-taking among other things. I suppose I’ll wait for the next version before looking at the LL version of the grid viewer again.

So, it’s back to the open-source viewer scene for me. The best open-sourced viewer I have found to date with regard to performance (which really translates to how fast will it download textures and “rez” the world for you) is and has been the Kirsten Viewer.

Then I found out about the Meerkat viewer, which offers some serious features not available anywhere else; specifically the ability to back-up your creations to your local machine, and restore them back into the Second Life grid, even onto other grids. In fact, it is the multi-grid functionality that stunned me the most. This is by-far the absolutely best, most useful feature I have experience in any grid viewer. There is no doubt that when mature, the Meerkat grid viewer will be the universal viewer for most, if not all grids.

The first thing I noticed about the Meerkat viewer is that there is a Logout feature. yes, that simple feature SL residents have been begging for for the last six-years. Logout. In other words, logout of the current grid without having to actually exit the application and then restart it in order to log back in with another account, or nowadays another grid.

Continue reading ‘When an Emerald is not a stone or a color’


SL: Adult Content Warning

Alphaville Herald posts a question about how “child-themed” avatars in second Life can cause some hyperbolic discomfort among witnesses to them, especially if witnessed in a mature setting – such as club or worse: sex-themed location.

Many residents will claim ‘child avatars creep me out’. And I can understand that. They don’t bother me, per se, but if I witness one in what would be a highly inappropriate place in first life, even though it’s Second Life – I don’t care if the typist is a verified adult. I will join the “that’s creepy” camp.

However, the Zindra continent is now opened and it’s a ghost town. Not in terms of people visiting the place, but in terms of anything being there at all. Just a bunch of empty, plain sims as far as your draw-distance will allow, except for the empty buildings in the city areas.

So a well known resident, Marianne McCann, who has become friendly with many Lindens over the years is invited to preview the new Zindra continent along with every other resident with an account even a day-old.

Marianne McCann has been a “child” avatar since I’ve known her back in 2006.

Even though Zindra is nothing but a mass of empty sims, it’s purpose has been well-publicized. Thus, there is a mindset attached to it. That mindset more or less equals “Uber-brothel for the purpose of your most deviant desires”. Even though it’s not really that.

Continue reading ‘The Über-Deviant-Brothel Continent?’




AriBlackthorne.com

More posts. More nonsense. More dip-shits. More whatever in bite-sized pieces.