Second Life®, First Person

What�??s Your Inventory Quality-to-Crap Ratio?

2008-08-14T10:22:00.005-04:00

A friend once told me that, every night before she logs out of Second Life for the day, she strips down to her underwear. I thought that was a pretty odd habit to have, not to mention really really TMI, until I realized she wasn�??t talking her RL self. By undressing her avatar before she logs, she explained, she�??s forced to find something new to wear the next time she logs in. Before she started using this little trick, she found herself wearing the same thing for several days straight.

I have to say, I think it's a fantastic idea. I often find myself tempted to wear the same thing for days on end just because I don't want to expend the energy required to make myself look through my bloated inventory and find something new to wear. My friend's technique is great because it doesn't give her the choice. (Then again, to do this you probably need to make sure you rez somewhere that's fairly private! I rez in the middle of our living room, and sometimes Lanna has guests over. How embarrassing would that be?)

I guess the other option would be to make my inventory less of a nightmare. I've written before about trying to cut down the size of my inventory, but that's really only half the battle, isn't it? Because it's not just about keeping the quantity of items in your inventory down... it's also about keeping the quality of items up. In other words, what I like to call the �??inventory quality-to-crap ratio�?? needs to stay high. The better the ratio, the better the chance of finding something wearable when you go searching through your inventory.

I had a pretty good idea that my Q-to-C ratio is embarrassingly low, but I didn�??t have a way to test that... until now. Details, after the jump.

Perhaps overstuffing your inventory is just a fact of Second Life - what happens when goods are cheap (or even free) and there's no space or weight limitations to keeping everything you pick up. But I'm exceptionally bad about it - I pick up and keep freebies that I know there's no chance I'll ever wear. Maybe it's the sad legacy of my newbie days when I was Lindenless, but it's rare that I find a freebie that I don't add to my stash.

But I'd had enough the other night, when I spent a good ten minutes scrolling up and down through my inventory, marveling at all the folders whose contents I couldn't even begin to describe. It suddenly dawned on me... want to test just how bad your inventory is? Start wearing folders at random, and see what kind of fugliness ensues.

Even better, it's a fun parlor game! Have a friend call out a letter and a number. Start with the first folder beginning with that letter, and then count down that number of folders. Wear everything in that folder. Rinse and repeat until you just can't stand the sight of yourself anymore.

I roped Lanna into playing with me, and she was a good sport and humored me as she always does. (I swear, she has the patience of a saint.) She started with �??E3,�?? which was a blue calcite freebie choker from Earthstones, which isn't really my style but wasn't terrible. But things went downhill from there:

Z12, a pair of blingy Halloween-themed platforms. Boo!
M18, a freebie skin and shape. Oooh, can I please be overly tan and have a large nose, too?
Q22, a folder containing another freebie shape and an awkwardly streetwalkerish set of stand animations in an AO. And then the real kicker...
L4, a lingerie set, including a corset whose neckline is one of those SL masterpieces that is cut so high and wrong that it manages to make your breasts look both huge and pancakey at the same time.

Top it all off with a hairstyle, and you get...

Isn't it grand? That's what a random selection from my inventory gets you. I think I desperately need to try and increase my Q-to-C ratio, before someone gets hurt. Because looking upon something like this is dangerous to your eyesight.

(Just a quick aside... I'm not picking on freebies in general, or complaining about what's being given out for free by designers. I would never complain to a designer about any freebie they decide to give out, I firmly adhere to the "beggars can't be choosers" philosophy. On the other hand, let's be honest, a lot of things are freebies for a reason. While there are certainly quality freebies to be found, they're few and far between in my inventory, apparently.)

What about you? Are you a hoarder of freebies like me, or do you actually have some standards? What would you get if you randomly picked items out of your inventory? Do you dare to find out, and are you brave enough to share pictures?

When it rains...

2008-08-08T17:08:00.009-04:00

I know, I know... just as I started posting regularly again, I drop out of sight. But this time it�??s different, I promise! The last time I went quiet, I actually wasn�??t in Second Life much, and I didn�??t feel like writing. This time, I�??ve got more writing than I can handle.

I�??ve written a couple of posts over at Linden Lifestyles, leading up to the grand finale today. One�??s a review of Ornamental Life that�??s already up, the other is a farewell post that ~~you should see sometime later today~~ is now up too. I�??m also writing two articles for this month�??s GLAM Magazine. Oh, and then there�??s that pesky RL job of mine, which also requires a wee bit of writing. I had a major brief due this week, and it�??s devoured all my spare brain cells... not that I had that many to start with.

Add all that up, mix with actually trying to retain a little bit of free time to spend with Lanna, plus shopping, and throwing a party with Lanna at our house this week (no I haven�??t uploaded my pictures yet... you can see some other people's here, here, here aaaand here) and you get the insanity that my lives have become recently. I promise I have things I want to say, I just haven�??t been able to type them out and post them here.

So that�??s my excuse for my absence. Do I need to bring in a note from home?

Lazy Blogger Quicklinks: Naked Men Edition

2008-07-28T12:38:00.005-04:00

I�??ve gotten a bit busy at the day job today, which means it�??s time for another set of quicklinks!

My dear friend Kate Amdahl is one of those people who seems to have a knack for noticing when there�??s a valuable service not already being provided on the Web. Plus, she has the good fortune of being skilled enough to remedy those situations! Her latest project is a Web portal for all things Second Life-related, called Second Links. I think it will be most useful to new Residents who are unfamiliar with the panoply of SL Web sites that are out there, but I�??ll bet that most everyone else will find it nifty, too. Give it a try!

As a lawyer, I take great interest in reading the latest postings of Ben Noble over at Virtually Blind; he always has great insight on the intersection of law and virtual worlds. He�??s even written a book about the subject, which I haven�??t read yet but I promise is on the list. Even more impressively, Ben recently had an Op-Ed picked up by the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal! It�??s a great presentation of why Ben believes virtual worlds are the future of the Web, and would be the perfect thing to send to any of your friends or colleagues who just don�??t �??get�?? what it is about Second Life that you find so compelling. (Well, besides the naughty bits.)

Speaking of naughty bits, on a humorous personal note, I�??ve been noticing a lot of traffic on SLFP recently, originating from Google Image searches. I always am intrigued by what brings people to the site, especially if it�??s graphical in nature, so I looked into the hits and realized they were for the most part aimed at my use of the IP Rights Campaign advertisement featuring Stroker Serpentine (pictured, right). Which confused me, until I started trying out keyword combinations to see what would give that image as a search result. Turns out, if you search for �??naked men second life�?? on Google Images, my use of Stroker�??s picture is the first result! (And I pop up on the second page of results when you search for "naked men" on its own.) I highly doubt anyone searching for �??naked men�?? really wants to end up here at SLFP, but hey, whatever brings in the traffic...

The End of an Era

2008-07-25T00:35:00.013-04:00

Some sad news to share this morning. If you haven't seen this already, Linden Lifestyles announced today that the blog will be going inactive on ~~August 5~~ August 8, closing out what can only be described as a wildly successful run.

I'm not sure what to say about the situation at the moment, it's just too close and my brain is still a jumble. Of course, I'm very sad to see the blog go, and not merely because of my recent involvement with it as a member of the writing staff. No, my sadness is more general, because I think Second Life is losing something very special. As I've written before, reading Linden Lifestyles during my newbie days did more to help me realize the creative potential of SL than anything the Lindens did themselves.

(I don't mean to imply that I disagree with the decision to end the blog. As noted in the post, Salome and Sabrina have time-related reasons for doing this, a situation which which I can empathize completely. If they say it is the right time for Linden Lifestyles to go, then it is, and I support them in their decision with no questions asked. But that doesn't mean I don't feel sadness over it.)

Looking on the brighter side, the archives of all the entertaining and informative posts produced through the years will remain available, so other new Residents will have the same opportunity I had to learn and laugh. And on a more personal note, my sadness is tempered slightly by the knowledge that I had the opportunity to work with a few truly amazing people, who I now have the privilege of calling my friends.

In the Second Life blogosphere, where Residents often start and abandon their blogs within the span of a month, it is nothing short of astonishing to see a blog of Linden Lifestyles' quality continue for as long as it has. My hat (an elegant and fashionable hat, natch) goes off to Salome and Sabrina for all they have accomplished, and I wish them both all the success and luck in the world as they move on to do whatever their Lives - both First and Second - have in store for them next.

Did the Eye-in-Hand Blink?

2008-07-23T09:37:00.009-04:00

Hey, does anybody remember the Great Second Life Trademark Kerfuffle of 2008? Yeah, me neither. Nevermind, let�??s just go back to arguing over whether prim toes are creepy.

Oh, wait a minute, now it�??s coming back to me. Back in March, Linden Lab suddenly announced a major change in its position on the use of its trademarks. It amended the Second Life Terms of Service to control our use of the Lindens�?? marks in ways not required by US trademark law, and even went so far to claim that their ToS now permits them to ban Residents for their actions on third-party sites, such as blogs.

Yes, it�??s getting much clearer now. And then the SL blogosphere spun up into a tizzy, with people worrying (unnecessarily) that they�??d be sued or banned from SL if they didn�??t include a ® symbol in their blogs every time they wrote the words �??Second Life.�?? We went on strike, and then LauraP Linden wrote a �??clarification�?? blog post that resolved some issues, and left others open. If I remember correctly, yours truly maybe wrote one or two things on the subject.

Of course, I�??m making a little light of something that we all took very seriously back in the Spring. I just think it�??s funny that for all the sound and fury that existed back then, nowadays nobody seems to give the new trademark policy much thought. And there doesn�??t seem to have been much action on the Lindens�?? part, either. Could Hamlet Au have been right when he said that "most of the grousing will be cathartic, and the new rules will gradually get absorbed with relative ease"? Was this was just a tempest in teapot? I doubt it. Why, after the jump.

Today is four months since the Lindens announced their new policy. I figure it�??s as good a time as any to look back because, as you may recall, the new policy announcement gave us all a 90 day grace period to come into compliance with the new trademark guidelines. We�??re now one month past the end of that grace period... plenty of time for the Lindens to take some enforcement action, if they wished. But, to my knowledge, nothing has happened.

I haven�??t heard of anyone being banned because they didn�??t say �??Second Life world,�?? rather than simply �??Second Life,�?? as appears to be required by the Linden�??s guidelines. I haven�??t seen any blogs get shut down. I haven�??t heard of any groups in SL being disbanded because they contain SL or Second Life in their names. And even though Gwyn reminded them to watch out, SLNN, SLUniverse, and the Second Life Herald all still appear to be operating. (SweetSecondLife also appears to still exist in some mild-to-severe state of borkage, but that was going on well before the trademark deadline arrived.)

So, what�??s going on? I simply don�??t know the answer. If I were the Lindens�?? attorney, and they were paying me good money because they wanted to get really serious about enforcing the guidelines, I would have spent the grace period pulling together likely targets for cease and desist letters, and getting those letters drafted. Then, on the day the grace period expired, I would have dropped them in the mail.

Even taking into account a slower, West-Coast pace of doing business, I would have certainly expected to see some action taken within a month. But nothing as of today. I guess there could be cease and desist letters going out that I just don�??t know about, but you�??d figure the Lindens would go after the biggies like the Herald first, and someone at the Herald would be shouting about it from the rooftops.

(Quick aside - of course, like I said, it�??s possible there�??s enforcement going on that just isn�??t being reported. If anyone has received a cease and desist letter, or knows of someone who has, or has even just been contacted by the Lindens for a friendly chat, please comment below or contact me using the link in the navbar up above. If you want, I won�??t publicize your name, but I do think it�??s important to let everyone know what�??s going on.)

Of course, the other alternative is that Linden Lab blinked, or at least is holding tight for a while. Perhaps in connection with the recent push to generate good PR (as Tateru posits, most likely prompted by the debut of Google Lively), the Lindens have decided it�??s not a good idea to roil the Resident waters any further by waging an unpopular war against Terms of Service violations.

Again, if I were the Lindens�?? lawyer, I would tell them that a holding pattern like this is a stunningly bad idea. If Linden Lab is truly serious about protecting its intellectual property, the only thing worse than having a permissive trademark policy (like it did before March) is to have a strict policy that you then refuse to enforce. If they were worried about losing rights in their marks under the old policy, having a new one that you won't enforce isn't much better in that regard.

Now, I�??m certainly not asking for the Lindens to start enforcing their policy to the letter, because I still think it�??s an overreach and is contrary to trademark law in many ways. That would be bad. But what is worse is the current situation, where we�??re all stuck in limbo where we have the Lindens talking big about enforcing their marks, and then doing nothing about it.

Look at it this way. You�??re a Resident new to SL, but you�??ve read the trademark guidelines and you actually read the Terms of Service before agreeing to them (yeah, I know, fat chance... but it's my hypothetical). So you know you should steer clear of the Linden�??s trademarks, and you think you know how to do that. But then you get in-world and see Resident-run groups called "Second Life Land Rentals" or whatever. You read the Second Life Herald. You watch respected shows such as Metanomics on SLCN. Could you be blamed for thinking that maybe you�??ve misread the Lindens�?? trademark guidelines, and that these other Residents know what they�??re doing?

I don�??t like to see a Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of the Residents in this way. If Linden Lab wants to hew to a strict reading of their policy, that extends their trademark protection beyond what is granted by US trademark law, so be it, they should try and enforce it and someone will ask a court to rule on whether it�??s valid. But that won�??t happen until the Lindens actually try and enforce the policy. In the meantime, we�??re stuck with untested, overly broad trademark guidelines, and left guessing about whether what we�??re doing is permisible.

To mangle a phrase: Linden Lab, it's time to enforce or get off the pot.

Disclaimer: This post is commentary and isn't offered as legal advice. I'm an attorney IRL, but you have no way of confirming that, so following my advice would be silly anyway. You're not my client, and no attorney-client relationship is intended to be formed. Longer disclaimer here.

An Uneventful Life

2008-07-22T00:10:00.006-04:00

Believe it or not, but I don�??t get to many fashion shows in Second Life. Yes, it�??s partly because of my severe allergy to lag in all its forms, but actually there is the occasional event that I really want to attend so much that I�??m willing to brave the lag. No, more often than not, I miss out on events because I simply can�??t be in-world at the right time.

Take this past weekend, for example. As some of you may know, the Second Life Footwear Expo (or as I always call it, the Shoe Fair) is currently going on, spread over four Rezzable sims. Last Saturday at noon SLT, the Expo was hosting a fashion show to highlight some of the designers�?? newest footwear. My shoe lust has been steadily on the rise lately, meaning that I had an almost primal need to find some shoes and make them mine. So if there was any chance of making that show, I was going to do it.

Now, as many of you know, I have serious difficulty getting in-world during the day. On weekdays, I�??m at work, and on weekends I�??m usually too busy with my daughters to get any solid block of time at the computer. So when both girls decided to take naps at about 11:00 SLT Saturday, I thought to myself �??Shoe Fair FTW!!�?? and jumped in-world.

I got myself all glammed up (it happens so rarely these days, I had to post a picture!) and jumped over to the sim a bit early. And, as I stood there and watched the models prepare and the guests arrive... my youngest daughter woke up, and I had to log out. At quarter to noon SLT.

Figures, right? More, after the jump.

Now, this isn�??t a gripe about my darling daughters, or about RL commitments conflicting with SL enjoyment. I know that I�??m not the only one who misses things in SL because of bad timing. One of the great things about SL is that it spans the globe, so there's a wonderful diversity of Residents. But at the same time, that means that no time is going to be good for everyone. Someone is always going to be asleep while your event is going on, unless you take a cue from Codie�??s recent sim opening and keep the party going for 24 hours straight.

But for some reason, I find myself frustrated more and more by these conflicts. There are those whose schedules are flexible enough that they can get in-world whenever they need to, and I have to admit to a twinge of jealousy. I wonder how many of the people I�??d consider �??influential�?? in SL - Prokofy�??s FIC, if you must - have the ability to be in-world whenever necessary, even if they�??re not in-world all the time.

For me, it�??s just not an option. Unless I go into solo practice, I�??m never going to be in-world during the workday, and until my girls get older, I�??m not going to be around while I�??m home and they�??re awake. I guess what I�??m starting to wonder is, how much does it detract from my Second Life that I�??m only able to be in-world most nights from 7-10 SLT? Does that make me some sort of second-class citizen if I�??m rarely around to attend Linden office hours, or Metanomics, or yes, even fashion shows?

Put another way, can it really be called a �??Second Life�?? if that Life only exists for three hours a day?

Throwing in the Web 2.0 Towel

2008-07-19T23:30:00.005-04:00

I�??ve tried. I really have, I promise! But I�??ve realized recently that no matter how hard I try, I�??m just not cut out for Web 2.0.

While I�??d love to be one of the crowd of Second Life Residents who are able to immerse themselves in all the social networking tools that the Web has to offer, I just can�??t. Trust me, I see the appeal of staying in touch with all my friends through non-SL tools when I can�??t be in-world, like when I�??m at work. But there�??s no way I can do that without sacrificing RL work responsibilities, or RL personal relationships.

Balance, that�??s my new mantra (or is that Sophrosyne? I can never remember...), and I�??m trying my best to maintain balance between RL and SL, as well as work and play in general. And frankly, I�??ve realized there�??s no way to be knee-deep in social networking and still maintain that balance. Or maybe there is, and I�??m just not capable of it.

The many ways Web 2.0 has defeated me, after the jump.

I don�??t use Flickr, which it seems like every SL resident does these days. Yes, I like the little social networking aspect of commenting on photos and adding them to pools and such, and I know it wouldn�??t take too much of my time to just say I�??m going to use Flickr for hosting my photos. But when I started this blog, I started uploading my photos into Picasa because it�??s run by Google, just like Blogger is. And now I think I�??m stuck. I certainly don�??t want to move everything I�??ve got in Picasa over to Flickr, and I don�??t want to just start putting the new stuff on Flickr because the idea of scattering my photos across two hosting sites just bothers me.

I made a run at using Twitter, and I think I gave it the college try, but it just wasn�??t working for me. There are too many people to follow, and it just got sort of overwhelming. I had a hard time following conversations between people, and before long I was spending huge chunks of my workday just trying to catch up on friends�?? Tweets. On top of all that, I also had a hard time coming up with things to say in my own Tweets. Frankly, I can�??t imagine why anyone would find the daily minutiae of my life to be worth reading, and the 140-character limit on each Tweet seemed to prevent discussion of anything more deep.

Plus, there were all the technical troubles Twitter had, causing it to not work half the time. All of a sudden, it seemed like everyone moved over to Plurk. This was about the time I took my little summer vaca from SL, and so I haven�??t even given a serious look to Plurk, but my superficial examination has left me thoroughly confused. I guess it�??s like Twitter on steroids, with all the pressure to microblog and keep up with other folks�?? microblogs, but with the added pressure of a reputation rating called �??karma�??! No thanks.

I never got into thesixtyone. I think it�??s a neat idea, and I like how artists can theoretically become �??discovered�?? if enough people bump them, and how the users who are good at picking popular artists are rewarded. But it just doesn�??t work for me. I can�??t listen to music at work because my brain tends to focus on the music instead of the work at hand. And at home, if I have computer time and I want to hear music, I�??ll go to a live concert in-world.

I don�??t Skype, for the same reasons I don�??t use voice. I�??m not much into machinima, so I don�??t post videos to YouTube. I�??ve given Lively a quick try and it crashed for me about ten times in half an hour, and besides I�??m not happy about the fact that you can hit and slap (assault) other avatars without their consent. I still use Google chat occasionally to talk with Lanna when we can�??t be in-world, but as I�??ve noted before it�??s a sorry substitution for SL. I belong to a few Ning groups, such as SL Bloggers and Fashion Finds, but to be honest I rarely use them.

I guess you could say that Blogger, and blogging in general, is Web 2.0-ish (really, hasn�??t �??Web 2.0" been used to the point it�??s lost all meaning?), and that�??s not something I�??m going to give up. But that�??s because it fills a need for me - the ability to share with large numbers of readers my thoughts in a way that Second Life really isn�??t set up for at this point.

Then there�??s Facebook. I will admit, I have two Facebook accounts, one for RL and one for SL. (And no, my Second Self is not friends with RL me, so don�??t bother checking!) I enjoyed using Facebook as Kit at first, but what I�??ve since realized is that what I really enjoyed was using the Scrabulous application on Facebook to play Scrabble with friends, and that�??s it. Which, besides being a time-waster and a huuuuuge copyright infringement, really doesn�??t have anything to do with Facebook as a platform in and of itself. And the platform just started to annoy me, with all the invitations to install new applications, half of which I don�??t understand and don�??t really care to. (Why do I care to be a zombie? Or buy and sell my friends?)

What I find really funny about Facebook is that I�??m actually a big fan of using it IRL. I have reconnected with classmates from high school, college, and law school. I�??ve seen pictures of the children of old friends who I haven�??t spoken with in ten years. It�??s great. But that appeal is completely missing for me when it comes to SL. I mean, if I just IMed with you last night on Second Life, why do I need to write on your Wall this morning? Yes, I get random friend requests in Facebook, and I�??m happy to confirm all of them, but they never turn into new friendships in-world because the people never say hi after they�??ve become my Facebook friend. So, what�??s the point? Well, other than pwning Hamlet Au in Scrabulous...

This Facebook dichotomy - the fact that I like using it for RL and not for SL - is what made me start to realize that maybe SL social networking isn�??t my bag. It�??s because in many ways, I find all the Web 2.0 stuff to be redundant with SL. To some extent, doesn�??t Second Life qualify as a big, pretty social network? We make friends. We chat. We share experiences, images, and music.

Sure, as Rheta has pointed out, Second Life as a platform isn�??t as adept at doing these things as a social networking site that focuses on just one of them, like Flickr for photos. But it does suffice for my purposes. So other than allowing me to remain �??plugged in�?? to the SL Resident community all day long while I�??m at work and not in-world, I don�??t see the benefit of doing non-SL social networking with SL friends.

That�??s not to say that the SL Web 2.0 doesn�??t have benefits for some people. If you like it and it works for you, great. It just doesn�??t for me. Because once I try to plug in to the SL community all day long, I have to tune out from the RL world just that much more. And that�??s not balance, now is it?

What about you? What appeal do these sites hold for you? And can you balance using them with your RL?

222

2008-07-17T16:32:00.002-04:00

Okay, let�??s give this whole getting-back-into-Second-Life thing another shot, shall we? I really did mean it when I said in my last post that I wanted to reconnect with SL, it�??s just that RL has decided to interfere even more than it typically does. My family had planned a weekend trip down South to see my extended family for the first time in over a year; while there, my grandmother passed away, and we decided to stay for the funeral. So, needless to say, I�??ve been gone longer than expected, and haven�??t been around SL.

But I�??m back, starting now. Last night I spent a few hours reconnecting with Lanna in-world, which ranked right up there next to �??sleeping in my own bed�?? on the list of things I was looking forward to doing when I returned home. Over the next few days, I will try slip back into my SL groove, spend some time thinking about where to take the blog, and recommitting myself to becoming part of the Resident community again.

Being gone - and this time, I�??m talking gone gone, like no computer, no regular email, nothing - did help me gain some perspective on the disconnect I tried to describe in my last post. It�??s a silly case in point, but take the state of my Google Reader when I checked it this morning, after a week of neglect. As you can see to the left, there were 222 unread blog posts, most of them on blogs about Second Life, that I needed to either catch up on, or resign myself to not reading. It�??s easier to not read, but then I wouldn�??t have seen Kate�??s latest thoughts on the use of voice, or all the hoopla about Lively, or all the shoe numminess from the Shoe Fair that On Your Toes is sending our way. Would that have put a crimp in my discussions with any of you going forward once I was back in-world? I don�??t know, but I don�??t want to risk finding out, either.

More, after the jump.

One of the things that I�??m realizing makes coming back to SL after an absence so unexpectedly hard is that, for me, SL is very much about a sense of belonging. And when you�??re away, that belonging - that connection to the Resident community - starts to slip away. The grid keeps on churning along, events come and go that you�??re not a part of, issues flare up that you don�??t weigh in on. That's what those 222 unread blog posts really brought home.

I�??ve written before that in my mind, so much of the appeal of SL - the reason it�??s more than just a glorified chat room - is the commonality of experience that we all get by viewing the same virtual world around our avatars. Well, when you�??re away, that commonality of experience naturally starts to diminish. I can�??t talk with friends about visiting SL5B, or my take on the latest Linden PR disaster, because I haven�??t been there in-world to experience it with them. That little bit of distance makes me hesitate before I IM someone out of the blue, and then maybe I decide not to because we won't have anything to discuss, and we drift even further apart, our commonality of experience breaking down even further.

On some level I know all of this is silly, that until August of last year I had no experience at all in the zeitgeist of SL, no common experience to draw on, and yet I managed to integrate myself into the community. Re-integration should be easier, just a matter of putting myself back into SL, wandering around and seeing what�??s out there, IM-ing old friends out of the blue, and making new friends. But all of those things are effort, whereas my Second Life had gotten to the point recently that it was fairly effortless - blogging, shopping, maintaining relationships... all sort of just happened.

Not anymore, at least for a little while. I think I�??ve decided I want to expend the energy to reconnect, to read all of those 222 blog posts, to IM people on my friends list instead of waiting, hoping that they'll IM me instead. Whether RL will let me, that�??s a different story, but I�??ve started the process. How�??s it going so far, you ask? Well, twenty posts read, only 202 to go...

The Quiet

2008-06-27T22:39:00.003-04:00

Well, I�??ve shown that my word can�??t be trusted, now haven�??t I?

Last time I posted something on this blog, I said that things in RL had gotten busy, and that I was going to be traveling, and that I�??d be back writing again in �??about a week.�?? That was 28 days ago. Four weeks of not writing at all about Second Life, and not even really being in SL, for that matter.

And, what�??s worse... it�??s taken a good bit of effort to make myself come back, both to SL and the blog.

Don�??t fret, it�??s not that I don�??t love y�??all. In fact, it was your emails, your comments wondering where I was, that helped me realize that maybe there was something about my Second Life that I wasn�??t willing to completely chuck for good. And, of course, my dearest Lanna was here for me, and losing her is probably the worst thing I can imagine happening in SL. But even so, coming back into SL has been difficult for me, and what�??s worse is that I don�??t have a ready explanation for it.

But I�??m going to try for an explanation. I could just post something saying �??I�??m back�?? and we could all go on like I�??d never been gone, but that�??s not fair those of you who have let me know I was missed, who I think deserve some sort of reason why I turned my back on this grid, even temporarily. And, who knows, maybe coming up with an explanation will help me to get back to where I was before I left too.

I�??ll give it a shot, after the jump.

I wasn�??t kidding in my last post, when I said that the day job and family obligations were conspiring to keep me busy for a bit. But that was at the beginning of June... and now it�??s almost July. There really hasn�??t been anything external that�??s kept me away from SL the past two weeks or so. I really don�??t have anyone to blame but myself, for not being around.

Longtime readers will recognize that this isn�??t the first time this has happened to me. After my second daughter was born, I made myself take some time away from SL to focus on family things. But once my month away was up, I found it really difficult to pop SL back into the place where it fit in my life before I left. The same thing seems to be happening now, the only difference being that I wasn�??t away for over a month - this time, it was only a couple weeks before I could have come back if I wanted to. And yet, I still found it hard to come back. What is it about being away from SL, that makes it so hard for me to return?

And it�??s not just coming back to SL that�??s hard - the blog has been difficult to return to, as well. Just like my first post back after the baby, it�??s taken me quite some time to figure out what to write in this post. I don�??t know why these �??I�??m back�?? posts seem to require so much more effort, but maybe it�??s a parallel to returning to SL in some ways. I feel like I need to say something in my first post in over a month - it doesn�??t have to be momentous, but it can�??t just be fluff. And I guess I could also just be out of practice - maybe the blog muscle atrophies with disuse, just like all the other ones.

But I knew that I couldn�??t let my current hiatus go past today. Four weeks could very easily turn into four months, and I�??m not ready to let SLFP wither away just yet. So, as I was sitting here, staring at the blank page and struggling with writer�??s block, I was reminded by a post over on New World Notes about something Mygdala wrote a couple weeks ago regarding her troubles coming back to SL. Myg�??s experience, and similar experiences of at least one commenter at NWN, got me thinking that there has to be something to this phenomenon. There has to be some degree of universality, if I�??m not the only one who feels this way after I�??ve been away a while.

Sure, I have my own issues. To tell you the truth, Second Life has been feeling a little meh to me lately, and I�??ve been getting a lot of negative energy from various things that have been going on around the grid. (Those are things I want to discuss, but they can wait for another post.) But the fact that others are also having re-entry difficulty gives me hope that this has nothing to do with my own personal issues, but rather is a temporary feeling that will go away as I re-integrate.

Pondering my writer's block at The Quiet

So here�??s my personal theory. (You knew I had to have one, didn't you?) I think the fact that we find SL hard to come back to is somehow tied to what Rheta Shan discussed in her fascinating post, The Great Escape. I don�??t know that I completely agree with Rheta that SL is always an �??escape,�?? and I�??m still processing her claim that we are all drawn to SL because of some unmet need in our First Lives. But what her post did help me realize is that, unless we�??re one of the lucky few who can make SL our vocation, it is always going to be an avocation. And just as with any hobby, it is a choice of how we wish to spend our free time. For those of us who have become devoted Residents of Second Life, we have chosen to spend a certain portion (if not all) of our free time exploring and evolving our alter egos.

But what if something happens - whether it�??s family commitments, or work, or what have you - that takes away the possibility of being in SL? We will still always have some down time to fill, so perhaps we find some other avocation to fill it with. Maybe we read that book we�??ve been meaning to read, or we catch up on television reruns or Netflix movies. Or maybe we just reconnect with some people in our First Lives who we haven�??t spoken to in a while.

When things have calmed down and when we�??re given the ability to return to SL, all of a sudden there are competing demands for our free time that didn�??t exist before. It�??s not to say that we feel any differently about SL or the friends we have made. But rather, maybe we�??ve just realized that we want to find out how that book ends, or we want to find out who the final Cylon is on Battlestar Galactica. And suddenly SL isn�??t the all-consuming avocation that it once was.

Which brings me back around to what I said earlier - that I�??m finding difficult to pop SL back into the place in my life it took up before I left. It may be a simplistic way to look at things, but if the shape of my life isn�??t the same as when I left, why should I expect it to be a simple thing to fit SL back into it, without making some changes?

I have no idea if this makes sense to any of you - I�??m not even sure it makes sense to me. But I needed to try and explain why I don�??t feel the blog flowing like it used to, and why SL doesn�??t feel as �??easy�?? as it did before I left. I�??m sure that, just like the uncertainty I felt the last time I returned after a long absence, this will all wear off and I�??ll be back to enjoying SL again. And who knows, maybe it will begin to eat up all of my free time (and even some non-free time!) again, as it used to.

But for now, what�??s important is that I�??ve written this post, gotten some things off my chest, and dipped that first toe back into the blogging waters. It has to get easier from here, right? I�??m sure it will, and if anyone asks, we�??ll just tell them that I was on blogging vaca for a month.

Is your heart growing fonder?

2008-05-30T09:18:00.003-04:00

I'm going to apologize in advance, this post isn't going to be "about" anything other than explaining where I've been, and where I'm going to be in the near future. Yes, I've been conspicuously absent from the blog for about a week now, and it will probably be another week or so until I'm back to blogging full strength. I hope everyone will hang in there with me during that time.

In case anyone is worried, nothing is wrong, I've just hit a busy patch at my day job, and my baby brother is getting married next week and we've all been busy with that. Plus, the things I've been wanting to post about are all subjects that require some thought and effort to write, they're not quickie posts I can put up in an hour.

I just felt like I needed to say something now that it's been a week since my last post. To tell you the truth, I really resisted writing this - it feels like I'm making excuses, and I don't normally do excuses. We all have RL issues and time pressures, and I don't like that I'm admitting that mine have defeated me, for now. Plus, I have no idea if it shows, but in an attempt to be a quasi-serious blogger, I've tried to make myself post at least three times a week. I don't like missing targets, even self-imposed ones.

But mostly, I don't enjoy writing a post like this because I feel like I'm abandoning my readers. Don't get me wrong - I don't have any grand delusions that some of you are checking the blog every morning as you drink your coffee, to see if I've written anything new and feeling disappointed that I haven't. But in the past week as I've sat silent, I've topped 100 subscribers on my RSS feed, which tells me that folks somewhere are keeping tabs. I know that I sometimes get a slight feeling of abandonment, unreasonable as it may be, when a blogger I enjoy takes a break from writing for a bit. If that's happened for any of you, my apologies.

Well, see, this is why I've stayed away! What was intended as a simple AFK post has now become something much longer as the thoughts continue to tumble out of my brain. I've got to get back to RL work, but I really do want to say thanks. I never thought I'd get 100 people reading the blog a day, much less 100 subscribing to it. I really do appreciate it, and I hope to see most - if not all - of you again in about a week.

We come to bury Ruth, not to praise her...

2008-05-22T00:02:00.000-04:00

Looks like our dearest Ruth - the default form for all of us, the way we were rezzed into the grid, the way we appear anytime Second Life can't figure out how it's supposed to make us look - is no more. At least for those of us using the Release Candidate viewer.

Linden Lab announced tonight that as of the newest version (7 I believe? I've lost count, really) of the Release Candidate, Ruth will be no more. According to the release notes:

Newly created avatars without a gender, or any avatar where �??clothing is still downloading�?? are rendered as a cloud rather than naked/wrong body shape.

Goodbye, Ruth. Hello, Cumulonimbus! I guess if you ever want to see Ruth again, you'll have to head to Shapes by Zada and pick up Zada's "Unbreakable Avatar," which is the Ruth shape with a gray skin. (That's me modeling it in the picture above.)

I haven't yet seen a "cloud form" avatar - if anyone has, and has thought to take a screenshot, give me a shout using the "Contact Me" link in the toolbar, and I'll post it here in an update.

UPDATE: Cloud Form Lanna has been spotted! Picture below.

Viva la GLAM

2008-05-21T16:00:00.001-04:00

I�??ve been wanting to share something with y�??all for a while now, about a publication that I�??ve been lucky enough to join recently. While I hinted at it a few weeks ago, I didn�??t want to say anything until the first issue bearing my name came out, for fear of jinxing things. And now that it�??s out, I still have hesitated to say anything here, for a reason I�??ll get to below.

But if you know me, you know I can�??t keep my big yapper shut forever. So I�??m happy to announce that as of the May issue, I have joined the staff of GLAM World Magazine. You can find the issue here, the article which I wrote jointly with Genna Gray begins on page 51. Yes, it�??s about the history of men�??s fashion in Second Life. No, I knew next to nothing about the subject before we wrote the article. What can I say, I love a challenge.

I really couldn�??t be more honored to join the magazine. If you�??ve never read an issue before, Caliah Lyon and her staff put together a well-written and visually exquisite product every month. Some of the photo layouts rival what you�??d find in RL fashion magazines. While I don�??t think I can do much to help on the visual end of things, I will certainly do what I can to add to the well-written part.

By this point, you�??re probably asking why I would have any hesitation to talk about this publicly, given my enthusiasm about it. I have hesitated because there are those who have implied that my reputation in Second Life is at risk if I have any involvement with the magazine. I�??ll try and explain a little better, after the jump.

The short version of the story is this. Minnu Palen, who owns the GLAM World sim and Minnu Model Skins, also publishes GLAM World Magazine. Minnu was recently publicly accused of copyright infringement on a certain Second Life fashion/gossip blog. The claim is that Minnu improperly and illegally used files purchased from the Web site Renderosity in the creation of her most recent line of skins. Minnu has responded, stated that she was acting within her rights, and denied any copyright infringement.

(You�??ll note that I�??m not naming names other than Minnu or linking to any of the blogs involved other than GLAM�??s. I have to name GLAM and Minnu if I want this post to make any sense; it isn�??t because I only want Minnu�??s side of the story heard. Frankly, I�??d prefer that neither side have their story heard - I�??m really not interested in feeding this controversy any more, but if you absolutely must find out more, Google will get you there.)

That�??s it. In an ideal world, this would be handled by the parties involved, or in court, and the rest of us would go on our merry way. But in the echo chamber that is the SL blogosphere, this has erupted into a full-blown flamewar, and has pulled in all sorts of uninvolved parties, each with her own axe to grind and opinion or accusation to share. Drama, drama, drama.

Which brings things back around to me. The GLAM World blog recently announced the release of the latest issue of the magazine, and welcomed the three new staff members joining this month - myself included. Not long afterward, over on the blog that originally published the accusations against Minnu, the blog owner noted the press release and said that those of us named were being pulled in deeper, �??reputation-wise.�?? I took this to imply that by being named as a staff member to the magazine, this person thought that I was risking my reputation in SL.

So, I think you can understand why I hesitated, even temporarily. I don�??t like to be threatened, but in a community where reputation is so important, I felt that I needed to assure myself that I wasn�??t doing anything that I�??d later regret. Especially since the issues involve copyright infringement, which I�??ve spoken out on in the past, and which because of my day job I should be expected to know something about.

But in the end, I decided that I wasn�??t going to let this controversy prevent me from talking about things I�??m doing and that I�??m excited about. I do think the world of the magazine and the people who work for it. I was thrilled to join the staff, and I realized I had let this controversy drain that excitement from me. Once I thought about it, I decided that I wasn�??t going to allow a few people and their threats to take that enthusiasm away from me, and prevent me from sharing it with my friends.

As for the threat to my reputation, it boils down to guilt by association, which I don�??t put any stock in - especially when there�??s so tenuous a link between myself and Minnu. There are people screaming about this issue who say they�??ll never buy another Minnu product. That seems to me to be reactionary and premature, but so be it. Others have expanded that to include all businesses who have a location in the GLAM World sim. That�??s a bit extreme, but again I can see the logical link. But to extend your proclamations and threats to people who work for the magazine, which has nothing to do with the skin texture accusations that have been raised, and its staff, most of whom are writers, is beyond the pale.

Let me say this. I have never met Minnu. I have never bought her skins (they don�??t look right on my shape) or any other product she sells. I have no allegiance to her; nor do I have any personal, first-hand knowledge that I could use to pick a side in this controversy. I would have never even known it existed unless I happened to stumble across a blog that was discussing it.

I write about SL fashion because it�??s fun for me, because I enjoy learning about it, and because the Residents I get to interact with are interesting and for the most part good people. I think it�??s absolutely preposterous to say that I�??m risking my reputation by writing articles, just because of who publishes the magazine I�??m writing for. The same goes for the entire staff of the magazine, in my opinion. In the end, I decided that I wasn�??t going to let myself be hindered by something that, frankly, I have no involvement with and have chosen no side in.

Some people have asked me why, given my day job, I haven�??t picked a side in this matter. In fact, it�??s because of my familiarity with copyright matters that I�??m staying neutral. I know from experience that copyright cases are hardly ever what they appear to be on the surface. Copyright law is incredibly complex, and it�??s far more complicated than simply looking at two products and claiming to see some similarities.

I think there�??s been an incredible rush to judgment on both sides of this issue. Some people swear they can see all sorts of similarities in the skins, others see no evidence of similarity at all. The fact of the matter is, a layperson�??s conclusion on similarity is a very minor part of any copyright claim. In a case involving a specialized field such as this one, the judge would hear testimony from people who are experts in the field comparing the two designs, not from your average blog reader, or even from an intellectual property lawyer. So I�??d recommend taking with a grain of salt what�??s posted by various fashion bloggers, or their commenting readers, about how they compared the skins and reached this or that conclusion.

The closest we can come to the experts that would be used by a court is the opinion of other SL designers, and as far as I can tell their opinions are decidedly mixed. So, if people who actually know something about the subject can disagree about this, that tells me it's a close case on the copying issue. Furthermore, even if Minnu did use elements of the file, we haven't even reached the legal issues involved, such as whether Minnu had permission under the purchase license, or whether her use is permitted under any number of exceptions to the copyright law.

The best I can do at this point is take no position other than maintaining my status quo relationships until there�??s a resolution by the parties involved. Appointing ourselves judge, jury, and executioner when we have neither the knowledge nor the expertise to make any sort of informed conclusion in the matter is irresponsible, given the potential for real harm to the parties involved, both financial and reputational. And for heaven's sake, stop trying to drag other people into the controversy when they�??re not involved. Myself, I�??m proud of what Genna and I wrote together, and am happy to be able to share it with you all.

Greetings, Daily Kos-ites!

2008-05-19T11:34:00.003-04:00

I wanted to give out a big Second Life, First Person welcome to all the folks coming over here from the Daily Kos. Since the article linked to me on the term "Rezbianism," but only pointed you to the main page of my blog, you might be searching for my old post entitled "My Rezbian Theory." Check it out, and I hope you'll be interested enough to explore the blog a bit further. Thanks for visiting!

To my regular readers, just to explain: This morning I was linked to in an article on the Daily Kos website. I highly recommend it - a very interesting and deep exploration of what sexual orientation means, especially when gender becomes a changeable trait, rather than a defined one. Special highlight on the wonderful Zha Ewry in there, too!

Self-Jealousy

2008-05-14T17:22:00.004-04:00

Are you jealous of your Second Self?

That�??s the question that a recent post by Dandellion Kimban implores us to ponder as we muddle through this grand experiment in dual identities that is Second Life. The easy answer, for me, is yes - I envy a lot of things about my avatar: her perfect tummy; her hair that�??s never messy, and always that perfect shade of mahogany; her ability to stand in heels all day without needing to soak her toes in a footbath for seven hours afterwards.

But those things focus on what being virtual allows our avatar to do or have, and that�??s not really what Dande�??s getting at. She wants to know if we envy who we are in the metaverse, as compared to who we are IRL. It�??s a difficult question for me, and one I�??ll try to wade into after the jump.

As I see it, there are a few ways that I could potentially be jealous of the avatar who is Kit Meredith. The first is that I could be jealous of the social life that she has - the myriad friends she chats with; the wonderful partner who is also her best friend; the exciting, fun, and sometimes glamorous events she attends. This is the sort of thing that Dande�??s friend is complaining to her about in the email she excerpts on her blog - that the avatar has a better social life than the driver.

I�??ll confess that I�??ve felt this way myself. There�??s no doubt that my social life IRL has changed mightily since I had children. I forego happy hour after work to rush home to see my girls, and I stay in most nights because a babysitter is expensive and a pain. In many ways, logging into SL is the easiest way for me to leave the house these days after the kids go to bed. And yes, there�??s sometimes a twinge of jealousy when I realize that I don�??t keep up with my RL friends network like I used to, while at the same time my Friends list grows by the day, filled with fascinating people.

But as I think about it, I realize that this is really a false distinction, and there�??s no reason for me to be jealous. The friends that I have ISL, they�??re my friends. Lanna is my partner, and she�??s enriched my life beyond any borders between the virtual and the atomic worlds. And when I go to a party ISL, it�??s me that�??s getting to go and have fun. So there�??s actually no reason I should feel jealous, because it�??s not like Kit is leaving me at home on the couch when she goes to a party. I get to experience all the fun and emotions that come with her social life. So when I find myself feeling this jealousy, I�??m always able to talk myself out of it.

The second way I find myself getting jealous of Kit is in her burgeoning notoriety. As my post last week alluded to, in a number of ways Kit Meredith is already better known than my RL persona. While I certainly don�??t aspire to fame or SLebrity, I won�??t deny that it feels neat to be recognized, or when people who I�??ve never met tell me they read the blog. My RL persona is far from unknown in certain circles, but there�??s no way that I�??ll ever be known in the way that I could be ISL.

And there, again, the twinges of jealousy start. And, again, I have to keep reminding myself that it�??s a false distinction. When Kit writes something on the blog that people read and like, it�??s MY words. While people who know me may not know my RL name, they know me nonetheless.

But there�??s a third way I find myself getting jealous of Kit, that isn�??t explained away so easily. Sometimes I find myself getting jealous of Kit�??s personality. My personality ISL is in many ways exactly like my RL one. But there are also some differences that I�??ve started to see. I�??m still struggling to define them exactly, but suffice it to say that my SL self is more positive, more carefree, and more open than my RL self, who can be cynical and suspicious. I have an edge to my personality IRL that I think most people ISL would be shocked to see.

Yes, there are those who will tell you that their personalities are different between RL and SL for one simple reason: they are completely different people in each Life. I�??m not in that camp - I am the same person, though I may project myself differently when I�??m in SL. But that raises a completely different question - if I find myself being jealous of who I am ISL, why can�??t I just try and be more like that IRL?

It�??s the conundrum Dande is referring to when she writes:

You know, our avatars are maybe not the best of us, but certainly are the parts of us that we love very much. Some of those parts we were aware of, some we had to discover during our second lives. . . . I am not going to raise the question why our humans haven't developed our avatar's personalities in the meatspace. Sure some things that avatars do are not possible in the meatspace, but what we are talking here is something more essential and, therefore, available in the first life. Our humans can talk and act like our avatars do. Right? So? Why that avie is not going out in the meatspace then?

Well, I think that�??s exactly the question, Dande, and you may not raise it but I will. It�??s something Lanna has asked me on numerous occasions - if I like the qualities that are emphasized in my SL persona, why can�??t I try and express them more IRL? I don�??t think I�??ve ever given her a sufficient answer, but I�??ll try again here.

In a lot of ways, my edge appears IRL more than it does ISL because I need it IRL, and I make sure that I don�??t ISL. My job requires me to be hard-edged, cynical, analytical - and I don�??t deny that I enjoy that part of being a lawyer. But at the end of the day, I�??m tired of it and want to be at peace. So I choose to put myself in as drama-free of an environment ISL as I can. And in that environment, it�??s a lot easier to be open with my feelings and positive.

There�??s also a self-selection element to it - I can choose when I want to be ISL, and if I�??ve had an awful day and know I�??m going to be a nasty you-know-what to everyone around me, I simply won�??t log in. I�??ll go to bed instead, or spend my time elsewhere. Those who are around me IRL have to be around me no matter what, so they end up getting the bad side that most of my SL friends never see.

And finally, I think that there�??s a difference between how I express myself ISL, that makes me come across as more agreeable and less hard-edged, that has nothing to do with me. It�??s the interface. There�??s something about typing, that puts an additional step - an additional filter - between thought and word. It allows me to make sure I express myself exactly how I want, and it no doubt lets me remove some of the things that I�??d rather not express.

Zha Ewry wrote about a corollary to this on her blog recently in a post called �??Congruence - Words and Actions.�?? She notes:

In a mostly text world, with avatars which type what we tell them to, and blush, smile, and frown, on cue, the listener, is at the mercy of the speaker for body language, which can be misleading, either due to self deception, or actual intent to deceive.

While I�??ll give this a more charitable view that Zha does - I don�??t think it�??s necessarily misleading to make your avatar use body language that isn�??t exactly like the body language I�??d use IRL - her point is worth noting. Anyone who has spent any time chatting with me knows that I use emotes like a fiend, but they�??re almost always to express something positive. Kit nods at people I agree with, Kit laughs at things I find funny. But Kit doesn�??t ever shake her head, grimace, or smirk, even though I might be doing the same thing IRL.

What all this adds up to is a personality for Kit that is me, but a more positive, idealistic me, and I sometimes find myself jealous of those qualities. Would I be more like Kit IRL if I could? Possibly, but it�??s beside the point, because I�??m how I am for a reason. I like myself in both Lives, and I�??m happy to be exploring both facets of �??me.�??

What about you? Are you jealous of your avatar?

100 and counting!

2008-05-09T14:48:00.007-04:00

Two quick blog-related notes. First, my post yesterday about Googling your Second Life name and comparing to your legal name (or, as Vidal Tripsa fetchingly put it, the �??Kit Meredith Challenge�??) was SLFP�??s 100th post! I know it�??s not that big a deal, and surely there are blogs that update way more frequently that have reached 100 posts a lot sooner than I did. But still, it�??s nice to note, it helps me feel just a little more established in the blogosphere. Special thanks to Hamlet Au for linking to the post from NWN, it adds to the happy happy joy joy.

Second, for those of you who keep up with the blog using a feedreader (FeedBurner tells me there�??s about 90 of you - yikes!), you�??ve no doubt noticed that I�??ve switched back to partial post format in my feed. It�??s a temporary measure, and while the story is a long one, it basically is due to the fact that I�??m using a nifty new widget that Blogger Buster tipped me off to, run by a service called aideRSS, and I'm trying to get it to recognize older posts. (You can find the widget - pictured at left - at the bottom of the page in the rightmost footer section.)

What aideRSS basically does is sort your blog�??s feed by �??popularity,�?? measured by the number of comments, Google links, Diggs, and del.icio.us tags the post has gotten. One way you can use it is to then take those ranks and put them in a widget that displays the top ten most popular posts, like I have done.

But you can also use it for blogs that are not your own. Tired of sorting through every new post published on the Fashion Planet Feed? You can run it through aideRSS, which will then provide you with what I�??d call �??sub-feeds�?? - RSS feeds that include only the top 50% or even 10% of the posts on the feed. It�??s an interesting idea for those of us who have a hard time keeping up with the flood of RSS feeds we�??re subscribed to, but don�??t want to drop any of the sites we follow.

Anyway, hope you find the widget useful, and I promise that I�??ll switch my feed back to full format very soon. Have a great weekend, everybody!

Avatar, Google thyself

2008-05-08T14:10:00.007-04:00

I know it�??s an incredibly vain exercise, but do you ever Google yourself? I don�??t mean searching for your legal, real life name - that�??s been part of the pop culture for years now. I mean Googling your Second Life avatar's name. I had the strangest experience the other day when I Googled �??Kit Meredith�?? and shockingly found that my SL identity returns more results than my RL one.

I guess I shouldn�??t be terribly surprised by this - after all, our SL identities only exist in the virtual, online sense. And unless we use Skype or have RL contact with other Residents, the only way for us to maintain our community when we�??re not in-world is through our online presences. Actually, I bet this goes a long way toward explaining why it seems like every other SL resident has a blog, and why we�??re taking over social networking sites such as Flickr and thesixtyone.

Anyway, as of today, a Google search for �??Kit Meredith�?? returns 2,250 hits. My RL name... less than that. And here I was thinking that I was pretty Googleable as my RL self. In an age of Google Fights in which Googleability is often equated with popularity or reknown, should I feel strange that I�??ve been able to eclipse in six months in SL what it�??s taken me over three decades to achieve in RL?

What do you get when you Google me? Details after the jump.

Now, granted, at least some of those 2,250 results that Google returns on �??Kit Meredith�?? are not �??me.�?? There�??s always some juxtaposition of the terms by accident, like the �??Batman Activity Kit (Meredith Books).�?? There�??s also apparently a few people named Kit Meredith in RL, though their hits are rare and pretty far down the list.

Interestingly, there are two Kit Merediths who are characters in novels... and they�??re both male. Kit Meredith is some sort of shapeshifter who practices �??wild magic�?? in �??Murder Entailed�?? by Susan Krinard. He�??s also a wealthy heir to an estate in the romance novel �??Poor Caroline�?? by Elizabeth Mansfield.

But the rest of the hits are me, and for the most part they�??re the virtual bread crumbs of my online travels - comments I�??ve left places, links from people�??s blogrolls, mentions of me on other people�??s blogs. Makes me realize just how much time I spend browsing the blogosphere!

The really interesting results are the ones where you find your name being dropped in discussions that you�??re not a part of - sort of like eavesdropping on someone else�??s conversation and finding out you�??re being talked about. Fortunately, in the ones I�??ve turned up, people are saying nice things! For example, in the comments to a blog post on your2ndplace.com, Alan Bamboo calls me his �??favorite blogger of all time.�?? Awww... now I�??m blushing.

And I had to laugh when my search turned up a Tweet by Jacek Antonelli asking �??Is Kit Meredith on Twitter?�?? No, Jacek, I�??m not, Twitter terrifies me because I already waste enough time during the workday (see paragraph above about browsing the blogosphere). But now that I know I�??m being asked for by name, maybe I�??ll try it out. Wait, what am I saying? No! I must resist!

What about you? Do you ever Google your SL name? Who would win in a Google Fight between your SL name and your RL one?

Virtual Surreality

2008-05-07T12:36:00.005-04:00

Though I�??d never tried out blogging before I became active in Second Life, I always had the hunch that I�??d enjoy it. After all, writing is the basis for my day job (television portrayals aside, most attorneys spend more time writing than they do on their feet in court), and it just seemed logical that I�??d enjoy writing on a blog. What I never expected was that I�??d spend nearly as much time on the visual side of blogging as I do actually writing.

While you can certainly publish a blog that has little to no visual content, I believe that a key to having a successful site is presenting the reader with visuals that complement whatever it is that you�??re writing about. That�??s why I spent so long on my site redesign back in January, and why I rarely publish a post without at least one image. Blogging at Linden Lifestyles has just reinforced my emphasis on visual content, given that a core element of each post over there is the photos of whatever products we�??re reviewing.

What this means is that I spend a lot more time in SL these days taking snapshots than I ever thought I would. Good thing I really enjoy doing it - in RL I�??ve always been a bit of an amateur photographer, though I do it more as a chronicler of vacations and life events than I do it for the art of the photograph. But SL has taken things to another level for me, just because there�??s always something amazing to try and capture with a snapshot, and because the platform really lends itself to some stunning imagery, especially after the introduction of WindLight. Plus, in SL you never have to worry about not having your camera in your purse when you run across something that you really want to take a picture of.

Which brings me back around to answering the question I know is on the minds of most of my readers right now: �??Why in the name of Phillip Linden is there a picture of Kit nekkid next to this post?�?? Well, it got your attention, didn�??t it? Plus, I�??m hoping to get paid - explanation (and more nakedness) after the jump.

I�??ll bet that if you were to go back over the archives of my blog (go on, do it, I�??ll wait...) or even look at my Picasa albums of in-world photography and studio pictures, you�??d see that my skill in taking SL photos has definitely increased. But it�??s been a struggle. The introduction of WindLight vastly complicated things, especially on the lighting front. I�??ve had to learn a lot about local lighting and the WindLight presets in order to get to where my results are more like this, rather than this or this.

But I�??ve also been extremely grateful for the customization that WindLight has permitted me, both in terms of lighting and atmospherics. It�??s a blessing and a curse to be able to tweak every little thing about the environment like WindLight permits - I can�??t tell you how much time I spend just moving the sun around the sky, trying to get things lit just right. Could you imagine having that power for RL photography? I�??d be a danger to myself and others.

Recently I found out that the website Koinup (sort of a Flickr and YouTube for virtual worlds) was having a WindLight photography contest, and I knew that I really wanted to enter. Yes, the prize is really nice, but I honestly don�??t have any expectation of winning - I just saw what great stuff the other entrants were submitting, and I wanted to challenge myself to do something similar, to really put my WindLight skills to the test.

The contest rules allow you to submit two SL photos, which will be judged by a team made up of Vint Falken and the Linden brothers (Pastrami and Torley). The challenge of the competition is to �??focus on the potential of Windlight.�?? Obviously, for me, that potential is to get naked and sit in black water:

Portent, by Kit Meredith

To me, the appeal of WindLight has mostly been its added realism - I�??m still stunned with how the light plays off the ripples in the water so perfectly, and the sunsets... well, we all know how I feel about those. But for this competition, I thought I�??d focus on a different aspect of the potential of WindLight, namely the way it permits surreality just as easily as it improves reality. This comes mostly from the ability to customize the sky and water with whatever colors and conditions you want. For the photograph above, I went to the Chouchou sim, which is already very surreal on its own, and then made the water and sky black and the clouds red. (Full disclosure, I used Torley�??s WL preset �??CastleVain�?? for the sky with some modest tweaks, and the preset �??Valdez�?? for the water.) Oh, and I stripped off all my clothes and sat down. It�??s not being naked, it�??s being nude. Because it�??s art!

Polluted, by Kit Meredith

This is my second submission - you can see both in larger formats by clicking on them, which will take you over to the photo page at Koinup. (You can also check out my Picasa album where the other shots that I didn�??t submit are posted.) I wanted somewhere I could use a pink sky and green water, as a complete pander to Torley�??s watermelon tendencies. Just kidding. I was flying around the Rezzable sims looking for good scenery to photograph (being Rezzable, it�??s a target-rich environment) when I ran across this oil rig in the middle of the water.

I selected this as a subject for two reasons - first, the best features of WindLight really come out in shots with lots of water and sky, and the setting has lots of both surround a very evocative build in the oil rig. Second, I had really wanted to do something with a �??toxic�?? theme, with greenish water and a very radically colored sky. I thought an oil rig was the perfect setting for something toxic. Again, I used mildly tweaked versions of Torley�??s WL presets for these - �??Chernobyl�?? for the sky, and �??Listeryne�?? for the water.

I don�??t think that you really need much postprocessing with these shots, especially since the idea is to show off what WindLight can do on its own. I did adjust the contrast on both pics a little, and added the transparent frames, but that�??s really it. I hope people like these, I certainly enjoyed putting them together.

Time for some spring cleaning

2008-05-03T13:43:00.005-04:00

Well, the day I was dreading has finally come. As of last night, at 7:12 PM SLT, my inventory went over 15,000 items. I�??d been playing chicken with this milepost for days now - clearing out my trash a couple of times to keep me under the limit - but I have to face it now, I�??ve officially reached crazy inventory land.

Why is this such a big deal? For starters, it�??s just become a massive PITA to find anything in my inventory anymore. Yes, I can find things through search, but that means that I need to know the name of whatever it is I�??m looking for, and my memory just isn�??t what it used to be. This actually became a problem long ago, and when I passed 10,000 items in my inventory, I told myself that was it, I was going to clean up and organize things. Which, being my typical disorganized self, never happened.

So I did what any good lawyer does when faced with a situation she doesn�??t like, I moved the goalposts. My new and improved goal was to keep my inventory under 15,000 items. And there�??s a good chance I would have let this milepost slip by as well, if the motivation for cleaning up was still just organization and convenience. But two things I�??ve read recently lead me to believe that it�??s much more than that, and I am resigned to the fact that there�??s a solid couple hours of inventory sorting awaiting me in the very near future.

Ignore what�??s after the jump at your own peril!

I browse the Second Life blogs a lot, especially when I�??m procrastinating, and I sometimes end up finding interesting stuff that I bookmark for later examination. Inevitably, when I do go back to the page, I cannot for the life of me remember how I found it in the first place, and this site is just such an example. It�??s the blog of Zoe Llewelyn, and the specific post I found is about a year old and has to do with her losing a great deal of the 30,000 item inventory she�??d accumulated over the years of her Second Life.

While it�??s certainly an interesting read, the main post is not why I bookmarked it. What really caught my eye is the last comment to the post, which was left by Kona Linden. In the comment, Kona gives out a couple tidbits about inventories that really shocked me. First of all, he gives the blanket statement that:

You should never have more than 15-20k of objects in your inventory. The more objects you have, the slower it will be for you log into SL...even to the point where you will no longer be able to log into SL because you have too large of an inventory.

Well, that explains why my logins seem sluggish lately. Plus, there we have it, a clear and unequivocal statement by a Linden that big inventories are bad bad bad. I�??ve also seen it reported elsewhere that we actually run an increased risk of inventory loss once our items go over the 15-20,000 range, though I can�??t for the life of me figure out where I read that.

The second interesting thing in Kona�??s comment is that, apparently, the item count at the top of your inventory is not necessarily accurate. While I guess this shouldn�??t surprise me coming from Linden Lab, it�??s still odd that the software can�??t make an accurate count of our inventory. Couple with that on the recommendation that we don�??t go over 15-20,000 items, and I�??ve started to see that erring on the side of a smaller inventory is probably a good idea.

The other thing that recently gave me pause about by inventory was a post that Tateru Nino wrote over on Massively. Tateru�??s �??Under the Grid�?? posts are always interesting reads, as she tries to explain the workings of Second Life in easy-to-understand terms, and this one about calling cards is fascinating. I�??ll let you read the entire article yourself, but there�??s one part I found fascinating.

It turns out that when someone you have a calling card for (usually, people who are, or ever were, on your Friends list, though you can also obtain calling cards other ways) logs in or out, the system sends a notification to your SL client software, telling it to update that person�??s calling card with their online status. Then, in Tateru�??s words:

The viewer has to then search through every item in your inventory, and check to see if it is (a) a calling card, and (b) if it is the calling card of the person that it has received a login/logout notification for. If it is, it updates the status of that card. You might have more than one card for a given person, and they could be in pretty much any of your inventory folders, so a complete search is needed.

Uh-oh. This isn�??t sounding good. The fallout?

The larger your inventory is, the more work each update takes. The more calling cards you have, the more updates you get ... Ever have those situations where your viewer seems to freeze for half a second? A second? Possibly several seconds? And they happen just here and there?

/me cautiously raises her hand and nods...

That's probably your viewer grubbing its way through your overly large inventory trying to update your calling cards.

Well, there you have it, straight from the Nino�??s mouth. Putting aside convenience, putting aside the potential risk of increased inventory loss, the fact of the matter is that our bloated inventories may be adding to the lag we experience. I really have noticed the viewer hiccuping on me more and more, and had just chalked that up to the Release Candidate, but now I�??m thinking that I need to buckle down and meet this issue head-on by reducing my inventory.

So, sometime in the next week, I�??ll force myself to use one or two hours of my very valuable and scarce SL time to sort my inventory. There�??s gobs of stuff in there that I don�??t need. I don�??t know how many freebies and hair and skin demos I�??ve picked up over the past six months, but I�??m sure it�??s a shocking number. So I�??ll clear those out, along with all my outdated or unwanted notecards and landmarks, and I think I�??ll make a pretty big dent in my 15,000. I�??ll certainly report back here if I see any improvement in SL�??s performance.

What about you? How big are your inventories? Do you clean them out on a regular basis, or just let yours run wild?

Aggregators out, Aggregators in

2008-04-30T13:38:00.007-04:00

Time for me to eat some crow, because it�??s official. I�??ve completely given up on Sweet Second Life. Yes, it�??s the same blog aggregator I noted months ago for being a good way to discover new and interesting Second Life blogs. But I�??m done with it. I�??ve even removed the little widget from my sidebar that tells you what my rank on their website is. So, there you have it, mmmmmmmmmmm crow.

I�??ll vent about all the little issues I�??ve had with the site after the jump, but the fact of the matter is that I think it had sort of outlived its usefulness for me. When I was new to the Second Life blogosphere, an aggregator like Sweet Second Life was a great way to find new blogs that I hadn�??t heard of before. It was through that site that I found the blogs of Codie, Crap, Kitty, and Mygdala, plus lots of others. Now that all the blogs I�??m interested in reading are on my RSS feed, I really don�??t have much use for Sweet Second Life anymore.

But I don�??t like to always rely on my feedreader to keep me up to date - especially since lately it seems like Google Reader has been slow to update with new posts on the blogs I follow. (I checked and it took several hours to update my own feed the last few times I posted something new here on the blog.) Enter Alltop, which is like a more stable, better designed and actually useful version of Sweet Second Life, minus the completely arbitrary ranking of which blogs are �??hottest.�?? Over the past few weeks it�??s become my go-to page for seeing what all the big blogs are talking about at any given moment.

Oh, don�??t worry, I�??ve got plenty more venting to do about Sweet Second Life. It�??s just after the jump.

Before the venting, let�??s talk about Alltop for a second. Like Sweet Second Life, which was just a SL-centric subset of a larger service called SocialRank, Alltop aggregates blogs on all sorts of topics, and organizes them into different groups. So there�??s law.alltop.com and cute.alltop.com and moms.alltop.com. Those of us looking for SL-related news will be interested in virtual.alltop.com, which aggregates blogs having to do with virtual worlds and MMOs in general, though the listing does tend to be dominated by Second Life blogs.

On its face, Alltop appears to be your typical aggregator, listing the titles of the last five posts from 60 blogs about virtual worlds. If you hover your mouse over any of the post titles, you�??ll get a snippet of the start of the post. You can remove any feeds from the listing that you�??re not interested in, by just clicking on a little x at the top right of the feed. So there�??s nothing groundbreaking about it, but it�??s so well organized and laid out that it just begs you to use it.

The site appears to editorially choose which blogs to list, which can be a good thing (because there�??s never a �??why the frak is that irrelevant blog listed�?? moment, like you get with Sweet Second Life) but also a bad thing if the editors start choosing content based on their own agenda. Luckily, at this point there appears to be no apparent agenda, and I�??ve been impressed by the breadth of the content, which ranges from news sites (Massively, NWN, and SLNN), to fashion sites (Linden Lifestyles, Second Style Fashionista, and the Fashion Planet feed), to personal blogs (Torley, Gwyn, and Jacek). There�??s even a Twitter thrown in there, though I�??m going to be asking them to add the SecondLie Twitter, it�??s just too funny not to include.

The one drawback I�??ve found with the site is that there�??s just too much on it. I think my own personal RSS feed is bloated, and it has less than 60 blogs on it. With an RSS feed, you can see when there�??s new content added to the blogs - there�??s no way (as far as I can tell) on Alltop to get it to indicate which content is new since your last visit. So, you end up looking through all the blogs listed, trying to remember if there�??s anything you haven�??t seen before.

I will note that there�??s a slight degree of self-interest in blogging about Alltop here. I�??d like to get my blog added, and as the Alltop folks readily admit on their �??About Us�?? page, it certainly helps them look favorably on your request to add if you mention them on your own blog. Okay, that�??s a �??I�??ll blog your blog if you blog mine�?? arrangement, I�??m cool with that, but I thought I should point it out for everyone so it�??s all above-board. I certainly haven�??t shaded my impressions of the site because of this.

Now, the venting, as promised. I really shoulda seen it coming, that Sweet Second Life was going to give me heartburn. After I originally noted that I found it useful, SocialRank�??s main blog picked up on my comments as a �??great review�?? of the site. So that was strike one, you can�??t tell a mildly positive comment from a great review.

Then there was the whole problem about me not being listed on their site. Just kidding, that wasn�??t the problem at all. The problem was that when they did add me, they added me by listing my blog title as �??Blogger: 404 Error - Page not found.�?? (Which strangely enough was going to be my original blog title, before I decided that I would rather thumb my nose at the trademark gods and put Linden Lab�??s registered mark in my blog name. Yes, I�??m joking.) They eventually fixed it, but that�??s strike two - you either have a stupid monkey or a borked algorithm putting your blog list together for you.

Well, in the months since then, I�??ve seen strikes three through seven fly by, and I�??ve finally had it. After they listed me, I installed their little widget in my sidebar that would tell everyone where I was ranked on their list. (Sure, I still think the idea of ranking �??hottest blogs�?? is arbitrary and silly, but come on, allow me a little vanity here.) Well, it turns out that with very rare exceptions, the widget was never right. Either it showed the rank that the site had displayed the previous day, or it was inexplicably one off from what the site was showing on that particular day. So if I was ranked 34 yesterday, and 27 today, the widget would show today that I was either 34, or 28. Strike three.

Then there�??s the fact that the site was unstable, or would simply stop updating, for long stretches. Some days the widget would fail to load on my sidebar, and when I went to check why, www.sweetsecondlife.com would not load. Or, on a number of occasions, the list of �??Today�??s Top Blog Posts�?? wouldn�??t update for several days, which seems to imply that the blogosphere went on holiday for those days, which we know doesn�??t happen even when a bunch of us want it to. Strike four.

Then there was the time the site went stagnant for almost a week, and when it started updating again all of the data on recent posts - what the site apparently uses to determine rank - had disappeared. So, for a while, the site listed me as not having posted anything new in the past 14 days, even though I�??d posted six or seven times in that period. Which, not only meant that my posts apparently weren�??t ever going to show up on the �??Top Blog Posts�?? page, but my blog�??s rank suffered heavily during that time. Ever since then, the data has just been flat wrong - right now for example, it says this blog hasn�??t been updated in the past six days. That merits two strikes - five and six.

Finally, the thing that really takes the cake for me is that I still have no idea what this site is trying to do with its rankings. They have never made any sense to me. There were times where I would go without posting for a few days, and those always seemed to be the times my blog moved up in the rankings. Or, my blog's rank would change drastically from day to day - top ten one day, below 50 the next. Then, for some reason, for a few days I inexplicably surged up to number three in the rankings, behind only Gwyn�??s blog and Reuters and in front of sites that I know for a fact get more traffic and comments, like New World Notes, the Big Blog, and Torley�??s blog. Even I think that it�??s a little extreme to put me in front of them. So, that�??s the seventh and final strike, and at least for me, Sweet Second Life is out. Now batting, Alltop.

What? I never said I was any good at baseball.

Ordinal Explains It All

2008-04-28T15:13:00.003-04:00

Have you ever had the pleasure of running across a blog post that is just so perfect in its style, wit, and simplicity, that you can�??t help but step back and marvel at it for a while? And if you�??re like me, once you�??re done marveling, you have to post something about it on your blog to share it with everybody. Oh, and you also feel this extraordinary jolt of jealousy because you didn�??t write it first. No? Maybe that last part's just me, then.

Well, whatever. Today I had just such an experience, as I was clearing out the backlog of my RSS feed and ran across a post by Ordinal Malaprop called �??An Illustration of the Cosmology of the Grid.�?? Ordinal has taken just about every element of the Second Life pop culture and merged them into one crazy flowchart/system diagram. It�??s brilliant, and has brightened what has otherwise been a gray and rainy Monday for me.

I love everything about this diagram, like for example the fact that the line for �??Communication�?? between Linden Lab and the Grid is dotted. Or that Blogs feed Outrage into The Grid, while Twitter feeds Rubbish. Or the inclusion of �??clicky-clacky shoes�?? in the area below The Grid, entitled �??Hell.�?? (Though I do question the absence of �??bling�?? from Hell - what gives?)

And, of course, the diagram is accompanied by Ordinal�??s writing, which is in that unique Victorian-era voice that she uses so well. (I don�??t know what it is about Capitalized Words that I find so Humourous, but I do.) If you don�??t follow her blog - or, �??Aethernet Journal�?? as she calls it - �??An Engine Fit for My Proceeding,�?? you�??re missing out.

all images by Ordinal Malaprop. Used subject to Creative Commons License.

Hamlet's Really Mixed Reality Mixer

2008-04-25T12:00:00.010-04:00

Lanna and I had the pleasure of attending Hamlet Au�??s virtual book signing party last night, and we�??re now the proud owners of a signed prim copy of his new book. Who knows, maybe it will be worth something someday. Not that I�??ll ever be able to find it in my inventory when that day comes, but that�??s not the point.

Hamlet and a few of his guests, including Lanna (far left) and myself

It certainly was an interesting experience. Ham and Iris Ophelia were both in a New York apartment at a RL party for the book release, and were also trying to participate in the room chat at the SL party. No offense to Hamlet (he was busy getting his RL drink on, I understand) but Iris did a much better job staying involved on the virtual side of things. And that�??s why we did this to Hamlet during one of his AFK moments, instead of her.

Oh, and we also did this:

We weren't being mean - we were trying to make SL Hamlet feel like he was really in New York.

Anyway, I rarely post pictures and recaps of events I go to, but ZOMG I�??m totally FIC now. (Yes, that was intended to be ironic, I miss not having my emotes here on the blog.) More pics after the jump...

I also had the pleasure of meeting Lyra Millionsofus, who is an absolute doll and did an amazing job with the build for the party. Plus, she was able to juggle IM while also playing cruise director and keeping the party interesting, which I always consider to be a difficult thing when people are TPing in and out and crashing all around you. While I�??m normally not someone who shops at Armidi (I have low lag tolerance), Lyra�??s stunner of an outfit from last night may force me to make an exception:

Where's that other hand, Hamlet?

We were also entertained throughout the evening by the incomparable Flea Bussy, who changed avatars about every two minutes and still hadn�??t run out of novel and surprising incarnations by the end of the evening. We were told that our voyeurs from RL were quite entertained with the avie show and tell. My favorite had to be Flea as a dragon, and a pink one at that:

All in all, it was a great time, and I enjoyed the mixed reality aspect of it, though it was a little less "mixed" than what was promised. The big screen in New York that was supposed to show the SL scene wasn�??t working, and the pictures of the RL party that were allegedly going to show up on the prim laptop in SL never happened. But, it was less about the meta and more about showing support for Hamlet and his book, which I do intend to read once I can get my hands on a copy. I hope Hamlet ended up having a nice time, and will forgive me for putting the lampshade on him while he was AFK.

I have more pictures of the party here, on Picasa. I'm not cool enough for Flickr.

Second Life Glamour Shots

2008-04-24T13:29:00.005-04:00

Harper noticed that I�??d put a new profile picture of myself up over at my SL Bloggers group page, and asked if I�??d written about it. I haven�??t, primarily because I can�??t imagine that anyone is interested in me posting pictures of myself and providing commentary. Then I realized that that�??s exactly what I do over at Linden Lifestyles every week. Oops. Well, I�??m a little short on time and post ideas this week, so I�??ll take whatever topic suggestions I can get.

I was recently asked by someone to provide a head shot photograph of myself, in connection with a project that I�??m working on but can�??t really talk about just yet. While I�??ve taken snapshots of myself to use as profile pics in the past, I didn�??t really think any of them were up to snuff for my current purposes. Plus, I think my photography skills have definitely improved recently, now that I�??m learning a bit more about WindLight and experimenting with composition and all that.

So, I secluded myself in the photosphere for an hour or so and started loading up the hard drive with snapshots. I think I got a few good ones, including the one to the left, which I am now using as my profile picture on various Web sites, including Blogger.

Larger version of the snapshot, plus a special bonus one that my friend (and much better SL photographer) Gita Rau took, after the jump.

I don't know if anyone cares, but I�??ll give a quick rundown of how I got the shot. About a month ago, I knew I�??d be needing a well-lit space with a white background for taking Linden Lifestyles photos. So, I decided I needed a photosphere, which for those of you who aren�??t familiar is basically a hollowed-out sphere that is partially open in the front. You can retexture the interior of the sphere with whatever background you want, and you can set up an array of light-emitting prims around your pose stand to get rid of any nasty shadows.

Problem is, I�??m crazy cheap, and I didn�??t want to spend the thousand plus ellz that a photosphere typically costs. (If you�??re flush with cash, the Kyoot Army sphere is 1500L and is very nice.) So, I built my own on top of our skybox. It�??s not the most elegant build, and it�??s not scripted so I have to manually change the background when I want something other than plain white, but it works for me and I can get the shots I need pretty quickly these days. Remind me and I�??ll post a few shots of what I�??ve built in a later post, along with some details on the prims, in case anyone else wants to build their own.

Oh, what the heck, I'll be like a real fashion blog or something:
Hair: Vivian in Mahogany by ETD; Skin: Adore in Teal by Adam n Eve; Jewelry: River Stones set by Paper Couture.

So anyway, after getting myself posed how I like in the sphere, it�??s time to fiddle with the lighting and graphics. I have a �??Photo Preset�?? in my WindLight lighting options that is very close to Caliah�??s original �??optimized�?? lighting settings. The foundation of the lighting is the Blizzard lighting preset, which takes the harsh edge off the WindLight sunlight and helps smooth out the shadows a great deal.

Quick aside - I�??ve tried Caliah�??s updated �??optimized�?? WindLight settings too, but the light turns out to be too harsh for my taste. My photosphere lights were set up to work with Caliah�??s original settings and I�??m too lazy to change them. If you�??re going to be taking snapshots with the environment visible behind you, rather in a sphere with lighting elements all around, Caliah�??s updated WindLight settings are worth a look.

Before taking any snapshots, I also turn up my graphics settings as high as they�??ll go. I normally walk around the grid using the High setting on the slider in the Graphics Preferences tab, unless I�??m somewhere crowded, and then I'll push the slider down to Low. But for pictures, I crank things up to Ultra. I also go into �??Hardware Settings�?? on that same tab, and turn on anisotropic filtering, and turn antialiasing all the way up. (Changing antialiasing from within the Second Life software is a new feature of the current Release Candidate, so don�??t look for it if you�??re using the standard viewer.) And finally, I go into the �??Advanced�?? drop-down menu in the main toolbar, and turn on hi-res snapshots. I�??m pretty sure I�??ve come close to melting my video card a couple times, but the results usually turn out to be worth it. (BTW, Torley has a great video tutorial on the Graphics Preferences, if you're interested.)

Finally, I�??ll share one last trick I use, though others might have a better way of doing this. I always hate photographs of myself where I�??m not looking at the photographer, and even if I�??m using a great pose my avie will often just stare blankly ahead and refuse to make love to the camera. I could just move the camera into my gaze, but often that�??s not the best angle for the photo. What I do instead is rez a transparent prim and move it to where I want my avie to be looking. Turn on �??view transparent�?? (ctrl-alt-T), and focus your camera on the prim by alt-clicking on it, which also makes your eyes point toward the prim.

Now, while still alt-clicking on the prim, move the camera to compose the shot how you like it, and then turn off �??view transparent.�?? Voila, you have a perfectly composed shot where your avie is more or less looking the right direction. I say �??more or less�?? because for some reason, you can never make your eyes stay completely still - I guess it�??s an attempt at realism, but your pupils will always dance around a little. Be patient, they�??ll eventually hit just the right spot and you can quickly hit �??ctrl-`�?? to take a snapshot to disk.

Finally, the post-processing end of things. I don�??t do much, though I know there is a lot out there that can be done in terms of enhancing color and softening the image in a graphics editing program like Photoshop or GIMP. I basically do two things if I�??m trying to get a perfect snapshot. First, I blur the edges of shadows on my skin if there are any abrupt transitions from light to dark areas. (Ryker Beck has done a very helpful video tutorial of this technique.) Typically, this isn�??t a problem with adequate lighting in a photosphere, but sometimes it is.

And second, though we�??d all like to deny it, our virtual selves are still just jumbles of polygons, and those polygons have edges. Based on the pose you�??re using and the angle of your photo, your avatar�??s mesh can sometimes be a bit angular in places. I use a tool in GIMP called iWarp to smooth out these points when they�??re too drastic. Photoshop users have an even better tool called Liquefy, which Vint Falken has a great video tutorial on how to use.

So that�??s how I went about getting the photo you see above. As I mentioned, my friend Gita Rau also offered to take a photo for me, and if you�??ve ever seen her Flickr photostream, you can see why I immediately said yes to her offer, she�??s immensely talented. I know she does things a little differently than I do, she has an honest-to-goodness photosphere and a bunch of poses that aren�??t freebies, and her Photoshop skills are far and away better what I can do in GIMP. Below is the picture she took of me, as you can see she�??s softened the image so well that it almost looks like a real photograph, and I love the color enhancement she did with my lips, they look amazing.

I think this is definitely the one I�??m going to submit for the head shot. But I don�??t want the one I took to go to waste, so I�??m going to use it as my profile pic on various sites like Facebook and SL Bloggers. So... there you have it Harper. I hope this was informative and/or interesting. If not, I hope you�??ve learned your lesson about asking me things!

Trademark musings, and New World Lanna!

2008-04-22T17:18:00.006-04:00

I'm still not sure what I think about the recent clarifications to the trademark policy that were announced last Friday. In some ways, those who say the blogger "strike" got exactly the results we were asking for are correct. We asked that Linden Lab clarify their policy, and LauraP's post did so to a large degree. Whether we like the clarification or not, at least they've leveled with us about their intentions. It certainly makes me feel better and more respected to be treated like an adult and given the facts, even if I don't like them. I'm tempted at this point to sit back and let the Lindens' actions fill in the remaining open issues.

On the other hand, I feel that those who are unsatisfied and wish to see the bloggers continue to fight are justified in feeling that way. While LauraP's post did scale back what exactly the Lindens expect us to do under the branding guidelines and the Terms of Service, there's no doubting that the guidelines still extend beyond what is required under US trademark law. Whether we permit Linden Lab to reach like this becomes a moral issue instead of a legal or notice one, and some believe we can't ignore it because of free speech concerns. There's also the moral dimension of allowing Linden Lab to extend their Terms of Service to cover actions that don't have anything to do with the service itself, which I think makes people queasy.

I'm starting to think that I come down somewhere in the middle, as I often do. I think I've hit the point where I need to sum up how I feel about everything, lay out the remaining issues, and then see where things go. Once I figure out what those actually are, I'll get around to writing a post. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, happier news! As I alluded to two weeks ago, my girlfriend/companion/ love/sweetheart/dearest friend/a lot of other wonderful things Lanna has made her debut over at New World Notes as Hamlet's event maven! I'm indescribably happy for her, and proud of her. I can't think of a more perfect "fit" for her many talents than doing what she's going to be doing, which is bringing people together in ways that interest them. Please, take a moment to head over to NWN and leave her a comment welcoming her to the blogosphere!

LauraP Linden owes me two hours

2008-04-18T17:09:00.002-04:00

I�??ve really got to learn to type faster, or something.

With the strike over, I was writing up a post summarizing where we stand on the branding policy issue, and almost had it ready to go. Then, wouldn�??t you know it, LauraP Linden published a new post over on the Big Linden Blog about the policy, further clarifying how the Lindens are going to look at the whole trademark issue, and specifically how blogs are able to use the marks (in their eyes, at least). Rather than wasting time trying to rewrite what I�??ve got, I�??m going to step back, take a deep breath, and try to digest LauraP�??s post over the weekend before writing anything.

Two quickies on the strike - first, some bloggers have objected to calling what we did a �??strike,�?? because they think it�??s demeaning to workers who actually do strike IRL and risk losing their livelihoods over working conditions or compensation. I don�??t know about the demeaning part, but I�??ll agree that calling what we did a strike wasn�??t the best term. Probably calling it a protest, or a blog boycott, would have been more accurate. But Gwyn chose to call it a strike, and since it�??s her world and we all just live in it, I was willing to call it a strike.

Second, for all the people who criticized our tactics, I�??ll just point out that we ended the strike today, and we got a clarification from the Lindens today. Coincidence? Of course it is. But I�??m still going to call it a win.

Always a new adventure around the next corner, isn�??t there? Have a great weekend, everyone.

To the barricades!

2008-04-15T13:36:00.007-04:00

Yes, as Tateru reported today, I am joining Gwyn�??s blog strike, along with Rheta, Codie, Tao, and hopefully many others. While I lack the means to remove all my content temporarily like other bloggers are apparently doing, I won�??t be posting anything new for the next three days.

I had planned on posting this announcement earlier in the day, because now I guess I�??m technically announcing my participation in the strike in the middle of the strike. But there were costumes to be obtained! Songs to be written! Coffee to be downed!

In all fairness, I think some recent statements made by the Lindens have hinted at the fact that Linden Lab isn't going to enforce the Terms of Service against bloggers for not following the trademark guidelines on their externally hosted sites. I�??d planned on posting a summary of these comments here, but never got around to it. (Oh well, guess I can�??t now. Strike! Strike!) I�??ll try and go back and review what�??s been said so I can summarize it into a (hopefully coherent) post when I get back.

After the jump, a little musical interlude to entertain you in my absence.

Because every revolution needs a jingle, I�??ve written up a little strike anthem, to the tune of �??Do you hear the people sing?�?? from Les Miserables. (Click here if you need to hear the original tune.) But first, period costumes!

Do you see the bloggers strike?
Reluctantly laying down their pens?
It is the striking of the authors
Who refuse to use �??TM�??!
To the silence of our keys
These guidelines will succumb
We�??ll make them hear our pleas
When tomorrow comes!

Will you join in our crusade?
Who will refuse to blog, like me?
Until a Linden will renounce
This new branding policy?
Then join in our fight
That will give us the right to be free!

Do you see the bloggers strike?
Reluctantly laying down the pen?
It is the striking of the authors
Who refuse to use �??TM�??!
To the silence of our keys
These guidelines will succumb
We�??ll make them hear our pleas
When tomorrow comes!