Two Random Snapshots

Two random snapshots that I am posting for some reason.



Me buzzing by a lighthouse.


Me playing with Windlight.

Merry New Birth Year!

People are whining that freedom of speech is being violated since Linden Lab seemingly turned away age players and Gor and similar things from Second Life's Fifth Birthday Bash.

My only response is, So?

What is the point of this birthday party? It's just one giant group hug between Linden Lab and Linden Lab as they congratulate each other on a virtual world well done. The entire idea is stupid. I don't want a booth so I can make some Linden (like Torley :p ) proud of what they've done. The only impressive thing I can see is how people still want to attend and hold booths at this thing despite all that LL has done.

There's no reward. At all. The only thing to be said about flaunting your SL culture is, I suppose, spreading the word about it which is done better by other methods.

I'm not just talking out my rear, either.

Thousands of years ago, Sparta had a proud military tradition. Sure, it was brutual and violent and violated seventeen basic human rights but it served a real purpose and was a unique part of their culture. That was Sparta, as they say in the movie. It was acknowledged back then as something alive and vibrant. You felt it. Then, stuff happened and a few wars and Sparta became a tourist attraction. People came to gawk at the silly Spartans living their, uh, spartan lifestyle.

That's just one example. Other cultures have had similar experiences where most of it is stripped down to a few pieces that people think are weird. Look at Chinatown in any city. Here, there are even signs to point tourists to "Chinatown", so they can gawk and pretend they're in China and maybe take pictures of "those funny people".

This is what is going to happen if your group takes up a booth at this thing. You're in Gor, then people are not going to admire your culture or want to sign up to it, they're going to point and laugh and say, "Look at the funny Goreans! They are not like us so they are funny! They have slaves dur dur durrr" Like a sideshow. Is this really what you want?

Frankly, I think unless you're some big business or builder in SL, any booth you make will reduce you to sideshow status. If you want to be taken seriously, I suggest not setting up a booth. People will come to it alright, but they probably aren't going to sit down and actually appreciate the depth of your religion and sims and customs. They're probably going to say, "LOL LUK AT TEH CHILDRENS AVIES SO KEWT" or "GROSS ADULTS AS CHILDS SICK SICKO".

Hence, why I will not or ever consider setting up the Church of Nunchuck in a similar fashion. If people want to appreciate my 'culture' then I want them to really live it and understand it, not perceive it as some display to take photographs of and brag to their friends that "I saw the funny peoples".

And that is all assuming that everything goes smoothly at this event. Looking at the past history of all these LL events, it is an ugly track record. There was Christmas '06 event, with the skating rink in New York and lighting that Christmas tree. That was a total disaster as the crowd I was with didn't even realize anything had gone on. The other events that Christmas lagged so badly that once I had to wait about four hours for the simple reason that every time I logged in I couldn't stay stable enough to teleport out. Ah, teleport failures.

Valentine's Day this year was another one. If you have a Ruth fetish, then that party would have been your heaven because the sheer volume of people caused delays in rezzing. I didn't crash that time, but it was worse in that I didn't want to log out but I wasn't really doing anything in world either. I ended up going out to a Qdoba nearby with a few friends in real life. When I came back a few hours later, I found I had crashed at some point from the helpful redmap notice.

There have probably been more events than I've been to, I'm sure of that, but when I do go to these things I never enjoy it. If I wanted to lag out terribly I'd go to a SL club and enjoy the company of friends and a DJ instead of being shown about stupid 'events' that I can't enjoy because they won't rezz or the sim crashes. No, thank you.

What is the list of things to do at this birthday extravaganza? One week of listening to speeches from Philip and M, followed by exhibits where we all get to be virtual tourists and see what other people do with themselves in Second Life (which I predict will end up turning into a virtual zoo of culture). About the only thing I would go to see is the art, machinima (what the hell is that word, anyway? Why can't we just grow up and call it 'movies' or 'videos'? Why this weird ass name?), and music. And if the latter two don't load on my viewer and the art doesn't rezz well....

The second week is more exhibits from the big businesses in SL. Like education (colleges), health care, nonprofits, IBM and General Motors and AOL and so on. Oh gee, I get to go to this event to hear my school preach at me how wonderful it is and what it's doing. And if I couldn't care less, I can only imagine what those past college are probably thinking. "KILL ME NOW, I ALREADY PAID MY FOUR YEARS". And don't let these people fool you with 'it improves education'. I have yet to see anything significantly improve education in SL that wasn't a gimmick. "Golly Gee Whiz! I can make a model of a CFC molecule! I could have done that with plastic models in real life, but I chose virtual world for some reason so it would take two more hours than it normally would! Yippee!"

That's just the education side of it, too. I'm not even going to touch the companies and corporations, most of whom don't give seven figs about SL except as an advertising vehicle. None of them have probably done anything significant for any community, unless you count their private islands as the "community". To hell with them.

Finally, they rap up with a special guest speaker! With a special announcement! What, is Steve Jobs rolling out "iLife" or something? Is SL closing down and this is the big Adieu? Who is the speaker, Torley? Maybe it's Prokofy. Torley? Or Maybe it's me! Oh the mystery! I HAVE TO GO NOW. It's not like it will be blogged by HALF THE FREE WORLD (I admit I will blog about it, too, because I am such a loser ;_; ).

Notice anything about those events? Here is a clue: Linden Lab does essentially nothing. Oh, I spoiled it and told you the answer. Oh, sure, they host the sims and provide the two CEOs and a mystery guest to speak (how generous), but that's about it. The rest relies upon the people of Second Life being suckers and buying into building their own exhibits. That's cool, but shouldn't Linden Lab be doing something besides plain ol' host? I don't know, have a "tour Linden Lab" ride through a SL recreation of their home base in San Fran. Or something. If they are doing anything, I haven't heard about it.

So no, thank you. I have better things to do, and honestly, the entire idea doesn't excite me. Better luck for the Sixth birthday bash next year.

Torley II

Torley read my blog and commented upon it!

I feel honoured. At the very least, I have an idea now why Torley tends to be upbeat. As he says,

"... When you're in the dirt without an umbrella, gotta keep digging. :)"

I guess if I worked for Linden Lab, I'd be like that too under the soul-crushing experience of breaking things constantly while everyone sends you hate mail decrying that you broke some object of theirs when you have no control over that.

That reminds me. I read one of the recent blog posts, and someone made about the same point I did (that Torley is more or less useless as a Linden) but went to a different extreme. While I think Torley just has a sucky job, this one commenter went on to explicitly say, "I DO NOT LIKE YOU".

Jesus, people, can't you separate the person from their job? I'll give Torley credit: for all the bashing I do about him like a high school bully, he certainly never gets rude. He didn't barge through here and say "go to hell" (I would have). He's a very nice guy. But I don't like the job he does. And I'm sure he doesn't like the job I do, namely nit-picking him to death and criticizing his each and every word. But I don't hate him and he probably doesn't me (to be fair, he has only met me maybe once and through this blog, so he probably doesn't even know I exist. Although, he commented here, so he must have a cursory idea that I exist otherwise he wouldn't have known where to find me).

So yeah, outright hatred is bad, yeah?

Bottom of the Barrel

It's official.

Torley has run out of ideas.

We're all doomed.

ARC and You!

On the blogs recently, I see lots of blanter concerning the "ARC" which I find just a tad on the overreacting side.

But first, just what is ARC? It's known as the "Avatar Rendering Cost" tool, which is a fancy way of measuring how big an impact your avatar makes upon the grid. It's a quick way of seeing if your 255 prim necklace is crashing people out. A higher number means your avatar is drawing more resources and thus causing more pain to your neighbors.

The idea behind Linden Lab releasing these tools to the public is to get those who complain about lag to shut the hell up. With ARC, you can spend your days trying to pin down who's dragging down the sim and vent your anger out upon him, her, or it.

THe fuss arises (because no matter what, they must make a fuss) due to the observation that a lot of popular attachments are high prim and rendering heavy. There is a fear that due to the popularity of events and the massive waves attending them that only those with the minimal ARC number will be allowed in and thus discriminate against those with heavier ARC numbers. They fear that everyone will be forced down into attachment-less clothes-less black skinned avatars in order to enjoy any form of SL.

But, I don't think that will happen.

In engineering, there are always constant trade-offs. An improvment in one area will be off set in another area, and the big game is to get what you want with minimal trade-offs. You'll never get the perfect concept, that's impossible. But you'll try. In addition, and especially in games and real-life vehicles, there is a constant leveraging of performance parameters. Aircraft such as the A-10 do not have the speed or manuveurability of a F-16 simply because the immense armor and weapons load will not allow it, however, that's acceptable because it does not have to dog fight, just blast tanks.

The ARC tool is going to inspire a similar thought process. It cannot be denied that today people load tons of attachments onto themselves, with lots of scripts imbedded into the mix. As Second Life has come along, and new scripters have come in, attachments have steadily reached epic proportions. There are prim breasts, prim chest hair, prim this and that, and often with all kinds of nifty scripts which change the color or cause it to do something or imitate a real life this or that. There has been a shift towards these kinds of things due to plain old peer pressure, since bigger and more detailed was often seen as better. It took some incredibly heavy attachments before people began to bellow about it.

Now, with the ARC tool, the Lindens have introduced a method of self reflection. For once, we are confronted with a number which represents just how much of a pain we can be to our close friends and fellow party goers/concert attendees/sim neighbors. And there is a sense of guilt and shame, especially to those who have really high numbers (I haven't tested the tool myself, but I think 2500+ is bad). I think the big fuss is due to people wanting to have their cake and eat it too. They want to go easy on their fellow avatar but they don't want to sacrifice their 255 prim boots.

So, why am I confident we won't be reduced to an endless sea of black? Because people will subconscienously apply engineering principles to the matter.

Consider this. I find that my three piece hair, each piece 255 prims, gives me a value of ARC 55000. I want a good looking hairstyle, but I don't want to drag a sim with me when I enter, either. The crowd against ARC argues that we HAVE to go to basic Linden default hair. But that's a false dichtomy, because there will be a certain value of ARC at which there would be little effect upon Second Life performance, say, it's 1500 (just counting the hair). All I would have to do is simply shop for a designer who designs good but efficient hair. If I stay in the 1400-1600 range, I may be able to find something that looks good and saves wear on sims. It won't be as detailed as my original piece, but it won't be as much a memory whore either. Compromise.

And those builders who design for efficiency will be rewarded, as the crowd drifts to wards lowering their ARC. It will feed upon itself, after a fashion. A balance will be struck between going completely nude and blinging out.

Those who detract the ARC complain that we're discriminating against their right (right!?) to wear prim heavy avatars, presenting a scenario in which we're a sea of clones. But that simply won't happen. What will happen is that we'll drift towards a lower ARC count without hitting dead zero. The detractors don't want to consider this and radically alter their shopping habits or upset their way of living. They've made a significant investment in their avatar's appearance and perhaps have a trademark (think Aimee Weber) which they don't want to change but is causing an ARC meltdown.

The simple fact is that the genie is out of the bottle and things will change. Discredit and disprove the ARC as much as you want, it is one of the few indicators of avatar cost out there and people will use it (just as people will use ban lines despite their hideous appearance on the grid).

Thank You Dirk

Throw a few bucks at real people to build the community. It is important. New residents when welcomed and encouraged properly rent our land, buy our clothes and furniture, become interested in our art, become inspired to improve their education and enroll in a class. They find likeminded residents to discuss their griefs and illnesses with. They find strength and use that newfound strength to uplift others. They bring their imaginations and skills with them and challenge us with new creations and ideas... and they do it all without borders or boundaries.
-Dirk Talamasca, on Prokofy's blog

Yes! Yes! Oh yes Yes! Dead on! On the button! Getting the newbies together and getting them involved: bingo, right on the head of the nail. That's what increases retention. I can summarize it right here:

"Build the community. It is IMPORTANT. New residents when welcomed and encouraged properly [continue on to stay invovled in SL activites]."

This is what I have said before, in a concise and neat paragraph. Thank you, Dirk. I feel validated now.

One Day

One day,

While taking shade on an old wooden bench under a canopy of maples, away from the
bright noon sun, I found a quiet calm. The child were out at school and adults out
at work and only I was there resting. The sparrows darted back and forth into the
shrubbery and squirrels chittering around the silent sigh of the trees as the breeze
whistled past.

I was left to myself in that breezy haze of the park.

Minutes passed,

And a man came along and sat down on this old wooden bench under the maples.
Intently studying the shifting of the flora and fauna, as the sparrows darted and the
squirrels chatted. How could they hold his attention so? I wondered, unfortunately
wondered aloud before I caught myself.

He turned and fixed his gaze upon me now. But it was not a stern look, of one who
has been offended. No, in his eyes was a warm light and his face and grizzy shadow
curled into a slight subtle smile. It was the kind yet amused look of someone who
understood.

"Just thinking."

"About what?"

"Thinking about nothing."

"Well, that doesn't make much sense now."

"Does it?"

"Nope, not a mote of sense."

"I see." And he trailed off into his own little world. Silence passed for a few
minutes.

"But..

Can you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

"What you were thinking about nothing."

"Well," he trails once again. His head reels back slowly, arching towards the
sky.

A strong wind whipped up and startled the trees and the leaves clapped against
each other saying how rude it was.

"I could ask the same of you."

I was confused. Of me? What about what I am thinking?

"Well, I'm thinking about wondering what you are thinking about."

"Why?"

"Because it's odd to see someone come and sit in silence watching animals.

Especially here. There's hardly much here to see."

"Is that so?"

"Yes, you should go visit a national park or something! Lots of things there."

"I see."

"Yeah. Here it's just a few birds and squirrels and whatever plants they throw in

to look pretty."

"What do you think of their attempt? I find it quite beautiful."

"It is beautiful, just not natural, you know what I mean?"

"True, but that tells you something, does it not?"

I sat and thought a while. It was a park, a garden of sorts. People planted the
shrubs and trees and flowers they thought pretty and melded well with each piece of
this set. What does this tell me? Silence once again permeated the air while I
thought, while he watched contentedly the birds.

"I guess it tells me what the person who runs this park thinks is good."

"I see."

"Yeah, I guess he thinks tall maple trees shadowing old wooden benches, along a
brick path bracketed by simple shrubs and interrupted by the staccoto of the tulips
and pansies, is a good park."

"Yes, I can certainly see that."

"What about you? What are you thinking?"

"Do you think the park director really thought that?"

"Oh, well, I guess so. It would be his job to do that, right?"

"What about the squirrels and sparrows?"

"They take up homes everywhere, I guess they just moved in."

"Like squatters?"

"Yeah, a lot like squatters, if you think of it that way. They're ok, but they

crap on everything and make it all messy."

"Yes, that is true."

"They've been trying to trap them and get them out. They say they have been

getting mean and trying to attack people for food."

"And what do you think of that?"

"I guess we can't have people mugged by sparrows, right? They're already being

mugged by other people, let alone a by squirrels."

His smile seemed to fade a little. Had I upset him?

"But! But I guess that's a bit mean since those animals are just trying to live."

Silence once again. He sat, staring now straight ahead, no longer focused upon
the animals, or me, or the sky. Sat pensive. Was he truly offended by what I had
just said, or just thinking whatever he refused to tell me? It was but seconds.

"Did you ever think of the park like you think the director thought of it?" He

asked, turning to me again. I was relieved, he seemed to be in better spirits.

"No, no not really. I just walk through here sometimes. I like it, it's nice."

"And why do you walk through it?"

"Well, it is a nice day out and I don't have any work today. I guess the

director's tastes are a lot like mine, so I like it here too."

"Those birds and animals, they don't think about much either."

"I assume so, they're just animals."

"But they enjoy this park just the same."

"They do live here."

"Do they?"

"Where else would they live?"

"I have seen many birds elsewhere in less favorable places, I can only assume they

live somewhere there. So they do not all live here and places like it."

"Well, maybe they commute like people."

I swear, I could have seen him laugh. Picturing images of sparrows and pigeons
getting into traffic jams above their human counterparts, going to 'work'. I
supressed a giggle myself.

"You want to know what I think?"

"Oh yes! I've only been asking this entire time, silly!"

"Well..." Trailing off again, staring off into space, into that world of his that
seemed close but far away, mysterious. But I didn't press him, I never thought to.

He turned to me, and said, "I was thinking perhaps it is sometimes best if one
does not think too much about these kinds of things.

Sometimes, things are better left experienced.

I came here to watch the sparrows and squirrels go about,

Not caring or thinking.

And enjoy this nice spring day."

I was stunned. Had I been hoodwinked into being a fool? I certainly was! How
dare he lead me on like a piper from Bremen.

But as I thought about it, he was right. Did it really matter who thought to put
what into this small park? Or where to put it? And what its inhabitants thought or
lived? Wasn't it simply enough to sit and watch it unfold?

I closed my eyes and listened. I heard the sharp reports of the sparrow's wings
and each squirrel's fast paced musings to their neighbors. And the silent sigh of
the trees as each leaf went to and fro in the gentle warm breeze flowing past. Warm
like his smile. I could hear my own heart beating in the steady tempo of life.

I took a deep sigh.

And I opened my eyes.

"You're ..."

But I was interrupted. A strong wind came again and startled the wildlife and
made the trees moan. A plastic bag carelessly floated by like a ghost of humanity,
carried along by the chances of the air.

He was gone.

I was left sitting upon the old bench under its maple canopy and in its green
environs, amidst the drumbeat of wildlife, all alone.

The wanderer never came back.