‘Vint, sit here and read.’ ‘C’mon, Vint, I told you to get rid of your clothes!’ ‘No, the shoes you can keep on.’ ‘Now stop snapshotting and pay attention, Vint!’ ‘Vint, drop that camera, you’re not supposed to hide behind it!’ ‘No, Vint, you look fine like that, really.’ ‘Your complexion, Vint? It’s ok I guess.’

I got to shoot with my favorite machinima director and all I got is this stupid green eyes. Hmmm. That’s not really true, though. I got some neat stuff. And a kind ‘do not blog/tell about this yet’. *sobs* Maybe I could show you all the underpants too. Although I didn’t feel very sexy in those. Nah, let’s leave it as it is for now. In the meantime you can take a look at Rob Danton’s other machinimas. Let’s take Dancing with Death in Trash Palace, for instance:

… or the cute tough girl Nephie doing some serious blowing up:

… or at this series on Flickr of Rob stealing a car.

Tags: machinima, rob danton, selfportrait, video
Categories: Vint Falken
2 Comments »

Up to now, I blamed the photographers. Or the Second Life client. And the graphic cards. But after seeing him ‘in person avatar’ at SL4B I now realise: Philip Linden’s hair is butt ugly. Yes, I know, it is not prim hair. So it will never actually end up in his butt. But it’s still ugly as hell. So, as the Second Life community, let us all help Phil, shall we? Do you have free hair coupons? Send them to Philip! Do own have a prim hair shop? Do invite Phil over! If you do not have any of those, you can still just rezz him a plywood box to hide his head in…

Now, I gave it a shot to look at which new hairstyle would suit Philip Linden best. What do you think? (click it for a bigger version)

If you do not like my suggestion, or think you can do better, feel free to experiment with Philip Linden’s hairdon’t yourself. You can use any of these two pictures of Philip Linden below. For the make over, I myself used a free account at makeoversolutions.com, but there are tons of other sites and programs that let you experiment with hair and make up on a photograph.

Tags: fashion, hair, philip linden, sl4b, the irony
Categories: Fashion, The Irony
10 Comments »

Centering the discussion/comments/suggestions on this on SL Bloggers wiki’s forums, hence comments closed on this one:

We barely got over the last blogmeet and are now planning the next, seems like each meet is getting bigger and better for both turnout and enjoyment. his is just an announcement and a rough outline for the next meet.

• Date: July 15 (Sunday)
• Start Time: 1pm (SLT) Its been set at this to try and accommodate any and all time zones
• End Time: Who cares.. we can just keep partying till we all just drop of exhaustion.
• Location: Dinee Ghia’s home in Chamcook (SLurl to come)
• Theme: we have 5 to choose from
  • Japanese
  • Pirates
  • Gorean
  • Tinies
  • Goth/Vampire
  • … any other ideas for themes.. voice them please.. if we don’t use them now, they can be kept in mind for future meets.
• Topic of discussion: TBA
  

As the Summary says. Keep this date open, please.

I shall not be present myself though, being on the Dour sim with 130.000 other RL avies listening to Amon Tobin, Autechre, Blue Velvet, Brujeria, Converge, Dr Lectroluv, Fixmer/McCarthy, Merzbow, Tiefschwerz, Venetian Snares, Zion Train, the Dropkick Murphys, Wu-Tang Clan, Sick Of It All, … *one happy Neko Ann*

On the other hand this is a good time to ask if any of you are planning to attend the BlogHer ‘07 conference in Second Life. So, did any of you - besides Myg - inscribe? And what do those going expect? *opens comments again*

Tags: blogher, sl bloggers, sl bloggers wiki, sl blogmeet
Categories: SL Blogs
6 Comments »

Aha, so the SL Bikini Project is not dead. Although I should have attended payed attention in high school geography class. Which country do I put this one under? Austria it is. ;)

You can still download my PS bikini template and here are the instructions to go with it:

The SL Bikini Project is all about showing Seond Life’s diversity through or in bikini’s.

Together with this .txt file, you should find two .pds (photoshop) templates. Open them, paint on the ‘paint here’ layer (that’s the one that doesn’t say ‘white edges), activate the alpha layer channel (it’s already there in channels, just press the eye), save as a .tga file (32 to keep the alpha channel!) and upload both the upper en below texture into your Second Life.

In appearance, create a new undershirt, drag the bikinitop texture from your inventory opon the white square that says ‘texture’ beneath it, save it, and you just made a bikini top. Create a new underpants, drag the underpants texture bla bla bla…

Now snapshot yourself in those bikinis and show us what you made at http://bikiniproject.vintfalken.com

Greetings,
Vint Falken

Tags: clothing, SL bikini project, template, texture
Categories: Fashion
2 Comments »

Candidate Evans does the huge - and probably costly too - promise of ‘Keeping Second Life Safe of FL Lawsuits, as Governor’. The SLGOP’s campaign poster with the tag line ‘Own your own clarity’ states: It’s RL Lawyers - like Jack Thompson - and RL politicians that pose the greatest threat to our way of life… because their lawsuits and ill-conceived laws could virtually DESTROY Second Life as we know it! As you Governor, Erbo Evans will be committed to defending and protecting SL against the threats - NOT using them as an excuse to limit Resident free expression, or grab more power for the government! The Grid Democracy Party acknowledges the importance of this issue, especially now the rumours go that the present Linden Administration considers country based filtering systems. Yet a few pages further on his blog in his campaign folder Candidate Evans’ campaign manager Danielle Ferguson threatens to orbit all who do not vote for Erbo. The Grid Democracy Party here wishes to make the following statement: when in office we shall take a very thorough look at all AR’s filed against Danielle Ferguson, her staff and and Erbo Evans conserning orbiting residents and we shall react appropriate. Of course, AR’s for murdering prim babies, stealing from innocent residents and broadly offensive behaviour shall be ignored. A campaign switch that was started - or so she claims - by Candidate Flintoff with the key sentences: ‘Tyffany Flintoff will be Your Governess. Vote for her on 1 July or your (Second) Life will be over.‘ Candiate Flintoff says Mr. Evans stole her campaign ideas: ‘The Flintoff campaign does not have to turn to staff members to provide an attractive model for their posters; it’s clear that my earlier comments to Mr Evans surrounding his attire have struck home and he now realises that “latex sells”; Ms Ferguson is clearly one hot item and should she wish to jump ship to the winning team she knows where to call; the subtle and understated use of weaponry in these posters is surely too similar to be coincidental; and the gentle reminder that bad things happen to those who vote poorly has been a feature of the Flintoff campaign since day one.’

A new candidate - stepping up close to the end of the SLelections race - is Nuschi Martynov. Speaking German as mother tongue, he must have thought ‘Hey, as Arnold can do this, so can I!’. On his platform he addresses the german immigrants and bus passengers in Second Life, saying that he supports the other candidates’ - and we assume that’s mainly Candidate Falken’s - demands, but not the candates themselves. He starts his campaign with the demand for the right to be late in Second Life. And witht he promis that if you vote for him Second Life will be slower. We think he should clarify on what would be slower: the bug fixes, the implementation of the new verification system or the folluw up of AR’s and help requests? Yet, as it comes to candidates with cute german accents, the Grid Democracy Party still prefers Candidate Volare.

Update: Candidate Martynov clarified his ‘for the Right to be Late!’ platform: ‘The Right to be Late has to be an avatarian fundamental right. Slowness must be part of the basic SL system. Occasional lag is not enough! Delayed TP’s and Logins cannot happen just now and then! This is our first Election Poster. Vote for Nuschi Martynov! For the discovery of more and better slowness in SL!’

Tags: erbo evans, nuschi martynov, SLelections 2007, tyffany flintoff
Categories: SLelections2007
4 Comments »

There’s a new not a meme! Hear! Hear! Rose Farina asks us if in our Second Life’s we have manners. Not the ‘tell your Xcite not to talk to channel 0′ manners, but when you tell someone you will do something or be somewhere for something do you show up? Are you generally polite to other players you don’t know? Do you feel free to blast others because of the anonymity factor? Do you belong to the group who says if you can’t say anything nice don’t say anything at all group? Feel free to rant, vent or rave about your view on this subject.

My in-world manners

I think I am an overall friendly and polite avie, but of course, I can be mistaken. *grins* I try to help ‘teh n00bz’ asking me questions and once in a while I even slip them 200L$ so they can start uploading textures - although I think most of them spend it on tipping strippers anyway. If I say ‘RTFB’ or ‘Read the Fucking Blog’ I leave out the ‘fucking’ and add the permalink to the blogpost they can find the answer and a message that they should first read that one and then ask me when there are any questions left.

As for abusing the power of anonymity, I realise all to well I have none of that. When registering this blog’s URL with my real name, I kissed that - imho, overvalued possession - goodbye. Which means I threat people like I would do in First Life, except if ’stepping out of character’, like with the seriously ‘disclaimered’ SLelections. Do note that I do not shoot my First Life friends, and that there are some other minor differences, but those differences all originate from the different nature of the Second Life metaverse compared to the First Life one.

When IM’ed or e-mailed with a question, suggestion or just a simple ‘hello’, I try always to answer with (different versions) of one of the following replies:

• Hi to you too + optional text. (On the simple ‘hello’.)
• Yes, of course, …
• Yes, but later… (mostly followed by ‘mail that to me, please)
• No, sorry, I do not have the time/I do not think this to be in my field of interests/…
• Maybe, can you send me some more information?
• No, but maybe you could ask/talk to/… *insert avie name here*

If I do not reply, your IM must have slipped through or was not noticed before a crash. Feel free to remind me of replying to you. ;)

As I do try to reply - be it shortly or not - to all IM’s I receive, one of the most annoying things is people who do not do the same. If someone states in his or her profile that there is a better way to contact them, I’ll use that one, but if they do not, I expect them to reply to IM’s.

To work around the capped of delivery of messages, create an e-mail account and let Second Life deliver your off line received messages to that account by changing the settings here. You shall still not receive them in-world, but you shall get all IM’s in email and can reply to them by email or later when in-world and using search for the person who has send the IM.

Also in Second Life, the Golden Rule applies: ‘Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.’ (Socrates)

My VintFalken.com Blog

Again, I think of myself as having a ‘decent style’ on my Second Life blog too. What I consider basic (SL) blog etiquette:

• Respect copyright: If you want to use copyrighted material - and we can assume that anything found on the net that isn’t clearly annotated as being in public domain or under CC license actually ‘belongs’ to someone and is thus copyrighted - ask the original creator of the material - be it text, pictures, … - if you may reproduce that content and how they wish you make clear that it is their content and not yours.
• Respect CC and attribution: When using CC material, give a decent attribution with it. Clearly noting it was not your content and a link back to where the original content is and people can contact the original creator. Not obliged, but certainly polite is to let that person know that you liked what he is creating and that you are using his/her content.
• On the CC non-commercial license: If you are running adsense, other ads or affliate links the page reproducing the content, clearly, you are not a non-commercial blog and you should ask before reproducing content licensed under CC non-commercial.
• If someone tipped you on something, gave you a great idea or ran a story before you, do the polite thing and give them the deserved credit. You want them to do the same for you, no?
• Share knowledge: Do not just say ’see what I have’, but also add ‘here you can find it too’. Do not just say ‘look what I can do’, also add ‘if you want to give it a try, this is how you start’. Believe me, people will appreciate this.
• Do not ‘thrash’ something or someone without a reason. You can say you dislike a certain person or service, but do share why you dislike it. Contacting the person behind the avatar or service first and telling him about your dislikes may do wonders too.
• For Christ and Linden God’s sake, aggregate the full feed of your blog! If only given a partial feed of your blog, I shall not conclude you want me to read what you have to say, I shall conclude you just want me to click your site for adsense revenue or whatever. Of course, I shall stop reading those tiny bits of what you had to say and never visit your site again.
• Allow anonymous comments: you publish a blog in a way that allows everybody with internet access to read it. (Well, except for some people in China maybe.) So, you should also allow everybody who wants to to comment. You can still moderate comments - or moderate all that include an URL, as I do -, install Askimet and/or Captcha, but at least accept them. One of the most frustrating things is reading a blogpost, liking it/wanting to add something only to find out you can not comment. If you are on Blogger, realise that not all of us want Blogger ID’s. I dislike the platform and thus shall not create an account there. Period. *ponders about open ID*

Also for (SL) Bloggers rules: ‘Also in Second Life, the Golden Rule applies: ‘Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you.’ (Socrates)

Multitasking, my biggest sin.

I’m a heavy multitasker when in Second Life, often switching between the multiple IM conversations in the Second Life client, my feed reader, my browser, Photoshop, … . Often that leads to me totally ignoring main chat and replying to IM’s belated. Bear with me, please! If you notice I do not respond to something in main chat, IM me. If we are IM’ing and you feel offended by my slow replies, tell me so. I will either quit the other things I am doing or will say we can continue the conversastion later.

Tags: behaviour, not a meme, sl blogs, SLetiquette, vint falken
Categories: Vint Falken, not-a-meme
5 Comments »

Some small tricks that solved problems I was having:

• The client was telling me - as I was typing - that it would log me off for inactivity. Huh?! To disable logging of because of inactivity, go into the Client Menu (Ctrl+Alt+D) and activate ‘Never AFK’ under ‘Character Test’.
• Trying to TP someone, I encountered the annoying error that his TP button was grey. Hmmm? Ctrl+Alt+V and then reopen the profile tabs worked. You get other neat options too, although none of them work. Except for maybe ‘locate the person on map’. It does not locate the avatar, but does say if it’s north, east, south or west from you. I did not check about this info being correct yet though. (But if so, with some intermediate steps you could locate someone on the map that did not gave you permission to do so?) And would the ‘Freeze’ option work on land you own?
• A work around for voice chat in IM not working: Find the person(s) calling card. Right click it and select start conference call. Watch for all the names to show on the list then push call and wait for the call to start. Some times typing a message helps this start faster. (Loki Clifton)
• And for those who did not know yet: Get rid of those annoying and butt-ugly foot shadows by just going ‘Client menu > Rendering > Features > Foot Shadows’. Neat!

And the Bryce 5.5, you ask? Upon releasing 6.something Daz Productions decided we may all get the 5.5 for free. I must admit I have not used Bryce since fooling around in the 2.1 over six years ago, so I’m rather curious how it looks, works and feels now. You can find both the Mac as the Windows version at Cnet. (From Muse’s blog)

Tags: bryce, client menu, software, tips and tricks, voice
Categories: Exploring, Second Life, Tutorial
2 Comments »

1. Dolmere Talamasca - Second Life resident: “No Sit” Script - Sometimes when you’re building an object with multiple prims you want some of them to allow an avatar to sit down while other linked prims should reject a sit request.
2. Tranniefesto: A Crossdressing Adventure - Kota’s after SLUK story/drama. Scary.
3. Veronica Gunfire on Flickr - Corbett Howard - Wow. Every shot in the stream is delicious, but this one’s best. Girls with guns style!
4. Daltonic Gin: OpenSim fun =) - Dalien on OpenSim: So, what is it ? Basically - it is what it is - it is your own sim! (for which you do not need to pay - just launch it on your machine).
5. Second Life Art News: The Photography Studio of Grignano - Steampunk Second Life photography contest. Zoe?
6. Play YouTube Mobile videos directly in Second Life - Torley Lives - The new You Tube mobile site uses an MPEG4 codec via an RTSP stream that is supported by QuickTime and therefore plays in Second Life without further trouble.
7. The Wastelands: On The Topic of Lag by Ash Garden - We all hate lag, and with two sims loaded with people, scripts, attachments and builds, it’s an inevitability. So, to try and make all our lives a little easier, I’d like to go over a few things we can do to make this insideous threat a little easier to d

Tags: contest, links, open sim, scripting
Categories: Contests, Links
No Comments »

I’m not that good at sitting still during speeches (and TP’ing out did not work), so I’ve shot some Lindens. I figured I’d just read soon to be ex-governor of SL Phil’s speech in the chat logs. ;)

Does anybody have the link to the media file/video already? I was one of those persons not being able to access it for leave streaming.

PS. *hint* Voice is enabled on the SL4B sims and I’m running Firstlook Voice. *hint* (I still did not test it, as nobody seems to enable voice on their clients?)

Anyway, here goes the chat log:

Philip Linden: Hi All
Philip Linden: Happy happy birthday everyone!
Philip Linden: So many people.
Philip Linden: Who here was there that night?
Philip Linden: When we had the ball drop.
Philip Linden: Love that old map
Philip Linden: Reminds me of June 22, midnight, 2003
Philip Linden: I’m not using the voice client right now.
Philip Linden: How is everyone?
Philip Linden: Feeling good myself. Nice to be in-world.
Philip Linden: So many new faces.
Philip Linden: And a few old ones too…. hiya Yadni.
Philip Linden: We’ve got some old lastnames out there…
Philip Linden: Nomad
Philip Linden: Zugzwang
Philip Linden shouts: Does anyone remember how many times we used to let last names be used?
Philip Linden shouts: Yep, the original goal was 150
Philip Linden shouts: But even back then, we still sometimes let it go to that.
Philip Linden: This is an amazing event and set of builds.
Philip Linden: OK that sounds like fun.
Philip Linden: Let’s start with a Linden bear… I guess that is a crazy idea.
Philip Linden: OK next person to buy for zero gets it.
Philip Linden: That was sorta fun.
Philip Linden: How about another one?
Philip Linden: Hope we don’t crash the sim :)
Philip Linden: OK let me get closer.
Philip Linden: Can everyone hear me?

And then, then Phil’s Big Speech:

Well… let me just start by saying thank you…. For being a part of this big dream coming alive. People often ask me these days if I felt at the start like SL would work. And what I answer is that I always knew that SL would work,But that I dodn’t know exactly when. So thank you all for being the ‘when’ For those who haven’t heard me speak before, And I guess there are a few here! I was dreaming about SL since I was a kid. I felt sure that a whole world could be simulated on computers. and watching it all happen. We used to talk at work about a giant forest… full of evolving plants and things… a place you could wander around in forever, which noone had ever seen. and not see the same thing twice… and know that there were places in there you would happen upon, That was how I can remember thinking about SL at the start. It is also interesting to note, There are really a lot of ways in which it also hasn’t changed. that while SL has grown so much over these last 4 years, As we grow, it is easy to worry that the magic of this place will somehow go away. But looking at the world today, it is just as magical, only bigger. The things that make SL special are coded into it at the lowest level: Those are things that are enabled by the basic technology here. That is what makes me happiest today, and keeps me loving my job! I hope this day and event are fun… a way to see SL through time. Thanks for being here! I’ll hang around to chat, but let me wrap up so that we can all wander around and enjoy the day. I’m gonna logoff and get the voice viewer so I can chat a bit!! Back in a few.

Philip did not return, though:

Daedalus Young: I warned Philip he wouldn’t be able to get back in :P

And Iridium Linden:

Tags: linden, philip linden, portrait, sl4b
Categories: Portrait, SL4B, Second Life
3 Comments »

The Grid Democracy Party wishes to warn you all for the enormous danger a Wei08 administration would be. Their plans for a War on Danger and Keeping Second Life Safe, Together, are scandalous and an attack on any Resident’s Universal Avie Rights!

Candidate Falken had to do all sorts of icky stuff like massaging Wei’s campaign manager Mygdala March to get to this documents, but she bravely - and a bit drugged too - underwent these horrifying and scandalous actions as to protect you, the Residents of Second Life.

The shocking document she laid hands upon is a referendum that those insane minds created for once Wei would be Governor of Second Life. We quote:

Dear Resident,

We have recently noticed increased safety concerns among residents (this means you). In order to make your meta-life more pleasant, we believe work on lag, inventory loss and technical problems should be postponed in order to address this urgent issue.

Our statements should be understood to constitute an implied meta-Patriot Act, to be immediately followed with the installation of one new class 5 island simulator and one class 3 island simulator to include the following facilities to ensure your safety: sim PremiumPrison, sim FurryCrawl and sim UnveriPrison.

Under the provisions of this referendum, PremiumPrison and FurryCrawl will be outsourced to private companies. Imprisoned residents’ weekly stipends will be confiscated in payment for their safety services.

An exception to Community Standards will be made for those two companies to give them the necessary tools to ensure your safety.

The incarcerated shall work to create full-permissions content to prove their value as residents. Content will become the sole property of PremiumPrison and FurryCrawl. By purchasing this content, you will be contributing to your safety in Second Life.

UnveriPrison will be operated similarly and will house any avatar refusing to verify payment and identity information. We still intend to allow unverified registration to boost user numbers. The influx of a large number of second-class residents provides us with heretofore untapped sources of revenue through forced labor for the crime of refusing to verify.

We also realize that re-education will not be suitable for certain residents. For those residents, a declaration of unsuitability will be made and avatarship immediately revoked, to be followed without ceremony by a meta-death sentence. The concerned resident and all alts will, after a public stoning, be permanently removed from the grid for all times and the inventory and land will auctioned by us, except for the good bits which we’ll keep for ourselves.

We are sure by applying these rules we can make Second Life safe, together.

As we do care about the community’s opinion, somewhere in the upcoming week we shall, for a short time, offer you the possibility to teleport to Referendum Island and agree to the following referendum:

How heavily should the following crimes against safety be punished?

Now just look at the original document for the questions! Those people behind Wei08 must be out of their minds!!! Residents, think of your Freedom, not your Safety! Do not support their War on Danger and do not vote for Romana Wei on the 1st of July! Vote Vint Falken instead.

Tags: mygdala march, referendum, SLelections 2007
Categories: SLelections2007, Second Life
8 Comments »