Browsing statistics & blogpost for 2008, I get an idea what the Second Life community was most interested in, what enraged us, and what made us go “woot!”. Of course, this would be uncomplete without a list of “10 things to remember about 2008″ and “5 things to forget as quickly as possible.” ;) An overview of 2008 in Second Life according to vintfalken.com:

Most Popular

‘Free Skins’ - This all started with news of Miss Eloh Eliot releasing her skins as ‘open source’ photoshop templates end 2007. This excellent example by Miss Eloh was swiftly followed by Sezmra Splendor. Basing their work on Eloh Eliot’s skin templates, and also releasing their .psd’s were Miss Strawberry and the Brazen Woman skin brand. I wonder if this means we’re cheap, or really interested in the craft of making SL skins? Regardless, I’m hoping to see some more ‘open’ skins released in 2009! (More or less also in this category: my free full perm bikini template. Lot’s of views & downloads, not many comments though. *shakes fist*)

The Tutorials: although most of the tutorials on this page were written in 2007, you are still really interested in ‘learning new stuff’. Toppers are using Photoshop’s liquify tool to correct squared breasts, layer styles for depth in textures (I still need to do Part II) and - strangely enough - How to see last login date.

Exotic Second Life Clients - Lots of interest for Kirsten’s Second Life Shadow Viewer and The 3D Stereo Viewer. I assume people like to see things “in a different perspective” once in a while, and of course, shadows rendered on the spot, for even the budget PC’s is something we continue to dream about. =)

Real Life - Anything ‘real life’ related gets a tremendously high view count, admit it, although you deny, you’re all pretty curious! Be it about the fact that I deny to be male or How the Second Life ‘flickrites’ look in atomic form, you can’t help but click it! ;)

OpenSpaces - Despite such virtual wonders as the Garden of NPIRL Delights and Philip Linden being switched for M Linden, we’ll probably all remember Second Life’s 2008 as “the year the openspaces vanished”. Lots of just commotion over an unjust ‘pricing and policy change on Openspaces‘. That unjust that a Free Accounts Pricing and Policy changes suddenly became believable for a lot of residents. In the mean wile, the promised announcement about ’script limitations’ on openspaces & homesteads - “before January” - have not been announced yet. But for the real ‘effects’ - besides a serious drop in land mass - of this Linden Error, we’ll need to watch 2009 closely! ;)

OpenSim & Moving Your Stuff - Less comments, maybe most think “let’s wait and see” but lots of views on topics relating OpenSim, other girds and importing and exporting goods from and to our Second Life inventories. I believe this interest in OpenSim will only grow in 2009, as the code gets more stable, the functionality expanded and more and more people will turn to OpenSim to get their very own small grid, hosted on their own virtual land servers.

For 2008 definitely remember:

1. Second Life User Interface Design Contest
2. Second Life Bloggers Mix’n Match.
3. Linden trademark policy change and the new ‘your imagination, our trademark’ policy.
4. Change in reporting ‘copyright violations’ and DMCA procedures.
5. Prim in my Hand.
6. Launch of avatars united, Myrl and Koinup growing.
7. Attachments stuck up ass was fixed.
8. Richard Minsky’s SLart. (still ongoing)
9. SlangLife. (deceased in 2008 too)
10. Vint joining “Team Rezzable”. In the same category: The Garden of NPIRL Delights & Dino Destroy.

We want to forget about:

1. SLim.
2. Age Verification.
3. SL5B ft. child avatars.
4. The new and not-really-improved secondlife.com.
5. Lindens pretty much ignoring the teen grid.

Various Numbers

1. Vintfalken.com average traffic went up 134,26% compared to 2007.
2. Flickr.com is still my #1 referring site.
3. Most of my visitors come from the USA, the UK, Germany, Canada and Belgium.
4. In total people from 186 different countries visited vintfalken.com.
5. There are currently 901 posts and 6,689 comments and Akismet has protected this site from 92,904 spam comments.

And errr.. before I forget:

Happy 2009!

Tags: 2008, second life, vintfalken.com
Categories: Second Life, Vintfalken.com
4 Comments »

Image Credit

Image based on Looker Lumet’s “Christmas on Mars”. I intended to do something with the Xmas Greenie & the 3D Stereo Viewer but then I saw Looker’s image and just fell in love with it. As I prefer ‘multi-functional cards’ (cross-lifes), I was pretty sure the RL folks would appreciate his design more than what I had in mind, so I begged him for a “full perm” copy to use as my christmas card. Looker was as kind as to grand me those perms. Woot! Tyvm, Looker!

Tags: 2009, greenies, looker lumet, season greetings, xmas
Categories: Vint Falken, Vintfalken.com
10 Comments »

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 »

Yeeeey! We have reached a dazzling 5000 comments - that does include track- and pingbacks, but not the 30.000 spam comments Askimet caught for me - here at vintfalken.com. Yes, I know, vintfalken.com is not a group blog, so why am I saying ‘we’? Well, none of those ‘conversations’ on my blog posts could have taken place without YOUR input, so thank you so very much! ;) Yes of course, some might say I just like to listen to myself speak, but I must point out that is not the case, and I utterly love people commenting here, sharing their thoughts and opinions, tips, solutions, complaints, dreams, hopes, good and bad jokes, … .

So as a big ‘thank you’ I’ve asked some kick ass Second Life creators, if they were willing to hand out some merchandise to the persons who made comment 5000 - 5005. As both Stephen Venkman and Kailie Quinn could not keep their mouths shut at the time I reached 5k - hey, I’m not complaining, please continue commenting here! ;) - and I got more than 5 things to give away, I’m just going to give something to everybody featured in the top 5000 to 5010, minus myself.

This means that:

Stephen Venkman - known for his Second Life photography - gets Miss Juliet Ceres’ beautifully created ‘Fitz’ avatar. Fitz was my favourite avatar to run around in during the last week. I just could not stop looking at myself walking when wearing Fitz and I would just *smile*. I’m sure Mr. Venkman will look dazzling as a mechanical steam-powered kitty! *purrrrsss* Read more on the Fitz avatar on the NPIRL blog. If you want one of your own, Miss Ceres has more of them available in-world.

Kailie Quinn - aka Katarina Malthus - gets Miss Ceres’ skilfully sculpted Wastelands Armour, an all time favourite of me. Perfect for wearing when you are in an hostile environment, or just want to look ‘though’. Maybe she can use it to collar Mister Venkman in ‘Fitz mode’ and take him for a walk? ;) As said before, Miss Juliet’s stuff can be found in-world at Virago.

Wordfromthe Wise - who participated in the ‘10000L$ bounty for best trademark parody’ contest - will receive CodeBastard Redgrave’s marvellous Machinimacam, which enables you to make better, more interesting machinima. You don’t have to limit yourself to filming your own avatar walking anymore! ;) I wonder if his - or her - next entry for a contest will be a machinima now?

Kanomi Pikajuna - ‘Kanomi is important. Kanomi is special. Kanomi matters. She is the friend to all. Everybody likes her! Everybody likes the nice girl who is the friend to all. She is nice and important and she is special and important and the nice special important friend to all! Kanomi is important! Kanomi matters!‘ - receives not one, but three different prizes, all created by virtual fashion designer Sofia London. Soon Kanomi will be the proud owner of a lurveBite after glow dress, a guy beater tank top and the black ink dress.

Notorious clothing collector Veyron Supercharge - well, as long as the clothing does not reveal to much, that is - has won famous designer Rebel Hope’s awesome Cleopatra outfit: ‘Cleopatra is a 23 piece costume including bodice, pants, skirt wrap, two options of snake arm bands, prim shoes with jewels w/base, jeweled ankle bands, scarab jeweled bracelets, ankh and jeweled staffs (one with a crossed arm pose), lighting system to cast a beautiful light on her upper body, crown of jewels with sculpted prims, sculpted jewelled necklace, Cleopatra cross arm pose separately also, and the box is Cleopatra’s Needle and is included in the package.‘ The throne she will have to buy herself, though. Or… does anybody feel like being her Marcus Antonius? ;)

Last but not least, Mister Tao Takashi will receive a an exclusive beta version of ‘The Ordinal Wilks&Co Vertical Clock-Loading Pistol’, created and donated by steampunk creator Miss Ordinal Malaprop. Rumours go that the pistol refusing services, or misbehaving occasionally is intentional. As this is an exclusive beta, I do not own one of myself, nor could I supply a photograph. So I’m very curious at seeing the ‘Ordinal Wilks&Co Vertical Clock-Loading Pistol’ depicted and tested. Mr Takashi, fire away! ;)

(As all winners were unaware they were entering a contest, they will be notified by email and asked if they want to receive the gift before they are being shipped.)

Tags: contest, vintfalken.com
Categories: Contests, Vint Falken, Vintfalken.com
8 Comments »

For those that did not put 1 (photography proof) and 2 (a week at Rezzable HQ, London) together yet, and because Sered Woollahra wanted to hear more: I joined Rezzable ranks. For those that do not know Rezzable yet - although that’s hard to believe - they are responsible for amongst others: Greenies, Carnival of Doom, Surfline, Crimson Shadow, Toxic, Stratos, Black Swan, The Cannery, King’s Rezzable, … sims. The best overview of what nifty, new things they are up to you get by reading - and subscribing to - Rezzable’s newsletter.

Ok, so now that we’ve established that Rezzable is creating, building and organising a lot of quality stuff, what will I be doing? As sims constantly change - nothing is static in a virtual world, the Dino Destroy as a recent example of that - I will have some main things to focus on, and some constantly revolving ones. But there are:

1. Rezzable.net/rezzable - Know of someone who did not join SL yet and you want him or her to join up? He or she is curious what virtual worlds is all about, but thought the whole avatar thing to complicated? We’re glad to help out!
2. Greenies - Cutest extraterrestrials in the whole metaverse. All who thought they were limited to just being cute to look at, will soon be proven wrong. Finally, Greenies are mine! All mine, I say! I am allowed to help think and do with Greenie stuff. They’ll stay just as cute, but will become way more engaging. I bet my ears and tail over this.
3. Rezzable Art - SLart at the Cannery and Miss Melodious upcoming show. Helping out a tiny little bit. Does anybody happen to have fig - Ficus carica that is - leaves in their inventory?
4. Second Life for Relay For Life Fashion Show - Rezzable donated 4 sims and of course also takes part as a designer team. According to Vint, very interesting: virtual consuming that actually has a real and touchable First Life good cause. Or how virtual worlds, actually can make a difference. We’re not all about pr0n and ‘look how dirty those virtual minds are’ newspaper articles.
5. Tunnel of Light - Mister Spiral Walcher’s amazing WindLight build. For ages, tweaking the client menu to get some kind of glow effect, it is now officially ours. It became high time that someone showed the possibilities of WindLight glow to all. Besides, this renders the use of PS filter diffuse glow totally unnecessary. Yeey! Generaly tiny bit helping out. To go and visit there, IM me, and I’ll be your date for the ride. ;)
6. … - Yet more and much more to come.

Curiosity satisfied?

Ok then, let’s hop to the next subject: virtual ‘independence’ of Vint and vintfalken.com. That is a hard one, even for me. I always blogged - and will continue to blog - about things I was either busy with doing my self, or thought noteworthy, interesting, … for all of SL residents, or virtual future or just for my readers. ;) Of course, I’ll continue to do so. But now a lot of stuff I will be doing, will be Rezzable-related things. For reasons of being clear, things tagged ‘Rezzable’ and put in the ‘Rezzable’ category will have to do with Rezzable, the others will not. I see some logic in that. ;)

An example of this: If I blog about an upcoming Rezzable event I’ll be partaking in, I’ll tag it ‘Rezzable‘. If I blog about Veyron Supercharge’s latest affair, I’ll tag it ‘Veyron‘ and not ‘Rezzable‘. If I write that I don’t like Age Verification and am not planning to take part in it because it will solve nothing and I tag it ‘age verification’ and ‘rant‘ but not ‘Rezzable‘, then that is clearly my - Vint’s - opinion and not Rezzable’s. This can’t be that hard to ‘capiche’. ;)

Hoping this clears things out,
yours truelly,
who is very happy with the fact that she joined Rezzable ranks,

Vint Falken

PS. RaR is not going to like this, but I already found a great excuse for being late for work that is neko-worthy: ‘Help! On my way to work, I fell in the bottle that says ‘Milk’, and now I can’t get out.‘

Really, they should make those builds kitty-proof. ;)

Tags: greenies, real life, rezzable, vint falken, vintfalken.com
Categories: Rezzable, Vint Falken, Vintfalken.com
17 Comments »

I was going to code 2008’s New Year wishes. Really! I had it all written out. The code was to take all great things from 2007 and to that, was to add some more positive variables. Then all bugs & crappy stuff would be filtered out, et voila: 2008! But such a great coder as I am, of course, no way I could get the LSL to validate.

At that point I decided to stick to what do am good at: the new year’s wishes are thus wrapped in a bit of photoshop. ;)

To all: have a great, kick-ass, w00t! 2008 filled with *purrrs* and happiness!

Tags: vint falken
Categories: Vint Falken, Vintfalken.com
6 Comments »

I was already wondering when Sweet Second Life would not only - attempt at - indexing the SL blogosphere, but also be a topic for that blogosphere. Not that I was awaiting it. When they first launched and started spamming blog comments, I asked for a bit more info. Although I did send it to the email address they supplied, I never got an answer: i just figured they did not want people to write about them.

Now they finally get noticed, it’s not in a way that calls out for a lot of applause: Crap Mariner is wondering if Sweet Second Life is full of Crap. Well, it isn’t. Although he did submit his blog, and that is exactly why it _is_ full of crap. Yes, this kinda confuses me too. Also Tiessa Montgolfier, having submitted both mine and Veyron’s blog - which never showed up - finds they have a strange way of ranking blogs or a lousy crawler.

Yet, at the Social Rank headquarters, they have their answer ready:

Hi there. Thanks for your feedback. I have added both of the blogs that you mentioned into Sweet Second Life so you will start to see them being added over the next week or so.

In terms of the ranking, it is based on links and comments. So, in that sense it is more advanced than either Google or Technorati because we really look at who is talking about which blogs and we do that over time so we can have accurate rankings.

However, at times we may miss a blog so thanks for suggesting that we add these into our index.

Geeh. Lady or Sir, I wrote you an email to ask for info, and you never replied. Back at that time, when I got a beta or alpha or zero or whatever account, I also submitted multiple SL blogs, where amongst mine. Other blogs included were for instance Zoe Connolly’s, October Hush’s, Kisa Naumova’s, Dolmere Talamasca’s, Codebastard Redgrave’s etc. All rather popular and active blogs. They never showed up in your rankings. A few months ago, I submitted mine again. It still did not show up. You say you index - I still doubt you index at all - based on the amount of comments and incoming links? I must say, that the last quarter, I had a lot of both. So someone needs to work on their algorithm a bit? I agree with Dandellion, don’t boast about being more original than technorati, or google. At least, they index quite thoroughly. And they drop by if you ask them to!

One thing learned: the link-love theory is bullshit. Best way to be blogged about: not linking to people! Although I still assume, you do not want people to write about you, and you did not list my blog, so I’m not linking. Nah. Yeah, I’m rather good at holding grudges. And I now second the full-of-crap-theory, in stead of the link-love one. ;)

Tags: blogtools, sl blogs
Categories: SL Blogs, Vintfalken.com
7 Comments »

As some might - or might not - have noticed, VintFalken.com looked terribly unbalanced, highly confusing and a bit f*cked up last night. Noticing that did not make my yesterday’s state of being terribly unbalanced, somewhat confused and highly disappointed in society - real life one’s, don’t worry - any better.

VintFalken.com’s main page (the blog entries) were not showing at all, and as for the other pages, the center column jumped towards the left and the side bar was scattered all over below of the pages. Unreadable, to say the least.

Questions that sprung to my mind:

Does it look this terrible to everyone?
After consulting Loki, I could answer ‘yes, definitely’ to that question

What went wrong?
After consulting Loki, I still did not have the slightest clue.

Defeated, I went to bed…

Then suddenly the imaginary electrical light bulb above my head started to glow very brightly: ‘Shit! I left the chmod permissions for some of my template files to 655! Now.. somebody or something wouldn’t have..’.

Actually, I did not _really_ forget about those permissions. I just though nodoby would be interested in the template files. As I - of course - don’t have a backup of them in the state they are to be - that is, not with the changes I made to them - the easiest way to test this was to select another theme. So I took the one I initially planned to mod… and VintFalken.com is far from pretty, but at least readable again.

Now it’s either:

• More or less restoring the old vintfalken.com to it’s classical looks.
• Starting over again with a new theme to Vint’s liking and mod that.

Dunno yet. Do know whichever I choose, it’s time lost I can’t spend on the tons of other things I want to do. So shortly put: this does suck. :(

But if anybody knows a not-so-much time consuming way to find out if it was man or machine screwing me over like this, and which IP address finds itself behind that evil creature, do let me know!

Tags: vintfalken.com
Categories: Vintfalken.com
19 Comments »

I was one happy Second Life blogger when on August 21 2007 VintFalken.com reached 2000 comments when Shockwave Plasma hit the ’submit’ button on this post, pondering her return to Pownce. As I do not reach 2k comments each day - or week, or month as a matter of fact - it was worth doing something extra for this:

Now, originally this is a rather big file, so I do want to give Shockwave a real life print - if she is interested in having one, that is. But: this one is on me (on my google adsence revenue, actually ;)) and I don’t want her to feel obliged to give out her RL address / data to me. So I’m looking for:

1. A good online photograph printing service
2. that allows to give out gift certificates by e-mail or code number for an amount I choose
3. and allows Shockwave to use that gift certificate for a photograph I upload
4. and delivers to that part of Earth where Shockwave Plasma’s owner resides.

Suggestions, anybody? (Or any other solution, of course.)

PS. Next celebration of important milestone in my Second Web Life is 50k views - 44,778 as I type - on the Flickr stream. Codie is waiting for me to reach that as she promised me we’d celebrate ‘50k’ together in ‘Par Tay’ style. =)

Tags: portrait, shockwave plasma, sl to rl, vintfalken.com
Categories: Portrait, VintLabs, Vintfalken.com
10 Comments »

Name: Mil McMillan
Nationality: Main grid resident
Age: 2 months
Last seen: Second Life, main grid, half an hour ago
Was heading to: Open sim
Skin & shape: unknown

Mister McMillian, I hope you are ok? Please let me know something in-worlds (OpenSim or SecondLife), in the comments or at e-mail at info@vintfalken.com. I’m really worried you’re stuck between these two virtual worlds and I have no other means then this to try and reach you.

If you’re in neither, and are trying to get back to SecondLife, make sure the target of the shortcut says just this and that the -loginuri http://ruth.petitbe.be:9000 is gone.

“C:\Program Files\SecondLife\SecondLife.exe” (You might want to ‘type’ this, not copy paste, because of the quotes, but make sure the quotes are there!)

If the problem persists, just drop me an email at info@vintfalken.com and I’ll try to help by e-mail or chat or I’ll supply you with a Belgian support number. ;)

I’m sorry if I explained something unclearly,

Vint

Tags: open sim
Categories: Vintfalken.com
7 Comments »