We know you were all looking forwardediddly to the awesome performance from the Virtual Family Von Trapp at the Second Life 5th Birthday Event. Due to yet unknown technical issues there are some slight changes in the program. Normally, this should pass unnoticed to you, beloved residents. The children Von Trapp will perform on a different sim as Maria Von Trapp and Georg von Trapp. We kindly thank you for your understanding and believe this show at SL5B will still be full of awesomeness. Here are the new promo textures you may use. Please respect the ® in your Second Life®.

Vint Linden*

* Disclaimer: if anybody wonders, this is NOT an official Linden Blogpost and I am NOT an official Linden.

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. ;)

*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?!!

The frustrations kept piling up. The final trigger? Waiting over 20 minutes to download the newest release client. This 20 minutes were spend on doing the preparation work. After that it was just quickly rezzing in-world to take the matching photographs. Which would not work because my Pandora animation HUD I need for the ‘play dead’ animation did not work. (Lindens?! Grrrr!) and I did not exactly get the shot I wanted because my shoe would not rezz either. And there were ugly black stripes on all my snapshots. And I crashed. Etc. Which started the debate between me an my owner: is this an actual virtual suicide, or a cover up by Lindens of the homicide and maybe even murders that they are committing on a daily basis? Mass genocide? Anybody? Ah, well.

I won’t do this for real. And my owner can’t stand the idea of having to pull the plug on me. But still, sometimes we both agree, that maybe the only thing they would still hear, is a letter written in - virtual, but none the less - blood.

PS. We’re feeling a bit more optimistic again today! ;)

PPS. Don’t try this in your virtual homes on damage enabled land!

Lindens sold us a brave new virtual world. Remember ‘Second Life is a 3D online digital world imaged, created, & owned by it’s residents‘? The virtual world era when we could still buy virtual land? First, Linden took ‘owned by it’s residents’ away. We could create and imagine for them, but it was not our world any more. But they still sold us a virtual world. And now? Now they are just selling us a piece of - lately rather crappy - software and some - lately rather crappy - services. If we have ever been, well, we are not residents to them any more. See. I am Belgian, not Belgian™. I live in Belgium, not Belgium®. Yet, I’m not a Second Lifer, I have a Second Life®. That means I own a ‘good’, not that I’m part of a world.

Don’t get me wrong. Most of the time I like being a part of the Second Life® brand experience. I really love some of the friends I got through Linden Lab™’s services. But ever since this ‘use of Linden’s trademarks rollback’ decision was made, I had a hard time to see Second Life as a virtual world we can still all help build.

When the Second Life community was much smaller and generally unknown to the public at large, our policy allowed Residents to use certain trademarks on their websites (which the policy called “fansites”) to show their connection to the Second Life community. At that time, for example, a disclaimer on a Resident website that showed the Second Life Eye-in-Hand logo could be enough to protect against confusion. That was because the early group of Residents was incredibly familiar with Linden Lab and could easily distinguish Linden Lab’s website from Resident sites. With the growth of the Second Life community and a greater awareness of Second Life by those outside the community, it was increasingly important to take precautions to ensure that when people saw our trademarks (particularly people less familiar with Linden Lab), they knew it was a product or service of Linden Lab.

I _know_ I am not the only one that feels used right now.

However, we want to work with Residents who need time and help making adjustments. If you need extra time or help, please write us at tm-questions@lindenlab.com.

I suggest the following questions:

1. Dear Sir/Madam Linden, I have an url that says mysecondlife.blogspot.com. How do I change that URL without loosing my blog’s content?
2. Dear Sir/Madam Linden, I currently have the Second Life Eye-in-hand™ Logo on all my in-world textures. Of course, I do not own all of those anymore, lots of them were sold. Could you please replace these UUID’s with these (long list!) to make sure I comply with your usage of trademark laws?
3. Dear Sir/Madam Linden, I now need to move my website to another domain. How do I do that without loosing my ranking in Google?
4. Dear Sir/Madam Linden, do you consider ‘xxx’ and ‘pr0n’ to be nouns, and is my community xxx-pron-SL.org complying with your trademark policy?
5. Dear Sir/Madam Linden, I have www.building.sl and English mine is no good. I am construction company. You pay me for domain?

Which ‘Dear Sir/Madam Linden, I need help’ questions springs to your mind?

1. Greyed out HUDS (or greyed out everything) - After a lot of complaining about HUDS being to distracting, Linden Lab decided to just colour all HUD devices in a neutral grey. This function can not be disabled. ‘Everything Grey’ can be disabled by enabling atmospheric shading under ‘graphic preferences’. (got these features on: Rezzable computer)
2. Non supported - This time Linden Lab decided to listen to the spouses, partners and kids of their userbase. Spending to much time on Second Life? No fear, the ’system not supported’ feature comes to the rescue. This feature can only be disabled by investing a decent amount of First Life assets. (got this feature on: laptop)
3. Glow XXL (new!) - To make virtual worlds future look even more bright and shiny, Linden Lab implemented the ‘Glow XXL’ feature. Let the glow take over your complete screen! This feature has different settings, which you can toggle in the Client (now ‘Advanced’) menu under the ‘debug menu’ and then renderglowiterations and the other renderglow options. To disable this feature completely, set renderglow to ‘FALSE’ in the debug menu. (got this feature on: desktop computer)

Yeey! Not. This means tomorrow I must set all my fears aside and stick my head and Veyron’s gift into the pc. Please, all cross your tails for me!

Should we start a ‘RC 1.20 documented features’ pool on Flickr? ;)

Atmospheric Shaders ON

Atmospheric Shaders OFF

And I’m not sure if I’m actually ‘digging’ dazzle either… . :/

Maybe this is just me getting old. Or maybe this is just what was bound to happen. But sometimes it feels like Second Life is become as much a ‘rat race’ as First Life:

Write up blogposts if you find something new and interesting. Find something new and interesting you’re sure the others will be interested in too. Get things done - in time. *hides from Sho* Talk to people who are insulted if you do not IM ‘hi’ to them for two days. Have no time left to people that are interesting and inspiring and that you have not talked to for weeks. Drop & refuse interesting projects because you run out of time. Postpone kick-ass projects because you can not get hold on the right people. Reply to all IM’s. Reply to all e-mail. Reply to all Flickr mail. Keep your inventory sorted. Change outfit once a week. Remember where you had written down that ***** password again.

For others this might be even more complicated, almost all of the above and then add to it:

Need to keep scripts working, product updates released. Paying shop rentals and figuring out which shops to ditch, and were to find great new ones. Keeping up with all the latest SL improvements (and down-provements). Managing staff, which probably also suffer from all of the above. Finding staff. Developing new product, ideas, textures, … . etc, etc, etc

And it gets even more chaotic when First Life mixes in. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining: either it’s our Virtual Brave New World that changes or else I have definitely sought this myself. Just having a little bit of problems adjusting to all this, and sometimes I even long for my dancing pole over at the Paradise Lost. Things were simple back then: just 5 dance animations to choose from.

Anyway, that’s as far as the explanation with my second entry for the Koinup ‘Exoctic’ Contest goes. ;) The photograph is taken inside something that said ‘help power the grid’.

Strangely enough, the ZHAO still functions as it should, reading the information from exact that notecard that is so-called missing from database, as it still displays the poses I’ve listed in the notecard. If I’m trying to access the copy of the notecard I have in my inventory, it gives the same ‘missing from database’ error message.

Me is now highly confused and wonders:

• If somebody knows how I can still find out what was written in my poses notecard. So I can copy paste that, make the necessary changes and insert it in my ZHAO again.
• Will I be able to delete the current notecard(s), if it’s missing from database?
• If someone can hand me a copy of their ZHAO notecards, so I can see how things were to be written again.

Update: Takuan and his alts are experiencing the exact same problem. Anybody else? Take a quick peep into your AO’s (right click, edit, last tab) and try to open the notecards to see if they are still there/allocated right?

So, now I have a bet going on, and as my opponent says IMDB is wrong, I need other sources of information. Preferably some who are old enough to have watched Melrose Place when Viggo Mortensen was still young.

Did or did not Viggo ‘Aragorn’ Mortensen have a role - with more than one appearance - in Melrose Place?

Any help appreciate. Especially if you prove me right! ;)