Remember Lindens looking to buy avatar content, but not doing a public ‘call for avatar content’? Well, it seems Lindens have shopped, liked and added to library. 16 avatar outfits new as of today:

1. Girl Next Door by Adam n Eve
2. Musician Male by Renegade Clothing
3. Boy Next Door by Renegade Clothing
4. Cardboard Boxbot by Grendel’s Children
5. Clubgoer Female by Nylon Pinkney
6. Clubgoer Male by Adam n Eve
7. Dragonlet by Grendel’s Children
8. Gamer Female by Renegade Clothing
9. Gamer Girl by Nylon Pinkney
10. Gamer Guy by Nylon Pinkey
11. Gamer Male by Wraith Unsung
12. Girl Next door by Renegade Clothing & Adam n Eve
13. Musician Female by Renegade Clothing
14. Musician Guy by Nylon Pinkney
15. Professional Female by Adam n Eve
16. Professional Male by Adam n Eve & Nylon Pinkney

Personally, I only tested two: ‘Girl Next Door’ and one of the ‘Gamer Girls’ (Girl or Female, not sure). RaR is wearing the ‘dragonlet’ in the photograph, though. And I must say, I was rather disappointed by the two I tested. I _know_ it is better than what used to be in library, but for the humans, it does feel a bit ‘icky’. Why so?

Girl Next Door by Adam n Eve

A mediocre skin, not bad not good. Really a girl next door. But you must live in the Truman show, to have a girl next door in such a dress. Maybe it’s the place I live, but my girl next door wears sexy, tight jeans, lots of bracelets, a nice ‘fashionable’ tshirt and does not look like she has a BMI that’s in the red. Of course, I can’t vouch for American Girl Next Doors, so, maybe it’s just Belgium in the wrong here. Oh, disregard the cockroach on a stick. That’s not standard included with the virtual Girl Next Door avie. ;)

Gamer Girl or Female… whatever

Although I’m not a hardcore gamer - just SL, AoE and Travian and some consoles occasionally -, I do associate myself with the gaming culture. Probably saw Hackers II a time to many. Anyway, man, was I insulted when I saw my new outfit rezzing. It’s like Tank Girl at age 50. Don’t get me wrong, I _love_ Tank Girl and wish I could be just like her. But this… yikes. They should hit you so hard, your children will be born bruised!

I sit behind the PC all day, yet I don’t weigh anything above 60 kilo’s. Neither does one get pregnant when doing nothing but sitting behind a PC, so… . Then why does my gamer avie looks like she could definitely use some time in the fitness hall? Next, shorts… . Now we all know LL’s mesh for pants sucks. Best shorts evvah? Colleen Bib’s from Savvy?. But hell, this yellow-green monster? Olilly would not have even made something that horrible. To the gamer avie’s defence, I must admit I love the boots. =d But anyway, standing next to me in the photograph is ‘The Lady with the Bear’ from Carnival of Doom’s freakshow. The problem here? She’s the more sexy one. *sighs*

If I were a new resident in SL, some of the things that would make me stay is that I feel good about whom I am & how I look. THIS IS NOT GOING TO HELP PEOPLE TO FEEL COMFORTABLE IN THEIR VIRTUAL SKIN! Because honestly, would you wear those?!

disclaimer: never take fashion advice from Vint, though. ;)

Tags: avatar, library, second life
Categories: Rant, Second Life
5 Comments »

From Arnout Sequent - also known for the invention of the SLinternet, which was kinda kewl, but never really catched on - comes this ‘clonies & particle tv’, as machinima’d by Bella March:

Amazing, nah? This ‘clonies & particle TV’ is really something that can’t be captured in snapshots. As Bella says: ‘Arnout Sequent pushed particles a bit further by converting them to the so-called ‘Imposters’ and by playing videostreams on them. Amazing achievement, see for yourself.‘ I don’t know which ingenious scripting is behind this, I only know it’s all about ’speed reloading / refreshing’ and that I have two 3D Bella’s in my skybox now - and really love them. Almost as much as the ‘real’ virtual version. ;) I do know I want a Clonie-Vint. Do you think it will be convincing enough to let it go to work for me? ;)

Tags: arnout sequent, bella march, clonies, particle TV, particles, SLinovation
Categories: Exploring
1 Comment »

BlogHer - the convention for female bloggers all over the grid world - continues the tradition started last year: also in 2008 there will a BlogHer conference in Second Life! If you care about my stupidity of last year - miscounting time zones by 12 hours and almost not showing up in time for my panel duties - or want to hear what panel members such as or me had to say, you should go and read. For me it is definitely strange to hear the Second Life: Real business: Brialliant or Bust again. A year’s time has passed, and I must admit, my view on this has changed. ;)

But let bygones be bygones, BlogHer is back, also in Second Life. And this year’s schedule is as promising as last year’s was. And BlogHer, they do not only promise, but also deliver. What’s on the agenda in-world this year?

DAY ONE, Friday July 18th (PDT)

1. 9:00-9:15 AM (live from San Francisco, CA)- Welcome to BlogHer ‘08 from the Westin St. Francis Ballroom in San Francisco
2. 9:15-10:15 AM - “Speed Dating” for BlogHers in Second Life (Last year very well lead by Myg.)
3. 10:30-11:45 AM - Second Life Break-Out Session #1: The Intersection of Blogging and Second Life
4. 12:45-2:00 PM - Second Life Break-Out Session #2: Second Life and Security
5. 2:30PM-4:30PM - Second Life Activity in Exhibitor Area
6. 4:30PM-8:30PM - Second Life Open Mic and Party

DAY TWO, Saturday July 19th

1. 9:30-10:30 AM (live from San Francisco, CA) - BlogHer ‘08 Morning Keynote: Hybrid Media
2. 10:45-12:00 PM - Second Life Break-Out Session #3: SecondLife as Educational/Training Tool
3. 1:45-3:00 PM - Second Life Break-Out Session #4: Using Second Life for Good
4. 3:30PM-5:00PM - Second Life Activity in Exhibitor Area
5. 5:15-6:15 PM (live from San Francisco, CA) - BlogHer ‘08 Closing Keynote: Living the Truman Show

I’m honestly looking forward to the keynote. I bet you it will be full of lovely anecdotes: Heather Armstrong’s first book was just released in April. Stephanie Klein is a blogger, an author, and is now in development with NBC working on a pilot for a series based on her autobiographical books based on her autobiographical blog. Heather and Stephanie are the perfect people to close BlogHer ‘08 with a discussion about what it’s like “Living the Truman Show*.” Bloggers everywhere are putting their lives online…and now into other media too. We’ll talk to them about how it feels to put yourself under that microscope. Heather and Stephanie may live it on a bigger scale than most of us, but haven’t you experienced some or all of these symptoms? Parts of life get nearly fictionalized in your own head as you plan your next blog post about events happening in real-time a) People confuse you with a character and forget you’re a real human being b)As your friends, co-workers and family become more aware of your blog they either get caught up in it all…or get more and more uncomfortable. By blogging we sometimes put ourselves in a fishbowl. Hilarity (and sometimes other not-so-funny stuff) ensues.

That and I’m curious which SL panellists are on duty this year! I’m sure Miss Queen Tureaud will let me know on time. Also ’same as last year’, the Queen of Blogher SL wishes to let you know that ‘all non profits get a free booth‘. Sponsorship deals of course, are welcome too.

If you want to go to the RL version of BlogHer 2008, you need to be quick, they only have 150 tickets left. But where to sign up for Blogher 08 SL? Here you go. Not sure if that ‘last name’ and ‘first name’ they want our Avatar or RL. Ah well. Let’s just sign Vint up! ;) Oh, for those who are worrying about not keeping enough LS for rent or shopping, participation in BlogHer 08 Second Life is free!

Tags: 2008, blogher, conference, queen tureaud, second life
Categories: Second Life, Vintfalken.com
1 Comment »

Hmm. Well at least I’m blogging again. I have no other option. The Grid is down. as usual Just like saturday during our Gardenstock Festival. Rolling restart, but they forgot the restart part of it. On a saturday! Back then I was swearing ‘could you please do this on a weekday’. But now I want downtime on weekends again. Anyway, it was a sad thing, because the T61 performers were really awesome. But both Mike00 and BabbleGrabble hold up well. They deserve a few extra bumps for that! ;) But anyway. Will a Linden please tell me _why_ I can’t get in. They used to do that in the old days, before the Second Life Birthday Event became PG. Yeah… those old days. Pffff. :p

*end rant*

PS. I actually checked my email. No message about ‘you were banned for X offence’. So I guess this is a lock all out? Strangely enough, the peepz I have on Skype are still in-world. Me wants in too! Me wants in too! Pfff.

Update: I’m in. Yeey! But I’m wearing my UI in stead of clothing. :/ ‘Deferrers’ (new trendy Linden word) rest of the blog updates to tomorrow. The official message - after a while of waiting and uncertainty - was: ‘Due to high demand, logins are currently deferred. Kindly try again in a few minutes.’ I guess that beats the ‘please be patient’ from Saturday when I was far from patient. Btw, high demand? 51,563 online now is not that much. It’s only 1/200th of belgian population! And do you know how small Belgium is?!!

Tags: downtime, rant
Categories: Rant
6 Comments »

1. Virtual Jungle: Touring the Open Source Grids - Tour of the Open Sims. Interesting read & summary. (found thanks to Gwyneth)
2. An Engine Fit For My Proceeding - An Illustration of the Cosmology of the Grid - ‘I am always of a bent to properly Explain the Technical Nature of how these things operate, and for that purpose I have prepared a small diagram of the Cosmology of the Grid and Second Life, which I hope will prove useful.’ GOTTA SEE THIS! =d
3. Announcing: Shoot Veyron - Supercharged by Veyron - Veyron Supercharge organises a virtual photography contest about her favourite subject: Veyron Supercharge. The prizes are: 1st prize, L$8k and you can take a picture of Veyron kissing you. ;) 2nd prize, L$3k and you can take a picture of V. kissing yo

Categories: Links
No Comments »

As filmed by Mr Miyaoka, The End of the Tiny Universe Convention. Don’t worry, it is not a sad story. It was a ‘kick ass’ convention, and I am proud that through ‘Tiny Greenies’ I’ve somewhat been a part of it too:

And if you thought there was ‘Tiny’, then what are these? Tiny²? Asked them to pose next to my shoe for comparison reasons:

I met those little critters at The Greenies Outpost store where Rezzable is handing out a limited amount of free Greenies Backpacks. Believe me, they are to cute to not get one! But be quick - checks inworld - only 170 from 500 left!

Tags: freebie, greenies, rezzable, tiny avatars
Categories: Exploring
1 Comment »

MISC-1231 - Missing Cultures & Communities from SL5B

Jira Issue ‘MISC-1231 Missing Cultures & Communities from SL5B’ is up to 147 votes. Which is less than I expected. I heard a lot of comments that say ‘but I don’t know how to vote on JIRA’, so here you go: ‘how to vote on JIRA issues’.

1. Go to the JIRA issue MISC 1231
2. On the left, under ‘Operations‘ it says: ‘If you were logged in you would be able to see more operations.’ Click ‘logged in‘ to log in. (Clicking it here will take you to the correct JIRA issue too.)
3. It will ask for your avatar name and password. It’s a Linden Lab service, so you can safely give them your password. Fill out your data and press ‘LOGIN’. You will be taken to the JIRA issue MISC-1231.
4. In the left menu you will see: ‘Voting: You have not voted for this issue. Vote for it if you wish it to be fixed.’ Click ‘vote for it’. Et voila… ;)

There were a lot of - jira style - humorous comments on this thread, but the ones that really said it the best, is Shoshana Epsilon’s: ‘So, it appears that no applications from child avatars will be accepted. That means there will be no bouncy castles or avatar canons or swing sets. No play ground. No Marianne.‘ *pinks away a virtual tear*

Everett Linden comments on SL5B

Everett Linden commented on Massively’s ‘Calling All Cultures Not Anymore’ saying:

‘Hey everyone…there’s a lot of misunderstanding here, so let me try to articulate our policy here. Child avatars are welcome at the celebration. However, we do respectfully decline the submissions we received to create exhibits for the event. Goreans, role-players, and members of the multitude of international communities are all welcome, and I hope you come.’ and ‘The SL Birthday on Linden land is PG.‘

This means ‘they’ downgraded from an mixed area (PG & Mature) at SL4B to only PG sims on SL5B. Something that was definitely not in the original draft/policy for SL5B which stated ‘All sims will be Mature’. Last time I checked, 78% of all regions in Second Life were ‘mature’ - which does not necessary mean they contain mature content, but still. So only 22% of the whole of Second Life may be represented at Second Life’s 5th Birthday Celebration?

I can’t start to describe how totally twisted the ‘we allow them as visitors but do not accept their builds/wish to recognise them as a community’ is. But basically it comes down to this: feel free to drop by and populate our sims and live here, it’s good for our statistics. But, please, don’t show yourself when Real Life is around. Kind of reminds me of that country that ships off a certain percentage of their population in garbage trucks when they have a lot of journalists around for a big event.

Jacek maybe expressed this best: ‘But Linden Lab, it seems, doesn’t want its Residents anymore. It doesn’t want a free, open, creative world. It wants a sanitized, media-friendly world, that universities and big corps won’t think twice about making major investments in. LL’s message for Residents now is: Thanks for making us so popular, but go away now. You’re embarrassing us in front of the cool kids.‘

Annette Blachere’s SL4B nightmares became reality

Last year, Annette Blachere’s photography exhibition was one of the most talked about at SL4B : Annette was picturing her worst nightmares for the future of child avatars in Second Life. Annette got crucified, attacked by monsters, … . (I’m still trying to track down some of the photographs she put on display at SL4B there, please IM when you have photographs of those photographs or can help reaching Annette!)

One of my friends, Bella March, was truly shocked by those images. Luckily, Bella has an open mind, and after some poking from my side, she went to talk to Annette, asking her why she did such terrible things to herself in the photographs. Here is the conversation, as recorded by Bella March at SL4B:

Bella : …but I find the pictures disturbing
Annette : why?
Bella : I keep thinking of my little girl when I see the pics
Annette : but the aim is to show a Nightmare that is happening in SL
Annette : I mean Bella… I don’t wanna die,
Annette : and I don’t wanna to be used as a sexual excuse inside SL…
Annette : I don’t want LL use us Children
Annette : as the excuse to ban different choices
Annette : and this are my NIGHTMARES!
Bella : but you must understand that your nightmares become mine too
Bella : Annette, hai paura di morire in SL - are you afraid to die in SL ?
Annette : Yes of course
Annette : from the last post of Linden Lab
Laetizia : I don’t think they are going to ban child avatars
Annette : it’s even a real possibility
Annette : I’m not so sure
Laetizia : children are not offensive
Omi : even i am worried
Bella : it’s what adults do to them that worries me
Laetizia : yes Bella
Laetizia : bambini non sono ‘broadly offensive’
Laetizia : if they want to ban kids, I will fight against that
Annette : Dank!
Bella : me too
Bella : with all my powers
Annette : I love you all!!
Annette : if you wanna a cookie just click my Sunflower
Laetizia : coalizione europea per i bambini :)

KIDS 5B

‘The Kids’ are going to throw their own 5th Birthday Celebration… celebrating the kids, and not Second Life. More information at the Kids5B blog. Looks like they already got things quite good together: some donations (more are always welcome, of course!), a sim, a layout for the festival… neat! I’ll certainly visit! Bring out the swings, and euh… hide those lollipops away as I will probably eat them all! *blushes* And maybe Lindens can move the SL5B sims next to the Kids5B one? ;)

Still frantically trying to keep an overview of all blogposts in the ‘SLogosphere’ about SL5B ft. (or minus) Child avatars. Feel free to poke me if I missed one!

Tags: child avatars, politics, second life, sl5b
Categories: Second Life
8 Comments »