Dog Biscuits

I’ve spent the past few days helping a friend (who I actually struck up a friendship with through Twitter!) set up her new shop/business in-world.

Jenicca Gothly sells dog treats at her stores on Clos Normand and Port Babbage – but with a bit of a twist. These aren’t treats for virtual dogs, but actual REAL dog treat biscuits that she makes from her home and sells online.

The treats – of which there are currently three varieties – all contain natural ingredients. Jen makes them from home and sells them through an Etsy site, but being an avid SL-resident, she figured she could try and market them through whatever means were at her disposal. She’s rented two shop units so far, both on Victorian-era themed sims, so needed a shop interior that matched. She’ll be the first to admit that she’s not the best builder (but then neither am I), and by setting up everything she needed – signs, mailboxes, décor, etc – had run pretty close to her prim limit. I helped by tweaking a few bits here and there for her, building a new counter, finding some low-prim vintage-style furniture and just straightening a few wonky pictures.

How does it work then? Well, you just buy up one of the boxes in-world, send Jen your address details etc, and that’s it. Shipping and handling is included in the in-world price. The boxes (in—world) cost about L$2000, so you need to have invested some money into SL to get them, but I thought it was a really clever and secure way of handling payment!

I really like what Jen’s achieved so far, and I hope her business venture is a success! Woof!

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New Year

It seems like 2010 was the least productive year for me in SL so far; I felt like I didn’t really make much or do much, other than use it to socialise and catch up with friends from each corner of the globe. I adore SL in that respect. For me, it is the best social networking community – it’s real-time – the MOST real-time social-network I believe is out there - it allows voice chat and it allows you to share creativity. Linden Lab needs to realise this, rather than waste time trying to unnecessarily develop more online social content. What they have here is unique and precedes a lot of other social networks, and it should be marketed as such, not trying to copy what’s followed.

I really want to do more in-world this year. Last year, RL took over, and probably understandably – I got married, for one! That took a lot of time, planning and saving and I was very fortunate to be able to cash-in and use some of my SL-sales to be able to pay for our wedding cake toppers! We (me and Nat a.k.a Kitti Dumpling in-world) rounded out our Second Life-connection by having two of our tiny friends - Mutley Latte and Josephine Planer - at our wedding too!

So, I hope to have turned out at least two pieces of Machinima by the time the year’s out, have organised at least one event for Raglan and made at least six outfits. They’re my Second Life New Year’s Resolutions!

I'm Still Here!

Apologies to you, loyal reader, for not updating this blog in six weeks! All of a sudden I had a real life wedding to attend - MINE! It kinda took up a lot of my time.

What virtual world stuff have I done since then? Well, not a great deal, unfortunately. I added my opinion to a comment a Linden made here, which I thought was pretty bad; but then in my experience, web developers have almost always been anti-social misfits with no real idea of how to properly address another human being.

Avatars United closed down. Silly move. Sure, it wasn't being used to its fullest potential, but I'm sure it could've been. To me, it had LOTS of potential, and I have a whole stack of ideas of how it could be developed; but I'm sure someone being paid a lot more money had better ideas and saw that the only recourse was to obliterate it entirely. What a waste.

I've also missed most of Raglan Shire's Shocktober Festival too (the Halloween-themed month) due to RL commitments; but most of all, I've missed hanging out with friends. Hopefully I'll get to catch up with some properly soon.

Medieval Looms

It's the FOURTH Medieval festival this month on Raglan Shire!

I'm proud to say that I remember the very first one on the Shire. It was held over a weekend, I believe, and took up the area that is now known as the Silicube. Over the years it's grown to now take over the whole field - where the square is, surrounded by Artisan tents and the like - and a grand castle. I made outfits for the first one. Thankfully, due to the fact that the style I made hasn't changed since it went out of fashion over 300 years ago, they still look good these days!

This year, I've tried to contribute my commemorating the tinies favourite festival (for many, at least) by making a huge tapestry. I've been taking pictures of medieval tinies individually and then arranging them on long panels. I've then applied a canvas-style effect over the images, chopped them into sections and uploaded them, to stick them back together into one long tapestry. I've managed to photograph 133 tinies - one of whom appears twice (in different outfits) at my request, because I didn't think many people would be interested! I might still add more yet. I've put it up for display in the castle, and have had lots of requests from people to buy copies of it. I may sell the textures rather than the prims, and then folks can make sections if they want.

I'll donate the proceeds to the animal funds that we're currently raising to go towards our continued adoption of a tapir in the States and a giraffe at London Zoo in the UK. Zayn is also hoping to raise enough to be able to donate to two secondary charities that work with animals on a more general basis.

I might have some interesting news regarding my 'Le Squabbit' machinima movie too soon. I don't want to say too much at the moment, in case nothing happens. But...watch this space!

Emerald Warrior

In light of the fact that the moderator of the Modular Systems blog - the words of wisdom from the Emerald Viewer team - can't be bothered to approve or disprove my comment on their admission to launching a premeditated attack on another blogger, I've posted a screen grab of the comment, and copied my comment below. It goes:

I’ve never used your viewer. A lot of people I know have used it. Apparently it has some ‘really cool features’, but never having used it, the only ‘really cool feature’ I’ve ever witnessed it the chunky multi-coloured Edit particle beam, which I can live without. However, those I do know who’ve used it have complained repeatedly that with each successive update, the viewer has become more and more unstable and unusable, so they’ve switched away.

I don’t know what you did, who you targeted, what happened, and to be perfectly honest, I don’t care. However, based on what I’ve read, I will say this: get your fucking act together. You’re harming the credibility of not only yourselves but every other self-serving basement-dwelling script-babbling software engineer who IS working to do something better for themselves and others. You can hire all the ex-Lindens that you want to try and bolster your credibility, but if you can’t even get past something as petty and as fruitless as this, you may as well give up now.

Goodnight everybody!

In an (un)related side-note, I visited the Emerald Point sim last night. I was in conversation with two friends in IM just before I went, and was flitting between chatting to each of them and reading about someone trying to investigate the story of their blog attack who kept being booted from the sim. I told both of my friends I was heading over there, and there'd be a strong chance that I'd be kicked offline. I was force-crashed three times in 10 minutes of being there. Coincidence? No way. These Emerald people are griefers in sheeps clothing.

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Dear Uncle Phil

Dear Philip,

I watched your keynote speech not with especially great interest, to be honest, as I came into it with a crippling amount of pessimism about the state of the company and its future given that you’d laid off a host of other people just the week before. Still, you have to admire me for still wanting to see it, right?

My review would be: mixed bag. I heard you talk about stuff that was all a bit too techno-jargon for me and I heard you mention some things I could understand. However, I do still have some issues I’d like to address…

I’ve been in Second Life for approximately 47 months, and have been a Premium Account holder for approximately 46 months. I’ve purchased L$ during my time too, so I’ve given you a fair bit of my own money over the years. In that time, I’ve built things for little or no financial gain, and I’ve taken the time to help others build things; I’ve designed sims and I’ve helped others design sims; I’ve had a blast making machinima, and seeing what kind of reaction my approach to mini-movie making has had; I’ve made contacts with people from all across the globe, I’ve made genuine friends, some of whom I’ve then had the great pleasure of meeting outside of Second Life – some are even coming to my forthcoming wedding! – and I’ve suffered genuine sadness at losing some of those friends along the way too. I’ve done and experienced quite a bit that I should be very appreciative of the Lab for, as without SL, these things would never have happened.

However, when I hear that you want to put the focus on new sign-ups, it pains me Philip. It really does.

Of all the things I’ve done to enhance for the Second Life experience and promote to others, where is the return of the appreciation? Where is the love, Philip? I’ve been paying for your support, so where is it? Maybe you’re not a fan of my machinima – it’s OK, a lot of people don’t like Coldplay or waffles (I call these people ‘the crazy folks’); maybe you don’t have a tiny avatar and therefore think that your tall avatar look ridiculous in the tiny outfits I make. I can’t figure it out! I still suffer with lag. I still see log-in issues, I still see inventory issues, I still see transaction issues on a weekly basis. If these are going to be ongoing issues, come out and say so, so I’ll stop clinging onto the belief that these things are being worked on.

Of course you want new people to come in-world, that’s completely understandable. I worked in the retail sector for a while, and I appreciate that Second Life is (in part) a product, and you need your customer base to continue to grow if you want your company, your business and your revenues growing – that’s Economics 101.

And I can appreciate you wanting to get the experience right; if I was a new customer about to walk into an amazing looking new store with fancy flashing neon signs and sexy music playing out over Bang & Olufsen speakers, I’d be thinking, ‘Wow, why didn’t I come here sooner?!’ But if, on the way in, I hear someone on the way out muttering about how bad it’s getting and getting worse in there, I’d be stepping into that store in a very different frame of mind.

You said in your SL7B speech: “So going back to those basics and just trying to make this thing work for all of us is what you can expect to see from us next.” No offence, but in the time you said that and now, I haven’t seen a whole lot of improvement. So why are you working on new stuff already? Are you seriously telling me that everything’s fixed?

I know it’s hard to please all of the people all of the time (especially those scripting geeks; sheesh, trying to please them sometimes seems to be as infuriating as trying to turn a lion into a vegetarian), but have some appreciation of the paying customer base. I don’t consider myself one, but some of the longer-term residents do have some very good ideas that should be looked at and addressed. However, I do know that most of those ideas are based around improvement of the general experience, not how it looks. You seem to be focusing on giving new users a fancy new pair of shoes to walk in; however, when you’re asking them to walk down the same muddy, puddle-ridden, debris strewn road as the rest of us, having shoes with the springiest of steps or the whitest of laces won’t make an ounce of difference.

Regards,

Chaffro

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Childish Behaviour At SLCC

So it's SLCC this weekend. I'm not really sure what it is, but I get the impression from looking at the website that it's like a fan convention for Second Life, put together by residents, but endorsed by Linden Lab.

Philip went. He announced that they were shutting down the Teen Grid. I'd like to think that at the same time as that bombshell was dropped, a dark silent figure right-clicked and Touched Blue Linden's virtual grave and set a fast rotation script off.

So this probably means that the main grid will now become populated by teens who talk in 'txt speak', hassle you for money a lot more and generally think they're cleverer than you. Word up, kids: you're not.

It also means that kids will be walking freely amongst groups of adults, unsupervised, having conversations with adults unsupervised and generally being open to everything that already goes on in the Main Grid - unsupervised. I'm sure (read: hoping) that LL are planning some protocols to safeguard underage residents from the potential dangers of online grooming, but it hasn't taken people long to realise the dangers already. My pal Toxic Menges worked for Habbo, a social networking world specifically aimed at teenagers and was quick to point out some of the problems she had to work around via a series of (always interesting) Tweets.

Another big thing that got mentioned was 'meshes'. A whole bunch of Lindens were laid off the week before SLCC too and Qarl Linden was one high-profile casualty of the latest round of redundancies (perhaps deflecting from the fact that up to ten others had also been given their marching orders). Apparently Qarl was the person who made sculpties possible and was working on or towards bringing 'meshes' in-world. I've no clue what they are or how meshes work, so I can't comment on that, but better educated geeks tend to rave about them, so I'll assume they are a big deal. However, the fact that they were talked about at SLCC almost seemed to indicate that someone at the Lab had actually listened to the outcry of residents upon Qarl's departure and sought to calm the mob. Or maybe I'm being optimistic. It's a shame that another obviously incredibly talented person has gone. Sculpties are good fun to play with, and they have certainly helped shape (no pun intended) SL in a far more creative way.

Anyway, I lead a bunch of tinies - Escape Unplugged, Patience Littleboots, Clover Denzo and others - to the SLCC sims on Saturday night, just before speeches were about to resume. We hid beneath the stage before climbing onto the tables and riverdancing to the audience below. We'd done three dances before a moderator told us all to leave the stage. In retrospect, maybe he'd seen us earlier and thought that although it was the most entertaining thing that had happened there all weekend, three dances was enough.


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