Wow! How did that happen? It’s 2026 already, and I haven’t posted here since last September. It’s not just here with the blog, I’ve not done anything particularly creative inworld or added anything new to the store, so generally I’ve been rather unproductive in most areas. Apart from shopping, that is… over the past couple of months, what with Halloween and Christmas events and sales, Black Friday, and all my usual favorite weekly sales, my inventory has grown unreasonably and I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time unboxing, sorting and trying out purchases. Not really a good excuse for skipping inworld activities, but it’ll have to do.

In the real world, things have been completely bonkers, and that’s the primary reason I’ve been missing in action. In between work and family demands, what time I’ve had spare has been taken up with sleep, out of necessity, rather than choice. So, there you have it, and I’m only writing today because I’ve a couple of weeks off work. People keep asking me what my plans are, and frankly, the only plans I’ve made are just to chill and make no plans!

But, for now at least, I’m back!

It’s been quite an uplifting start to my year inworld, mainly due to a couple of unexpected IMs. Usually, I’m no fan of messages arriving out of the blue and IM communication is reserved to close friends only. If I should receive a call from someone outside my most immediate circle of friends, which of course does happen on occasion, particularly around Christmas and New Year, with people feeling obliged to say ‘Hello’ and offer friendly greetings, but when they do I often feel uncomfortable and the conversations will usually come to a premature and awkward end. Inevitably, I also get occasional IMs from customers or strangers wanting to talk about commissions or similar. I find these awkward too, although I do my best to engender good customer relations, even though I may be squirming inside!

So, it was extremely surprising to receive an unexpected IM this week from a complete stranger, apparently a customer from some years ago…

“I just want to thank you again for that sign. it is so amazizng my girl has me put it out everytime she redoes our area. and we have had a lot of people say that its amazing.”

Just a simple message, but one which really gave me a boost. They didn’t have to reach out to me, but they did, and to get a message like that about something you’ve created has a huge impact. Even though I’ve been making and selling items since 2020, I still find it rather surprising that anyone is willing to pay good money for them and I always have a nagging doubt that I’m just not good enough to be a SL merchant. So, having someone, not only compliment my work some time after purchasing, but in the way this customer did, and say that other people think it’s amazing too is hugely affirming. Made my day!

Then, equally unexpectedly, the same week, I received another IM. This time it was from an acquaintance, but only inasmuch they’re on my friends list. I haven’t seen them or spoken to them for years, so to get a message from them at all was surprising. What they had to say was even more surprising though. Some years ago, they’d given an inworld music performance which I’d gone along to and, on a whim, I’d decided to record it for posterity and afterwards give them a copy. They were super-grateful and appreciated the gesture, but soon afterwards I’d forgotten all about it, until they messaged me this week.

They told me that seven years previously they’d shared the recording I’d made with a professional musician who had then volunteered to mentor my friend and encouraged them to start writing their own music. They described it as a turning point in their life which gave them a new sense of direction that they’d desperately needed, and a sense of purpose that had been missing. The reason for their message; they simply wanted to thank me for making the sponaneous decision to record that original performance, which proved to be the trigger for a series of life-changing events for them.

I was somewhat taken aback, but incredibly happy to have made such an impact, without even knowing it.

Those two unexpected and uninvited messages have really served to kickstart my year in SL. I seem to spend so much time complaining about unsolicited IMs and the banal, annoying, sometimes innapropriate content they contain that to receive something so positive and uplifting has been wonderful. It’s also made me come to a new appreciation that what happens inworld can have unexpected beneficial consequences in the real world, again set against my own experiences from the past where I’ve seen things happen in SL that have negatively impacted upon people’s real lives. It’s made me feel good, and not in a self-congratulatory way, but in a sense that I feel reassured that SL can serve a purpose other than being a fun way to fritter away a few hours of an evening, and that those of us who do spend our time inworld are there for a reason and our actions and words can be uplifting to others. You might mock such a conclusion, but to me, it’s reassuring.

I’ve spent time in SL almost every day for the last 15 years, and at the dawn of this new year it feels good that I’ve not wasted that time, either for myself, or in what I may have done for others. At least, that’s my hope.

Happy New Year!

s. x

Don’t question why she needs to be so free
She’ll tell you it’s the only way to be
She just can’t be chained to a life where nothing’s gained
And nothing’s lost, at such a cost
The Rolling Stones – Ruby Tuesday

So, what’s new in store?

Well, loads of stuff! Far too much to go into details about… 28 new items, in fact, and there’s still a few more to come. To be truthful, a lot of these have been hanging about in my inventory for a while, I just haven’t had the time or willpower to go through the horribly tedious task of jumping through all the hoops that you have to, just to get items onto Marketplace.

Anyway, enough moaning. After finally knuckling-down and spending 3 painful hours sorting things out I’ve finally broken the back of it, so let me introduce my new product lines to you…

Let’s start with my new range of mood lights. Small lamps designed to add subtle accents to your room, without flooding the entire space with light. There’s a whole range, from cute and quirky to futuristic – ranging from 1-3LI, and all at L$200 apiece – a high street coffee costs nearly 10 times as much! These are great for enhancing those dark corners and bringing them to life. There are 13 in all – yeah, I know it’s a weird number, but I got a bit fed up with them after a while!

What are you going to set your new lamps upon? Might I suggest my new range of 7 casual/coffee tables? Let’s start with my Cyber Table, with HUD-controlled lighting and only 2LI. Fancy something a little more ‘interesting’? Try the Impossitable! Creating this one pretty much broke my brain – even when I look at the finished item I find it difficult to get my head around just what I’ve done. You need one of these in your SLife, trust me!

I’ve a few new decorative items too… Pineapples! Yep, pineapples, don’t ask me why, I just thought I would! A couple of new blocky wall art pieces, and erm… a completely useless, but extremely satisfying power switch. Go on, you know you want to!

Yes, this is a little late. The official story is that I wanted to collect my thoughts about the whole thing, but in reality, I just haven’t had the time to sit down and put a decent post together – these things always take way longer than I expect them to. I’ll simply leave it at that, and be fashionably late to the party.

Party is probably not the best descriptor, if I’m honest, because I’m talking about the recent passing of Ozzy Osbourne, The Prince of Darkness.

People will have their own opinion of Ozzy and the band that launched his career – Black Sabbath – and you are, of course, entitled to that opinion. Heavy Metal music, for which he’s been frequently credited as the originator, isn’t to everybody’s taste and neither was the man himself, but today I’ll be focussing on the part they’ve played in my life, and it’s not insignificant.

Rewind the tape to my early teenage years, when I was just really discovering music, and you’d find me a somewhat rebellious loner, someone who hated to conform and for whom life was all about sticking it to The Man. Truth be told, that still holds true for me today in many ways. The mainstream music of the time pretty much passed me by – it was too bland, too much the in-thing, and too safe and palatable to the masses. That’s when I discovered Heavy Metal, and Black Sabbath were pretty much the first band that I was really drawn to. I liked that they were edgy, different and something that your granny would disapprove of, and the music felt like it was meant for people like me. Ozzy’s voice was very different to those of the slick, polished singers of the pop scene and I have vivid memories of sitting in my bedroom in the dark, headphones on, while the gentle rain and thunder at the beginning of Sabbath’s epic ‘Black Sabbath‘ heralded in the crashing guitar intro and Ozzy’s haunting vocals – enough to set my teeth on edge, and half scare me to death. I loved it.

Heavy Metal was my mainstay throughout those formative years: The music, the bands, the look, the companions who shared my interest, all sustained me right through to adulthood. I listened to the niche radio programmes that were always on late at night and had their dedicated die-hard followers – The Friday Rock Show, with Tommy Vance; and in my own neck of the woods on Radio Wales, Rockpile – hosted by Richard Rees – a show with such a small following that if you wrote in with a request you were pretty much guaranteed a shout out… I did, often! I felt part of an elite and special group of people, few outside our circle understood the allure of the music, and that suited me just fine. It was my music, my escape and it started a love and respect for music that has continued to grow throughout my life.

Over the years, my musical tastes diversified: I still loved Sabbath, even after they sacked Ozzy, which of course exposed me to the mighty Ronnie James Dio, and I continued to enjoy Ozzy’s solo work throughout the Bark at the Moon years and beyond, but I also started to embrace other musical genres too – American Rock, Indy and Britpop, Grunge, Techno, Garage, Mod, even world music and, much, much later, I finally started to catch up with all that New Wave and New Romantic music I’d shunned and derided as a teenager.

I never lost my affection for Metal though, or Ozzy, may he rest in peace – I owe him a huge debt of gratitude for introducing me to the music that formed the foundation for the soundtrack of my life. Sadly, he’s not the only rock legend to have left us… Dio, Lemmy, Di’Anno, Bonham, Eddie Van Halen, Rhoads, Bon Scott, Malcolm Young, Charlie Watts, Rick Parfitt, Meatloaf and so many others. All people whose music I grew up listening to, music that formed the backdrop to my younger years, the struggles, the triumphs, the good times and the bad.

It’s not just the rockers though. As I’ve mentioned my musical tastes now encompass a vast range of types and genres, and when we lose an artist, for some reason it really hurts. I don’t know these people and have never met them, yet their work is tightly interwoven into the fabric of my life, and when they pass, I can’t help but feel a sense of loss. 2016 was the worst: The year we lost Bowie, Prince and Leonard Cohen, along with what seemed a neverending procession of eminent musicians and singers. It sucked – but that’s nothing compared to what the next ten years or so will be like.

I’m reaching that time of my life when the musicians and artists I listened to in their prime, those fifteen and twenty years, maybe a little more older than me, have become of pensionable age. Nobody lives forever, and anything over our allotted three-score years and ten has to be considered extra time, especially for those who’ve lived the rock n roll lifestyle. The harsh fact is that editors are already drafting obituaries for a rollcall the likes of which we’ve never seen before… So many names who have been an intimate part of our lives, for most of our lives, will inevitably fade out to silence far too soon.

I’m sorry if you were hoping for a piece about Second Life, but sometimes – as you’ll often read in profiles – SL and RL are interchangable, and so every now and again, you’ll learn a little more about me as a real person through these pages. We are the product of our experience, and a huge part of my experience is music, and that is true whether you meet me for real or virtually, it is who I am.

This has been a challenging one to write, but I console myself with the thought that, on the other side, with all those legends of the music scene waiting for us, there’s one helluva gig going on for us to look forward to!

And, if you should get there before I do… Save me a spot in the mosh pit!

s. x.

And I am not frightened of dying
Any time will do, I don’t mind
Why should I be frightened of dying?
There’s no reason for it, you’ve gotta go sometime
Pink Floyd – The Great Gig In The Sky

The sound of their music alive in the cosmos
There’s power in the air
The world is on firе, their energies blazing
They left us all they had
Judas Priest – Giants In The Sky

There are some things in SL that, perhaps without exception, we all hate with a passion. Of these, sorting inventory has to one of the most loathed activities. No matter how well organised we may be, and no matter how methodical and determined we are, at some point or other we’ll be faced with the daunting prospect of trying to tidy up an inventory that has gone rogue on us.

It doesn’t take much for a inventory to go from delight to disaster – a couple of shopping events in a week, plus a hunt, and no time to unpack, and suddenly we’re faced with a nightmare of unpacking, rezzing, wearing, sorting and deleting; and, the longer we leave it, the worse it gets. No matter what our strategy, a tiny lapse of judgement or the slightest delay in getting around to applying ourself to the task can snowball into a disaster zone of monstrous proportions, leaving us with no option other than to knuckle-down and spend several hours methodically restoring things back to sanity, or alternatively, giving up and just hoping we’ll be able to find what we need, when we need it.

There are, of course, plenty of different approaches to structuring an inventory to make it straightforward to manage. Some use multiple, descriptive, nested folders to organise their stuff; others may operate a strict routine for de-boxing and unpacking, after every shopping trip. Maybe, like me, you keep a ‘temporary’ folder as a holding area, until you can get around to sorting things out, which – by the way – doesn’t work… You just end up with a mini inventory, hidden away in your main inventory, which still needs to be sorted out and is going to be just as painful!

Those with more practical minds than myself make good use of the ‘outfits’ folder, but again that has its limitations, especially if you prefer to mix and match clothing or have a penchant for changing bodies and shapes frequently. Builders may discipline themselves to religiously rename everything they create, to avoid the nightmare of an inventory full of objects named simply, ‘object’. However, whatever your method, there will come a time when it will inevitably fall down, and there’s nothing for it other than to put up the ‘unavailable’ sign and get stuck-in to de-cluttering.

Alternatively, you can choose not to. There are those who ruthlessly delete any folder or item that’s sat unopened after a specified period of time, whether or not they paid good money for it. Others may just give up and live with the fact they will always have a bombsite as a wardrobe, even though this can mean they end up with multiple copies of the same thing, which – inevitably – causes even more clutter and confusion.

It’s a sorry state of affairs, and one which can be alleviated to some degree by creators and merchants being helpful in their approach to packing and despatching their wares. On the other hand, they can also make the whole process even more fiendishly challenging than it already is by adopting massively unhelpful methods for what should really be a simple matter of transferring a virtual item from themselves to a recipient.

Let’s begin with packaging. I adore merchants that package their items in a HUD (helpfully labelled add/wear); a HUD that automatically unpacks its contents straight into your inventory in a sensibly-named folder, and then poofs off the screen without any need to remove it. You guys have nailed it, and I appreciate your effort. I will continue to buy your stuff!

Then we have those merchants who seem to go out of their way to make life difficult, they are the reason we end up wearing boxes that we thought would be HUDs. Boxes, that when unpacked, reveal themselves to contain additional boxes, which also need to be unpacked. I’ve even seen boxes, within boxes, within boxes, which then contain additional boxes for each colour/design – not only do you have to cope with all that unnecessary unpacking, but you’ve now got 17 separate folders all containing the same item, just in a different colour! You guys suck! (I will still probably continue to buy your stuff, but I will curse you all the way!)

Speaking of folders, anything that can aid and assist in identifying, sorting and locating them can only be of benefit. Perhaps the simplest means of achieving all this is by clearly naming the folders spawned by the vendor’s HUD or multitude of boxes. So, why in the name of all that is holy, do the vast majority of merchants insist on adding ridiculous non-alphabetical prefixes to their store or product name? The answer, of course, is simply to appear at the top of the list, just as in the good old days, you’d find AAAAAArdvaark Lockmiths as the first entry in the phone book, SL merchants go the extra mile and use unicode characters that nobody has ever seen before, just to get that miniscule element of brand visibility. Only, it makes me want to pound them with a baseball bat instead!

This ridiculous practice means that now, in order to easily locate my items, I must have the ability to be able to work out just where in the alphabet ‘ᚐ’ occurs, and where it is in relation, not only to standard letters, but also does it come before or after ‘ ᪴ ‘, and is ‘ ᪵ ᪳ ᷀ ᷀ ᷀ ‘ before, somewhere in the middle, or after the end of the rational, simple and pretty much universal A-Z. (Yes, I know not all alphabets are quite as universal as all that – for example, here in Wales we have 29 letters and no K,Q,V,X and Z – but even so, they’re a damn site more easy to navigate, even with the odd unfamiliar character). What you clever so-and-sos have managed to do is completely the opposite of what you’ve intended – you’ve made your item so difficult to find that I may not bother at all, especially since once I have managed to locate your weirdly-named folder and moved it into one of the sensibly-names ones I’ve created to hold my stuff, I can pretty much guarantee I’ll never be able to find it again. And… even worse, you’ve messed up my inventory even more than it was before.

Please don’t do that!

Real life gives me plenty of nonsense I have to deal with, so it would be great to be able to head into SL for some respite from having to think, solve problems and deal with other people’s sh*t; but more and more often I’m finding that some things inworld are every bit as frustrating – if not more so – than the real world, and if there’s one thing I want to be able to do with ease in SL, it’s choose something to wear. I want my inventory to be something like a wardrobe – a space to store my clothing, neatly compartmentalised and sorted into different sections, ready for me to grab and wear – simple. Except, in reality, my inventory bears a stronger resemblance to a teenager’s bedroom, strewn with piles of random clothes and without any indication of where to find anything in particular, and unlike the teenage slob’s disarray, it’s not my fault.

Is it really too much to ask of merchants that they use plain English to label their wares, without any preceding symbolic nonsense that can catapult it to anywhere in my inventory? Much as I’d like to think I have a logical and analytical mind, I don’t have the mental capacity to be able to sort non-alphabetic characters into alphabetical order, a concept that is in itself a little bit mind bending… it’s like trying to work out where a fragrance fits into the visible light spectrum!

I’m actually going off shopping inworld. Not only is ‘fashion’ geared towards those who prefer to have more flesh exposed than covered, but a lot of it is just plain weird – things no-one would ever wear in the real world, but the time-consuming and utterly boring chore of unpacking, often multiple packages, deleting dozens of redundant copies in body shapes I’ll never need, and then sorting them into my already creaking inventory folders is just way too much like hard work. Throw into the mix the ridiculous characters inserted into names, further confusing and stringing out the process, and I’m starting to wonder if it’s really worth the effort.

Then again, who am I kidding? Shopping rocks!

s. x.

This flippity dippity-hippity hip-hop, you don’t really wanna get into a pissin’ match
With this rappity brat, packin’ a MAC in the back of the Ac’, backpack rap crap, yap-yap, yackety-yack
Eminem – Rap God

Before you say anything, yes I know! It’s been an age since I last posted anything on here, but I promise you, I have valid excuses justification for my lack of activity. Life has been rather crazy recently: I have a new job, and a few health problems that I won’t bore you with have also been eating into my capacity to stay sane enough (well, relatively) to be able to spend time concentrating on updating the blog. So, life in general has been rather tiring of late, and what free time I would normally set aside for writing has seen me dozing-off for a couple of hours on the sofa instead.

Must try harder!

Anyway, I’ve finally managed to get around to putting fingers to keyboard, and I’ll do my best – no doubt, not so well as I’d like – to post a bit more regularly from now on… maybe.

Another consequence of my recent day-to-day challenges is that I’m acutely aware that the house is not looking its best at the moment. It’s clean and it’s tidy, but there are some things that really do need attention. There are a couple of houseplants in need of some TLC – ironically, I spend far more time tending to my virtual plants inworld than on the real thing! Then, there’s the garden, or maybe I should start calling it the jungle? To be fair to myself, i’ve not really been physically up to the challenge of tackling the mowing and general maintenance stuff, which has coincided with the growing season, and on those few occasions when I’ve had the time, and felt up to the task, it’s usually been raining! It’s all very verdant and green, but it’s also rather overgrown too, and something needs to be done about it.

Then there’s the matter of my decking, a massive expanse of timber that had received little love or attention prior to my moving here, and has since deteriorated to the point where it’s essentially now a death-trap. I finally have the spare cash to have it torn down and replaced, but the whole business of finding someone reliable to do it is a journey I’ve been putting off for weeks. Plus, any builders will want access to the back of the house, and that entails getting out the hedge-trimmers to cut back the forest preventing this, since I never use that path myself. And that brings me back to the point about feeling up to the task of tackling the gardening!

It’s just not up to scratch at the moment, and I’m not happy about that. That is why, if you happen to pop round to visit, I’ll probably confine you to the kitchen, which is at least presentable and only has a limited view over the wasteland that lurks beyond.

Although, even if everything was pristine, it’s unlikely I’d give you anything like a right to roam around my home! (I might invite you to join me on the new deck for a convivial G&T in the rain, once the damn thing is built though).

You see, Americans and Brits tend to have strikingly different attitudes with regard to their homes and visitors, something I’ve learned from observation of friends from over the Pond over the years, and particularly from my interactions in SL. I certainly don’t want to character-assasinate whole cultures, but in general, an American will want to show you around, whereas a Brit will neither feel the need to look around, should they be invited to nor will they, on the other hand, feel obliged or willing to extend the same hopsitality to a visitor to their own home. It seems to me that from an American perspective, there’s a predisposition to give visitors the grand tour and show-off the property, usually throwing in a few observations about the square footage, whereas your typical Brit would feel broadly uncomfortable about such things, and I guarantee, wouldn’t have a clue about the size of the house, other than ‘it has 3 bedrooms and a downstairs loo’!

The expression that an Englishman’s house is his castle, (please substitute English for Welsh, Scottish, Irish, Cornish or Manx, and woman for man, as appropriate) is both horribly awkward, as demonstrated by the qualifiers in the preceding parentheses, and extremely accurate – we’re pretty guarded about our homes, and tend to keep their innards very much under wraps. As for Americans, they tend to be more expansive and open regarding such things and are more than happy for you to explore their ‘crib’ and poke around in their fridge as much as you like. I think the British mentality is a throwback to the times (which even I can recall), when most houses would have a room designated as ‘the Best Room’, an inner sanctum reserved solely for receiving visitors and laying out coffins at wakes. You were never allowed inside it for general use; that’s what the rest of the house was for. In more modern times, the concept of the Best Room, has waned, but the feeling that the home is a somewhat private place, and mostly off-limits when it comes to visitors endures.

When it comes to virtual homes however, it seems we all have Brit genes, regardless of nationality. Everyone is prepared to defend their right to privacy: Don’t even cam me remotely when I’m in my SL home, or dire things will follow! It always feels a bit of a privilege to be invited into someone’s virtual quarters, and there is no greater social faux pas than forgetting where you were when you logged out, and turning up uninvited in the middle of a friend’s living room the next time you log in! Our homes in SL are where we try on outfits, get jiggy with a romantic partner, or stand for hours unresponsive in our underwear whilst sorting through inventories – they are a sanctuary where strangers are unwelcome, and even guests have a shelf-life. I think that’s because we can feel very exposed elsewhere in SL, where everyone can see you, and there are few places you can retreat to when you need time and space for yourself. So the Brit way of thinking seems to fit.

However, let’s not forget that SL is fundamentally a social experience. Inworld, we tend to congregate with others, both friends and strangers. Even shopping is often a social experience, with overcrowded events and many different strategies to ensure that stores are gathering places, not just retail outlets – lucky chairs, sales, limited-time offers, often bring people flooding in, falling over each other at the entrance, and that’s a scenario also true for clubs and other activities too. Crowds are the lifeblood of commerce in SL.

Being a social environment, community plays a big part in how we relate to others in SL. That’s one of the reasons that groups form such a fundamental part of the inworld experience. However, in terms of the wider definition of community, things have changed over the years and that is, I feel, thanks to a single determining factor – Linden Homes.

Back in the day, before shopping events and 24-hour music venues were ubiquitious inworld, there were places we would gather just to hang out with friends. Real communities, based around iconic sims and locations, now dim memories, but then vibrant groups of people who felt a real sense of belonging in that particular virtual space. Talk to anyone who’s been around SL for 15 years or more, and they’ll reminisce fondly about those places… Pooley Stage, Bay City, Matthew Street, Virtual London, Omega Point, Bullgod Choppers, Venice, to name just a few. Places where you were always guaranteed to find someone to chat with, impromptu parties and all sorts of crazy activities, but now you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere like that any more. Even those few surviving remnants of the old gathering places have become empty and bereft of visitors.

I think much of the blame lies with Linden homes, and that the decline in communities across the Grid started when the Lab started offering places to live as a membership perk. I would say that’s had a huge impact, not only on where people hang out inworld, but also on the overall state of the Grid.

It used to be the case that anyone wanting a place to call their own would find a piece of land to buy or rent and then, by necessity, be compelled to seek out buildings and accoutrements to personalise the plot and make themselves a cosy home, this in turn promoted exploring the Grid to seek inspiration, and – if all else failed – there was always the option of doing-it-yourself. Becoming a builder was simply the next logical step if you wanted something to your own design and taste. Those too lazy laid-back or incapable of building their own always had the option to rent somewhere already furnished, and often such places also had their own communities spring up around the accomodation.

Then came Linden homes – freebie accomodation for the masses, and the masses gravitated to it in their droves. Promoted as communities, that turned out to be the one thing these vast regions of cookie-cutter residences never became… Once people had their new pad, they closed the door behind them and rarely ventured outside. Meanwhile, the locations that had previously been hives of community activity and life became empty, soulless ghost towns. Abandoned land replaced popular gathering places, and private islands lost their populations overnight.

Linden Home regions seem to me to be the gated communities of SL, the very epitome of the American Dream – carefully manicured front lawns, clean streets, and nothing in the way of human interaction taking place anywhere. And here’s the peculiar thing: In the real world, you’d find few Brits who’d find that proposition particularly attractive, yet inworld, they love it! In much the same way that Americans have gravitated towards the British way in terms of privacy within their own four walls, so to have the Brits gravitated towards the American way in wanting to live in vast suburban spralls, where you can get on with your life safe in the knowledge that nobody is ever going to call round for a chat or a cuppa, and everyone keeps themselves to themselves.

The sim I call home used to be a melting pot of activity and virtual interactions. There were always people around, chatting in the street, paying visits to friends, having impromptu get-togethers for no other reason than friendship and companionship. Now, it’s quiet – very quiet – the only visitors being an occasional shopper and survey bots dropping in for a few seconds to count the non-existent traffic. It’s sad and disappointing, but it’s a pattern I see repeated everywhere. Regions that creators have lavished vast amounts of time and energy to make interesting and welcoming places lie empty and devoid of life, and I can’t see it changing in the future.

It’s a shame, and if you ask me, it is the outcome of a poorly-thought out strategy that has erased much of the underlying culture and community from SL.

However, you’re always welcome to pay me a visit and enjoy all the delights my virtual home town has to offer.

Better still, bring a friend or two with you?

s. x

What shall we use
To fill the empty spaces
Where we used to talk?
Pink Floyd – Empty Spaces

Totally not Easter themed. Yay!

We’re going back to the 80s with cool stuff that any Gen-Xer needs in their SLife!

Kicking off with the Rubik’s Lamp – I must have spent endless hours fiddling with that dratted cube in the vain hope I might succeed in solving it, whilst all my friends could do it in seconds, with their eyes closed. In the end, I just peeled off the stickers – lateral thinking!

Perhaps just as frustrating, and just as much fun… Tetris! These Tetris-styled lamps make a great focal point, whether used as lamps or wall decor. Two versions: static and animated. Go on, I’m sure you’ll get them to fit in your room (see what I did there?).

Remember the awesome Windows’ ‘pipes’ screensaver? Well, this is better – running taps that cast a soft blue glow over your room, and absolutely no need for any plumbing whatsoever (not even teapots!), and there’s a complementary droplet lamp too. Now you can have a damp patch wherever you fancy!

Check ’em out today!

Selling content in Second Life can be, well let’s call it ‘interesting’. It was quite some time before I finally took the step of setting up an inworld shop, and then a Marketplace store, for a number of reasons. First, of course, I had to come up with a product that I could (fairly) competently create and which was likely to sell, but there were a number of other obstacles, both real and perceived that held me back from taking the plunge.

To begin with, the process to get a product onto Marketplace seemed insanely complicated and time-consuming and – for the record – my opinion about that hasn’t changed at all, but by far the most daunting obstacle for me was the customers.

As a frequenter of a number of SL forums and blogs, I was used to seeing horror stories about nightmare customers, and just as frequently, reading acerbic rants and long diatribes from disenchanted purchasers who seemed to be of the opinion that the customer is always right, even when they’re plainly wrong and making totally unreasonable demands of content creators. It was these particular personalities that loomed large in my thoughts: Did I really want to enter the seemingly combative arena of virtual commerce and spend all my time dealing with disgruntled customers? It seemed to me that becoming a merchant was a potential recipe for turning a fun pursuit into an horrible burden.

Eventually, I did it anyway, and in the main I’ve been pleasantly surprised to find that my fears have been pretty much unfounded. That’s not to say that it’s all been plain sailing, but customer interactions of the negative kind have been, thankfully, minimal. In fact, I’ve found most customers who have cause to complain have been more than forgiving when I’ve genuinely screwed up and I’ve put things right for them. There are, inevitably, a few numpties that really need a kick up the rear end rather than a pleasant customer service smile. For example, there’s the idiot who left me a one-star review and complained about the no modify item he’d bought from me on MP because… it was no mod! Seriously? He also moaned because mesh items have a higher LI when you make them bigger, and he’s not the first customer to do so. Clearly, hadn’t taken their medication that day.

Those aside, however, selling content in SL has been fairly straightforward and not nearly as fraught as I’d originally feared, however you never really know when you’re going to be on the receiving end of a curve-ball that unexpectedly catches you out, leaving you with a bemused look on your face and a sense that you’ve dipped your toes into the fringes of the Twilight Zone.

This week, completely out of the blue, I got an IP strike for one of my products.

Now, I’m a huge advocate for protecting intellectual property rights for artists and creatives. I strongly believe that those who make original creative works should be protected – in law – so that their work cannot be stolen, copied or attributed to another against their wishes. Having said that I also think that there is some latitude for derivative, parodying and fan-made content, where this is within the spirit of the genre and doesn’t seek to blatantly infringe copyright. I will add a further caveat, inasmuch I feel equally strongly that big corporate concerns are often fair game to be challenged in terms of copyrighted material, particularly where they ride roughshod over the rights of their contributing artists, for financial gain, and agressively pursue ruthless anti-competitive actions to ‘protect their brand’. We see the latter frequently, for example where a multinational company threatens shock and awe against a one-person brand, simply because their name sounds similar.

Anyway, now you know my stance and, when it comes to SL, I’m very careful to avoid anything that could be overtly questionable in terms of IP rights, taking account of what I’ve stated above. So, it came as something of a surprise when the Lindens took down one of my MP products on the basis that it infringed their intellectual property policy.

But… I really don’t think that it does. Take a look below, and tell me what you think:

Yes, there is a strong similarity to a certain well-known brand logo and slogan, but I’d argue that by any reasonable definition, it’s very different, is quite clearly derivative and a parody piece and wouldn’t be at all conflated with the brand which inspired it by any average person.

Let’s break that down. Firstly, the logo itself is not the same as the original, If it does indeed resemble it, it’s still not a copy, as I’ve both inverted it and flipped it horizontally, specifically so that it wouldn’t be construed as any attempt to replicate the real thing. If anything, I’d happily contend that it’s actually a stylized representation of the Great Wave off Kanagawa! So stick that up your corporate rear end and swivel! Secondly, the accompanying slogan, whilst bearing a passing resemblance to the real one, is again quite definitely parody, and the only shared element is the word ‘Just’. Although I’m no legal expert, I doubt very much that any company, no matter how many high-powered lawyers it might employ, could successfully argue ownership and control of a non-proprietory word used in everyday language, whatever context it’s employed in. So, in my opinion, and I’m by no means an expert although I do purport to possess and modicum of common sense, this smacks a little of corporate nonsense. Actually – full disclosure – my inspiration for this particular piece came not directly from the ‘injured’ party’s advertising spiel, but it’s based on a photo of a piece of graffiti, so ultimately it’s a derivative of a derivative parody work – you’re chasing the wrong person!

Much as it galls me, I’m not going to go through the hassle of trying to argue any of the above with the Lab. Life’s too short and I don’t have the energy. I could take issue with the fact that rather than taking me to task in this rather facile and ridiculous fashion, the Lab might be serving me and their reputation better by pursuing the several other content creators on Marketplace that have stolen my own images and are blatantly using them, completely unaltered, to promote their own products – they haven’t even removed my logo from the pictures! However, I fear that would also prove to be a pointlessly fruitless exercise too, and I simply cannot be bothered.

So, instead I shall back down gracefully and take some solace from the knowledge that it would appear that Nike consider little me such a profound threat to their global presence that I need to be eradicated. Go me!

Anyway, I get the message loud and clear… Just don’t!

s. x

I don’t tell you what to say
Oh, don’t tell you what to do
So just let me be myself
That’s all I ask of you
Joan Jett – You Don’t Own Me

Unless you keep an eye on the official SL blog feeds, or happen to have counted your groups recently, you may be unaware – as are a surprising number of people – that The Lab have recently blessed us with an increased number of group slots, standard members have been increased from 42 to 50, with 55, 80 and 150 for paid members, depending on your membership tier. Stored IMs have also increased, meaning you’re less likely to get the annoying IMs capped message.

It’s good news – I don’t think that anyone would wish to complain about extra groups and IMs… erm, except me, of course! Well, it’s not so much a complaint about the extras, but a more general moan prompted by the change, which can be summarised in a couple of main points. First, Linden Lab’s marketing and communication is as shockingly poor as it’s ever been, and secondly, inworld groups no matter how many we have, are a woefully inadequate tool for the one purpose that the majority of them serve.

As far as the first point is concerned, the way in which the Lab communicates – or rather fails to communicate – with users is downright dreadful, always has been, and it shows no signs of improving. When you consider that extra groups is something that most of us are extremely grateful to have and have asked for numerous times, why on earth haven’t the Lindens announced it with a bit more of a fanfare? It’s good news, a better deal for residents, a big improvement – in short a great opportunity to do some positive marketing and making a bit of a song and a dance about. However, that’s not how the Lab does things, instead they bury the announcement in the official blog feed, which within a matter of days had disappeared off the front page of the website dashboard, something that few people read or are even conscious of.

It amazes me that, with all the potential ways the Lab has of communicating with residents, they’re so inept when it comes to employing the tools at their disposal to good effect. Why, for example, when they have new features or improvements to promote, don’t they have a splash screen at login, or an inworld notification? Alternatively, having gone to the trouble of putting together a blog post, why not email it to everyone – they don’t have to do it to the point of being annoying, but certainly it would be great to receive an email on the odd occasion when something new and cool is available!

The Lab’s marketing strategy has always been woefully misguided. When the inworld trend is for realistic(ish) human avatars, the Lab is still obsessed with including at least a couple of furries, and someone wearing a tail, in pretty much every piece of advertising (Spoiler: that really can turn people away). Promotional videos are – let’s be generous – reminiscent of Cold War recruitment campaigns and seem to intentionally shy away from encouraging new users to join, but are aimed instead squarely at the existing user base. And, when it comes to incentives to become paid-up members, they’re not exactly attractive – I mean, I can’t be the only one who struggles to get excited about ‘exclusive’ sandboxes? As for Linden Homes, I know they’re popular, but they only really suit a particulartype of person, and it seems to me, a particularly American demographic… but, more on that in a forthcoming post.

In short, I can’t help feeling that The Lab have missed a trick here – a fab opportunity to shout about SL improvements that benefit everyone, and which would have boosted their credibility, but has actually turned out to be a bit of a non-event as far as the majority of SL users are concerned.

So, now we come to my second moan, which is about SL groups themselves. I’ve always considered them to be a means for bringing together residents with common or similar interests: clubs, if you like, with all the functions that a club might make use of – a chat room, the ability to appoint officers and responsibilities and a messaging tool that can act as a newsletter to members. If you take a look at any group description, it’s patently clear from the options and functions available that’s how it should be used, but in reality the vast majority of groups are employed in a completely different manner that really isn’t suited to the group concept.

Most groups are just an advertising platform, bombarding members with offers, updates and latest releases, a cheap and accesible tool for content creators and merchants to promote their stores, clubs and events, with the added benefit that they can be linked to inworld assets that give discounts or other perks to members, but exclude anyone not in the club.

Nothing really wrong with that, I suppose, but it’s not what groups were designed for and that causes problems. I recently visited a store with a beguiling selection of freebies – over 20, in all – spread across the wall, every single one of which could only be obtained by joining an event group specific to that item. Now, there’s no way I had any intention of joining over 20 groups, no matter how cool the freebie, even if I had sufficient slots to do so – that way insanity lies. So, no freebies for me and – more to the point – no sign-ups for the events featured, and an overwhelming feeling that I was being used. I ended up leaving the store, without looking around or buying anything.

We’ve all been in similar situations. Maybe not faced with a whole wall of groups to join, but when faced with limited group slots and enticing offers, whether freebies, discounted purchases or exclusive items for members, we all do the same thing: we join the group, grab the swag, then immediately quit. The content-creator gains no benefit from it and any opportunity for future promotions or communication via the group is lost. Meanwhile, we’ve got what we came for, and if in future we do happen to come back and see something we like, we’ll do exactly the same thing, all over again.

Groups are just not designed to be used in that way and we really need something better. Any system that relies on the purchaser needing to have spare capacity available from a limited supply of slots isn’t suited to be used in that way and will never provide a satisfactory result for either owner or subscriber, throw in a group chat function that’s never worked properly, with a significant number of group members choosing to go outside SL and used Discord instead, and you’re left with a very poor imitation of a marketing tool that needs to be so much better.

I don’t pretend to know what an effective and better solution would be, but I do know that what we currently have to use is flawed and unfit for that purpose. It surprises me that with all the talented scripters and designers that we have an effective alternative isn’t readily available and employed – we already have HUDs for events and sales, for example, surely some enterprising soul could come up with a way of linking them to lucky chairs, midnight mania boards and vendors so they function in the same way as groups do? If groups can do it, then it stands to reason that the same can be done with scripts. All we’d have to do if that was the case would be to grab, or buy the HUD, and simply slip it on when we need to – no need for group slots, we could keep them for the things we really need to have a finger on the pulse for, and unlimited in number. We could even drop all those HUDs into our frequently worn folder for easy access.

But, what do I know? There may be an even better way. Groups though are not the answer.

I shall leave you with that thought. I have additional group slots just begging to be filled, and they’re not gonna fill themselves!

s. x

We got our own way of walkin’
We got our way of talkin’ (gotta have fun!)
Any time of the year, don’t you hear (gotta have fun!)
Spendin’ cash, talkin’ trash
Bryan Ferry – The In-Crowd

I’ve been working hard in the lab, cooking up a whole new batch of goodies and they’re ready to hit the streets right now!

Inspired by the hugely popular Breaking Bad series, I’ve put together a collection of 9 brand new products that will be instantly recognisable to any fan, and which will look great in all sorts of locations, from urban environments to club settings, and even on your bedroom wall… and, of course, are essential pieces for any self-respecting meth lab!

Choose from ‘WW’, ‘Say My Name’, ‘Los Pollos Hermanos’, ‘Let’s Cook’, ‘Heisenberg’, ‘Have An A1 Day’, ‘Br Ba’, ‘Blue Meth’, and ‘99.1%’. All available on Marketplace – just search the HHI Store for ‘meth‘… but, don’t tell the feds!

I’ve been feeling mildly rebellious for the past couple of weeks. Not towards anything in particular, or for any specific reason I can put my finger on, but it’s just a mild feeling of wanting to break the mould, simmering gently beneath the surface. Maybe it’s related to the start of a new year, or perhaps a result of having some time off recently and getting used to having free rein to do whatever I wanted, whenever and however I wanted. It’s a case of wanting to ‘stick it to the Man’, but I’m not entirely sure what exactly I want to stick, or who the Man might be, although I suspect it’s the world and its demands in general that I’m feeling are just a little restrictive of late.

There’s nothing new about that, I’ve always been a rebel. Even as a schoolkid I resented authority and having to conform, and I considered myself to be a bit of a square peg in a round hole, and that’s continued throughout my life, although I’m probably a lot more restrained these days than I used to be.

I’ve always done things my way, which is rarely the ‘right’ way, or how my peers would go about things. That, at times, has made life difficult and challenging, it’s often turned out quite badly (but I’m willing to own that – my choices, my consequences), but there are equally times that it’s worked out in my favour and has absolutely been the right way for me to go. Many might consider me stubborn – I prefer to say, tenacious; some might say I’m confrontational – whereas I’d say I’m forthright; some would say I’m obstinate – I’d argue, principled. In simple terms, I don’t like to be told how to live my life, at least not without considering any alternative possibilities, and sometimes it can feel as if I’m being made to conform to being the person that others want me to be.

I think I’ve seen a lot of changes with the people around me in the past couple of years, changes for the better that seem to be bypassing me, and it’s possible that this has provoked a growing frustration within me around my own situation. As an example, several of my work colleagues have taken early retirement – a luxury that isn’t something I could consider in my current circumstances, indeed retirement of any kind is still too far in the future to be an idea I can reasonably entertain. That’s something that I have little control over – I’m at the mercy of circumstance – most irritating!Things like that can niggle, particularly when life has become slightly humdrum and predictable and I feel the need to do something new and different, and at times like this it’s not unusual for my frustrations to manifest in SL – somewhere that I’m totally in control of my destiny, and in an environment where I can be as rebellious as I wish.

It’s at times like this that I can change from a mild-mannered, unremarkable resident of the virtual world into some very different incarnations. I may become an anarchic punk rocker, or shed my everyday look to become a futuristic cyberpunk or grungy post-apocalyptic scavenger. Alternatively, you may find me driving one of my Ferraris, or giant Hummers, with reckless abandon around the roads of SL, and just as frequently off-road, with little regard for rules, speed limits or other road users. It’s very cathartic!

My little diversions into the wilder side of virtual life can last anything from a couple of days, to weeks, or even months at a time: The more restrictive real life gets, the more I tend to stop conforming in the virtual world, and the more I do things my way, in my time, as I want to, because I have to exercise constraint in the real world – a lesson that has taken me years to learn, although sometimes I still break the rules because, deep down inside I have that need. Sometimes you have to be selfish to be good to yourself. If, however, I can’t get no satisfaction and what I want in RL, well maybe I can get what you need in the virtual equivalent. It’s not the same, of course, but mentally and emotionally, I don’t think there’s a lot of difference – freedom, is freedom, in whatever form it takes.

I’ve often heard it said that many log in to SL as an escape from real life, but we have to face up to the reality that RL can’t be escaped, it is what it is, and often it’s very much what we make of it: No matter how much we may feel that life and circumstance control us, we’re still the masters of our own destinies. We can choose to be victims, or we can choose to accept that life is rarely as great as we’d like it to be, roll with the punches and go with the flow, rather than fighting it. That’s not to say those of us with a rebellious streak should quit our principles and take things lying down… sometimes, you just gotta do what you gotta do. Weigh up the consequences though! That’s probably one of the more important lessons I’ve learned over the years, pick your battles carefully and be prepared to take the flak. And, for those times when you really need to go full-on Tank Girl, or Ellen Ripley, and take on the world but there’s just no way to do that for real, at least you can have the satisfaction of sticking it to the Man virtually.

It won’t necessarily change life for the better, but it doesn’t half feel good!

s. x

Rebel rebel, you’ve torn your dress
Rebel rebel, your face is a mess
Rebel rebel, how could they know?
Hot tramp, I love you so!
David Bowie – Rebel Rebel